Even for a show that has this many people on it, a great deal happened on this episode of True Blood. Most of it with crummy dumbass music.
In Sookie's head, she spends about ten minutes in Faeryland. For her subjectively, it is ten minutes of a tampon commercial in which she luckily does not eat their goblin market food. But once she determines that faeries are 100% bullshit and tries to get her Grandaddy "Gary Cole" Earl out of there -- pissing in Queen Mab's cornflakes as she goes -- the whole place turns into Beirut and everybody starts looking like nasty elves and it's just a bad, bad scene. Claudine and her brother help them escape and Earl ages twenty years in one second, which puts him about 19 years after dead.
This part was probably stupid to you, unless you are hip to how faeries operate. Then probably you were like, "Don't eat the fruit! Don't piss off Mab! Get the eff out of there!" and nothing was that surprising. If the latter, you were probably amazed at how accurate Faeryland actually was and it turned around from being dumb to being awesome.
In real life, a year has gone by in Bon Temps. This is nice, because it preserves the show's "everything happens in real time" structure, while also making interesting things happen instead of the same things.
Jason has been: A cop and basically the boss of Andy, who is all kinds of addicted to V and still kind of the dad of the crackhead were-panthers. Which makes it all the more frustrating when they do crackhead things like knock him out and put him in a deep freezer that's not plugged in -- the better to let panthers touch him or something. No news on Kitch Maynard, but I shall remain vigilant.
Bill has been: Mopey.
Eric has been: Mopey, but like a sexy kind of mopey?
The two of them are waging two very different kinds of political takeovers. In the wake of King Russell blowing, everybody's spot-slash-getting concreted, which is the best thing of the entire episode. Bill's like the Sarah Palin and Eric's like how you wish Obama was.
And Pam is kind of like John Kerry, if John Kerry was exactly how he is, but also blasé about being a serial killer.
I think Bill is also now the King of Louisiana and dating Andy's sister Portia Bellefleur, who is played by Courtney Ford (Dexter, et. al.) who is the freaking best. I think both of those things were mentioned, but it's so hard to pay attention to Bill Compton's details because he is such a snoozer of a fellow.
Tara has been: Turning into a cage-fighting lesbian. Shocker there. Boo hoo hoo, I'm the most hated character in all of television, I guess I'll be something everybody likes, such as a cage-fighting lesbian. You can expect a lot of outrage regarding this realistic storyline, where the girl got raped by a vampire for twelve weeks and then decided to make out with hot chicks instead. Like, can you blame her?
Tommy has been: Turned into Maxine Fortenberry's My Buddy doll to replace Hoyt. This is amazing. He is a little bitch and Sam is so grossed out and it is so, so great. Meanwhile Sam is hanging out with some other sexy shifters and trying to feel his shifter empowerment, but since it's Sam, he only feels empowered in fits and starts and usually with his shirt off. Then he goes back to being glum and cute and kind of creepy.
Hoyt & Jessica: Kind of hate each other, but it's also sort of romantic? I don't know, that part was pretty great. They yell and fight about how he wants her to cook and she's like, "Human food is disgusting, why would I prepare it?" and they both kind of have a larger point about eating, but then she giggles and then he starts giggling and it's like, they are going to be okay. (Obviously they are not going to be okay, nobody is okay on this show, but they're sexy for reals.) Pam eventually spots Jessica tramping around Fangtasia and tells her to stop being an idiot, but no: She wants to have her Hoyt and also random neck.
Jesus has a fucked up haircut and is dragging Lafayette into his new dorky coven of sexy Wiccan dudes, Holly -- this sorta Hot Librarian nerdy-knitter hipster girl -- and also the very dorky Petunia Dursley, who has some kind of a naked psychic power that can tell that Lafayette used to be Eddie's whore. (Aw, Eddie.) Anyway, she brings a lovebird to life and I guess maybe she's not that bad at being a witch, but that's bad news for her anonymity because you know how vampires always have to be up in everybody's shit.
Arlene & Terry have been: Worried about their devil baby, who's spending his first birthday ripping the heads off Barbie dolls and whatever. It's so stupid.
Generally, if you're the kind of person to bitch and moan about how there's too many characters, this show's intellectual burden is probably getting to you. But if you are not into that type of bitching, then it was a fun and sexy blur, like always. This year seems to be about witches and ghost witches mostly, but the whole Bill Thing just got super interesting. Which is normally something you would only say on Opposite Day. And you've got Eric just leering at the camera like, "I'm going to take off my clothes all the time pretty soon," so I guess watch out for that too.
Previously: All kinds of things but it's not necessary to follow up with any of them at this time, because of what's happened since last summer. Case by case basis. After breaking up with all her vampire lovers for being paternalistic and getting her killed all the time and sucking her blood without even asking, Sookie's gone to Faeryland.
FAERYLAND
Looks: Dumb like you'd assume -- or, if you saw Caprica, it looks like Cheesy Fake Abomination Matrix Heaven -- everybody's roaming around in togas eating glowing fruit that looks like the whimsical holiday lighting you might buy at a party store and there's a permanent Maxfield Parrish lavender-hour thing happening. It looks like those Terry Brooks fantasy paperbacks you used to see at the grocery store and wonder who that was. I was kind of hoping it would look like Beirut, but whatever.
Who is here: Grandaddy Earl, Barry the Bellhop and Claudine -- who is Sookie's literal Fairy Godmother.
Sookie: "Okay, if your job is to look after me, can I just say you suck?"
Claudine: "Listen, the way you act? You stomp into the face of death like five times in every episode and then get mad when the creatures you're taunting react by trying to kill you. I fully assume you're going to try and get killed at least once in this scene alone."
Sookie: "Valid."
Barry the Bellhop's fairy godmother is a hot dude named Lloyd who looks like a Master of the Universe, but even gayer. Maybe this whole thing isn't so bad. I want mine to look like the title character of the movie Krull, whom I've been convinced I am going to marry since I was about five.
Sookie looks around and realizes a bunch of stuff about Faeryland all at once. (I know I keep linking to that, but I don't want to explain it any more times.) Namely, don't eat the food because it will mess you right up. Everybody's sucking on the fruit -- the (if you will, apparently) lumiere -- and having these orgasm faces and whatever. It tastes good and feeds your faerie nature and also pulls a Persephone on you.
Sookie: "Grandaddy Earl, what are you doing here? You died when I was little!"
Earl: "Sookie, what are you doing here? Why are you thirty? I've been here a week."
The credits roll as they stare, stare, stare at each other. I guess we can use this time to think about how if twenty years is a week in Faeryland, then just this teaser is probably costing Sookie at least a few months. That is, if you can stop laughing at their hilarious staring contest and the faery music going apeshit long enough to think at all.
Earl: "So if it's been twenty years, I guess Adele's dead. How'd that go?"
Sookie: "Not so bad. She was chopped, screaming, limb from limb by a serial killer with a fake Cajun accent he learned from cassette tapes. Everything before that went pretty well, though."
Earl: "Oh, that's good to hear. And your parents?"
Sookie: "They drowned in a flood. I was getting molested at the time."
Earl: "It is so nice to visit and just catch up."
Sookie, at this point, sees through the Matrix -- a faerie looks like whatever, but you'll never know it because they put on the appearance of a hottie, but if they get mad or things get weird, you see through the glamour in little ripples -- and spots an unseemly Unseelie goblin-looking motherfucker on the prowl, and then she sees black demon goop pouring down the walls, and then notices the lumieres are sort of rotten looking.
Sookie pulls it together and remembers that A) This is still bad news, from a second ago, B) She is psychic, which it always takes her a while to remember for some reason, and C) Earl is also psychic.
Psychic Sookie: "Grandaddy Earl! Don't eat that fruit! This is a trap."
Psychic Earl: "A what?"
Psychic Everybody In The Whole Place: "Sookie, nice to see you are still capable of being dumb as shit."
THAT VERY MAB THAT PLAITS THE MANES
The Queen appears. She's wack, making her a very good Mab -- which is to say, not quite a Titania (think more like Sophie-Anne) -- and she is having none of Sookie's mess.
Mab: "Little lady, the 'trap' is the world you've left behind."
Everybody, Even Sookie A Little: Bows deep, like it's Munchkinland and Glinda just showed up to condescend to everybody.
Mab: "At ease, y'all. Sookie, try some fruit."
Sookie, after trying to be a polite Southern lady for a while, finally just spikes her fruit and it rots on the ground. Mab's teeth get a little gobliny and Sookie stares. Mab weird-talks her way through the situation, which, in brief, is that thanks to Sookie being a fangbanger, Bill got to visit Faeryland -- or at least the foyer, the lobby, the portico -- and since it was vampires that chased the faerie out of our world in the first place, that's got TPTB all riled. They thought there were no faeries left, and now they know better.
So Mab wants to get all the faerie/humans out of our world so that vampires will go back to thinking faerie is not on the menu. She wants to do this by implying that Sookie and Earl and the rest of the psychics are kind of miscegenated, I think. Then, once all remnants of the faerie are over on this side, she'll close the doors forever. Sookie's point is that she's no longer interested in hanging out with vampires and can, in fact, "guaran-damn-tee" it. But Mab goes gobliny again and assures her that it's not really her call. Needless to say, Sookie smart-mouths her at this point.
So Mab wants to get all the faerie/humans out of our world so that vampires will go back to thinking faerie is not on the menu. She wants to do this by implying that Sookie and Earl and the rest of the psychics are kind of miscegenated, I think. Then, once all remnants of the faerie are over on this side, she'll close the doors forever. Sookie's point is that she's no longer interested in hanging out with vampires and can, in fact, "guaran-damn-tee" it. But Mab goes gobliny again and assures her that it's not really her call. Needless to say, Sookie smart-mouths her at this point.
They try to forcefeed her the fruit, but Sook hits Mab with the ol' razzle-dazzle and she goes flying and lands on her ass. I guess she wasn't quite ready for Sookie's particular brand of bullshit, because my assumption is that normally Sookie would not be capable of doing that.
Because pathetic fallacy is the hallmark of faerie aristocracy, Mab's distracted to the point that, sure enough, Faeryland turns into Beirut. Or at least Joshua Tree National Park. Also, everybody now looks like punk zombies, or like the movie Legend, or Anjelica Huston in The Witches, or one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. Scary stuff. Time To Bounce O'clock.
(This is also the point where I totally relaxed, because that tells you that this show knows what it's doing. Like it usually does, but all the tampon-y stuff had given us pause. The key to navigating it is that -- because it's a spiritual state, not a geographical one -- you have to treat both kinds of appearances as part of, but not the whole, truth. It's all maya whether it looks like heaven or hell. Just like with people or real life, Real Faerie Unplugged is not something you're ever going to see, because that word "real" doesn't mean anything: You just see different truths about it, manifesting themselves through the filter of your own stuff.)
They make a run for it while Mab recovers and then glowing magic-grenades are dropping everywhere and only the most human/most focused faerie are able to keep their seemings. This is also so we can tell who's "good" and who's "bad" -- usually, but especially here, kind of a useless perspective -- because it's a fight scene with lots of running around and explosions, so the Seelie/Unseelie distinction of their appearances is really just more like Shirts/Skins so we know what's going on.
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Clever. And then building on that, Claudine's brother Claude -- lookin' mighty Unseelie at this time -- throws off the chasers by pretending he's captured them, which gives his sister time to throw more magic glow-grenades to hold off the forces, long enough for Sookie and Earl (despite his having eaten the fruit) to jump through what looks like about five dollars' worth of special effects.
Man. Once Sookie gets a handle on that magic grenade power, boy is she going to fuck everything up! On the reg! Can you imagine?
TIME OUT O' MIND/THE FAERIES' COACHMAKERS
They land midday, but both Bill and Eric's eyeballs pop open the second she's back in our dimension, because as usual Sookie's love life is both the engine the show runs on and its grandest punchline.
Earl realizes he's aging twenty years in one second, so they say their goodbyes and he's like, "Sorry I abandoned you for twenty years and your entire family died." They joke about how Adele is going to beat the shit out of him in Heaven, which is cute. And then just before wisping away on the wind, he gives her his pocket watch for Jason, essentially so the plot can skip any attempts to explain the subjective timeframes of Faeryland Standard Time to her brother, which would take, like, an entire episode and he still wouldn't get it.
Jason: "You mean like sometimes when you want somethin', like a cheeseburger or somethin', and it seems like it takes forever for them to make it? But if you have to take a test, time speeds up into a blur?"
Einstein: "Actually, yes. That's exactly what it's like. But I feel like by grasping it you've somehow ended up even further from understanding it."
Jason: "An intuitive grok of quantum physics is the one upshot of never using my brain for anything."
Characteristically, Sookie cries for about a minute, with that awful and affecting sad-face she makes, then dusts her shit off and stomps home to change clothes and find somebody to yell at.
SOOKIE'S HOUSE
Has been buffed, rebuilt, landscaped, beautified, repainted, updated, furnished and furbished and all of the things you can do. It looks amazing, the opposite of the Maryann Makeover, so of course Sookie starts some shit.
Workman: "Stranger, you can't go in there!"
Sookie: "It's my house. Why are you guys rebuilding and fixing up my house and making it look awesome? I hate you motherfuckers."
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The guy calls the police because a strange stomping girl just locked them out, and Sookie heads over to cry at the kitchen table some more -- complete with the Country Adele music of being home and being sad -- because not only did her grandfather just die, but the last thing that happened before she left town ten minutes ago was everything turning awful. Eric fed her to King Russell and tried to commit suicide and she found out her entire storyline with Bill for the past three seasons was a huge lie so her heart is broken. The girl needs a little rest. Not to be.
Jason comes in with some facial hair that would look douchey on anybody and yet still, shocker, he doesn't look that bad, wearing a cop's uniform and calling out to any intruders. He's all over her in a second, looking like he's a seen a ghost, happiest he's been in a while and Sookie -- not having put the obvious pieces together -- is more confused about why he's wearing a cop uniform.
Jason: "Jesus Christ! We thought you were dead! We've been lookin' everywhere for you! We figured a vampire musta did it. Bill or maybe that crazy tall one..."
Sookie finally figures out the situation and here's the bottom line: Twelve months, two weeks. Probably for the first two weeks everybody was sad and then for the last year they realized that, without Sookie stirring shit up constantly, they might all have a chance at leading productive lives.
In brief, Jason sold her house to a mysterious real estate shell company (obviously owned by Eric Northman, not that this occurs either of them, and also cue the Internet's Asperger's Syndrome to worry for months about the very important legalities of this) because of the grief of one more person dying in that house and Jason being all alone with only panthers for his family.
Sookie, finding a way to bitch: "I cain't believe you gave up on me!"
Jason: "Not only are you a fangbanger, which in my experience equals 100% death, but you're Sookie Stackhouse. You don't even go to the bathroom without notifying every cast member in person where you're headed."
ibid., adorably: "We even made up a website!"
More talk about the subjectivity of FST, with Jason not quite in disbelief, but more importantly with the most gleeful, loving smile. He says he believes her, but he doesn't really, until she gives him the pocket watch and he has the equivalent of those sad/sweet country-song feelings Sook's always feeling about Adele all the time and then he finally comprehends time. Then, an amazing thing happens that tells you how much all of this has changed her: He asks the time so he can wind the watch and Sookie's first association, the first thought in her head, is that it's sundown. Not happy about the prospect; probably not happy that it's still her first thought.
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Eric: "Apparently I have to go! But understand this. Everyone who claims to love you -- your friends, your brother, even Bill Compton -- they all gave up on you. I never did."
Eric compliments her paintjob -- Things! Changing! Everywhere! -- and she just kind of shrugs and waits for Bill to fuck off. Instead, Andy Bellefleur drives up right then looking very vibrational and offended that Sookie is not dead: "You have gotta be shittin' me!"
Bill comes down closer to him, and Andy moves well out of his way, and we learn that everybody thought Bill killed her or she was kidnapped. Sookie, of course, is not about to let her Big Fuss be taken out of her own hands, so she assures him she wasn't kidnapped: She stomped off our mortal coil and don't you forget it. But Andy is very...he's a guitar string that won't stop twanging. Guess the V he was sniffing last year got him after all. Remember when he was a big drunk? Times that by V.
In fact, Andy screams so much at her -- a certain amount of caring under a heap of irritation -- that Bill finally jumps in with her non-faery alibi: She was doing Vampire Business on Bill's behalf. Andy yells about that because Bill kept it a secret, but doesn't seem to question Bill's authority to do something like that. In fact, it calms him down; Bill explains that this was a matter of human life and that her spy work was necessary.
Bill: "I will repay the costs of the search effort, as soon as you issue a statement clearing my name. Obviously, I did not kill her."
Andy: "For thirteen straight months I've had that open case on my books! If it weren't for you, this year's Louisiana Safe Streets plaque would be on my wall and not fuckin' Webster Parish!"
Jason: "Okay, Andy. Tomorrow."
Andy, not questioning his authority either: "You owe me a plaque!"
Jason hustles Andy off in the cop car, and Sookie reminds Bill that he's had a year to adjust to life, but she just dumped him an hour ago for seducing her under false pretenses. And making her feel like a jackass. And tricking her into loving him. So he needs to chill. He says it's good that she's safe, which touches her, and she says it back. Mostly, though, it reminds her she is not at all safe, and also now has no boyfriend. She is Nobody's.
THE PRESSURE OF A NAME
Which, I think, we should maybe think about a little bit, in the context of this show, because possibly you've forgotten how the whole Mine thing works. On one level, it's territorial pissing. On another level, it's about men using women to play games with each other. But on the third level, the one that's actually relevant on a plot level to this story right now, Sookie's been smart-assing her way through the most dangerous places on Earth for every episode of this show because she was His.
Bill: "I will repay the costs of the search effort, as soon as you issue a statement clearing my name. Obviously, I did not kill her."
Andy: "For thirteen straight months I've had that open case on my books! If it weren't for you, this year's Louisiana Safe Streets plaque would be on my wall and not fuckin' Webster Parish!"
Jason: "Okay, Andy. Tomorrow."
Andy, not questioning his authority either: "You owe me a plaque!"
Jason hustles Andy off in the cop car, and Sookie reminds Bill that he's had a year to adjust to life, but she just dumped him an hour ago for seducing her under false pretenses. And making her feel like a jackass. And tricking her into loving him. So he needs to chill. He says it's good that she's safe, which touches her, and she says it back. Mostly, though, it reminds her she is not at all safe, and also now has no boyfriend. She is Nobody's.
THE PRESSURE OF A NAME
Which, I think, we should maybe think about a little bit, in the context of this show, because possibly you've forgotten how the whole Mine thing works. On one level, it's territorial pissing. On another level, it's about men using women to play games with each other. But on the third level, the one that's actually relevant on a plot level to this story right now, Sookie's been smart-assing her way through the most dangerous places on Earth for every episode of this show because she was His.
She knew that he would come running. She's admitted this out loud. We've talked a lot about what that means, in terms of feminism and in terms of dangerous wild things, but because Sookie as a character is easy to overlook I think the rest of the episode will make more sense if you think about it now, because it's what she is thinking about now: To love is to bury. Do you want to be buried?
So you go from a technical Damsel In Distress, who is rarely, if ever, in actual Distress -- and who is quite capable of using men as weapons (as well as actual weapons, not to mention gardening equipment) to defend herself -- and then turn her around in the mirror to look at the fact that she is entering this world, in a lot of ways, for the first time. Where everything is scary and dangerous and suspect and coming right at her.
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Which is not a safe feeling, but also not a rare feeling. And for all the hassle of having multiple vampires in love with her, it helped in this way until the price tags ended up too high. And she fled the universe rather than dealing with it and things sucked there, too. So she needs a gun or she needs to figure out which man will protect her.
Or, if you don't happen to hate women enough to assume their victimhood and lack of agency as a matter of fact, under the guise of feminism: She needs a gun or she needs to figure out which supernatural creature will solve this supernatural problem for her.
Both are true and both are valid and either way it's a story you're being told. I don't know, maybe the floating-metaphor thing is a muscle that gets sore with disuse, but I kind of thought we'd had this conversation about a thousand times already.
JASON
Immediately finds and takes away Andy's vial of V -- harsh like a man, authority unquestioned, but also because he has no patience for V at all. V has hurt Jason personally more than anybody else I can think of (besides vampires, obvs). Meaning that Andy now has no V, which means that for the rest of however long, Andy's going to be on a V hunt, because longtime alcoholic Andy got cured by Maryann but is now a drug addict instead.
Specifically a drug that acts on some guys like steroids and Viagra at once. Remember how Andy was so obsessed with Jason's sex life and his masculinity and then Jason got all obsessed with Kitch Maynard's sex life and masculinity and the whole time Lafayette was so funny about how dumb boys are? Men, historically, have a really hard time figuring out the Dumbo Feather on that one. Poor old Andy's needed V since before there was V.
~†WITCHHOUSE†~
It's been ten months since Lafayette's last scary vision after his trip with Jesus, but somehow tonight Jesus has convinced him to come to this lame magick shoppe and hang out with Wiccans and whatever. Lafayette has a mohawk and it's kind of amazing, because first you're like Lafayette looks crazy, and then you're like, Lafayette always looks crazy, how is this different?
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Other places Jesus has dragged him to include meditation classes and the Dallas Pagan Faire. Jesus knows he's being humored, but swears the particular crone in charge of this coven -- "It's not a coven!" -- has some connection to the magic that Lafayette will appreciate.
Lala, before entering: "Five minutes. Ten if they got drinks."
Lala, after entering: "Smell like where old air fresheners go to die."
Doubtful. What it smells like, I can tell you from a lifetime of being raised by these women, is cats and more cats and sage and sweet grass and patchouli and cats. Well, maybe in Bon Temps they use scented candles. Because you know they've got about a million candles going, too. Jesus points out the beaded curtain they've got, like maybe that'll make Lafayette feel more at home, and he does hilarious Lafayette shade at the beaded curtain, and they go in.
Who is there is: A dork with a beard, a nerdy sex kitten, some other ladies, hipsters, Holly the Waitress who magically failed to abort Arlene's devil baby, and Fiona Shaw a.k.a. Petunia Dursley. That's Marnie, and man is she sad. She's just old and smells like pee and mutters to herself and looks like maybe she really does see other worlds than we do, but that maybe they could help her with that at the shelter.
The ladies -- because who loves the gays more than a lonely, lonely lady -- are overjoyed that Jesus finally brought his boyfriend (excuse me, "partner") and drag him over there to sit in the circle. The sexy nerd-girl, Katie, is especially close to Jesus and excited about the boyfriend. Lafayette is weirded out that Jesus has been talking to them about him, being naturally suspicious and also suspicious of witches and things, and also weirded out that Marnie is so fucked up and crazy-looking.
Lala: "She looks like she could use a nap."
Katie: "Oh no! She's transported herself to another plane. That's how she can contact the spirits of the dead."
Planes, what a hassle. Sometimes it's ghosts and sometimes it's faerie goblins.
Holly: "Well, it's like fishin'. Cast your line into the dark, sometimes you get a response, sometimes you don't. On nights we don't, there's always vodka."
Lafayette gives Jesus some attitude about how the "greatest witch ever" seems to be a depressing, living Depends commercial, and Marnie suddenly stops murmuring, having finally noticed the nuclear magick reactor that Lafayette is. Watching somebody "channel spirits" is about the freakiest thing you can do, even knowing it's bullshit. Fiona Shaw does a great rendition of it. I hate that shit. So Marnie mumbles at Holly for a bit, and doesn't quite get the name right and Lafayette laughs at them until she does. And boy, she does.
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Marnie, via Holly: "Edith? Maybe in short form? Edie? Eddie?"
Lafayette, not getting it: "Could be, it's a common name."
Holly: "Well, you lose someone by that name, recently?"
Yes. Eddie was Lafayette's sugar daddy vampire with the red stapler that was drained and killed by Jason and Amy during their own witchy drug addict phase. Did anybody ever figure that out? I remember Lafayette yelling at Jason about things in general and getting worried and mad after Eddie was kidnapped, but I don't remember anything else happening.
Lafayette: "We... Lost touch."
Things go from bad to worse, as Marnie hands Lafayette an imaginary rose from Eddie and then speaks in an intense, but not-especially-Eddie, voice: "They drained me, Lafayette. But it's okay. It was worth it just to have a glass of Merlot with you..."
Lafayette freaks out and, with trust issues being a thing for him, immediately assumes this is Jesus's fault for talking too much about him and giving them things to charlatan about. Even in the middle of this freakout, though, they are like the best couple. There's a lot of respect between the two of them in every scene and it's nice to watch. Lafayette busts a move, obviously; Jesus chases after him while Holly comforts Marnie, who clearly has never been inhabited by a dead obese vampire before.
EFFING ARLENE
Comes home and finds the baby, Mikey, sitting a circle of decapitated Barbie dolls. When Terry comes out of the john she yells at him for leaving their devil baby alone and then Terry tries to keep her from going to the obvious place with the Barbie heads, but no, she's in there with a vengeance.
Arlene: "What the hell kind of baby does that?"
Terry: "Just boys. Regular, ordinary, curious boys? When I was a kid, I used to put squirrel heads on lizard bodies, and invent new animals..."
But no, Arlene is goddamned determined that her son is going to be a serial murderer, so she gets in his face and it's so annoying.
Arlene: "Mikey, Mama loves you so, so very much, but you have got to understand. Killing is wrong!"
I mean, I love the idea of being so afraid of something that you send it metastatic, that's a huge thing with this show, and of course Arlene's so effing dumb that you can play it nearly straight, like how people get so scared their kid will be gay that they turn them into real fucked up individuals, but she's just so damned Arlene all the time. On the other hand she's, if possible, even prettier this year.
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On the one hand, Jessica does not need to be cooking for him for any reason at all. And then, of course, she doesn't eat food so that should totally be his problem. But I seem to remember Jason having similar problems while living with Hoyt, so it's really just kind of sad to see him still having these presumption problems a year later and either way it's fine because that's not really what the fight is about.
Can Jessica go to the store once in awhile? No, because human food is all dead and grody and going to the Piggly-Wiggly is like a trip to the morgue. (Even though she's a waitress at Merlotte's.) Although Hoyt does make the good point that he feeds her, like, every night, and that -- "bleeding out, into your mouth" -- was pretty gross for him for starters, so maybe he's actually right on this one tiny point. So can Jessica scramble him some eggs sometime just because she loves him?
Maybe, but that's not the issue right now, because the issue right now is that baby is hungry and will not be thinking straight, so really the answer is to not have this fight. Because the fight is really about how eventually you figure out that every marriage is a mixed marriage.
But he won't stop bitching about it, so finally she zooms over to the kitchen and starts breaking eggs into a pan, shells included, screaming. "You want an egg? How about a dozen fucking eggs? I'm cooking for ya just like your mama!"
So then they fight about his mother.
Jessica: "If her aim were any better, I'd be a pile of goo and she'd be making your eggs! Your delicious fucking eggs! You like 'em runny?"
Hoyt, stubborn as hell: "I don't give a crap, I'm starvin'."
Jessica: "Good. Then God forbid I overcook it!"
It's amazing. Have you ever had this fight? Man, I don't miss being young like that. But when your identity is all mixed up in proving stuff, it's so easy for things to mean other things that they don't mean. Because there's a way in which it has nothing to do with people food and everything to do with the ecstatic realization that becoming a vampire, though it was awful at the time, eventually and quickly revealed itself as the gorgeous, thrilling moment that freed Jessica from a lifetime of...this.
EXACTLY THIS.
To love is to be buried, even when it's perfect goddamn Hoyt. You'd scream too. So she throws down this disgusting mess of eggshells and broken yolks and nasty, and he starts shoveling it into his face, it's so gross -- "Tastes great! Tastes just fuckin' scrumptious!" -- and finally Jessica cracks and starts laughing at him and begs him to stop eating the gross eggs. He tries to frown and be all, "Ain't nothin' funny about your disgusting, sorry-ass cookin'," but eventually he starts laughing too.
It's a great scene, the tension/relief of the scene, and it's nice to check back in with them, the sparkling chemistry of them, and see they're having people problems and not magical scary problems, and get the problem of their traditional(-ish) upbringings out of the way right up front -- and enjoy them being the best actors on the show, as usual -- but since nothing is ever okay on this show, all we've really learned is:
Their huge gross problem, whatever it turns out to be, will probably not involve eggs.
What it will involve, because they are the youngest characters and this is their role, is the disappointment of responsibility. Jessica's death made her a reverse-orphan and she's finally free! Sex and curse words and ice cream for breakfast! Except now all those urges her Daddy hated so much are crushing her with vampire strength and the whole immortal hymen thing and anyway her self-control is entirely her own. Magic doesn't change the cost, just the currency.
And then Hoyt is dating a vampire girl, which frees him from the conventional setup that he can't help but slide back into and for what: Living outside the box he was born to live in, no cookouts, no scrambled eggs waiting. The sacrifice of the life he always wanted. He thought he was escaping with this alternative-sexuality path his life has taken -- and he did, we do, when we follow our true passion -- but now what: Can't get married, can't have kids conventionally, churches hating him, everybody thinking he's a pervert, denied basic rights. And his reward? More problems, crazy weird problems and prejudices he never could have imagined.
Magic, whether it's immortality or love, always demands more than it gives. But without it, nothing means anything anyway.
STACKHOUSE
Sookie flips through stations on her house's new flatscreen and then Jason comes in with hot chocolate. She chooses the one with marshmallows, of course, and he settles in on the couch.
Jason: "Shove over. I'm not lettin' you spend the night alone."
Sookie: "Yes, yes. I'm home now and you were worried. But the last thing I need is a cop in the house when werewolves and vampires are constantly trying to kill me."
Jason, it's great: "No, it ain't that, Sook. Just...having you back, it's about the happiest I've been in my entire life. And I don't want it to end."
Aww! She's touched; they discuss how they're going to try and contact the mysterious buyers and cancel the sale. (Mention is made of Sid Matt Lancaster, a very minor but fairly interesting character in the books, but who in the show was a good friend of their bad uncle. So it's best that she gets the amazing lawyer she'll get in a minute. Maybe they can give the interesting little flourish Sid Matt had in the books to somebody else, the same way they're giving Tara all of Amelia Broadway's characteristics one by one.)
It's a great scene, the tension/relief of the scene, and it's nice to check back in with them, the sparkling chemistry of them, and see they're having people problems and not magical scary problems, and get the problem of their traditional(-ish) upbringings out of the way right up front -- and enjoy them being the best actors on the show, as usual -- but since nothing is ever okay on this show, all we've really learned is:
Their huge gross problem, whatever it turns out to be, will probably not involve eggs.
What it will involve, because they are the youngest characters and this is their role, is the disappointment of responsibility. Jessica's death made her a reverse-orphan and she's finally free! Sex and curse words and ice cream for breakfast! Except now all those urges her Daddy hated so much are crushing her with vampire strength and the whole immortal hymen thing and anyway her self-control is entirely her own. Magic doesn't change the cost, just the currency.
And then Hoyt is dating a vampire girl, which frees him from the conventional setup that he can't help but slide back into and for what: Living outside the box he was born to live in, no cookouts, no scrambled eggs waiting. The sacrifice of the life he always wanted. He thought he was escaping with this alternative-sexuality path his life has taken -- and he did, we do, when we follow our true passion -- but now what: Can't get married, can't have kids conventionally, churches hating him, everybody thinking he's a pervert, denied basic rights. And his reward? More problems, crazy weird problems and prejudices he never could have imagined.
Magic, whether it's immortality or love, always demands more than it gives. But without it, nothing means anything anyway.
STACKHOUSE
Sookie flips through stations on her house's new flatscreen and then Jason comes in with hot chocolate. She chooses the one with marshmallows, of course, and he settles in on the couch.
Jason: "Shove over. I'm not lettin' you spend the night alone."
Sookie: "Yes, yes. I'm home now and you were worried. But the last thing I need is a cop in the house when werewolves and vampires are constantly trying to kill me."
Jason, it's great: "No, it ain't that, Sook. Just...having you back, it's about the happiest I've been in my entire life. And I don't want it to end."
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Aww! She's touched; they discuss how they're going to try and contact the mysterious buyers and cancel the sale. (Mention is made of Sid Matt Lancaster, a very minor but fairly interesting character in the books, but who in the show was a good friend of their bad uncle. So it's best that she gets the amazing lawyer she'll get in a minute. Maybe they can give the interesting little flourish Sid Matt had in the books to somebody else, the same way they're giving Tara all of Amelia Broadway's characteristics one by one.)
Sookie: "Keepin' the flat screen though."
Jason: "Obviously."
FANGTASIA!
Pam, deadpan as usual: "Yes, of course, Fangtasia! is for everyone. Vampires, humans, men, women... Families. Pets. Everyone is welcome. Come on down. The blood is warm, and so is the service."
Interviewer: "And do human families have anything to fear with vampire-owned businesses in their community?"
Pam, scoffing imperceptibly: "No."
(Silence.)
Interviewer: "...Can you elaborate on that?"
Pam, hilariously parroting: "Human families have nothin' to fear with vampire-owned businesses in their community."
Nan Flanagan realizes that there is no stopping Pam from being stopping -- and not even Pam is pretty enough to sell the message about which she so urgently gives zero amounts of a fuck -- so she's happy when Eric arrives (on Bill's orders?) to take over.
Nan: "She was fine, if you happen to be blind and deaf and an idiot."
Pam: "What's idiotic is that the AVL believes the public to be so naive."
Nan: "I have proof, scientific, that people are far dumber than they realize. It's a post-Russell Edgington world everyone, and we win back the human public one smile at a time."
If you thought at any time that the phrase, "Post-Russell Edgington World," was not used enough in your life, well, you are in luck. Eventually you will find yourself doodling it without even knowing that you're doing it. It's a fairly sly gloss on early '90s xenophobia and it makes me even happier that Russell did what he did -- essentially, in terms of the media, 9/11 For Vampires -- because of how they're playing it. Like we built this careful house of tolerant cards and maybe were getting somewhere and then some zealot asshole went and ruined the entire world for us and now we all have to factor it in, forever.
EVEN BETTER IS WHAT HAPPENS
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Which is that Eric sits down to do his off-the-cuff Post-Russell interview, charming the shit out of the camera and working the intellectual liberal elite angle speaking for the oppressed. Meanwhile Bill's down in Bon Temps doing his best impression of Sarah Palin at some aw-shucksy Senior Citizen Center openin'. They're each looking for social capital, both for personal and political reasons, but attacking it in ways that are just mind-blowingly appropriate to them both. The music can't quite avoid letting us know how cute this scene is.
Eric, after affectionately snapping the mic off Pam's twinset: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Eric Northman. I'm a tax-paying American and small business owner in the great state of Louisiana. I also happen to be a vampire..."
Bill: "You know, as the oldest member of this community, Ah would have been eligible to take up residence here 110 years ago! But it warms mah heart to see the most beloved folks of our town, taken care of in the way that they deserve..."
Eric: "Now the past year, there's been a lot of inflammatory talk from politicians warning their constituents not to trust vampires. But think about it for a second, who would you rather trust? A vampire? Or a politician?"
(Beat, while you consider the fact that Eric just made a fairly broad joke at his own expense. And then another one, while you consider the fact that Bill is not only obsolete generally, but also so super creepy when he's trying to be ingratiating or normal in any way.)
Bill: "Ah must offer my gratitude for the generosity and the open-mindedness of the Bon Temps Chamber of Commerce, led by the redoubtable Miss Portia Bellefleur..."
(Portia, played by the redoubtable Courtney Ford, nearly winks at him from the front row. Hmm.)
Eric: "The truth is, vampires are as different from each other as humans are, because we were humans, and we ask only to be treated as such..."
Bill: "Ah am also grateful to be able to honor mah wife, Caroline, who was a treasure of this community for over 60 years. And many of these trees on this street were planted by her, and all the other members of the Arbor Society. And it is mah wish that this center will grace our town for as long as these trees have stood around us..."
Eric: "And we welcome you into our world as well. We're always more than happy to serve humans here at Fangtasia!... And I don't mean for dinner!"
Bill: "...Now then, we can't have a ribbon cuttin' without the giant scissors. Mister Mayor?"
Mister Mayor: "Thank you, Mister Compton. It's kinda nice not bein' the oldest person here for a change!"
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Which, Eric gives good spin and all, but there's a larger thing about how, in a Post-Russell World at this time in history, there's not a huge shitload of difference between one-on-one and TV time. Eric seduces the camera, while Bill shakes hands and pats babies. They're both earning it a smile at a time -- and don't think Nan hasn't thought all of this through -- but in a way that touches every demographic simultaneously: There will be footage of Bill doing the handshakes, globally, and there will be people visiting Fangtasia! from all around, locally, so everybody gets both messages.
"We're from here/I'm a widower/my wife planted trees/old people" speaks to the heart, while "Don't be scared/we are charming/sex is implied" speaks to the head. Everybody's one or the other. Nan gives the Nan version of being overjoyed, which is boredly rolling her eyes, but in, like, a friendly way.
NEW ORLEANS
Out back at the Fight Club, Tara's fighting partner makes fun of her for smoking and they razz each other about whether she let Tara win. Then they make out for a while. In some ways, TV Tropes is a valid thing -- certainly a very enjoyable thing, especially if you are on the spectrum -- but in other ways it tends to cheapen the conversation, because if you're not careful, or very stupid, noting the trope easily becomes getting angry about the trope, which becomes substitution of the trope as the topic, rather than the thing that is going on in front of your face.
So: Is it true that all previously heterosexual women, once raped by vampires, become lesbians? No. Vampires do not exist, although lesbians do. But it is true that in real life sometimes people who mostly date one gender sleep with or date the other. Sexuality is a moving target, as is identity.
So the question becomes, in this particular instance, given the fact that Tara Thornton has not dated any women that we know about, has been through some terrible shit -- just like everybody else on this entire show -- and is now dating a woman: Is it a problem?
Is it bad for women? Does it glorify damaging stereotypes about women, gay people, abuse survivors or whoever else? Does it chip away at the identity or self-determination of gay and bisexual people when you ascribe a historical antecedent to this behavior? Because things happen in our lives: should we avoid exploring where our passion leads, in case some bystander busybody connects the dots and says it adds up to a pathology?
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Well, that depends on if you're an idiot. Not, I stress, the person doing the complaining -- that goes without saying -- but the imaginary hypothetical person who must be protected from bad thoughts and ideas, because they're so sheltered as to have never met a person in their life and so must form their beliefs about these topics based on storylines from a TV show about vampires.
Somebody without experience of the fluidity of identity, or experiences with sex period, and thinks that boys who kiss boys are irrevocably gay and always have been, and girls who kiss girls are irrevocably gay and always will be, and thus Tara -- having gone from kissing boys to kissing girls -- is either fictionally unrealistic or suffering brain damage from PTSD.
FLATTERING, NO?
For those of us out here in the real world, if you've not had a friend suddenly go gay on you, and if you've not had private conversations with yourself about whether or not you think they're acting authentically or acting out or doing whatever they're maybe doing, and if you've not wondered if in fact this was always burbling or a part of their wider sexuality that you just weren't aware of, then you've probably never had the experience of realizing that it's none of your fucking business how they got there until they talk to you about it. At which point, you take them at their word, because whether or not you think it's okay or the right thing, ultimately it's their call. Ultimately it's happening, whether or not you sign off.
And while I believe strongly that the obvious difference between descriptive and prescriptive storytelling is undergoing serious attrition right now in our conversation about media, to a degree that's both laughable and embarrassing, in this case maybe it's smarter to just operate from the parallel assumption that Tara -- while a fictional person -- has made this change and go deeper with that, instead of fighting it. Because you're not going to get anywhere arguing with the facts, which are that Tara has made this change, which brings up questions that are okay to think about too.
And also, thanks for the support, but the last thing gay and bisexual people need is somebody explaining our lives to us. Especially in such sheltered, literal ways, like, if you think a guy is gay just because he fucked another guy. If you honestly think that's how it goes, you are in need of some greater and more varied social interactions. (Or honestly, to pay closer attention to the people you already know.)
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KITCHEN
Jesus: "Lafayette, please talk to me. I'm sorry that witch said she was going to contact a ghost and then contacted a ghost. I guess we had no way of knowing she was going to do that."
Lafayette: "Fine. Why do you want me to join a cult with you?"
Jesus: "After all we've been through and how hot we are together, you think that I would lure you into a cult? I think it's because you're scared magic is real."
Lafayette: "Bet your hot ass I'm scared magic is real! You are not being psychic about that. That is regular sensory perception."
Jesus: "Okay, look. Ever since your batshit mom and I figured out that you are magic, you have been in a tizzy. But to me, it is an awesome thing about you. So it's painful to me to watch you run away from something amazing, that makes you special, just because of that one time all the dolls were talking to you and we hallucinated the human sacrifices of history. Or that other time God made you a bridesmaid in a nightmarish ritual, or that time that a witch killed your friend for drugs, or that other time when your cousin killed a little girl and barfed and her mom drowned a possum and found Jesus, or also because of every experience you've ever had in your entire life."
Andy, running in all crazy: "I need to talk to Mr. Reynolds in private about some very important police business where you give me drugs!"
Jesus, bouncing: "Please come to the witches tonight, okay?"
Lafayette: "Maybe. Andy, I don't have any drugs for you."
Andy: "Don't talk to me like I'm a idiot! I'm the sheriff of this parish, with a perfectly legal and legitimate need for vampire blood!"
Lafayette: "I was pressured into giving all my V to the White Panthers, I have none. I don't deal drugs anymore. I am down to only having thirty-seven jobs."
Andy: (Starts roughing him up.)
Jason, immediately appearing: "Take it down! This man is not a suspect, he's not a person of interest, he is not a witness, and he is not a CI. So we got no reason to be questioning him."
Andy: "Right. Right, sorry. Must have got my drag queens mixed up."
Lafayette: (Annoyed.)
BACK OUT IN FRONT
Maxine comes in with Tommy Mickens, who is still limping with a cast because of when Sam shot him in the leg last year. Maxine is loving having a replacement Hoyt, and Tommy is loving having a mom for the first time in his entire life, and Maxine is all about handicap-accessible whatever, and they are just about disgusting together, and it is so great. Tommy's dressed like a Tommy doll of himself. The words "tushy cushion" come out of nowhere. He matches Arlene's fake smiley bullshit twinkle for twinkle.
Lafayette: "Why didn't you text me instead of letting us assume you were dead?"
Sookie: "time I'm abducted by aliens, I will make sure to do so. Where's Tara?"
Everybody: (Stares awkwardly.)
Lafayette: "Everybody kept dying and/or raping her, so she's on a road trip."
Sookie: "Okay, well, tell her hi."
Sam, tail seriously unwagging: Grrrrrrr.
Sookie: "Wow. I was pretty sure you'd be kissing my ass on a champion level. It's a sad day when Eric's cold dead flesh registers more joy at seeing me."
Sam: Grrrrrrr.
Sookie: "Look, I'm sorry. I guess a lot's changed. Like you're mean now."
Sam: "Yeah, a lot has changed and you weren't here."
Sookie: "I guess...um, I guess I'll go fuck myself, then?"
Sam: "You start part-time. Holly and Arlene got kids, they need the shifts."
Sookie: "There we go. Thanks for my job back after disappearing for a year, that's more like the Sam I remember."
KITCHEN
Jesus: "Lafayette, please talk to me. I'm sorry that witch said she was going to contact a ghost and then contacted a ghost. I guess we had no way of knowing she was going to do that."
Lafayette: "Fine. Why do you want me to join a cult with you?"
Jesus: "After all we've been through and how hot we are together, you think that I would lure you into a cult? I think it's because you're scared magic is real."
Lafayette: "Bet your hot ass I'm scared magic is real! You are not being psychic about that. That is regular sensory perception."
Jesus: "Okay, look. Ever since your batshit mom and I figured out that you are magic, you have been in a tizzy. But to me, it is an awesome thing about you. So it's painful to me to watch you run away from something amazing, that makes you special, just because of that one time all the dolls were talking to you and we hallucinated the human sacrifices of history. Or that other time God made you a bridesmaid in a nightmarish ritual, or that time that a witch killed your friend for drugs, or that other time when your cousin killed a little girl and barfed and her mom drowned a possum and found Jesus, or also because of every experience you've ever had in your entire life."
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Andy, running in all crazy: "I need to talk to Mr. Reynolds in private about some very important police business where you give me drugs!"
Jesus, bouncing: "Please come to the witches tonight, okay?"
Lafayette: "Maybe. Andy, I don't have any drugs for you."
Andy: "Don't talk to me like I'm a idiot! I'm the sheriff of this parish, with a perfectly legal and legitimate need for vampire blood!"
Lafayette: "I was pressured into giving all my V to the White Panthers, I have none. I don't deal drugs anymore. I am down to only having thirty-seven jobs."
Andy: (Starts roughing him up.)
Jason, immediately appearing: "Take it down! This man is not a suspect, he's not a person of interest, he is not a witness, and he is not a CI. So we got no reason to be questioning him."
Andy: "Right. Right, sorry. Must have got my drag queens mixed up."
Lafayette: (Annoyed.)
BACK OUT IN FRONT
Maxine comes in with Tommy Mickens, who is still limping with a cast because of when Sam shot him in the leg last year. Maxine is loving having a replacement Hoyt, and Tommy is loving having a mom for the first time in his entire life, and Maxine is all about handicap-accessible whatever, and they are just about disgusting together, and it is so great. Tommy's dressed like a Tommy doll of himself. The words "tushy cushion" come out of nowhere. He matches Arlene's fake smiley bullshit twinkle for twinkle.
Maxine makes Tommy say grace, which causes him to be adorable about what a dork she is. He's naturally a grifter so it's fine to just assume he's using her -- and there's nobody that deserves to be fucked with more -- but I like to imagine that he also likes the intense amount of attention she's prepared to give. He's never exactly shied away from the fact that he is desperately in need of being loved, in addition to being super fucked up. I missed Tommy, I had no idea you could feel that way.
Tommy: (Makes a point of engaging Sam, who is trying to ignore him.)
Sam: "How's that physical therapy I'm payin' for?"
Tommy: "Could use a couple more months. How's that anger management class?"
Sam: "...Might need to go more often."
Ah, Bon Temps. Where you shoot your brother and it ends up costing you. But after all the sudden darkness of Sam coming out last year, it's pretty exciting to think about him talking about anger, like in anger management, because the dull rumble of his constant resentment and grumpiness is cute but not as cute as Sam liking things. Or life.
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GIRLS DOING IT
Right in the middle of doing it, girl style, Tara gets a text from Lafayette about Sookie being alive and home. Because she's not Tara from Bon Temps with no father, but Toni from Atlanta with two parents and a dead grandma and lesbianism, she tells Naomi she's not overly concerned about the message.
LEGALITIES
The Redoubtable Portia Bellefleur, head of the Bon Temps Chamber of Commerce -- whom we still haven't noted is Andy's beautiful sister -- meets up with Sookie for a meeting about the house thing.
Portia: "Sid Matt is dying of being old and also friends with pedophiles, but such is life that people still want to see his name on the paperwork because in the South they hate women."
Sookie: "I have never made cappuccino before, and I don't know what it is, so I mostly just made you coffee and then strange whistling noises over the cup, behind the counter."
Portia: "Your buyer, this AIK, is a PO box in the Caribbean, so probably they're trustworthy guys. I am going to keep looking, but I am going to charge your ass my usual rate. We don't have an alien-abduction discount."
Sookie, cannily: "I'm sure someone with your skill can do it in half the time!"
Portia, letting it slide: "And then they're going to want recompense for the thousands of dollars they did cleaning it up after Maryann turned it into a fungal grotto of the spirits."
Sookie: "Payment plan?"
Portia: "Whatever. I'll find them and we'll tell them how pathetic your life is."
Sookie, trying to be friendly: "Thank you. There's a lifetime of memories in that house..."
Portia, psychically: "Yeah, memories of people getting murdered and cats getting murdered and werewolves getting shot and pools of blood everywhere all the time and that one drunk lady cutting off her finger and everybody fucking in your yard."
Sookie: "Um..."
Portia, psychically: "Poor girl. Well, except for fucking Bill Compton all the time. She must really have been in love with him if she went off to do 'vampire business' for a whole year and her house even got sold out from under her. I hope she doesn't come crawling back or I will have to turn into a bitch. He barely talks about her anymore! Welcome the fuck home, Sookie Stackhouse. Hands off my man!"
Sookie: "What were you saying? Sorry, my eyes were crossed and I was ignoring the words coming out of your mouth."
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HOTSHOT
In addition to being a real policeman (practically Sherriff, technically, now that Andy's flown the damn coop) Jason is also still the dad of the panthers in Hotshot. That's wonderful, because I thought it was going to be one or the other, but by having him be in both worlds you get a real sense of just how far he's come.
The best panther kid is Timbo, who is played by this ridiculously great actor Dane DeHaan, about whom you are going to be hearing a lot for years and years. I hope Timbo is a major character, it's so good to watch this kid work. I even broke my No Watching In Treatment Rule for him.
So Jason unloads the food he's brought them -- hot dogs, ice cream, pork and beans -- and sends Timbo to the icebox with the ice cream so he can wrestle some raw meat out of one little girl's hands -- I guess part of being a grownup is ignoring the fact that these people eat raw meat regularly so that he can teach them not to eat raw meat with their hands -- and they're gross enough that Jason kind of whistles to himself about how he wishes Aunt Crystal would come home and help shoulder the burden of him being dad and mom both.
Timbo comes back out, stutter-stepping like before but also shaken, and without looking at "Mr. Jason" tells him that the icebox is broken, it's not cold, and Jason asks if he's sure, since he just fixed it, and Timbo still won't look him in the eye, and if you know it's a trap then you know that Timbo is acting like two things at once -- he is being evasive, and he is also just naturally kind of slow -- but since you don't know that, you wouldn't know the difference in how he's being, and since you don't know the difference, you would also get slammed into the icebox and locked inside, because you wouldn't know to watch out for Timbo.
WITCHES
Speaking of the developmental iffies, I'm sorry to relate that Marnie's pet bird Minerva has dropped dead. I have this thing, this Nell/Flowers For Algernon thing, where I can't handle pathetic people being sad, and Marnie is the most pathetic person, and she's so sad about her bird, and it's awful. It's like watching a little kid drop her ice cream on the sizzling hot sidewalk, only the ice cream is your heart. (Also, Fiona Shaw is one of our greatest living actors -- she's known as the definitive Medea. Which, if just knowing that doesn't scare the shit out of you, read Medea again.)
It starts as a ritual to send Minerva into the spirit realm, where she's got bird shit to do, bird activities, and they hold hands and chant this sort of made-up TV Witch chant, and then a neat thing happens where the camera circles outside the circle and passes the back of somebody's head, but because of the angle and the candlelight it also, on the plane of the screen, equals a shadow passing over Marnie's face. And when we get to the other side of that shadow slash head of the person, she's not quite Marnie anymore. Or she's not just Marnie anymore, I guess is better.
ANGER MANAGEMENT
Sam is hanging out at his house with two ladies, one a beautifully crisp Southern blonde and another, slightly younger, named Luna (from The Gates, which was so amazing you guys), and a dude. They are talking about anger. Really, they are an informal support group of shapeshifters, so the conversation works both as a supper club of possibly swingers and also as a discussion of shifter stuff, for the most part.
Sam: "I thought I was recovering from shooting him, and then I saw him and it came back."
Group: "Yeah, you were doing okay for awhile."
Sam: "I knew it was wrong even before I pulled the trigger. It was like some other person fired that gun, and there was nothin' I could do to stop him."
Group: "Yeah, we are all like that. Being a shapeshifter, two-natured, means there is a person who will sometimes fire guns at their relatives. That's why you keep being two completely different people on this television show."
(Sookie: "I have that problem too! Being a faerie means sometimes I put people's boyfriends in garbage disposals while laughing like a lunatic. Maybe we can talk about this sometime because we are friends.")
They think about having another bottle of wine, and we learn that Luna is a schoolteacher, and then talk about "moving on from wine," which first you might think means drugs and then once they all start taking off their clothes at the same time you think means orgy and but really you knew what was going to happen the whole time: A small herd of horses goes running off into the forest, and it's pretty awesome except for the music, which is Faeryland amounts of ridic.
HOTSHOT
In addition to being a real policeman (practically Sherriff, technically, now that Andy's flown the damn coop) Jason is also still the dad of the panthers in Hotshot. That's wonderful, because I thought it was going to be one or the other, but by having him be in both worlds you get a real sense of just how far he's come.
The best panther kid is Timbo, who is played by this ridiculously great actor Dane DeHaan, about whom you are going to be hearing a lot for years and years. I hope Timbo is a major character, it's so good to watch this kid work. I even broke my No Watching In Treatment Rule for him.
So Jason unloads the food he's brought them -- hot dogs, ice cream, pork and beans -- and sends Timbo to the icebox with the ice cream so he can wrestle some raw meat out of one little girl's hands -- I guess part of being a grownup is ignoring the fact that these people eat raw meat regularly so that he can teach them not to eat raw meat with their hands -- and they're gross enough that Jason kind of whistles to himself about how he wishes Aunt Crystal would come home and help shoulder the burden of him being dad and mom both.
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Timbo comes back out, stutter-stepping like before but also shaken, and without looking at "Mr. Jason" tells him that the icebox is broken, it's not cold, and Jason asks if he's sure, since he just fixed it, and Timbo still won't look him in the eye, and if you know it's a trap then you know that Timbo is acting like two things at once -- he is being evasive, and he is also just naturally kind of slow -- but since you don't know that, you wouldn't know the difference in how he's being, and since you don't know the difference, you would also get slammed into the icebox and locked inside, because you wouldn't know to watch out for Timbo.
WITCHES
Speaking of the developmental iffies, I'm sorry to relate that Marnie's pet bird Minerva has dropped dead. I have this thing, this Nell/Flowers For Algernon thing, where I can't handle pathetic people being sad, and Marnie is the most pathetic person, and she's so sad about her bird, and it's awful. It's like watching a little kid drop her ice cream on the sizzling hot sidewalk, only the ice cream is your heart. (Also, Fiona Shaw is one of our greatest living actors -- she's known as the definitive Medea. Which, if just knowing that doesn't scare the shit out of you, read Medea again.)
It starts as a ritual to send Minerva into the spirit realm, where she's got bird shit to do, bird activities, and they hold hands and chant this sort of made-up TV Witch chant, and then a neat thing happens where the camera circles outside the circle and passes the back of somebody's head, but because of the angle and the candlelight it also, on the plane of the screen, equals a shadow passing over Marnie's face. And when we get to the other side of that shadow slash head of the person, she's not quite Marnie anymore. Or she's not just Marnie anymore, I guess is better.
And then the chant stops being about saying goodbye, and starts being about bringing Minerva back from the dead. And then it stops being entirely in English, and Marnie's suddenly speaking in tongues, and the chanting is getting more and more intense despite everybody being like WTF, and then with a great deal of authority Marnie commands Lafayette to join in the circle. The jolt of Lafayette runs through everybody, and the bird twitches and comes to life.
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It flutters out of the circle and then falls down dead again, and all Lala can do is be like, "Sorry it didn't work that great," but Marnie's not all that concerned about Minerva anymore, because that was the most powerful thing she's ever done and that means she can do it again.
Sex nerd Katie takes all of this in very intensely, and then heads to the castle of the King of Louisiana, for whom she is a witchy spy. The guards let her in, and they're strapped and armored like usual, but the King's house -- under its rich appointments and bright grandeur -- seems a little familiar. That is because Bill Compton is...
THE KING OF LOUISIANA.
The implications of this are staggering. I mean, inside the show it's interesting and obviously a big deal. But in terms of the story, the mechanics of what can happen now, it's genius. Not only does it open up the question of Where's Sophie-Anne and explains why Eric ran off when Bill told him to without even trying to make a deal or stall with Sookie, but it also means Bill is one step away from both Nan Flanagan and the integrationist AVL, and one step away from the Authority and the whole Monarchy/Magister system. He's almost as high an authority as there can be.
He's one of the most powerful and important vampires in the entire world, he's apparently dating Portia Bellefleur, his Maker is dead, he's no longer beholden to Sophie-Anne, he's one of like three people with knowledge of the Faerie, he's gone from being wealthy to being ridiculously rich, and his worst vampire frenemy works for him. Bill wins. If you really think about it, Bill totally wins, like, 1000%.
Which puts the whole tender scene with Sookie, where they acknowledged that they cared for each other and that he was empty without her for that year and that for her the year never happened and she's still pissed -- it puts all that in a very different light. Because if/when Bill Compton decides to become an asshole (and last year was all about playing with that possibility) she's going to need to have already sucked it up and negotiated being his friend. She needs to work this out posthaste. You can't just assume he'll mope and pine forever, not with this happening. He could get to be an actual bad guy so, so fast.
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THE HOUSE FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE STACKHOUSE
And even if he doesn't, she'd still do well to come in under his protection. Whether or not that means being His, who knows, but it was always explained to us that being His was as much about other vampires keeping their hands off an available food source as it was about romance -- or boring girl/boy power/protection/paternalism stuff. Talbot was Russell's (before he ever turned him), Barry's fairy godmother is a dude, Tara was never really Franklin Mott's even though he kept saying she was, etc.
But putting Sookie in the driver's seat here, seeing her as an active agent, means looking through her eyes and understanding her acknowledgement that without some kind of firepower, she's not just a victim -- she's a delicious victim, who summons attackers just by existing. She's playing on the bigger field and has no choice but to stay there, with the wild things, and that means separating her fairly rational emotions about all of this from the very tough decisions that she needs to make. The price tags have to be cold hard facts, not just fantasies or projections.
Alcide isn't just a hot, nice dude that can beat ass: He's a werewolf pack leader who comes with Debbie Pelt not far behind. Eric isn't just a friend she kind of hates, or Godric's only other survivor: He has looked her in the eye and double-crossed her a million times, always for her own "good," coming from his reptile Machiavellian worldview, even when it meant feeding her to the mad King. He tricked her into feeding on his blood so that he could track her anywhere and invade her dreams and he doesn't even understand why that's a problem, I mean, no thanks. But is that better than Bill, her first love, who has literally walked through fire for her and yet managed to find endless ways to break her heart, and make her feel like an idiot and a whore while still protesting how much he loved her? Do you want to be buried?
It's not an embarrassment of riches and it's certainly not a wish-fulfillment exercise. It's an invitation to relationship dynamics so twisted and compromised you'd need calculus just to get the basics down. It's not about choosing which cute boy, it's about figuring out how to live until the sun comes up. And if she could think like a vampire it wouldn't stress her out: She'd just do the math. But because she's not a vampire -- because she is a complex and fairly passionate woman in her own right -- everything's all confusing and weird, like, weird to the point that she fucked Bill on the floor while strangling him that time, like she could tear him apart.
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WEIRD TO THE POINT OF UFOS HAPPENING
So when Eric suddenly appears in her bedroom, marveling at her unclothed body, when she thought she was alone, you can't blame her for being confused. Is she still having those dreams, after a whole year without his blood? How can he be in her house if she's awake, since she rescinded both boys' invites? What is the world going to throw at her ?
"You don't own the house anymore. I do."
Which seems to have struck a chord with a lot of viewers and I think I understand it. Your home is the safe place, especially on this show, and having that rug pulled out by anybody -- but especially a man and particularly a man who is constantly trying to get control over you -- is really violating. That's very effective, I think, on a level I can't quite see for myself. I mean, I get that it's scary to think "at least that person can't get me here," only to find out you've been relying on an untrue thing, and you're in the nude, and you're weirded out about the sex monster with him anyway, but even still I think there's more to it.
And in any case, what's even scarier -- and again, the music is going apeshit so you can assume the show is doing it on purpose and not that you've somehow uncovered some secret misogynist agenda -- is why:
"Because I always knew you were alive, and if I owned the house, then I would own you."
And right before the fangs come out, he informs her: She is His.
week: Much shorter. Less to set up and pre-explain, but also this whole episode was about introducing the problems while not explaining them and making you feel Sookie's confusion and also while setting up the whole season, which it turns out can be complicated to write about. Sookie tells Eric where to shove it, Hotshot turns on Jason, the vampires and witches clash, Bill has hairstyles and Tara comes home.
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