Them Vs. Them

Recapped by Jacob Clifton · Aired 08-28-2011 · S04E10

Antonia is freaked out by the bloodshed and horror that Marnie's four Sheriffs perpetrate on the Tolerance Thing, which helps when Sookie finally jumps between Eric and Bill at the last second and uses her faerie powers to remove all the various curses on Eric. You can tell instantly that he's back, which is awesome; Nan saw her do it, which might end up being just as big a deal.

While Nan's Glamour Squad is wiping everybody within the vicinity of the hotel, and Marnie takes her new two vampire slaves back to the Emporium, Eric and Sookie have a little meeting about their relationship, how both Erics are real things, but also how Sookie's still in love with Bill. Mostly it is just a relief to have Real Eric back.

Terry takes Andy out for some Bellefleur rehab, putting him in a treehouse and then forcing him to walk home. After some pretty intense Smeagol conversations, Antonia tries a similar maneuver with Marnie, whom she now realizes is having a sad-nerd Columbine meltdown that has nothing to do with justice, but Marnie somehow gets her back onboard with that same speech she gave Tara.

Over on the shifter side, Alcide brings Tommy to Sam and they watch him die; it is very sad, but also not that sad, considering he died doing exactly what he was born to do and that he basically committed suicide weeks ago anyway. (Although this exchange was beautiful: "You're the best thing that ever happened to me," says Tommy, and Sam rightly snorts, "That is so fucking sad." True, and true.) Sam gets revenge-face and heads over to find Marcus, but the Packmaster is busy finally making his move on Debbie, so Sam settles for one of the other werewolves that killed his brother. Frankly, the awful way that Marcus says words has become so excruciating that it's worth getting it over with already.

In a post-Tolerance Thing world, Bill must finally break with Nan and the AVL, deciding to tattle on her to the Authority to keep his own position, and take radical action with the witches: He, Pam, Jessica and the restored Eric will load up -- with some dorky Matrix gear and some RPGs and a hilariously lame Talking Heads cover -- and head over there to blow them up good.

That's fine with Jess, since Jason's first response to sleeping with Jessica was to ask for a little glamour so he can forget cheating on Hoyt with her. Since Jessica recently learned that little lesson for herself -- glamouring your way out of guilt is a bad deal for everybody -- she storms off into the night, ready to kill some witches. When Hoyt shows up at his house looking for some bro love, Jason flees to Sookie's.

Which is how he gets pulled into Sookie's latest insane plan, which is to launch a pre-assault assault on MoonGoddess -- with Lala and Jesus -- to save Tara, the ensorcelled Sheriffs, and the rest of the Wiccan hostages before Bill and Eric can come kill them. Once Jesus makes it inside the magical barriers -- revealing that demon side we saw on V last year -- he realizes that Marnie's actually the one calling the shots. Tara and Holly are meanwhile doing a little spell of their own, so almost everybody gets out alive, but at the last second Marnie teleports everybody back inside, leaving Jason once again on his own.

and penultimate episode: Marnie's hostages now number most of the people on the show, with only Jason and the vampires outside to make the difference. MoonGoddess will most certainly be exploded, but I wouldn't count any of the major players out at this point. Sam will continue avenging Tommy's death, presumably, and a great big cliffhanger.

TOLERANCE THING

Oh well, it's just pandemonium. Bodies flung through the air willy-nilly, stupid Roy or whatever his name is doing this Irene Ryan hoedown dance, Marnie getting her Maleficent on, Eric chasing Bill around the place which is like six foot square, Sookie getting all up in the middle of it and tossed around like a ragdoll, silver on the faces of the vampires, faces ripped off the faces of the non-vampires... Let me tell you, it is a mess.

But then Eric gets the edge on Bill, and Sookie can't be having that, so with a guttural yawp she faeries the shit out of him*, screaming NO MORE!

And then his face turns ever-so-subtly back into a regular Eric face. They stare at each other for a long time, working out the complexities of all that, and Sookie's a little chagrined, a little overextended this late in the day, but not half so much as Eric. He looks like he just found his dead dog and then remembered he ran over it and subsequently then also remembered that he hated that dog.

*("Who better to mediate supernatural disputes than somebody whose powers are centered around discerning false from real, magical from mundane, compassion from selfishness? If she can learn to use these things actively, a sort of living Trump XIV, there is no illusion or delusion that she can't burn through...")

Marnie's bummed -- "Broken," she whispers -- but not as bummed as Antonia, who comes out for a little guilt-chat at this time. Apparently she just realized starting a war meant fighting one, and all this collateral damage -- note, the bodies seem mostly female, with a high percentage of moms -- is not really what she had in mind. If you are disappointed that we don't get to see this fight play out in some Sméagol fashion, as I was, well: stay tuned.

Nan: "Bill, image."
Bill & Eric's fangs: Vanish instantly and they stand up straight (Eric covered in blood).
Nan-at-large: "Everybody stay calm, the Fire Department and EMTs are on the way; I myself am a trained caring and a certified first responder..."

JASON'S TRUCK

Jessica: "Right away I need to stress that we didn't do anything wrong."
Jason: "But yeah we did."
Jessica: "Hoyt and I broke up with each other. Brutally."
Jason: "I didn't break up with him, though."
Jessica: "I'm the other woman in your bromance now?"

Jason: "Look. I watched out for him when he was small..."
Jessica: "Yeah, yeah..."
Jason: "...And when he grew ten inches in a year he had to walk with a cane..."
Jessica: "He can walk now. On his own. You are so Maxine right now! Let me tell you a little something about infantilization. Did you know my sister's name is Eden? Actually, back up. Do you know what a hymen is?"

Jason: "Right, but I'm saying this could actually break him. He could maybe die."
Jessica: "It's not like I was actively interested in hurting him either."
Jason: "Maybe there is a reason... Oh, I drank your blood! That would do it."
Jessica: "Now who's being an infant? Bullshit. We wanted to fuck, we fucked. There can be ornaments you hang on that tree, but they'll never be the whole thing."
Jason: "True, I'd like very much to bone you at all times, but not as much as I love my Bubba."
Jessica: "So then why is this my problem? I'm not asking you to Prom."

Jason: "I cannot look him in the eye. Will you please glamour me to erase it?"
Jessica: "I... Wow. You don't see how insulting that is? What just happened between us is so disgusting to you that you want it out of your head. Eternal Sunshine Of The Zipless Fuck. I'm still a girl with feelings, Stackhouse."
Jason: "But I feel guilty! About my actions! Like usual!"

Jessica: "If I have learned anything this season, it's that using glamour to get out of your own Hoyt-related guilt results in ten times the amount of horrible, because you end up having the fight anyway. And I'm certainly not going to insult my gifts further by doing it for your guilt, which is -- and again I stress this -- totally inappropriate as far as I am concerned. Work this shit out on your own time, I'm gonna go eat witches."

ALCIDE'S TRUCK

Swiftly Perishing Tommy: "A hospital cannot help me this time! I am dying from the inside out because of skinwalking! You must take me home -- to die!"
Ever-Useful Alcide: "Which would be where?"
Blood-Barfing Tommy: "Ugh, I hate to say this, but obviously Merlotte's."

MOONGODDESS

The witches spend about a million years trying to get bars on their phones and being their usual amount of moronic.

Cute Young One: "Magic is not stronger than technology!"
Tara: "Holly, these people are idiots and this witch store is lame as shit. Let's not die here. I fuckin' refuse."
Holly: "Tara, I am working on it."
Tara: "I am kind of in the weeds about magic because I've only been involved with pagan gods on like several occasions, and did a ton of research for Marnie way back when, but now I would like some more information."
Holly: "It's just power, and Marnie's just a witch. We can fix this."
Tara: "Marntonia is very pissed off and ancient though, like most things."
Holly: "We are also very pissed off ladies. Am I right? So let's do magic with that. Anger is an energy."
Tara: "Yeah, that's my personality in a nutshell."

Marnie comes in with Roy sharting his overalls about the bloodbath they "almost won," and she shuts him up by sending him to the pantry with the remaining Sheriffs.

Witches: "First of all, bloodbath? And second of all, being a hostage doesn't feel very friendly."
Marnie: "Stop being so ungrateful! I have put my soul at risk to destroy the night beasts for you!"
Antonia, which is also Marnie: "But at what cost?"
Tara & Holly: "Turns out the ceiling on this bitch's crazy was not where we thought."
Marnie: "Everybody stays put. Now shut up, I'm busy splitting right down the middle."

CASTLE COMPTON

Nan: "What was with the lightning coming out of Sookie that breaks spells?"
Bill: "These are not the droids you are looking for."
Nan: "Okay, let's fight about the ill-defined shit we were fighting about last week."

Which I have finally, I think, figured out. Bill's arc is about working from the inside, but then finding out that the PR spin of pretending to be something turns you into that thing, so now he resents Nan for engaging him in this cryptofascist monarchy in the first place. He yells a lot about how the Witch War is her fault -- because she let him 1) send Eric to kill them and 2) try to kill Eric and then 3) let him go and 4) forgot to mention it -- which is just Bill's own guilt at having become the King he was impersonating and then watching it go sour. He's got all those True Deaths on his hands, let's chalk those up to Nan and the AVL too, and this Tolerance Massacre now too.

And so in this part of the story it makes sense that he's turning on her, because he has to. But the writing last week was so bizarrely distracted that they seemed to be having this fight, from another direction, for no reason, and none of this arc of Bill's crown being heavy really makes sense at this point, because the seeds were not sown early and they were not sown correctly. In practice he's still just attacking her for no reason, but at least you can see the narrative intent behind it.

Nan: "There are Glamour Squads [!] all over Shreveport. If anything leaks remember the Civil Rights movement, sweeping social change, inevitably accompanied by violence and the appearance of chaos, yadda-yadda. That is the spin we'll give it."
Bill: "Spin does not mattah now!"
Nan: "Spin always matters, queerbutt."
Bill: "You are not in charge anymore!"
Nan: "Um, yeah I am. Whining doesn't make any of that change."
Bill: "Ah am goin' to tattle on yew to the Authority! [Spurious conjectures and outright lies which, maybe they were true before the preceding episodes were shot, but they make zero sense now.]"
Nan: "Whatever, dude. I'm out. One more vague mention of the 'factions' I'm balancing in the AVL and then peace."

By Jacob Clifton

Bill: "Ah should ask why you continue to mention those factions, as they may well be central to our continued storyline. But Ah shall not! My incomplete information is more than sufficient, as is usual!"
Nan: "What part of stop making yourself a political liability do you not get?"
Bill: "Not one parcel, ma'am. Not one jot nor tittle do Ah grasp. Now, we are going to storm that Emporium and murder a bunch of humans. Murder them. Ah dare you to contradict me!"
Nan: "God. At least when Sophie-Anne was asking for it she was adorable and dizzy. You're just being a dolt."
Bill: "It is mah pride! And mah duty!"

ROOKIE REVISITED, REMIXED & REMASTERED

Eric: "So, we're still dating, right? Nothing's changed?"
Sookie: "No, lots of things have changed. Like you're Eric Northman again instead of the class bunny rabbit I brought home for the weekend. For example."
Eric: "He's in here. Look at my bunny-rabbit eyeballs."
Sookie: "But like, dating you know would be like a real person? And that didn't work out with me so well two weeks (54 weeks) ago, when I found out Bill nearly got me murdered to seduce me and was keeping dossiers and shit. Which, not for nothing, but that kind of behavior wouldn't be that surprising from you on like a regular Wednesday."

Bill: "The plan is to blow up MoonGoddess, since we don't know about how you have to burn a necromancer in a certain order of body parts."
Nan: "That's not a 21st century solution! You're fucking our whole agenda up the ass!"

21st century warfare is about becoming the enemy, recognizing no fundamental differences in your ideologies, seeing only the crinkly edges of complexity. From where we're standing, you can see how dumb the whole conflict is: The coincidences and agendas akimbo and perpendicular, pretending they're allied; the way the sacrifices of Us are always so much scarier than those by Them. The way our asymmetrical response is always justified.

But if you can recognize that the war is really only ever between Us and Us, then it's not that hard imagine a war beyond that, unrecognizable. Irrelevant and transcended: Them Against Them.

Sookie: "Wait, you're going to blow up Tara and the other hostages?"
Eric: "Too bad they bet on the wrong horse. The drooling, weirdo horse."
Bill: "You, me and our daughters, an RPG and some hot leather spy outfits?"
Eric: "It's like you read my mind."
Sookie: "HEY!"
Bill: "Sookie, Ah must ask you to avoid interfering during the sixteen hours while everybody involved in this plan to kill your friends is asleep and silvered."
Sookie: "Yeah, that sounds like something I would totally do. I'll go home and knit a sweater, motherfucker."

MERLOTTES

Sam: "Tommy, or the pile of bloody rags and skin that was once Tommy, we are going to get a vampire over here right now."
Tommy: "No, I mumble-mumble."
Sam: "Suicide by werewolf? Are you a moron? No dying tonight."
Alcide: "He's got a right to choose his time."
Sam & Tommy & Anybody Really: "I'm sorry, who the fuck are you?"
Sam: "I guess you're right, gigantic sexy stranger. Let's take my brother inside and watch him die slowly and horribly, as a team."

Alcide: "Cool, I have nothing better to do generally than carry things around and be naked."
Alcide: "Heaven is like goin' home, all feeling good, white light, five people who love you tell you secrets, it's great."
Tommy: "Ain't no heaven, and hell's a dogfight. I'm gonna disappear like I never was. That's what I want."
Sam Or Alcide, Who Cares: "Well, won't you be surprised when angels come and lift you up."

By Jacob Clifton

But if you can recognize that the war is really only ever between Us and Us, then it's not that hard imagine a war beyond that, unrecognizable. Irrelevant and transcended: Them Against Them.

MERLOTTES

Tommy laughs, and apologizes for everything; Sam tells him it's okay now. They just never learned how to have a brother. Sam never learned to trust family because he never had one -- the Mickenses, the Merlottes, Maryann all burned him -- and Tommy never learned how to stop fighting. And the worse he got, the worse it got, until he hated himself a brand new face, and died for only thing he'd ever loved. You're born into a dogfight, without any tools at all. The only thing you have to sacrifice is yourself.

Gonna let Hoyt in; of course he lets Hoyt in.

Hoyt: "What's on?"
Jason: "I don't know. Somethin'."
Hoyt: "Well, who's playin'?"
Jason: "It's... Them Against Them..."

Hoyt sets to moaning about Jessica's absence, the smells and memories and the peripheral startlements and the good-grief relief that it's over, all mixed up together. Jason can barely hear it, it's too much information and it's too much Bubba. Hoyt asking for a minute of Jason's day, Hoyt asking if he can stay there with his Bubba, so he doesn't have to face their haunted house by himself.

Hoyt: "Like, I don't want her back, she...? It's just, but I keep waitin' to see her walk through the door, or like... Crawl up out of her cubby hole, you know, and... All kind of cute and kind of sleepy? You know?"

Jason begs his Bubba not to cry; it is out of their hands now. Hoyt crying is so much more than just crying, like how Alcide is so very naked. The awful Cubism of boys with no clothes on.

BELLEFLEUR

Andy wakes up to Terry shaking his V vial in his face and Arlene shitting a brick and yelling -- a great performance, really -- about their kids and drugs and whatever. Arlene eventually stalks off, more sympathetic and funny and the things she's supposed to be than she has been in a while unless that's my confirmation bias talking -- and Terry says it's time to go: Time to head for Fort Bellefleur.

SOOKIE'S

Jason: "Sookie, don't stop making me breakfast but you gotta stop looking at me funny, it makes me feel like you're acting psychic."
Sookie: "It's just weird because of how you are fleeing from Hoyt. Not very sympathetic."
Jason: "I can't tell you the real reasons, so I will just complain about his cryin' and rantin' and ravin' and repeatin' things over and over and drinkin' all my beers and continuously fartin' when he passes out."
Sookie, kind of loving it: "Jason! I don't need to know this."

Jason: "So can I stay here? People constantly stay here."
Sookie: "Yeah, but I need a favor. I constantly need favors."
Jason: "If it's vampire shit, count me out."
Sookie: "Tangentially? Bill's going to blow up Holly and Tara with a rocket launcher."
Jason: "-- The fuck?"
Sookie: "... Yeah, because of the Tolerance Thing, and the necromancy and Eric and..."
Jason: "Nope, I was totally getting raped by panther people while this was developing."
Sookie: Hilariously rolls out her eyes and puffs out her cheeks and sits down, because yeah, at this point it's kind of a tale.

FT. BELLEFLEUR

Yeah, I love Terry too, but this shit is boring. Ft. Bellefleur is a treehouse. Andy and Terry had easily extrapolated childhood issues around the facts of Andy and Portia's privilege and Terry's poor-relations situation. Terry went to Iraq to pay for college, only to find himself too fucked up when he got home to go to college; Andy didn't even feel like going to college, because he is a fuckabout. Terry got into piles of drugs for his PTSD, and Andy got him mostly clean, and now he just takes his antipsychotics and spreads rainbows and calming auras everywhere he goes, so it's time to return the favor.

Andy spews all the junkie things, but the interesting one is how V makes him faster and stronger and awesomer -- which we know that it does -- but I guess not today. Or maybe he's addicted now so it doesn't work. Anyhow, Terry produces lovely weapons from a random locker in the ground near the fort -- where he lived during his crazier times -- and challenges Andy to a shootin' contest.

LAFAYETTE'S

Sookie: "So anyway, after I told Bill I wouldn't interfere and made Jason some breakfast, I decided to come straight here and interfere."
Lafayette: "Seriously, this is grandiose. They're going to bomb Shreveport and then what, glamour the whole city?"
(Actually, of course, they can and they are. Somebody sometime needs to get Lafayette to use "glamour squad" in a sentence.)
Sookie: "The Stackhouses and the Reynolds/Velasquez household are the only humans that even know what is going on."
Lafayette: "Yeah, and we can't tell the cops. SWAT team's no good against magic."
(Finally they are learning. Somebody tell those stupid goddamn witches about magic already, please.)
Jason: "I also already called in an anonymous tip and the Shreveport cops laughed at me."
Lafayette: "I can't help feeling like this is Marnie's fault because of how she caused all of this to happen."
Jesus: "But poor Marnie! She's so pathetic, a trait no bullies ever share."
Verbatim: "Marnie's a victim! She's trapped! It's The Spanish Spirit!

I get that he has no way of knowing what's going on, or how far down Marnie's shitsuckiness goes, but it's hard to listen to it. Anyway, Jesus offers to go to MoonGoddess, talk to Marnie's spirit inside Marnie's body inside the spell of the Spanish Spirit inside the spell of the doors that burn you, and then he can link up with her and push Antonia back to Olden Days or being dead or whatever. After all, Jesus killed a goat one time. And a snake. And he has a demon head, that may come into play. Little does he know that Marnie is the worst and Antonia's actually not that bad or wrong.

By Jacob Clifton

FT. BELLEFLEUR

LAFAYETTE'S

Marnie: "Okay, but what if I give you some sadsacking Columbine speech about how nerds are picked on and feel bad about themselves all the time and need constant validation from people that don't give a shit, and then those same very important judging people are somehow also worthless and deserve to die?"
Antonia: "Noooo, but keep talking..."
Marnie: "Okay, and then a variation on the same speech I always give people whenever they notice how fucked up and awful I am? All about how killing vampires might be wrong, but really it's a very good idea? Which somehow convinces them to join my team even though it's really just the tautologically irrelevant ranting of a self-pitying crank?"
Antonia: "...And we're back. I don't know how you do it, Marnie."
Marnie: "Judging everybody by my own ridiculously low standard does seem to help."

COMPTON CRYPT

Nan: "Everything I have said in literally the last four scenes!"
Bill: "Ah am busy choosin' mah weaponry for tonight's Emporium raid."
Nan: "I am making a literal threat that the Authority is going to take you down."
Eric: "I always thought you were pretty dumb. I kind of like how rude Bill is being."
Nan: "You're grounded! Everybody's grounded! True Death all around!"
Pam: "Don't you threaten him, you incompetent bitch."
Nan: "True Death for you too! I am mad with yelling power! You are grounded for a week. I dare you to ask me for two!"
Bill: "If that concludes our business, Ah must attend to silvering mahself for the day's rest. Thank you, gun-runner friend."
Jessica: "I just want to kill a bunch of shit. That is all I've got on my mind."

MOONGODDESS EXT

Sookie & Lafayette: "It feels psychically weird outside this Emporium. And quiet."
Jesus: "Antonia must have cast a spell on the neighborhood that made people want to hang out other places."
Jason: "That explains why I want to hang out other places so bad. I just thought I was scared."
Them: "Can you hear Tara in there? She'll be thinking the loudest and the angriest."
Sookie: "Got 'er. And yeah, she's pissed."
Jason: "That's like her whole personality! How funny."
Sookie: "I can also hear Antonia, and she seems like she's doing fine in there."

Jesus: "Okay, but I'm still going to do my plan. BRB."
Jason: "I will come with you. Facing my fears is manly."
Jesus: "No, honey."
Jason: "But..."
Sookie: "Jason, you're the only one that's not magic..."
Jason: Hurt; yelps.

By Jacob Clifton

Marnie: "I don't understand. Don't two wrongs make a right? Doesn't feeling sorry for yourself count for anything anymore?"
Antonia: "No, it's like... If somebody hits you, and you hit them back, that's two things that happened. First they are a jerk, when they hit you. And then you also are a jerk, a person who hit somebody. The fact that they were a jerk doesn't mean you are not also a jerk. It's not like a coupon you cash in. Do you really not understand this concept?"
Marnie: "No, for I am a loser and a pretty shitty person."
Antonia: "Yeah, I'm noticing that."

COMPTON CRYPT

MOONGODDESS EXT

By Jacob Clifton

Jesus walks toward the Emporium and gets felled by the burny spell; Antonia comes out to say hey. Inside, the stupid fucking witches -- and I am still not making this shit up -- fully run forward and burn their shit on the door. Again.

Jesus: "Hey, Antonia! Nice burny-wall. You are really powerful. And pretty!"
Antonia, preening: "This old thing? A simple protection spell."
Jesus: "Hey, is Marnie in there?"
Antonia: "My name is Antonia Gavilán de Logroño!"
Jesus: "Jesus, I know. Sorry."
Marnie: "Because I hate myself and would prefer to just be one person that's mostly her, you get me?"
Jesus: "Can I come in? Marnie and I were/are close."
Antonia: "I am way closer to her than you are, first of all, and second of all where've you been? She's been worried sick."
Jesus: "I was in Mexico for no reasonable or discernible purpose. Sorry!"
Antonia: "It's cool. But just for my peace of mind -- ha, that's a joke because I'm an insane lunatic -- would you mind pushing your way through this burny-wall until your skin burns off and you're just bones?"
Jesus: "...No prob."

His head turns demon halfway through and Lafayette's just like, I don't feel like talking about that right now.

MARCUS & DEBBIE

Slide on into their inevitable bullshit, with Marcusssss talking that excruciating way he talkssss and all "your wolf ain't got your best interestssss in mind and you need to get with another wolf" and Debbie all, "I am so high right now that you actually look attractive" and whatever, just do it already. I'll take Alcide any way I can get him, but happy and useful would be nice for once.

("I'll never forget about you. You're in my heart. Always. You're my brother. You are loved. I love you.")

Andy muses on how the treehouse is where he went to live when his parents died, and then Terry leaves him there to walk back into town, like a free man.

VAMPING DORKWARD

Night falls and the vampire squad shows up at MoonGoddess: Bill and Eric, Jess and Pam, dressed to the nines and looking ridiculous, with a '90s-sounding remix of the title song playing, and it's just ludicrous.

week: No idea, but it seems like Pam blows up MoonGoddess and possible Arlene wears a necklace made of toes.

Meantime: Man, that Tommy thing. I think it's like this, besides just loving him anyway: He was the youngest of the suicides. Younger than Andy, Marnie, Tara, even New Eric. And he was the youngest of the shapeshifters: Younger than Toni, Eric, Bill, even Alcide twisting around Debbie's insane needs, warping himself into new shapes. And he was the youngest of the two-natured: Younger than Eric, Sookie, younger even than Jessica most ways. He had the smallest life, the shortest and the least consequential, and he died for no real reason. He wasn't even collateral damage to the War -- that was just Them against Them. He never even found an Us.

But that also makes him essential, because he was bearing the full burden of this entire season. They said it was the Season of the Witch, but it's not: It's the season of Skinwalking. Hating your own identity so much that you have to change into something else and pretend you can leave yourself behind. Right in front of our eyes, he was carrying the whole thing, and we never even noticed.

And if you look at this group of people, this Them that never noticed him, it's funny. Because out of all the two-natured, all the shapeshifters, all the suicides, the only one who seems to have his shit together at this point is Eric Northman. He has both Erics in him now, and they both look out of his eyes. He has the peace, and he has the fire. All of Godric's hope and faith, his broken heart, and look what Godric made. The most selfish man who ever lived, giving himself away utterly. Soft and hard at once, stronger than before, just like Godric wanted most. Godric, who carried Season Two just like Tommy did this year; Godric who died for our sins. Godric who first taught us, and them, about Us and Them. Godric, the opposite of Tommy Mickens Merlotte in almost every single way, except the ones that count. I don't think it'll be a Rainbow Bridge, and I don't think it will be angels, or even a white light. But I know it'll feel like home. And I think I know who'll be there to meet him when he comes.

By Jacob Clifton

FT. BELLEFLEUR

Terry sits on Andy's chest until he gives up V, then holds onto him tight because he is hallucinating and it's scary. Of note:

Andy: "You've been through so much. I ain't got no excuse."
Terry: "Plenty of men come back from war and don't live in a tree house."
Andy: "I'm so ashamed of myself I can't stand it. I don't want to be who I am."

Which is what the V was about to begin with, of course, but also what Tommy said, and Marnie, and New Eric, and Toni, and everybody else.

Andy: "What if it's ate my soul?"
Terry: "This is what rock bottom feels like, son. There's nothin' wrong with you deep inside. You're cryin', Andy. Men without souls do not cry... Who knows you better than me? Nobody. Not a person on this earth."

("I'll never forget about you. You're in my heart. Always. You're my brother. You are loved. I love you.")

Andy muses on how the treehouse is where he went to live when his parents died, and then Terry leaves him there to walk back into town, like a free man.

VAMPING DORKWARD

week: No idea, but it seems like Pam blows up MoonGoddess and possible Arlene wears a necklace made of toes.

By Jacob Clifton

JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps True Blood, Gossip Girl, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, on Twitter, and on Facebook. IRL work appears in BenBella's SmartPop series of anthologies, most recently A Friday Night Lights Companion and Fringe Science.