Uncle Ruckus Gets A Puppy

Recapped by Jacob Clifton · Aired 08-05-2012 · S05E09

Well, our hopes for an epic three-episode human/vampire war seem to be getting themselves in a row: Both the ifrit and the Dragon storylines seem pretty wrapped up, the werewolves and faeries are both involved in the vampire plot now, and the Stackhouses are no closer to finding out who killed their parents. Another dodgy transition episode at least managed to get that done with a minimum of downtime, and the introduction of at least two cult-beloved actors (Robert Patrick and Keram Malicki-Sánchez, a personal fave).

The episode starts wonderfully, with a hilarious teamup between Lafayette and Sookie to figure out why she's getting great big ghosty vampire heads in her bathroom. A short Whoopi Goldberg outtake later, Gran's managed to present them with just enough clues to this "Warlow" vampire to put Sookie in, you guessed it, terrible danger.

Sookie heads to Bud Dearborn's to find out more about her parents' death, and is ambushed by the Dragon herself, his gross hot tub girlfriend Sweetie Des Arts from a minute ago. Why she hates the various soup varieties is funny in a classist John Waters way, if not all that interesting -- although the rest of Bon Temps is now just calling her crew The Obamas, which is funny but saps even more meaning from her motivations -- but in the end, Sam and Luna help Andy and Jason take them out. So that's one storyline: Psycho Racist Bud is officially a worse Sherriff than Andy, which makes him happy.

And I guess Hoyt is okay, even getting snacked on by some pigs, and luckily Jessica seems to blame herself for everything that went down, which is dumb. Also dumb: The resolution of the whole dumb ifrit storyline, in which after much posturing and shouting Terry finally murders Patrick. Which is bittersweet: On the one hand, no more bitching and moaning from the Fowler-Bellefleur clan, but on the other hand, it's pretty gross considering Terry shot a woman in the head for no reason a bunch of times and now gets off scot free. Maybe it's not really over, though? That would also be bittersweet.

After his failure to assert anything in particular over JD's Pack, Alcide has an unending memory about being a young Quileute which leads him to look up his own father, a very drunk T-1000. Herveaux Senior is a funny curveball to throw this late in the game, but I still feel like only Martha can possibly end up being The One. The rest of the Werewolf Nazi Cult stuff is interesting -- Giant Fabulous Homo Russell takes Big Gay Catamite Steve Newlin to see his new pets, and ends up giving him Puppy Emmy as a fun faggy present; the whole thing diminishes them both, all of us really -- but headed as we are toward this apocalyptic endgame it just seems like the easiest way to get the two remaining shifters involved in the fight. (Or else week will give us some kinda Modern Family minstrel show bullshit with Newlin and Edgington fighting over their pretend daughter-puppy or something. Can't you see that happening?)

Eric and Molly team up to escape the Authority compound, betraying Nora in the process, but Bill turns out to be either less or more of an octuple-agent than the show usually demands of him: After some (embarrassing, it goes without saying) drugged-up sex, during which Salome turns into both Sookie and Lilith, Bill has joined the Authority in painful earnest, and ends up selling both our kids down the river. Out in the real world, Pam and Tara learn the ban on public feeding's been lifted, and a new Sherriff's been named for Area V... And he's about as gross and lame as you can be without actually being a werewolf.

Week: Our story ends with some fairies showing up at Sookie's house to casually explain that the factory bombings mean vampires are going to take over the world, so I guess that's what's going to happen? But with total wieners like Salome and Bill Compton at the helm -- even after his amazing plan of turning the whole show on its head -- I can't imagine it'll go very far.

PREVIOUSLY

Everybody except Eric is still seeing Lilith all over the place, and using their drug-enhanced cultiness to excuse all manner of tasteless genocide. Sookie and Jason took the faeries on a field trip, accidentally making contact with the vampire who killed their parents. The ifrit introduced a moral quandary, pitting Patrick and Terry against one another in a fight to the death. At some point I still don't get, Russell inducted the Shreveport Pack into his Nazi Werewolf Drug Cult. Hoyt nearly murdered Jessica for no reason, and then got kidnapped. And of all the jerks in this jerky world, it was King Bill Compton who set the final program in motion: Destroy the TruBlood factories, forcing the vampires to feed publicly and finally bring the Prophecy of Tiffany to reality.

AUTHORITY

The News: "So all the TruBlood factories are blowing up all over the place. People -- meaning humans -- are getting blown up, but that's hardly the worst of it."

Salome: "So this is going swell. Let's feed on this hot guy and I'll say a lot of crazy words."
Russell: "I'm manic and giddy and stopped making sense about half a season ago. Let's say grace before we eat this dude!"
Steve Newlin: "!"
Salome: "Well, since I'm the new Roman I guess I..."
Steve Newlin: "-- Cockblock! I will totally say grace now. It is my favorite thing!"

He does. It is folksy.

Russell: "I am a mystery even to myself that I find any of that business attractive."
Salome: "Well I'm going to say grace anyway in my crazy language, because everything needs to be about me at all times."
Eric: "I guess I will also eat this dude, but it's only because I'm hungry. Not because anybody told me to! I am a rebel, Bill. A loner."
Bill: "I am cockeyed crazy in a cult right now, Eric. I don't have time to adore you like usual."
Eric: "Then move over so I can chew on this nipple of this guy."

MOLLY

Molly: "Are you there, ridiculously contrived elevator apparatus that only exists in this one episode? I gotta get the fuck out! I just realized these people are bonkers."
Elevator: "You need special clearance to go places now."
Molly: "Are you there, Chelsea the admin assistant? I have a special problem."
Chelsea: "You need special clearance to go places because everybody is bonkers now."
Molly: "Thanks for the zero help, Chelsea."
Chelsea: "This is why I don't have female friends."

By Jacob Clifton

Molly goes somewhere else to flip out, and Eric appears out of nowhere. There is a tussle. They are both adorable.

Eric: "Molly, stop being a vampire at me and listen. These people are bonkers!"
Molly: "I know. But what will we do?"
Eric: "Something stupid?"
Molly: "I know just the plan for that."

SOOKIE'S HAUNTED BATHROOM

Sookie: "Are you picking up anything in my haunted bathroom mirror?"
Lafayette: "Yes, that I am super fine. Do you like my new eyelashes?"
Sookie: "No, I meant like a scary ghost head of a vampire."
Lafayette: "Then no."

Lala goes into Sookie's bedroom that still smells like peach vomit on a beautiful werewolf, and does a real-life séance. All of the ghosts talk to him, even the ghost of Jane Bodehouse's finger.

Lafayette: "You in danger, girl! Your Gran says to look under the bed. She's glad the 'striptease fairies' are looking after you -- about which I'm going to need a little more information in a minute -- but also, something under the bed. We should look there."
Ghost Adele: "Sorrrrrry I can't tell you mooooooore than that but I'm a ghoooooost."
Sookie: "I am always looking under there. I clean a lot, because of OCD. Have you heard from Tara?"
Lala: "Yeah, she texted me to stop texting her. It was real bitchy."
Sookie: "That's a good sign, probably. I don't really care anymore."

BTPD

Jessica: "Andy Bellefleur! Hoyt is not an Obama*! He's just mixed-up and in love with me, which causes him to join racist lynch mobs sometimes."
Jason: "That is not as romantic as it might sound in your head."
Jessica: "Speaking of that. At least he only almost shot me in it."
Jason: "Don't you have some kind of psychic bond from drinking his blood? Sometimes that happens as a whim of the plot on this show."
Jessica: "He is just blank and missing. His brain is like somebody made him drink ginger ale with oxy in it."
Jason: "Sounds like my Bubba, all right."

SAM'S

Luna: "So what? So I turned into you for no reason and then puked up my guts right before it got good, so what? Let's go become reverse racists already."
Sam: "No, because you're just a girl."
Luna: "I don't have time to discuss that right now. Let's go find the Obamas*."
Sam: "I will go find the Obamas*, you stay here and recuperate because you got shot in the abdomen."
Luna: "Feminism!"
Sam: "You got me there."

Sam: "No, because you're just a girl."
Luna: "I don't have time to discuss that right now. Let's go find the Obamas*."
Sam: "I will go find the Obamas*, you stay here and recuperate because you got shot in the abdomen."
Luna: "Feminism!"
Sam: "You got me there."

MERLOTTE'S

Arlene, verbatim: "Well, the last ghost lady Lafayette channeled tried to steal our baby. Why should we trust this one?"
Terry: "This one, for starters, I shot in the head. Not that it seems to matter."
Arlene: "Ghost bitch! Smoke monster! Terry is very sorry for that time he shot an innocent old woman in the head several times for no reason!"
Terry: "Also, so is Patrick! Please don't make us kill each other!"
Things: "No dice!"
Terry: "Well, I guess we should just stumble around until something happens. It's not like a highly trained killer is likely to use us against each other or anything."
Arlene: "If you need me, I'll be alternately crying and bitching in the kitchen."
Terry: "Good idea. Business as usual."

FANGTASIA!

Tara: "Just a thought, but maybe we should Shock Doctrine this TruBlood situation? If we run out, the vampire people are going to eat the regular people."
Pam: "We've got enough stock for a couple weeks, and then the world is going to end anyway. Whatever. We just need to keep our heads down, our tits up, and the TruBlood flowing. Understand?"
Tara: "I'm just a week old and an emotional illiterate, but you seem sad. You're worried about Grandpa Eric, huh?"
Pam, verbatim: "Just because we drank a bitch together does not make us Oprah and Gayle. Get the fuck back to work."

Tara hefts four cases of TruBlood with her pinkie, calls Pam "Vampire Barbie" which is not her best work, and heads back out to the bar, the better to once again pore over the many mixed messages of their relationship -- and the unsettling fact of exactly how easy it is to imagine Oprah and Gayle drinking a person's blood together. With some homemade scones or something. This is my favorite thing that ever happened on Oprah:

Oprah: "Duchess Sarah Ferrrrguson is here! To show us how to make English sco-ohhhnes!"
Fergie: "We call them skaaaans, not scohhhns."
Oprah, angrily: "-- Oh yeah? Well we just call 'em biscuits."

By Jacob Clifton

AUTHORITY

Eric: "Bill, you stupid motherfucker. You invented a global genocide out of your head."
Bill: "Praise Lilith."
Eric: "This isn't freshman year. You can't just suddenly go all Goddess worship to seem interesting. This shit is for real."
Bill: "Ah am havin' precisely that crisis of identity, Sherriff Northman. Ah thank we need to ride this one out."
Eric: "So even Sookie is just... Food now?"
Bill: "At least we stopped saying 'Sanguinista' every five seconds."
Eric: "True enough. But anyway, these people are bonkers and we need to leave. You can hash out your childish religious fanaticism elsewhere, but I'm not leaving you here."
Bill: "Ah knew that you loved me!"
Eric: "No, I just... You fucked up the entire world without even trying. I shudder to think what you'll come up with . Now, we have a really stupid plan which I am going to stupidly tell you, okay? All you have to do is steal some of Salome's blood for some reason. Meanwhile, I will be stealing Nora's, or possibly kidnapping her because I still love her for some reason, even though she is the worst."

SOOKIE

Sookie: "So, this aggressively decoupaged box under the bed contains -- as I assumed -- photo albums and the obituaries of all the constantly dying Stackhouses, as well as a report card... Ah. It's the only B Jason ever got. She knitted a frame for it."
Lafayette: "This isn't actually a plotpoint, and it's something I would already know, but did you know that Bud Dearborne's wife was Jason's sixth grade teacher?"
Sookie: "Presumably she molested him. Oh, here it says that Bud found our dead parents. I wonder why I didn't know that?"
Ghost Adele: "Becaaaaaause it didn't maaaaaatter until this ehhhhhpisode."

BTPD

Jason: "Castle Compton Security, don't let her out of your sight, even if she's just sleepin' or takin' a dump!"
Jessica: "Jason, I am a woman. I don't take 'dumps.'"

Andy: "Here's a website on Joe Bob's computer that he has visited over 500 times, just under the one where dudes with giant dicks fuck farm animals."
KeepAmericaHuman.com: "The Human Patriot Manifesto, Part 1. Vampires and other covert mutants are stealing our jobs, buying our politicians, controlling the media, and seducing our children. If we have any chance of keeping America human, brave citizens like us have got to stand up and fight back."

By Jacob Clifton

This shit is so political, y'all. There are tons of Obama-face videos on the site of Obamas* curb-stomping shifters and blowing up vampires and the like. It is disturbing.

Obamas*: "Death to soups! Long live the Dragon! Long live the Dragon!"
Jason: "Now there are dragons, too? Our world is full of wonder."
Andy: "No, it's a hamfisted reference to the KKK. Like Jane Bodehouse's uncle or cousin or father, or some combination thereof, was the Grand Dragon of the KKK. Cletus Bodehouse."
Jason: "Cletus, sure."

They beat up Joe Bob a great deal, because of their insecurities. It seems like there's a meaning or that the show is trying to say something, but I don't really know for sure. He will not give up the Dragon. Perhaps he is embarrassed.

ALCIDE FLASHBACK

Drivin' along in his car, listenin' to horrible music, bein' mopey like he just figured out that werewolves are trash even though he figures this out three times or more each and every season, Alcide remembers one time when his dad, Robert Patrick, put on a bunch of Ren Faire crap and yammered at them about being werewolves. This was before Debbie got to be super gross. Also before Alcide got super hot. Anyway, they all talked about how important the Pack is when you're a werewolf, because nobody else will deal with you because you are gross, and Alcide makes a decision and stops driving wherever he was going before, heading off to wherever he is going now.

DEARBORN

Bud: "Ginger ale, Sookie? Regular flavor, not Oxycontin flavor. And thanks for asking about my colon cancer so I can say words like colon and bowel and tumor a bunch."
Sookie: "Neat, anyway have you ever thought that my parents were killed by vampires?"
Bud: "Yes."
Sookie: "Thanks for your time. Is there anything else I should know?"
Bud: "No, or else I would tell you."
Sookie: "Okay, I'm just going to obviously read your mind in an incredibly rude and invasive fash... Oh, you were telling the truth. My bad."

Sweetie Des Arts, the lady that Bud is cheating on his wife with, clobbers her over the head with a cast-iron skillet. She's a larger lady, a smoker of menthols. Enter the Dragon. What, did you think it was going to be a person on this show? Silly reader. That's why they showed her for a whole five seconds, six weeks ago! So it would seem organic. (In the books, she's a cook at Merlotte's with a legit grudge against specifically weres that makes her anti-supe. Of course, in the books the whole entire shifter-sniping scenario makes about fifty times more sense anyway -- far beyond the Sweetie part -- which is saying quite a lot, actually, because even in the books it makes very little sense.)

By Jacob Clifton

BTPD

Is there anything sadder than a Bon Temps press conference? It's like if the Onion columnists were real and thought they were journalists.

Q: "Is it true that Barack Obama is actually behind the recent unsolved shootings and the kidnapping of a local vampire?"
A: "No. The President of the United States is not actually in Renard Parish shooting and kidnapping people..."
Q: "This hate group. They kidnapped a vampire, but they've also been linked to a double homicide in Monroe and a shooting outside Shreveport. Those victims were human, so what's the connection?"
A: "Right, because it went so well when vampires came out of the coffin. I'm not going to bother talking to you about shifters right now. They are so dumb, anyway."

Sam: "Luna and I smelled that basement some more and smelled pig shit, if that helps."
Andy: "I don't want to be in another pig storyline. I spent an entire season just wandering around saying that word, I won't have it."
Sam: "Okay, but can I be a pretend cop some more like all season?"
Andy: "No, you may not."
Sam: "Can I tell the reporters about shifters? We're kind of confusing."
Andy: "No, you may not."
Sam: "Feminism!"
Andy: "It doesn't actually work like that."

Luna: "This Southern paternalism, even for a girl of exotic extraction like myself, can be a bit of a curveball sometimes."
Sam: "You're telling me. Let's use our magic powers and not worry about it."
Luna: "I didn't think of that. Why don't we ever think of that on this show?"

MERLOTTE'S

Patrick: "Arlene, you're my hostage. Shiver and whine and be useless."
Arlene: "Check. I was already doing that."
Patrick: "Who else is working today?"
Arlene: "Just Lafayette, apparently. Sookie's getting herself kidnapped, Big John who knows, I'm here being a hostage, Holly is adrift in the ennui of her sad life, and Sam is off fucking with the police."
Patrick: "Call Lafayette and tell him to stay home."
Arlene: "Lafayette, you're shifty and lazy like the rest of your people. But this time it works out, because Sam closed down the bar for the day. What? No, everything's fine. No, why would I be upset? Oh, that? The highly trained military killer that you told to kill my husband? Nonsense. Just go smoke your doobies and I'll see you tomorrow."

By Jacob Clifton

DRAGON HOUSE

Sookie: "Hoyt? Why are we in pigs?"
Hoyt: "Very high on ginger ale oxy."

Jason: "Connections, connections. Both our Obamas* got dumb-ass white-trash names starting with J, played football for BT High... Sheriff Dearborne arrested both of them..."
Kevin: "Irony, girl! Anyway, Joe Bob was one of the people that blew the nest of ridiculous vampires in Season One, and Bud just let him go. And then Junior, public drunkenness."
Kenya: "I fucking hate everything about this town."
Jason: "I have to solve this crime! I turned Bubba into a bisexual fangbanger, and thence an Obama*. Everything is about me. Me! And my penis!"
Andy: "I've been saying that for five seasons now. I'm sorry I'm such a horrible Sherriff."
Sam & Luna are flies. These insecurities are lain open for them.
Andy, verbatim: "Now, Joe Bob's a son of a bitch, but it is my job to protect son of a bitches, too. And vampers, and shifters, werechickens and whatever the fuck else is out there. Even that fairy woman I totally swore to protect last season, that we forgot about entirely."
Kevin: "Hey, see on this video how the one Obama* is wearing the same squaredancin' boots that we bought Bud Dearborn when he retired? Maybe that's a clue."

DRAGON HOUSE

Bud: "Sorry about knocking you out and giving you to pigs, but you can read minds."
Sookie: "That part makes sense, but I still don't know what the hell is going on."
Bud: "Oh, we're a lynch mob. I'm sorry, I forgot that you don't ever pay attention to anything that doesn't concern you."
Sookie: "Okay. But like, Sam Merlotte is great, right?"
Sweetie appears: "Sam Merlotte is buying up property all over town so he can turn it into a shifter paradise! First the bars, then the apartment buildings, and before you know it, churches and schools. Then he can convert all the innocent children to his perverted shifter ways. Mosques and community centers of evil! World War IV ain't gonna be fought over land or oil in no foreign country, it's gonna be fought right here! For our humanity!"
Sookie: "Luckily, I'm fluent in crazy. But I do wonder who the fuck you are."
Sweetie: "I am of no consequence. But here's a Lynchian sort of John Waters flashback about how my husband left me for a raccoon-based shifter at a square-dance, where my blue eye shadow ran down my fat face and it was super weird and mean-funny."
Sookie: "What an interesting person you are. Just kidding."
Obamas*: "Anyway we're big racists or something and we're going to feed you to the pigs."

Sookie: "What an interesting person you are. Just kidding."
Obamas*: "Anyway we're big racists or something and we're going to feed you to the pigs."

They feed her to the pigs. Pigs eat Hoyt also. One of the pigs is Sam! Naked Sam saves Sookie from the pigs, and then I guess skinwalks into the form of a naked ninja, because he takes out all the good old boy Obamas* single-handedly. Not as a Tyrannosaurus Rex or a gorilla, you understand, just as regular Sam. You know, Sam Merlotte? Who is shorter than Anna Paquin and weighs less than Puppy Emma? He goes CGI Yoda on their shit. And then Jason and Andy come in and shoot everybody else, and but Hoyt's face is still pig-eaten and his heartbeat is thready. Sweetie escapes, but Luna chases her down in the form of a dog or something and punches her face in a few times, but eventually they put her in a cop car too. It's all very satisfying.

MERLOTTE'S

Terry: "Patrick, is that my wife you're holding hostage?"
Arlene: "Kill him, Terry! Shoot him in the head!"
Patrick: "Lady, I have a gun to your temple. Could you at least explore the concept of not being completely obnoxious at all times?"
Arlene: "Nope!"

Terry offers to fight him in hand-to-hand combat, but Patrick whines about how Terry is better than him in every single way and that's what makes this difficult, or some such nonsense. How about you're both fucking murderers? Why does the show think this is complicated? It's not complicated, you're both awful and you deserve to die at the hands of a smoke monster. There's no trade here. And in fact, if you really weigh it out, it's still more Terry's bad than Patrick's. Anyway, Patrick gets him on his knees, execution style, and Arlene just shrieks and shrieks and shrieks.

RELIQUARY RM

Eric & Nora: "Let's talk about faith and religion and stuff, only not really."
Eric: "Hey, you used to be really cool and ambitious, and now you suck."
Nora: "That's what God did for me."
Eric: "Well, can you help me also learn to be insufferable and boring and useless?"
Nora: "Because I love you, I shall try."
Eric: "And because I love you, I shall silver you and kidnap you."
Nora: "As long as somebody's making my decisions for me!"
Eric: "You should see what they did to Tara in Season Two. This is nothing."

By Jacob Clifton

RELIQUARY RM

GUARDIAN SUITE

Salome does a totally queer bellydance for Bill and talks about how she's Salome, but now instead of that one story she's also going to be like the worldly avatar of Lilith or some such drugged-up self-aggrandizing nonsense. Turns out that she and Bill have been chosen to be the new Adam and Eve, which is just... I give up. This whole thing is like the end of that movie Bug when they just start improvising their crazy narrative.

Bill: "What if Ah don't want to be the Adam of your Lilith-Eve-Salome?"
Salome: "You do."
Bill: "Oh, okay."

She turns into Sookie, and he bites her so he can steal her blood, but then she turns into Lilith, so we get to deal with that gory mess, and then they fuck for a long time and it's mortifying to watch, and I guess at some point Bill just gave in? I mean, I misspoke, I meant to say, Who the fuck cares what is ever going on with Bill Compton?

DRAGON HOUSE

In the aftermath of Sam's pig-shaped ninja extravaganza, Jason cradles and worries at Hoyt, and Sam stands around naked and Sookie is still high as a kite. I'm sure there's more texturally that went on, but fuck Hoyt and fuck his pig-eaten face.

MERLOTTE'S

Patrick: "Your stupid wife plugged me in the neck with a hair chopstick, so I might die from that. You should probably just shoot me or else take me to a hospital so I can come back later and shoot you."
Terry: "None of those things sounds like the right option for me today."
Arlene: "Just shoot him, you retard. This storyline can end at any time."
Patrick: "Don't follow orders, like that time I told you to shoot a lady dozens of times in the fact for no reason!"
Terry: "I guess you're right and it wasn't my fault. That thing I did of my own volition."

FANGTASIA!

Vampires: "I am craving some Tru Blood!"
Freddy Iverson: "This lady's boobs sure are tasty to snack on in public!"
Pam: "Get out of my Maker's throne, and stop eating that lady in public."

Freddy Iverson throws Pam across the room, and it is pretty tough to take.

Freddy Iverson: "First of all, I am the new Sherriff. Second of all, Eric Northman is very dead because of the Authority has gone bonkers. Third of all, we can eat wherever we want. And finally, let's all eat people!"

They eat all the people. It is a drag.

DRAGON HOUSE AFTERMATH

Jason: "I sure hope Bubba is going to be okay."
Nobody: Else Cares.
Sam: "Andy, before we go find our daughter that I just decided was my daughter recently for no reason, prepare yourself for some major condescension. I was listening before when you were saying you weren't a very good Sherriff. But considering you aren't cheating on your wife with an insane lady racist, and you haven't started any chapters of the KKK, I think we can agree that at least one Sherriff is worse than you."
Andy, tearfully: "That means a lot, you patronizing little fuckface."

NAZI WOLF CULT

Russell and Steve Newlin are an item now. If I got started on why that's gross and stupid, we'd be here all day. Suffice to say that Rule No. 1 for a happy life is, you never explain privilege when somebody is actively enjoying it. So if you think Russell and Steve are just the cutest thing, or Lafayette would be a fun person to keep as a pet, you can first of all fuck off because you're not helping, but second of all maybe we'll talk about why some other time.

Russell: "I have been collecting werewolves for almost two thousand years. Let me tell you about some of them."
Steve Newlin: "I never had pets, my dad was allergic to everything except God."
Russell: "You forget that bloodbag. Stick with me, darlin', I'll give you the world."

Here's a pro tip: Don't confuse yourself with my father if you want me to fuck you. Very simple rule. I don't know if this is generational-gay, or just the vantage point of heterosexual writing, but there is very little about Russell and Steve, separately or together, that actually makes sense in 2012 to anybody under 45. That Paul Rudnick/Jack McFarlane/Village People/Liza Minnelli shit stopped being funny twenty years ago, and now it's just sad and creepy. It's not a heritage, it's a symptom of getting stuck at the age of your tragedy. And the people who could have led us out of that trap all died, so now it's just us, and the rest of the cargo cult, trying to figure out what gay culture even means in their absence. I'm not saying I'm qualified to solve this question, but I am saying that this is not the answer to it. Laughing at your own expense made you safe thirty years ago, but you're just Uncle Ruckus now.

But I don't think it's entirely that. From the first episode, this otherwise stellar season keeps letting us down when it comes to its own blindness to privilege. Tara's empowerment is always knuckled under by Pam in the end; Newlin's sexuality continues to be a pretty ugly punchline to a five-year joke. But you have to know how lucky you are when you can look at any unequal situation and claim to see a level playing field, as long as you're the one on top: Tara "just happens" to be black, Newlin and Russell "just happen" to be hooking up. That's how it looks on the other side of privilege.

And that proceeds to give you the right to make jokes about it as though you were an honorary minority, just because you've labeled yourself a "gay ally" -- whatever the fuck that means -- or post-racially color-blind, or whatever it is. Except it doesn't. The whole thing falls apart because the whole thing was set up as a tactic by you to get out of examining your own fucked-up attitudes.

At the end of the day you're still Otherizing Tara at best, and taking her on a "reverse-racist" trip at worst, which is painfully destructive. At the end of the day, no matter how much you think you like gay people, you're still putting them in a gross fetishistic box when your favorite things about the show are Russell and Lafayette's "campiness," or Newlin taking Talbot's place as Russell's catamite Birdcage bottom.

Even if the majority of the viewing audience happens to enjoy these things, and that's why the writers keep pushing these buttons over and over in a neverending HBO circle-jerk, well... It's called "the majority" for a reason, isn't it? People don't "just happen" to be objects: You make them that way when you treat them like this. Not sure we'll ever be at a place where these things are okay to fuck around with, but tell you what. We'll let you know.

Russell: "Congratulations, JD! You win for Best Drug Addict!"
JD: "Thank you. I hope to make you proud."

Everybody drinks from Russell's wrist in a slurpy sensual white-trash mess. This is happening in a barn, I want you to remember that all of this is happening in a barn. Steve Newlin's eyes seemed permanently widened by what is going down.

By Jacob Clifton

Russell: "Congratulations, JD! You win for Best Drug Addict!"
JD: "Thank you. I hope to make you proud."

JD: "Martha, put down your granddaughter and come do some drugs?"
Martha: "I chose my Pack, and I swore I'd die for it. But I will never drink from you, fanger."
Russell: "Okay, then I'll be taking your granddaughter. How do you like them apples?"
Martha: "This screaming I'm doing means I do not like it very much!"
JD: "Russell, please do not give my granddaughter to Steve Newlin as a pet. For many reasons."

Russell's Viking accent comes out and he nearly kills JD for whining, but then sadly he does not. JD lives. Steve gets the kid. Martha screams and screams. Werewolves are the worst!

HERVEAUX SR

See, like for example this is Alcide's dad: Sitting in a trailer park trailer watching the races -- always with the races -- with a beer on his belly and just doing his best possible Mickens impression, when Alcide shows up.

Alcide: "You bet your whole disability check on this race? God, you're fucking gross. Anyway, I got abjured out of the Shreveport Pack at some point that wasn't on the show."
Herveaux: "So you're a lone wolf now, just like your old man."

AUTHORITY

Nora: "This is great how you're joining my cult... Wait, are you kidnapping me? Hoggle, what have you done?"
Eric: "I am going to use your blood to get us out of here, but also take you with us so I can deprogram you. As usual, this show has heavily weighted the ethics of this by saying that you are under the influence of something you didn't choose, even though over and over you did, so that what I'm doing isn't dreadfully offensive."
Molly: "Great, we can use her to get out."
Eric: "Molly, where is Bill? I can't leave without Bill, I lo..."
Bill: "-- What? You what?"
Eric: "Nothing, let's go!"

The elevator opens on, of course, Salome and a bunch of guards, so Molly and Eric get silvered and taken back into custody. One of the dudes grins at Bill so hard it looks like his face is going to break, but it's pretty cute. Maybe he's just laughing at the shitty cover of the title song this week. Who knows, who will ever know? Just know this: Bill Compton is as skilled at finding new ways to disappoint you as Eric Northman is good at charming you with his exploits.

Eric: "You traitorous motherfucker! Why?"
Bill: "Just because!"

Which means it's gotta flip back over, right? If Eric believes that Nora is not acting on her own faith, of her own agency, then the same must hold true for Bill. Except we saw him choose, just pinch his nose closed and jump off into the abyss, right? So really, they're just giving in. Like Bill always does.

COMING WEEKS

Vampires versus humans! Everybody has a gun on the whole show! Jessica and Jason continue to endanger one another! Bill probably has a fiftieth change of heart! Werewolves on the vampire side! Shifters technically against the humans probably but not necessarily with the vampires! Faeries the same thing, but the other way! Anna Paquin just keeps getting prettier and prettier! MARTHA BOSEMAN 4 SHREVEPORT PACKMASTER! And maybe Russell reveals that his entire character assassination this season was all one huge misdirection and actually he's still after the Authority and Monarchy, like he was all along until now. Right? I can't live in a post-post-Russell Edgington-world-world much longer. It makes me feel too weird.

JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Bunheads, Pretty Little Liars and True Blood 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, and novelette "The Commonplace Book" will appear on Tor.com in October 2012.

By Jacob Clifton

Eric: "You traitorous motherfucker! Why?"
Bill: "Just because!"

COMING WEEKS