Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
PREVIOUSLY
Eric kidnapped the Governor's fangbanger daughter Willa and learned they're putting vampires in concentration camps, just like God predicted. Then dumb Tara ran off with her, because what would this show be without Tara's shitty decisions. God figured out about Andy Bellefleur's ready supply of Fae daughters -- whose blood Takahashi can synthesize into turbo TruBlood -- right after a fight with Sookie, whose brother maybe just had an aneurism. Owl Sam got Emma back while Alcide's Pack was eating all the VUSsers (except for Nicole). Nora has some random Sanguinistic information about Lilith and/or Warlow -- who is almost certainly Ben Flynn, right? -- but none of the faeries know who she is but it doesn't help.
BEN IS GLORY
While Sookie is calling 911 for poor old conked-out Jason, and Niall is chasing Nora around the forest for no clear reason beyond the fact that she's a sneak, Ben makes some sexy faces and then fangs up and gives Jason some blood. Maybe because he is a good dude, maybe because obviously he is Warlow and even if he isn't Warlow, either way Jason is his brother-in-law by Sookie.
But also it is very interesting that Ben is a vampire, due to him being a faerie and not a vampire.
Outside, Niall has just about had it with running around chasing Nora, so he laser-handses a tree and this stops Nora dead, because vampires are afraid of fast-moving trees. He holds her still with faerie vibes, and she nerds out like a Nerdy Nora.
Nora: "How I know about Warlow is because... Well, have you heard of Lilith? I tend to just talk about Lilith pretty constantly, have you heard the Good News about Lilith?"
Niall: "I am the King of the Fae! I know all about everything!"
Nora: "Well it turns out that the Bible is mistranslated folderol. Which is a bummer to me, because it is my whole deal, but people have been overlooking what the Bible actually says and just making shit up since right around when gay people were invented."
Niall: "Stop talking about yourself and your dumb religion and start talking about Warlow."
Nora: "Okay so it says the People led Lilith to the Sun but actually it means the Progeny led Lilith to the Sun, and that's Warlow. Lilith's vampire son and I guess also a faerie and I guess also Ben. And only he can kill Lilith slash Bill."
Niall: "So wait, Sookie's ex-boyfriend is God and also the mother of her new boyfriend, who is Jesus and the Devil at the same time? This is the best season of this show."
Nora: "Hold up, am I glamoured? Why are we talking about this when I could be eating your delicious faerie self!?"
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Outside, Niall has just about had it with running around chasing Nora, so he laser-handses a tree and this stops Nora dead, because vampires are afraid of fast-moving trees. He holds her still with faerie vibes, and she nerds out like a Nerdy Nora.
Nora: “How I know about Warlow is because… Well, have you heard of Lilith? I tend to just talk about Lilith pretty constantly, have you heard the Good News about Lilith?”
Niall: “I am the King of the Fae! I know all about everything!”
Nora: “Well it turns out that the Bible is mistranslated folderol. Which is a bummer to me, because it is my whole deal, but people have been overlooking what the Bible actually says and just making shit up since right around when gay people were invented.”
Niall: “Stop talking about yourself and your dumb religion and start talking about Warlow.”
Nora: “Okay so it says the People led Lilith to the Sun but actually it means the Progeny led Lilith to the Sun, and that’s Warlow. Lilith’s vampire son and I guess also a faerie and I guess also Ben. And only he can kill Lilith slash Bill.”
Niall: “So wait, Sookie’s ex-boyfriend is God and also the mother of her new boyfriend, who is Jesus and the Devil at the same time? This is the best season of this show.”
Nora: “Hold up, am I glamoured? Why are we talking about this when I could be eating your delicious faerie self!?”
He faerie-punts her into the sky and it is kind of amazing. There she goes! Then she is randomly captured by the LAVTF, which acronym is fairly obvious. Niall’s just like, “That went well,” because he has no idea how helpful Nora can be during her three seconds of not sucking each episode. I was really hoping she would just join Team Sookie (the VFSSTF) at this point, but no. We are not there yet.
BACK HOME
Sookie is all sookied up about Jason when she comes back from her important mission of making a call on the landline, and the music is like, “But girl, what has changed in this room?” What has changed is, Jason went from having an all-day migraine for the last year of this show to just being good old Jason, cuddling up with Ben and feeling his oats.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Ben: “I guess he just got his bell rung or something.”
Niall: “Well, that vampire that is not really our problem got away. Thanks, dick!”
Ben: “Where is she now?”
Niall: “Vampire jail, that’s not the point. The point is, I am bitching. You need to protect that precious fairy snatch and not cuddle her dumb useless brother.”
Everybody: “Sorry we’re so dumb that Jason was dying and you were running around not doing anything helpful. We really should have wasted time like you, Fairy Grandfather.”
Ben, sulky: “I’m going to a motel to be sexy as all hell.”
Sookie: “Let’s pretend I’m not going to show up there so immediately it’s already happening.”
SHIFTERS & WERES & WHATEVER
Raccoona: “Wait, where are Emma and Nicole and Sam? Everybody we didn’t eat?”
Alcide: “I’m going to keep talking like Alec Baldwin, okay?”
Weres: “[Dumbshit shifter were things like 'I smell her in a SUV' or whatever.]“
Meanwhile, Lala and Naked Post-Owl Sam help Nicole and Emma into Lafayette’s car, so they can drive off into the Smoke Monster sunset of a storyline that is awful.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
GINGER
Is still janky in her mind-meat. They gas her house and immediately come in, and Ginger gets all her screamin’ out. It’s been a while since Ginger screamed her stupid weird ass off, so she has a lot of screaming to serve. The Gov gets in her face and even surrounded by gas bombs and SWAT laser disco and looking him in the eye — both because she is Ginger and out of it, and because Eric glamoured her to do this forever and ever — she still tries to finesse it.
Ginger: “AAAIEEE! He’s almost got her untied, Governor. Just a few more seconds, okay?”
Burrell: “Dr. Overlark is going to have so much fun spooning through the lukewarm oatmeal of your brain. Take this fangbanger to the concentration camp.”
Ginger: “Okay but if you’ll just wait a second, I have some more screaming to do.”
Gov: “It’s personal because of my daughter!”
He punches a wall and then yells because sometimes things are just funny. Like I wish that in every movie, a woman would forget her car window is rolled up, and get really excited to say hi to somebody, and then bash her face against the window by turning to fast. Not because women getting hurt is funny, but because GPOY.
SEWERS
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Eric: “Why isn’t Tara answering you on your baby vampire mommy mind phone?”
Pam: “Because she is the fucking worst. It took five years, but they finally ruined her.”
Tara: “No, I’m right here in this sewer. But Willa — a noncombatant who is on our side and in no fucking danger whatsoever — is hidden away from you! For no reason!”
Pam: “This is doing damage to our relationship.”
Eric: “This is doing damage… To your FACE!”
He grinds her into the sewer floor by the face, and after a whole lot of unnecessary static and Tara bullshit, she explains that somehow she has put her in the fairground off I-20. Pam whines that Eric should stop being mean to Tara, because somehow Tara’s suckiness is like a black hole, ensuckening all who know her. They suck so bad that even Eric yelling at them kind of makes him suck too, just for engaging.
CAMP BELLEFLEUR
Terry: “I can’t stand watching the news about Afghani terrorists, due to murdering that woman that one time when I was on drugs and then she turned into a smoke monster.”
Pre-Teen Sensations: “Then why are you?”
Terry: “It’s because I’m sad about Patrick. I liked him very much, and now he’s gone and I’m sad.”
Pre-Teen Sensations: “Actually you shot him and his brains went everywhere.”
Terry: “Rude! Arlene, I need backup!”
Pre-Teen Sensations: “Hee, hee, hee. We are going to give you PTSD all over again.”
Arlene: “Not even Sookie Stackhouse goes inside that fucked-up head, little girls. Do you understand what I’m saying? You will when you’re older and you marry a war vet and he chokes you in his sleep and a scary baby is everywhere.”
Andy: “Go to bed, you haven’t slept since you were three!”
Pre-Teen Sensations: “But did it work?”
Terry: “Yes. Boo-hoo-hoo.”
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
It’s funny how all the wordplay in this storyline is like the opposite of how bad it makes you feel when Sam or Raccoona says shifter or were things. It is just wonderful. And the whole concept of them being little Mean Girl bitches to him about this because they don’t know how sad he is or how much we love him, that is wonderful too. I am very proud of this part of the show, which is wild because it seemed like it would suck the most.
Andy: “You guys need to leave him alone, okay. He is all dicked up.”
Pre-Teen Sensations: “But we’re just fast-growing elf people, we don’t understand conventional ethics. And then also we’re awful because kids are pretty awful, because they’re not done growing up yet. It’s a metaphor for how parents have to be better people, and not get frustrated by that simple fact that children aren’t done.”
Andy: “I know, that’s what I’m here for. Your mom said it was my sacred duty, and she fingerblasted me about it when we first did it and then again when she shot you out of her magical vagina. But I am happy about it nonetheless. Stop reading my mind and go to bed, please. I love you and I love being your dad for three whole days.”
Pre-Teen Sensations: “Weird things are about to happen, Daddy.”
Andy: “Well as long as you don’t go through a strange pubescence like Charles Dodgson wrote this episode and then get kidnapped by God, just tell me about it in the morning.”
They go through a strange pubescence, as if Charles Dodgson wrote this episode. So they raid Arlene’s closet and head out into the night in Andy’s Sheriff car — “Let’s go drink beers!” — for an actually very valid reason: What if they completely miss their twenties while they’re sleeping?
See what I mean? It’s like all the painful worldbuilding of shifter language and the nonstop nonsensical fuckery of Vampire Politics in years past were somehow transmuted into something amazing. And speaking of…
Bill: “Well Ah was shore they were merely children. Perhaps this is merely another mystery of womanhood Ah have yet to discover.”
Jessica: “I think probably it’s a normal faerie thing we don’t know about because they are a secret. Maybe once Takahashi gets over being kidnapped by me dressing sexy for no reason he can tell us.”
Bill: “Do you smell their perfect womanhood body smells? Life’s fecund blessing!”
Jessica: “We need to work on your language a little bit.”
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
STACK HOUSE
Sookie: “Stop doing shirtless pullups in the doorframe and go to bed!”
Jason: “First of all, fuck you Sookie Stackhouse. The people need what they need. And second of all, am I not acting exactly like a person on V? How can you not put together this very simple narrative? Ben is Glory.”
Sookie: “Oh, got it. All that obvious shit — plus this puddle of Warlow blood I just found on my living room floor — has helped me put it together. Mother fuck.”
She grits her teeth on this latest betrayal in a very winsome, very Sookie-at-her-best way, and then — to her credit — wipes the blood off her finger so Benlow can’t GPS her fairy snatch and do all kinds of those other vampire tricks to her, such as having Tangerine Dream sex with her while he is a mental baby in Narnia, or making her masturbate on a porch while everyone else is at church. I honestly thought this was gonna take her all episode, but I should have remembered that any trail with the D at the end of it automatically makes her ten times the Scoob.
But also, because I love it and because nothing is easier than saying you hate something rather than thinking about it for five seconds, let us meditate on what is going on here. If you took everything great about the last five seasons and put it into a blender… Actually, start here. If you treat Nate’s dream of Life and Death eternally fucking and turned it into a TV show, you would have True Blood. Then follow every part of the show that follows from that, and put it into a blender. Even Godric is part of this math.
One bad guy is the vampire God, who is looking to save vampirekind by catching faeries. The other bad guy is the vampire Jesus, who is eating faeries while looking to destroy vampire God, but nobody really cares about the fae/vampire war because Lilith has started the (false flag?) human/vampire war. One of them is night, the other is day. Both of them are two people at once. (Probably neither of them is actually a bad guy, but that’s the advanced calculus, same way that Godric was right about the human/vampire war but never got to find out how.)
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Warlow is maybe also a faerie, making him the intersection between death and life that this show has been looking for — and locating precisely between Sookie and Bill — since literally the pilot. His blood is V, a human drug supercharged by being human blood changed into death magic — but his blood is also fae, a vampire drug supercharged by being literally life magic.
Warlow is the fae-vampire that Bill wants to create, tonight, with his science, but the Book of Lilith tells us that’s how it went down to begin with: God created Adam, Eve and Lilith, and then Lilith made herself a Son — not through sex, but a different kind of way — and not only was he this intersection between light and dark, he was also the faerie version of a regular vampire: A faerie that hunts faerie just like vampires are ex-humans hunting humans. That drinks the drink that vampires desire most, because it is their opposite and their answer and their apology.
In the Midrash Lilith goes to the Land of Nod, and copulates with the beings she finds there, and that’s where the Lilim and maybe the Nephilim come from. (This is from memory so it might not just be apocrypha, it could also be comics or role-playing games or whatever else finds its way into your head when you are young; that’s also this show, though, so I don’t feel the need to cite.) The important thing there is that there are other beings besides the ones from Eden: Just like when we met the faeries and they were UFO’s, the point is the same, which is that nothing is really alien, just something you don’t know about yet. Even the Fae comes from earth, in the end, and so they are our brothers.
But if, say, the new model is that Fae are up here, and vampires are down here, and humans are in the middle, then that’s even more exciting, because put everybody on that board and sees what happens: Both Stackhouses are like angels, running up and down the ladder between hell and earth, and the Brigant halflings are like angels, running up and down the ladder between earth and heaven. And what Niall is figuring out — and Nora, and now Sookie are figuring out — is that what’s most important about Warlow isn’t that he’s primeval: It’s that he covers the entire board. He is what God-Bill seeks to become — and what Billith seeks to become, we’re all looking for (and only Jason has found, intermittently), which is the ability to transcend opposites: To love that in ourselves which we fear and hate most.
In Snow Crash there’s a whole bit about how the death of Jesus Christ was about decentralizing faith in terms of regulated access to God: That the true redemption of that sacrifice was about making sure that everybody could call God on the phone and we didn’t need priests anymore — so the establishment of the Church on the rock of St. Peter was a hack of the code by the 1% to get that power back. That seems harsh to me — although I’d say 2000 years later, it’s become true anyway — but it’s helpful sometimes when you’re thinking about faith to remember that idea: It only serves the network providers to block you from having free wifi, so maybe you shouldn’t let shitty religious people affect your ideas about religion.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
But even if that’s vastly offensive to you, just pretend it’s an okay metaphor long enough to consider the fact that Godric’s death changed absolutely everything, in such a time-shattering way that we are still feeling the effects, years later. He gave himself up to the Sun, without benefit of his sweet progeny or anything other than his feeling that this inevitable war was a stain on us all, and that ultimately it has to be our choice when we go. He prepared the way. But was it for Lilith, or was it for Warlow? And because I have a very strong feeling it ultimately doesn’t matter at all: Can he still, somehow, get us all out alive?
I can see being disappointed, if you thought this show was about tits. Or about wishing you had a gay BFF like Lafayette or Pam. I even sympathize with that. But only a little bit, and frankly not for very long at a go. You don’t know what you don’t know, and calling something cute and dumb is usually a great way of calling yourself cute and dumb, but in this case I can guarantee it: Because the show started, last year, narrowing down to only being about the awesomely wise science fiction and religion of itself all along — and while that’s where I happen to live, it’s also where you get the most work done.
If this show had started five years later, let’s say, maybe this stuff would be more in the forefront of your mind: Without True Blood, there would be no Game Of Thrones, which never ever apologizes for being what it is. This show’s a little different, it puts the tits on the cover of the magazine so you have no compelling reason to read the articles. And while that got the show, and other shows, made, now that the star is falling it seems like maybe a disservice all along, because it ended up giving you no tools to read the show as groundbreaking urban fantasy. (And some years, some stories, actively fucked it up.) It sold you what you now think it is, and then stopped giving you that.
You tune in expecting the old overcompensating fuckfest, and instead you just get this religious crap and vampires sitting around in a room for a whole year talking about nothing whatsoever and killing each other at random. So I really do sympathize, because I know that if it weren’t specifically my job to care about this I wouldn’t either. (And I get that for some people taking things seriously is the exact same thing as getting bored, and not the fun the rest of us think it is, but for that one I have no answer because this has been going on for six years now.) But don’t mistake my impatience for yelling at you, because it’s not frustration: I’m only very excited to show you this, because it is showing all my toys to you.
This one, Defiance more often than you’d think, Buffy, Battlestar: Reasons to be happy that the mainstream is no longer giving you the option of being better than everybody else. To be overjoyed at the opportunity to be nimble.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Because of course Season Four (Witches) and Season Five (Authority) kind of sucked, got tangled up and tripped over their ambitions. But in this online culture of everybody being a critic no matter how little attention they’re paying, in the battle to see who can be over things first, this obsession with jumping the shark, with the routine of tuning in to hate-watch, sometimes we lose sight of the fact that there’s no real reason things can’t improve, at any time. There’s not a one-way street for quality, for joy, despite what popular wisdom has to say, and in any case that’s a horrible world to live in: I don’t do it IRL, I’m certainly not going to do it at work.
And I do believe that even with all that sucking, this season so far has streamlined, skimmed off the good parts of the last five seasons, and is telling a compelling story out of what’s left: It seems to me like purified True Blood, going back to the very first metaphors that brought us here and telling something good and brave with them.
PLUS THIS PART IS SO GREAT
Bill and Jessica follow the Plastics to a convenience store, and she holds him back, and it is beautiful how it goes, I don’t even want to editorialize.
Jess: “Hey, wait. Let me do it.”
Bill: “I can be very persuasive.”
Jess: “And very impulsive.”
Bill: “Aw, you don’t trust me?”
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
“I trust Bill. But I also know there’s a fight going on inside you, between Bill and Lilith, and I just want to make sure She doesn’t win tonight. Those girls… They’re the same age I was, when you turned me. If anything were to happen to them I’d never forgive myself.”
No hate, no resentment, no judgment. Just the facts on the ground. Even the Magister part of the speech isn’t really about Bill or Castle Compton at all: It’s reverence for that girl, that terrified abused girl who was put out of her misery by the man who became her father and her King. Poor fucked over innocent ruined chained-up Jessica Hamby, whose little sister was named Eden. Who was carried up out of Hell by death and into delight. It’s not even really about Lilith: Just the kindness Jessica can do for that sweet girl. In her honor.
PLASTICS
Like all Bon Temps convenience store workers, the guy is a grease trap who immediately offers to take the girls in the back and count their rings in lieu of ID, which of course Jessica is not having. She glamours him with a sexy, spiky confidence, and then turns to the ladies.
Jess: “My name’s Jessica, what’s yours?”
Gretchen Weiners: “Um, like we don’t have names?”
Jess: “That’s pretty fuuu… I mean, cool. It’s very cool. I hate having a name! You always have to tell people it, and it’s like so lame. Names, you know. Sayin’ ‘em.”
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
It is very dorky, like maybe Bill is your dad. But also wonderful, because: Jessica.
Karen: “If you’re just a normal girl like us, why don’t you smell like us?”
Gretchen: “Oh my God, Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re not faeries.”
Jessica: “I’m a vampire actually…”
Regina: “Boo, you whore.”
Jessica: “No, it’s fine. I don’t eat faeries, my stepmom is a faerie. And besides, I am super awesome! We can drink awesome shooters, listen to awesome music, and then just sit around and soak up each others awesomeness. Whattaya say?”
Outside, things get just as gross and Procurery as you might think, he’s all smarmy and getting off his cell phone and like, “It’s gonna be a little cozy in there, you’re gonna have to squeeze in.” And he’s not even trying to be gross, and Jessica’s not trying to be gross, but you add it up and it’s gross. It looks gross, it feels gross, and like I said last week, the amount and tone of the grossness would depend on how old they are, and how old they are is: Exactly to the apex of this-being-grossness. This is how girls end up dead.
STACK HOUSE
Um so in this part of the show, Ben and Jason are listening to smooth jams in the bathroom with no clothes on, and Ben is shaving Jason. That is what is happening at this time. Just some dudes, shavin’ up.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
And then when that is done with, Ben feels all on Jason and pronounces him every bit as smooth as these jams. It is very encouraging, like a friendly coach all alone after school, or your friend’s older brother at a sleepover, or (more accurately) your older sister’s fiancé right before they get married.
Nothing to see here. Nothing to see here that you have not seen already on the internet.
Jason feels a shirtless comfort, and the approval of a nude male authority figure.
And then Ben says, would Jason like to do him, and Jason as it turns out is fully down.
So Ben says, “Just relax. Do it like you do it to yourself.”
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
And Jason shakes the shaving cream can up and down in a rhythmic motion — to make it creamier, you see, and to make it come out faster — and then he squirts it into his hand. Success!
Then he wipes it all over Ben’s face. Ben loves it! Ben is very into it.
So then Jason starts shaving Ben. It is very steamy in the bathroom, due to condensation, at this time.
But then there is a little bit of a hitch, because he gets ahead of himself does old Jason, and he nicks Ben’s face a little bit. He feels so bad! How can he make up for this painful mistake? There must be a way.
“It’s okay,” says Ben, who is just going with the flow. “Taste it!”
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
And Jason would like this very much, so his face goes a little crazy with some urges, and he reaches up to lick Ben a little bit. Nobody’s around, nobody is around to know.
Just Warlow is the only person making unscheduled appearances in this bathroom lately, and I don’t think that’s likely right now, because Warlow is otherwise occupied. Occupied, to be clear, doing masculine foreplay sex rituals with the sweetest, hottest boy in Louisiana besides himself. (Besides Benself.)
BUT THEN
Just before the licking commences, and then some good clean dude-on-dude fun, Jason WAKES UP. For it was all A DREAM. A dream that came with a boner, that is very confusing for Jason, but not really for anybody else.
“This really is by far the best season of this show,” Jason says sleepily to himself, and then masturbates — I would imagine — in a certain furious way.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
For again, if you pass by the color boner in a field and don’t notice, it pisses God off. Even if it’s a V boner, which is all this really is, and it’s not even the first time V has gone bi on Jason so I’d imagine he’s okayer than we think. At least this time it’s not a vampire leather bear in a sex harness like in Season One, and it’s not all romantic daddy issues like in Season Two. (Or sad emo eyeliner like with Hoyt, which was absolutely the most upsetting way for V to go bi on you.) Just some hotties being hot as hell.
But also, there is nothing troubling about this and it happens to everybody, so don’t feel weird. You are the only person in charge of what your main deal is, and that doesn’t change just because of strange boners or even if you hook up with a person that is not your usual deal. Your identity is your business, it doesn’t change just because things got surprise awesome one time. You are still in charge. Men don’t automatically seem to know this but I think it would really cut down on the overall bullshit if we just told them.
CASTLE COMPTON
I think probably this is what it is like when you meet Charlie Sheen.
Bill welcomes Gretchen into his office, and shows her what he pretends is an ancient vampire sex toy, but really it’s just a weird bracelet that also takes blood samples. So she thinks she’s going to get some old man vampire sex and he plays into it, but for now Bill is winning (winning) and he keeps his hands off: Just promises she’ll be getting fucked eventually, but first fill up this sexy bracelet with some sexy blood samples.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
It’s a lot that is going on in this episode of True Blood, but I still like it, even with all the creepiness, because it’s like, these girls have just gone through ten years of puberty in an hour plus they have no idea what the hour holds, so they’re at this moment of just sex all the time, mortality plus fertility, and then on top of it they are engaged very seriously, very studiously, in the project of being Very Grown Up.
So for now, it’s only signifiers of sexual assault horror literally without anything underneath, which is a risky move for a show nobody really pays attention, especially to at a time when outrage is everyone’s first response to literally everything. But it’s right in line with the show seeming to use that fact to its advantage this year, and tell better stories faster.
Bill heads into the lab and speaks to Takahashi in Japanese, which pisses him off — it’s all so very Bill — and then asks the snarky doctor to TruBlood the faerie blood like he did human blood however many years ago. Plus a threat of death, of course.
FAIRGROUNDS
Eric is wearing all black, and Willa is wearing all white, when he finds her on the carousel. It doesn’t take much convincing before he understands how far she’s willing to go. He’s more like Eric than he has been in years: Wanting to believe her, beating back hundreds of years of self-regard and self-protection to keep himself alive. Finally, he wins, or loses, and decides to believe her.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Of course, it doesn’t matter. He could be doing it for awful reasons, in part is definitely doing it for awful reasons, but there’s something about the theatre with which he turns her that seems fairly decent and real. Godric’s line comes up: He promises to “seed” her (ugh) with “millennia of wisdom, honor, life,” and that part’s true. She plays it like a lost virginity (vide every scene we’ve just scene, if you want to get really complicated about it) but he treats it like a religious ritual, because that’s what it is. He lays his shirt down in the grave for her.
“I’m going to let you taste my blood now, Willa. Okay?”
He pops the crucifix off her neck, in counterpoint to the softness in his voice, and then jams it in his neck — very Eric — and then they’re off to the races. I mean, that’s a lot. If you are not in the zone for this, it seems like a huge joke and the music is overblown. But this is a man who has lost a daughter and a granddaughter, recently, and was evicted from his true love’s house yesterday, and from his own as well. Godric’s line is effectively cut off. And so there’s a beauty too in joining their families together — Burrell’s hate, Eric’s love — that twists Jessica’s reference to her own turning into another iteration of “Godric’s line is always better.” Eric as a just Magister, Eric as a kind King, Eric as a penitent martyr; Eric once again as father and brother and lover.
And then in the wider spectrum of the season’s story, there’s this: The Progeny will lead us to the Sun. What if everything Bill is doing is unraveled, moved backwards, reversed, by this act? Bill and Eric aren’t talking, they don’t know what the other one is doing. They were brothers when they took down the Authority, which made them now the parents of the vampire race. Bill as Lilith gives birth to them like a mother, and Eric all alone fights for them, like a father. But they could be each other’s undoing. Professor X and Magneto, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The open hand and the closed fist. But the show never stops whispering, “There’s always a third way.”
All Burrell wants is to put the vampires somewhere they can’t hurt us. All Bill wants is to put the faeries somewhere so we can’t be hurt. And all Eric wants to do is force the solution, beg the question, squeeze us all together until we pop. All of them willing to do brutal, unimaginable things for survival. Which leaves the question: What does Warlow actually want? Or Niall, who said about him — and the royal line — that Sookie “carries the Fae.” All these Kings and Princesses, trying to save the most people they can.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
SHIFTER NONSENSE
Nicole: “My leg is all fucked up and infected! Maybe I will become more minorities! Maybe I will become a werewolf and also lose a limb and then I can just be pretend bisexual and win every internet conversation for the rest of time.”
Sam: “That’s a dumb thing to hope. Also stop texting your other privilege monsters, they are all dead.”
Nicole: “I have to keep texting and yelling!”
Emma: “My mom died.”
Nicole: “You’re right, I’m being awful. Sorry Emma. I should just go crawl into the desert and die so I don’t slow you down.”
Lafayette: “God this bitch is the worst.”
Sam stands around looking hot as hell and yelling at Lafayette for no reason and hilariously, the entire time Nicole is rolling around in the dirt sobbing. It’s an amazing amount of drama these people can kick up out of nothing. He finally sends Lala away to get drunk at his house like he has been all season, and I guess because Lala remembered that Sam completely sucks, he finally agrees.
Nicole — who stopped crying the second it stopped being about her, note — is pissed that Lala is taking the car, so Sam drops his drawers (Lafayette flips Emma around real quick, it’s awesome) and turns into a horse. Nicole is impressed! That scene was actually pretty great. Actually I kind of love Nicole, she’s like Sookie part two. “I guess I’ll just crawl around in the dirt screaming until you think of turning into a horse, you tool.”
BEN’S MOTEL
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Ben: “Hey, Sookie! I was just being all naked and having dream sex with your brother, nbd.”
Sookie: “It’s cool, I forgot you can read my mind so I came over here to lie to your face.”
She invites him over for dinner, because that is Sookie’s version of being a badass, and of course it’s totally badass. She’s like, “My uncle’s a dick because of being a million years of age and a Replicant,” and Ben’s all, “I don’t mind, I’m even older than your uncle and walking sex and also Magic Jesus, it’s a date!”
And they laugh about how it’s 1) not really a date, except obviously it 2) is totally a date, except really they are probably 3) going to kill each other, except in the end 4) just kidding they will probably fuck. I wonder if he will even bother to put on a shirt for this date.
Me, I vote no. Jason votes a conflicted no. Sookie votes no. Stackhouse voting bloc. Niall abstains. Nays carry it. Bonk bonk. Faerie justice.
In the books Sookie is always buying groceries and doing shit around the house and dressing up in clothes like she’s a member of the Babysitter’s Club, but not so much on the show, so it’s nice that for this ambush dinner she is running around a grocery store, even if she seems to be mainly focusing on the diapers-and-Fresca aisle for some reason. Her hardcore face from walking away from Ben before has not gone anywhere, so either I’m wrong and this really is just nailing Ben — no hate for that plan — or she thinks she is a nuclear bomb and this is when she is going to nuke him. (Or both!)
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Sookie: “Jason, this voicemail is for when you wake up from your sex dream with my boyfriend. I need to have a dinner date and nuclear bomb experience with him, so could you take Niall to a movie? That should be fun since he barely considers you human, but think of it this way, he got so into bitching at Ben that you now have a chance of getting affection and no-strings-attached male approval from somebody that isn’t Andy Bellefleur. The thing you always want more than any other single thing.”
CAMP BELLEFLEUR
Andy: “My daughters are missing! Plus but I have no idea what they look like!”
Kevin: “I’m all gay and retarded, okay? Explain better. Isn’t it usually a family member that abducts children? Or Sam Merlotte?”
Andy: “Let’s ask Terry, he’s the one that goes all smoke monster every time they talk to him!”
Arlene: “Hey! Out of bounds, Andy Bellefleur!”
Terry: “That didn’t even make sense, so it’s fine. Also, they clearly stole your car — so at least at the beginning of things they were their own abductors. An important point to make.”
Andy: “They’re my kids! I can’t think straight!”
They talk his flipped-out ass down from the ledge and he realizes that he is too close to this case, due to the victims being his kids for five whole minutes and thus central to his existence.
STACK HOUSE
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Niall: “Good morning, Jason. You seem kind of gay today.”
Jason: “That’s so weird because I feel kind of gay.”
Niall: “Well, if it’s Ben don’t worry about it. I would tear that dude apart.”
Jason: “Right? But seriously. I have gay dreams pretty regularly, but only when I’m doing V. Do the Fae also make you a little gay? Is that ironically enough a thing about fairies?”
Niall: “Uh, maybe if he looked like Ben. Or Claude. Or most faeries. Or if he is a faerie that got turned into a vampire. Like at the Dawn of Time or something.”
Jason: “OMG Ben is Glory. Sookie should know this information!”
Niall: “No, let’s keep it a secret. Even though Sookie is the one that is supposed to kill him and there was an entire episode about that and I turned her into a nuke.”
OUTSIDE BEN’S MOTEL
Niall: “What would make this season even more amazing and not a joke is if I wore a steampunk costume and was puffing on a giant Gandalf pipe right here in this parking lot. And if my hair were a giant fright wig.”
Oh and also he called Jason his “wounded warrior” at one point, which was also amazing. He looks like Doctor Who, like literally it’s what if Rutger Hauer was Doctor Who, what would that be like. It would be like this, it would be perfect.
Jason aims his gun at Ben through the window, and Ben immediately takes off all his clothes to get in the shower and … Jason has a lot on his plate today. I am glad he no longer has his brain hemorrhage that was never really explained. They rush the shower, hoping for a little glimpse, and Niall fingerblasts the shower but there is no Ben. Then Niall goes down, and all that’s left is Ben, naked and glamouring, touching him all over, in a British accent.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Sad confused boners abound as the glamouring adds up to Ben telling Jason that it’s incredibly sad in his motel room, so he starts crying, and then tells him to say goodbye to Niall, who is about to be drained. Jason runs off to be sad and forget all of this, and then naked Ben drains Grandpa altogether. He died as he lived: Dressed like a dickhole.
Weirdly, Ben spits the blood in the bathtub. I don’t know why he would do that. Maybe to keep his edge from being fae-drunk? Maybe the fae part of him does not love the taste of faeries like a regular vampire does? Because if so, how does he eat?
Back home, Sookie gets out Gran’s recipes and looks for what meal goes good with colloidal silver.
Over in the Raccoona show, Jackson Herveaux is coming to help Packmaster Alcide track Sam Merlotte, which Raccoona doesn’t love because she is miserable and hates everything, but which Alcide thinks is the best idea because we are just wasting time until this storyline steps up, just like happens every year.
NUKE DATE
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Sookie gets her tits together and a nice pink lip, overdoes it on the blush making her look like a mean stepmother or substitute teacher who needs a sandwich to fill out those cheeks, and genuinely transforms herself into a sort of peachy-pink black widow who is ready to go to war with her number one enemy. Her eyes are black in the mirror, she is filled with purpose. Not even angry, that cold thing that comes after angry. The GTD.
If this seems like it’s all happening very fast, like she went from zero to sixty, think about the convo last week with Niall about how living with PTSD has made her more of an Eric than she lets on. But also, how every season is about which boyfriend she has to be with to keep herself alive, and she’s always resisting that, and now it’s like: Yes, it’s the end of the world out there, yes the Fae are extinct and she’s the only one left besides the Plastics and that’s a problem too, but there is an actual prophecy about how this is the main worst bad guy of right now.
Imagine if all your problems and resentments of men — every wrong ever done that came between your body and its holy desires, and its safety — came wrapped up delivered to your house, saying “Deal with me once and for all, and you can have your life back.” How easy it would be then, to convert into GTD form? Put on your makeup and get your tits out and turn into diamond and say to the mirror, Okay. To say, For the hour, I am bulletproof.
TRUBLOOD LAB
Bill: “This blood is crazy, right?”
Takahashi: “Yes, it has crystals of magic in there!”
Bill: “Great, let’s make those.”
Takahashi: “Maybe this is why Ben was spitting in the tub, but it has a half-life* of twenty seconds and then they go away and it’s just regular human blood.”
Bill: “I will get more and you can figure it out. I have many little girls filled with many magical midichlorians.”
Takahashi: “Bitch, human blood is still okay. Why can’t we just make regular TruBlood? And why are you kidnapping little girls?”
Bill: “Because how do you like life up on the ceiling? I am God! I am Darth Vadering you!”
Takahashi: “Okay maybe we should keep trying for a little bit.”
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
*(Oh does it?)
SOME WOODS SOMEWHERE
Willa is a success! I mean, her white dress is covered in grave dirt and blood and she looks fucked in the head, but it’s her first moment of life. Eric pays the donor, who is a little throwed by how much she took, and then he takes on Willa’s big old bag of crazy.
Willa: “YEAH! THIS IS GREAT! EVERYTHING IS ELECTRIC AND BEING A VAMPIRE! I JUST DISCOVERED DUBSTEP!”
Eric: “I remember my first beer, too.”
Willa: “ARE WE GOING TO FUCK NOW? OR KILL EVERYBODY? OR FUCK WHILE WE KILL EVERYBODY? OR KILL EVERYBODY AND THEN FUCK ON THE…”
Eric: “Honey obviously we’re paying the Governor a visit so he can see you’re still his daughter even though you are dead. It’ll be just like Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter, only you are having a psychotic break. What could go wrong. One more brilliant plan from the mind of Eric Northman.”
Willa: “Wait, you murdered me to prove a point?”
Eric: “Kind of but also you begged me to.”
Willa: “I am a vampire-hating vampire! How confusing! And an Eric-hating Eric-lover! You really are monsters!”
Eric: “No, think about it. Act normal and show him both sides. I want you to understand I have only ever Turned two people. I am saying this in a way that makes it sound like you are special, but really I just mean this is a big deal to me personally that you do this.”
Willa: “That seems really hard because I am out of my goddamn mind.”
Eric: “Either way I win, kiddo. Just do it. As your Maker I command you.”
Willa: “Okay bye I hope I don’t kill himmmmmm… [zoom]“
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Meanwhile, Pam and Tara bitch at each other like always. Pam is looking for speakeasies — “Keep an eye out for a seven-pointed star” — and wants them to take it slow, but Tara is just interested in throwing a fucking fit like always. Finally she zooms away when Pam has the gall to bring up how she fucked everybody over for no reason, and then once again, the LAVTF guys show up out of nowhere and catch Pam. Two down. Tara watches them torture her, because obviously that is what Tara would do.
BURRELL/NEWLIN
Sarah is awful comfortable in the Governor’s mansion, which is excellent in many ways. Her hair has calmed down and she is dressed pretty normal. But before she can do whatever sex voodoo on his brain that will enable her stunning move up the ladder of power, the SWAT guys knock on the door: “Your daughter’s here, but by way of euphemism we did have to invite her in, if you know what I mean.”
She Lucy Westenra-floats into the room, still wearing her crazy-person clothes, and it’s actually pretty sad when they’re alone. Sad, because — even with Sarah being a bitch in the corner — she’s nearly got him just by standing there, and then she goes into her Nicole-esque VUS chatter (plus more intense because she is newborn) about how he is persecuting her and he needs to stop and go fuck himself and all of this stuff. Like calling anybody an asshole ever changed their mind.
Sarah: “Don’t listen to her Truman, that’s the Devil talking…”
Burrell: “Goddammit, Sarah! It’s my daughter. This is my daughter…”
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Ah. And then the hand-punch from Ginger’s house comes back into it, and she smells the blood, and it’s all over. Willa pops fang, attacks her father — just like Mr. Hamby, it’s so weird to think about this that way — and Sarah takes her out immediately with a silver gun. “You’ve gotta send her to Camp, Truman. Baby I’m sorry, but you’ve gotta let her go.”
My stepmother was pretty legendarily awful but I will say she never once demanded I be sent to a concentration camp. Regular camp — and for chubby little gay me, the distinction was rather wobbly — but never Camp Anna Camp.
And then on the other hand you have Sarah Newlin, who is still doing the right thing as far as she knows it. I mean it’s not just bigotry with her. She is terrified of things that are terrifying, and strong enough to do something about it, which is both better and worse than most of us. I love watching documentaries about serious crazy Jesus people because of this: How with just one switch flipped, they would be the best of us. There is so much that’s admirable about those people, and just the one thing that makes it into so much useless darkness.
JUST WARLOW THINGS (DOT TUMBLR DOT COM)
While Sook adds silver to the meal and gives it a big sniff, we see the end of Benlow’s plan for Grandfather Niall: He didn’t drain him completely, just enough to take the fight out. So he takes him back to Claudette’s pocket hell on the bridge, feeds him just a little of his double-blood, and then explains their whole life, which is basically that he is Voldemort.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
The Flynns and the Brigants were close, kindred, maybe both royal, but right before Prince Niall was born, Warlow got Turned (by Lilith) and then went apeshit. “The darkness in me, it battles with the light every second of my being,” he says, because I am crushing it with this show. “But even on the darkest day, thousands of years ago, as I stood over the dust of my own mother and father… I couldn’t bear to kill a child. I spared you, so that our line could continue. And now, my kindred, I shall spare you again.” Niall is not feeling life in a pocket hell at all, but Ben just shushes him in his new British accent and smiles sadly, “I survived 20 years. I’m sure a King can survive longer.”
A WHOLE LOTTA MERLOTTE
Nicole: “Man, I’m glad Emma only seems half as traumatized as me by recent events.”
Sam: “I am here to say that horrible childhood experiences don’t cause you to be a fuckup later by any means.”
Nicole: “Remember how I just saw all of my friends get eaten by Raccoona?”
Sam: “Yeah, remember how Luna just died in my arms two days ago?”
Nicole: “Let’s get drunk and screw.”
Sam: “Jesus Christ, do I have a type or what.”
NUKE DATE
Beautiful wonderful Sookie has been waiting I guess for hours while Ben did his bridge stuff, and she finally sighs — disappointment of the jilted/of the not getting to murder her boyfriend — and takes the plates in, but then he shows up with flowers. She is so rooted in her Sookieness that it’s not even compartmentalizing when she immediately starts in on how he’s not being a gentleman by showing up late. She is so fucking cool!
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Weird conversations about how she prefers to watch people eat her cooking than eat herself, which sounds like southern lady crap but anecdotally I have found is how most people feel honestly, and then she does just that: Watches him eat her food, while muddling up his Southern and British accents and staring creepily at her over his wine glass.
Sookie: “Apropos of nothing, did you know my ex Bill was a vampire?”
Ben: “I kind of guessed as much from all the damage. What happened?”
Sookie: “He lied to me. He misled me, he wasn’t honest about who he was or why he wanted to be with me. And I don’t ever want to feel like that again…”
Ben: “Um, Sookie…”
Sookie: “– I’m not normally this forward but before I open my heart up any more than I already have, I need to ask you a question. What is it about me that you want?“
He shoots her a speech about how he just somehow “knew” they understood each other when they met, and she’s charmed because that is her idiom, but it’s more interesting than that: She saw him eat the food and not react to the poison. But she also, I think, knows he is special in lots of ways. So you could read that conversation very multiply:
First that she is lying and bulletproof, and honestly wants to know what the Warlow thing is about before she nukes him. Second that she is an idiot and just wanted to make sure he was Ben Flynn and the silver/nuking were just preliminary. But third, that he is both.
All she’s ever been with is monsters, what makes him different? She knows she likes him, her body likes him just fine, he saved her brother and Niall loves him, and everything he’s saying is true. She looks so grown up tonight, older, wiser, full of pain and fear and sadness and rage but also all this hope, and affection, and strength. It makes sense for the girl we know to be bulletproof, but wait until the last possible second just in case. That’s why I like her so much.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Now, I’m sad to say I think probably it is number two because we’re not even halfway through the season and he’s already got his hooks in (or rid of) the rest of her family, who are her only allies this season. And it would make sense to play this out, and the show doesn’t mind treating her like an idiot. I may love this season the most of any season already, but I haven’t learned to fully trust quite yet. So having said that, obviously I like number three enough to leave it in the mix. Because really the only downside to Warlow is the marriage contract thing, but we still don’t really even know what that is about, and I guess that Ben and Bill have to kill each other at the end of the world, but we don’t know much about that either.
All I know is that when he explained why he killed his parents he became a lot more trustworthy, because that’s the kind of show this is. Bill was the worst until he owned up to who he actually is, and then he became wonderful. Eric’s main thing is that he doesn’t bother lying, and the Stackhouses are too mentally challenged to dissemble at any point. Even Godric’s basic gospel was to strip away the pretense and airs of immortality and be honest about their place in the universe, even if it went to a not-great place in the end.
But having her lay a honey trap with a nuke at the bottom would be pretty ideal too.
CASTLE COMPTON
The girls — hilarious, as always, what a hoot these many many actresses are that they’ve found — start bitching Jessica out for being a dork and making them stick around the castle for like 24 hours, and eventually they turn on her and try to get out the door, and then before you know it Jessica’s lost control. The one thing that for sure was not going to happen, it starts happening. Chomp-chomp.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
GAS STATION
That gas station clerk yells at Jason and Andy about fuck your Sherriff car, is of no help at all, and then Jason beats his penis up with a nightstick and uses the word “fuck knuckle” and (to us) admits he’s having delayed anxiety from the huge part of his afternoon that he doesn’t remember but was really sad, and tough on him. And a little sexy.
Jason: “I think maybe he was glamoured, because my police brutality usually opens doors.”
Andy: “Hmm. Do vampires smell faeries?”
Jason: “Oh my God yes. Sookie drives those bitches nuts and she’s just barely f…”
Andy: “Outta the way! I remember God acting weird yesterday!”
He just drives off into the night, leaving poor Jason holding his stick. Again.
CASTLE COMPTON
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
…By the time Bill gets to the door, Jessica is rocking back and forth in the living room, surrounded by Andy’s dead daughters, sobbing out her shame. He is a father, appalled at her and horrified for her, hurt by her shame. But he is also a Messiah, who was just denied his last shot at Godhood. The Progeny led those girls to the Sun.
There is nothing worse than Jessica crying. Nothing. And this, the self-hatred and the futile nonsense bargaining — “just tell me they’re not dead” — only compounds it. I can’t remember the last time it was this sad with her. I guess when she was glamouring Hoyt in their house, that was the most shameful thing she ever did. That was awful to watch. This is worse, because no fucking way should/can this happen. This is like somebody put something in your food and you just realized it, that Hoggle what have you done feeling.
And Bill, man. He tried so, so hard with her: First to shame her out of this ever even being a thinkable thought, when he didn’t want to be her father. And then later when he was King, he went the other way, to redeem himself by loving her so much she wouldn’t be scared anymore. All of it was just a reflection of him, another way to play trust games with himself and/or punish himself, but eventually he even saw his way out of that cage. Then it was the Book of Lilith stuff, which was pretty ugly but she processed eventually and in the end it helped her grow.
But now, see the pressure he put on her: You will be my humanity. You will speak up for Bill when Lilith has the floor. She kept saying it, “you are impulsive” and “I don’t want Her to win” and the whole time she was saying, I might not be up to this. The whole time he should have known it was a perversion to ask. A necessary one, maybe, but that hardly helps. He’ll figure it out, I’m sure — self-flagellation being his best hobby — but right now, in this moment, looking at what she’s done: Do you think he knows he did this to her? To them?
NUKE DATE
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
Sookie puts a record on — “At Last,” necessitating a hurried ADR session it seems like — and sits down on the couch. Ben says it’s a shame they didn’t find their way into each other’s lives sooner, and that’s when I knew.
When Russell killed that reporter on TV that time, I had friends over. And I scared the piss out of them, because I forgot I wasn’t alone so I acted like I usually do when I’m watching TV — which I think we can all assume looks a little like schizophrenia based on how much is happening — and I promised never to watch this show live with people ever again. This moment, this scene, is a great example why.
Sookie: “Is that what you think you’ve done? Found your way into my life?”
Ben: “Haven’t I?”
Sookie: “Well, you’ve passed almost every test I’ve thrown at you tonight…”
Ben: “Didn’t even know I was being tested. What do I get for passing?”
She climbs atop him; he takes off her shirt and she removes his, and he lays her down on the couch. And as they are kissing, she says ever so quietly, “Okay.”
Why? Because over his back, she’s been working. Behind him, literally, it glows brighter than the sun. An entire episode of lost virginities and sexual liberties and fucking, fucking, fucking, more than some entire seasons of this show — and not once was it about sex. Not once. Not even a little.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.
“You can get off me now,” she says calmly, evenly. And when he doesn’t understand, it slips right off: Bulletproof underneath, all along. It’s a stunning, achingly beautiful shot — right up there with Bill and Sookie hatefucking on the floor that time, staring up at the camera; but static, hanging in eternity — and one that says in pictures what Sookie, and I, have been saying all night: Girl + Boy + Nuclear Bomb. And you never even knew.
“Get the fuck off me. Or die. Warlow.“
WEEK
Sookie chases ol’ Ben around the living room with her bomb, yelling at him about the last five seasons of this show while he continues to have no shirt and probably also be British. Everybody cares about the concentration camp now that precious Pam is in there. Werewolf things that who even knows what they are. And Andy has to have a little talk with Grandpa Vampire Bill about a few things.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Killing, Pretty Little Liars, Ray Donovan, Mistresses, True Blood, and Defiance for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.
Holy moly, this episode had everything. I am pretty sure this is my favorite episode -- and almost certainly my favorite season -- in all the five years I've been writing about this show. I am just so impressed with what's going on here. I think this might be one of my favorite TV shows, which isn't something I maybe ever would have said, even back when I majorly loved it. This was a thing of beauty. They've taken everything good from the last five seasons, blown into it like a Nintendo cartridge, scraped off the best parts and made that into a TV show. It is brilliant.
The Bellefleur Girls cross over into their twenties come nightfall, so Bill and Jessica have to rejigger their plans to kidnap them and synthesize their fae blood, but it works out. In the short term, I mean. In the slightly longer term, Takahashi can't seem to get it right, and while Bill is going God-crazy on him about that, Jessica accidentally eats them. It is horrific and sad and terrible, but that's life at Castle Compton.
Sam ditches Lafayette, turns into a horse and takes Nicole and Emma on the run. Once Emma's asleep, they hook up, not in spite of her friends and Luna dying a second ago, but because of it. Meanwhile, the Pack cleans all the VUS off themselves and calls in Alcide's dad to help track Emma, and the whole thing is dumb and boring because this part of the season is not about them, so just chill.
Eric (finally doing some Eric stuff that reminds you why Eric is a big deal) ditches Tara and Pam (who is now a guest of Camp Anna Camp, along with Nora) and plays a neat zero-sum trick on Willa Burrell where he turns her into a vampire. If she convinces her dad that vampires are people, great. If it goes haywire and she eats him, great -- and also hilarious. What nobody's counting on is that Sarah Newlin is sleeping with Burrell, so she's there when Willa fangs out on him, and now Willa's in her own dad's concentration camp too.
Meanwhile, before even the credits, we get confirmation that Ben is Glory, when he gives Jason some of his faerie-vampire blood to heal his weird head wound from last season. This gives Jason some excellent (excellent) Ben & Jason Sex Dreams, but also helps him and Niall to figure out that Ben is Warlow. Niall dumbly leads the charge despite his whole thing about Sookie killing Warlow, and is drained and tossed into Claudine's pocket hell -- after a fairly cogent explanation of exactly how Ben is Warlow and a vampire and a faerie all at the same time -- while Jason is glamoured and forgets the entire day.
But Sookie has also maybe figured this Warlow thing out, and spends the episode playing both our and Ben's perceptions about whether or not she knows (or cares!): She invites him to dinner at her house in person, salts his food with colloidal silver and just when you think she's given him the all-clear and they're doing it on the couch, boom. I said BOOM! She's got the nuke going and she's ready to roll.
An astounding, perfect ending to an intricate, moving episode full of sex (which is never actually about sex), Sookie being fantastic, Ben having lost the ability to shirt himself altogether, Jason finally up and running and being a total champ, and everybody's storylines (less shifters and weres of course) moving forward about a hundred steps more than you might have expected. So proud of the show this week, and this season in general.
Week: Sookie chases Benlow around the house yelling about all the wrong men have done her in her entire life, Lafayette gets back into the séance game, Andy comes to Castle Compton to find his dead daughters, and I'm guessing we'll finally see what goes on in Camp Ire now that Pam's a prisoner.