It's a very pretty, fairly experimental split narrative, as the non-vampire residents of Bon Temps gather for a fairly moving, episode-long funeral -- and the vampires finally go free. The Terry side is by turns funny and heartbreaking, as everybody from Andy to Lafayette to even Sookie stands up to say their piece. Big John even sings a song!
The individual funeral stories and performances are worth checking out, while the Vamp Camp side is characteristically OTT, but really the whole thing is more than the sum of its parts: Winding the beats back and forth between the two locations ends up creating a lot of story and emotion in the spaces between them, as everybody comes to some kind of peace or higher understanding.
Of course, for the vampires that also involves intense amounts of bloodshed and mayhem, but it's filmed in such an evocative and stylized way that you end up feeling almost as inspired by that, too. Eric, full of Warlow's faerie blood, heads daywalking off to free the prisoners, and does so with little fanfare, intense gore, and more than a few lovely side-moments: Bill, following in his footsteps seconds after, completes the job of smashing in Overlark's head after Eric pulls off his genitals and leaves him to die. That kind of thing.
With Violet in the Sunroom along with the rest of our guys, Jason has become a communal feeding supply for Gen Pop F, so once Eric has freed everybody -- including, for example, a young vamp whose Maker is in the last stages of Hep V -- he heals Jason, chuckles about the sex dreams he'll be having and then sets out to find the Sunroom and Pam (and Willa).
Meanwhile, Bill has realized that his faerie-infused daywalking blood is probably just as good as Warlow's -- and probably better than Eric's -- so by the time a truly amazing Sarah Newlin has climbed to the top of the silo that houses the Sunroom and cranked that door open, he's crowdsurfing in a Jesus pose as the whole group feeds. Eric snags Steve down in there and refuses to let him drink, so his last words -- "I love you, Jason Stackhouse!" -- are screamed to the sun. Moments later, everybody's drunk on Bill's holy blood and wandering the compound, having killed everybody, and Eric leads a beautiful riot in which they (and their compatriots all over the world) put an end to the poisoned TruBlood forever.
It's a pretty high body count, even for a bunch of Nazis, and they die in plenty awful ways, but I guess it's redeemed by Jason's last moment, in which he comes very close to shooting Sarah Newlin in the head. He makes much of this decision -- high on V -- and in the end sends her away, so I guess that's the end of that. Mostly it's the acting and Sarah's total screaming that sells it, although at this point everybody on the show has killed at least one person so he'd have to try really hard to be weird about it season. (Violet, on the other hand, is still very much in play as far as considering him her property. All the worse.)
Eventually, with Lilith's handmaidens calling him bodily to heaven, a nearly drained Jesus Bill summons Jessica, James feeds him back his faerie blood, and he returns to full health. The whole of Vamp Camp, then, ecstatically dances their way to Castle Compton in the sunlight... All but Eric, who is still mourning Nora and Godric, and in the episode's final moments -- having saved Pam -- sets off for suicide, or space or something.
If you like your drug orgies, you know this show will deliver regularly, but in this case there's a very melancholy note having to do with their secret yearning to be in the sun, and knowing that it won't last. Of all the reset buttons, it seems like this is the part that's going to hurt the most: That after decades, hundreds of years for some of them, they got something Russell, for example, wanted so much it drove him bonkers. And they're going to have to give it up again.
But at least they're alive. And at least in the end Sookie got to use her powers for good by explaining that she felt Terry fall in love with Arlene the second he first saw her, and in the end got to hear Arlene admit that even with the 21 gun salute, Terry would've liked the funeral after all.
Week: With no LAVTF or even fake TruBlood, and a global network of vampires who now know for sure that humanity's declared war, it seems like the thirst is going to be apocalyptic. Lettie Mae finally gets what's coming to her, ABCD continues hanging out with vampires like an idiot, we find out what Eric actually just did for sure, and Sookie realizes that being a faerie isn't all bad. I don't have high hopes for the wedding, though.
ARLENE
As Eric zooms up to a sunlit exterior of the factory, ready to chow down on some guards, Arlene -- in a mantilla and rather sexy black dress -- arrives at the very intense funeral. The military men are there, looking spit-spot; there are more giant wreaths than you can shake a Winner's Circle at -- including a giant one of, yes, Grandmother Bellefleur's calla lilies.
Arlene: "Oh, Reverend Daniels! Thank you for agreeing to this on such short notice."
Lettie Mae: "We wouldn't miss it for the world!"
Everybody: "That was so not the right response, but thanks for playing."
Daniels: "Excuse my drunk a-hole wife in her crazy hat. Let me ush you right past that moment of WTF."
SOOKIE
Sookie: "Feeling better?"
Ben: "Why, my love? Got somewhere better to be?"
Sookie: "Not 'better' exactly, but remember Terry being dead?"
Ben: "Right, right. Hey, are we still getting magically married?"
Sookie: "I guess so. I do try to keep my word, even when the bottom falls out."
Ben: "Okay great! And to prove I'm not a total boy obsessed with my own stuff over your own, allow me to bleed on your arm a little bit so you'll look nice for the funeral you're already dressed for."
Sookie: "Actually it was for my own, but you're right that it makes the transition from Unholy Bride to Daytime Funeral almost seamlessly."
Pssshheww!
Old Mrs. Bellefleur: "That's the weirdo, right?"
Portia: "Hush."
Sookie: "Miss Fortenberry, Miss Bodehouse. Are those two seats taken? And how's Hoyt?"
Maxine: "He's dating an ugly girl but at least she does not suck blood, unlike the girl Hoyt doesn't remember dating."
Alcide: "I still have dumb hair like Gavin Rossdale circa 1994."
Old Ladies: "That's okay because you smell manly, unlike Gavin Rossdale circa ever."
ERIC
Remember how Dr. Overlark gave Eric's sister a disease for fun? Now would be the time that Eric decides to play a little game with him. Have you ever known a baby? Their favorite thing, one of their favorite things, is when you pretend that you have "got" their nose, because it is absurd (because you don't really have their nose!). But in this case when Eric plays this classic game, he changes a few things:
First it is Dr. Overlark, who is not a baby but a grown man with grown-man problems such as "being a Nazi."
Secondly, Eric really does "get" the nose. Pulls it right off.
But maybe most importantly, it is not a nose so much as it is: A penis.
Eric: "I will be back in ten minutes to make sure you have bled out. Be thinking about where I could take things from here if you haven't."
Overlark: "I just hope you don't squish my head! I have a phobia of being stomped specifically in the head or face."
Eric roams through the complex, freeing happy hungry vampires as he goes. The soldiers -- who have been keeping the peace using their anti-vampire weaponry that scared Eric into terrible acts, all season long -- suddenly do not use their anti-vampire weaponry, and go down in a frenzy of being defenseless! The exact thing their anti-vampire weaponry --that they are still carrying and in perfect working order -- was designed to prevent! Don't worry about it.
In Gen Pop M, there is a mopey boy whose Maker is in one of the cold-freezer bins, getting on towards the end of his TruDeath True Death. For some reason, there are still plenty of vampires who have not succumbed, despite being forced to drink the TruDeath under penalty of going to the Hot White Room, where they clearly are not. Don't worry about it. Good on them! What a lucky day.
Eric: "Trust me, it gets really gross and then he will explode in your face, like a giant bag of poison blood. If you are quick, you will not get any in your mouth. If you are not quick, you will also explode. My advice is that either way, you are in for one or both of two very unpleasant experiences unless you leave this room right now. You caught me on the one day where I am nice and actually care that you leave, due to some recent experiences."
And the boy sits alone in that room, and who knows what he does? One thing is for sure, and that is whatever relationship they had, whatever they were building: That is gone.
TERRY
"But if any widow hath children or grandchildren, let them learn first to show piety towards their own family, and to requite their parents, for this is acceptable in the sight of God..."
Rev. Daniels says that, contrary to the old saying of "God, country, family," Terry said once only that he had decided it was "family, family, family." Daniels liked that, because Terry was sincere about it, and about his beliefs. I like it because they're two ways of saying the exact same thing: That the selfishness of madness comes only from being rudderless.
BILL
Bill: "Dr. Overlark, Ah see that you are missing a penis. How would you describe..."
Overlark: "It was Eric Northman. He went thattaway. Please kill me."
Bill: "Did you torture or experiment on a redheaded vampire named Jessica Hamby?"
Overlark: "Yep."
Bill: "Did you hurt her?"
Overlark: "Horribly. Tried to rape her, even. No dice though."
Bill stomps his head like a grape with one divine foot, and that's the end of that.
ANDY
The reason that Andy was a cop and Terry was a soldier because Grandmother Bellefleur believed in giving back to the community. Terry ranged wide and came home, and Andy stayed rooted to the spot. Andy thinks this is "bigger" and I guess maybe in some ways it is, but I also think the cost-benefit analysis would demonstrate that it wasn't worth it anyway. Mostly I think that being called to service is rare and strong and beautiful, whatever form it takes.
When Terry came back, Andy would visit him out in the woods, at Ft. Bellefleur, and try to get him to talk, to come home. I don't know that Andy knows the extent of what happened over there -- I think part of what killed Terry is that nobody did, besides Patrick and then Arlene -- so these memories are all a lot punchier and "PTSD can be funny" than they would be if anybody knew what Terry really did: That it wasn't really about agoraphobia or fear of people or frazzled nerves, but penance.
The best thing about Terry Bellefleur was always that he didn't take the easy way out: That his madness was pure because it was present. You might think that the whole Zen thing he did every season was some kind of funny joke about chaos or mental quirks, but no: He was Zen because he had to be. He was crazy because he was brave. He looked it in the eye. He didn't kill the black-eyed girl, he didn't shove it all away with drugs or glamours or magicks: He held his two hands apart and then brought them together like magnets, repelling, and he was so strong that by the end his madness was gone, leaving only the guilt.
In the rules of the show's universe, it was Arlene that got him killed: She took the easy way out. She killed the black-eyed girl, which as usual reaches through time and space -- in this case backwards -- to engineer your ending. But also in the rules of the show, he had a good death. He had changed shape in all the ways he could have ever needed to; he had come to the end of his incarnations.
BILL & ERIC
The vampires are now doing experiments on the people! It is for vengeance.
All the mayhem in the place -- teeth pulled out, tit-flopping hamster-wheel running, et cetera -- is no match however for the weirdest vampire in all of creation, a Level 3 doing an impression of an imaginary Brett Gelman character, that fucks around with Bill for a second in a singsong voice before twirling out of the frame, who has -- I don't mind telling you -- kind of become my everything.
I don't know that I can write anything that would do him justice, I just know that the way people act about Pam, that's how I feel about Weird Guy Vampire. He is played by someone whose actual name is Victor of Aquitaine, like if you were to go to imdb -- as I did -- you would find out that there is a person named that. Nothing would ever be the same.
While the vampires torture Dr. Psychiatrist -- "You are going to tell me what you did with your rabbit. Did you hurt it? Did you touch it?" is a topic about which I do not wish to know more, but I would imagine has to do with the sociopathy of turning your fetish into your discipline, like, anybody who is that into vampires should not be a doctor of that -- Eric frees Gen Pop F: "Go forth, and kill the humans."
With Violet and the other people connected to Jason in the Hot White Room, the remaining vampires -- who, again, should all be dead from Hep V right now -- have been brunching on Jason Stackhouse, so he's covered in bites and his eyes are even more crossed than usual when Eric arrives to resurrect him -- "You're in for a treat; when you dream of me, dream of nice things" -- and they are buddies. Cut to Jason, high on V (the good shit, Eric's blood, Godric's line), tossing black-humor jokes at the dead guards and generally bouncing off the walls, as they head for the Hot White Room.
Under one of those guards playing possum, of course, is Sarah Newlin, who as usual is displaying impressive adaptability.
SAM
Went fishing with Terry and Andy, because Andy wanted him to give Terry a job, and because Sam has a very low bar and manages to be somehow overly generous while also being overly secretive, he offers Terry the chance to come back. Then Terry catches a catfish and they all treat him like it's the Special Olympics, and then he throws the catfish back because every life matters.
Which, obviously, is the point of this episode that got everybody so bizarrely enraged: If every life matters, and since this show needs to justify itself beyond the hour-long action sequence you apparently wanted, it makes sense to contrast the homey Bon Temps stuff with the outsize and nonsensical Vamp Camp stuff. That's what the show has always wanted to be about, it's what the show will always want to be about. The justification for doing it this way, then, would lie in the artistry of how it's done. The interplay between the two levels of the show's metaphor, as expressed in the silences between notes; the connective tissue of the enjambment between each scene.
And the bad news about that is, the majority of the Terry flashbacks feel like placeholders, rather than organic developments out of the narrative we're being told we're watching. "The one where we learn how Terry got a job and became the heart of this community or some bullshit." "The one where Portia continues to be boring." "The one where -- shocker! -- Sookie manages to make it all the fuck about her."
My intuition tells me that the endless internet bitching about this episode comes from that feeling of inauthenticity that surrounds most of these moments: The longest funeral in the world could be fascinating, if it were fascinating. But this is just long. The concept can't carry you very far, if the execution is half-hearted like this; it goes from being a funeral that is painful because of love lost to a funeral that is painful because you are getting closer and closer to hating the person for dying because it means you are forced to go to this funeral.
ERIC
Is kind of dorky as he threatens Dr. Psychiatrist but finally when he gets his point across, the guy's like, "OTOH I fucked Pam, so I'm good." Even Jason can't understand why he did that. But I think it's weirder that his whole character has been orbiting this sex/death equation the entire time, and now all of a sudden it's just sort of like, "Well, either Eric or Pam will kill him, but who really cares?" Like obviously one of them should kill him, and he should have an orgasm in the second preceding that occurrence.
That's all we know about Dr. Psychiatrist: That he teaches us the lesson that this show keeps certain things vague for a very good reason, because if you pull that stuff out into the clinical sun, it just becomes tawdry and lame.
LAFAYETTE
Grandmother Bellefleur is unconvinced by his gender, although I will say that he looks fantastic. Usually his costuming is self-disrupting genderfuck class-mixing stuff, always that one element working against the rest of the look (or making it into an aggressive joke), but this -- square-cut suit, men's derby, purple accents; long fake eyelashes, minimal makeup -- somehow looks lovelier than anything we've really seen him in.
His Terry story is about his trepidation at having a shellshocked ex-Marine in his kitchen, where he was safe -- his safe places, they always lie behind so many veils and corners -- and then trying different ways of negotiating with Terry, fitting him into the world: Do you want a sassy queen; do you want a ghetto hardass; do you want a harsh taskmaster, taskmistress, what will make this situation flow for both of us. What keeps us safe.
And then he looked into Terry's eyes, and saw something there, and he reached out and touched it.
Terry: "I want to be good at this job. Will you help me? I just don't want to fuck this up."
Lala: "Well, we good then, because Mama ain't gonna let that happen. Okay?"
ERIC
On the way to the White Room, Eric hears and, grinning, recognizes the scream of Ginger. They save all the humans in detention, and she does her usual hip-cracking attempt at pulling herself together, and as much as I have hated Ginger for being a one-joke joke, I am so stuck for reasons to care about Eric at this point that I must admit, his affection for Ginger is a very dark, very funny, very likeable thing. My favorite characters always have a healthy love for trainwrecks and WTF.
PORTIA
[Is boring. You know how passionate I am about Courtney Ford, I would think, by this point. I wish she had shit to do. In the books, Portia is about as unbearable as you can be while still being bearable -- the bitch -girlfriend of your boy when he leaves you. Here, she's more of a foil for Andy as the sort of bridge between generations and classes that he always ends up having to straddle, but without the bitchiness -- or really any characteristics at all -- that would make it interesting. I wouldn't piss and moan quite so much about it except I know what the actor is capable of, and it's a lot more than fucking standing there looking flawless while the most boringest story of all time comes boredly slumping out of your mouth.]
SOOKIE
Rev. Daniels: "Oh my God Portia is so boring. I think we should have Arlene come up and just get this stupid funeral over with."
Arlene in an ESP: "I will probably throw up."
Sookie: "Actually, I have something to say first."
Rev. Daniels: "Cool, come up and talk about yourself endlessly please. If you have any mystifying revelations to make about yourself that nobody would believe or even try to understand, now would be an appropriate time to air those."
Arlene in an ESP: "Did you just read my mind with faerie powers?"
Sookie: "Yeah, sorry."
Arlene: "No, it's cool. I guess magic can be good also. I guess maybe ABCD didn't kill my husband by telling him true shit about himself. Good thing nobody ever seems to notice or care that I am a hypocritical bitch at all times, so there will be no consequences for calling a teenager a murderer like I did, which almost led to her death."
Sookie: "So anyway, let's see if we can get to the end of this sentence about Terry without it becoming about me, Sookie Stackhouse. Sookie Stackhouse, the town retard, the village idiot, the fangbanger whore. Me, Sookie Stackhouse, the girl who was almost killed by her own father not once but twice. Me, Sookie Stackhouse, telepath."
Nobody: "That is so interesting! Because telepathy is real, so this changes everything. But more importantly, we see how you have been dealing this entire time with a pretty severe mental impairment, which is why you only used to fuck vampires and have now decided to fuck faeries which are the opposite."
Anyway her story about herself is that one time she was at work and this way slutty waitress was all over Terry on his first day and Sookie looked in his head for the first and last time and discovered that he fell in love with Arlene that first day.
"He loved you since the second you walked into his life. And not too many people can ever say that they were loved like that. But you can, Arlene. And I just... You deserve to know it."
Possibly I loved that part.
THE WHITE HOT ROOM
As Sookie sweetly rests her head on Alcide's shoulder -- deservedly, it was great acting from her and Arlene both -- and they wonder where Jason is and why he's not at the funeral and things that are actually worth thinking about, Bill has a flashback to shit that happened three seconds ago, and realizes that if Eric is full of Ben blood and Bill is full of Ben blood, then they don't actually need Ben to be full of Ben blood -- just one of them. And then what if Eric -- who started major Jesus shit with Bill last week -- turned out to be the one that saved everybody? Bill would piss His panties, obviously. It cannot happen, it must not happen, He must find the White Room and then get inside there and be Jesus on them, Jesus all over them, Jesus Himself into their mouths and veins and hearts and minds.
Here's the thing about that, though: Doors work in a certain fashion of which we are all aware. You open them and then walk through them. So when Bill goes in there, regardless of what is going on in that room there is a door open in that room. So instead of being on fire, you could just walk through that open door, away from the being on fire.
Obviously, the solution to this boneheaded mess is that he should fall from the top of the silo, and then Eric and Jason could open it up from the outside once that has happened, so I'm going to just pretend that is what happened.
...Nope, vampires also can fly. There is literally no reason for this other than the heavy-handed hilarious symbolism of Bill finally getting to be Jesus, a thing that he has wanted -- and let's be honest, to which he's felt entitled -- for literally hundreds of years.
And because this season confirmed for me that he has been my favorite character on the show since some time early last season, I am mostly happy for him that he got to be Jesus. Like, when I was a little kid I wanted to either be a policeman, or wrap gifts at Macy's during the holiday season. And if I were today to attain either of those things, I would find it no less exciting now than it would have been thirty years ago. And I assume the same thing is true if you get to be Jesus after an extended lifetime of wishing and hoping for that. It stands to reason.
Anyway, Sarah climbs up to the top of the place, chanting Psalms and thinking about how great it's going to be when Jessica and Steve are toast. She doesn't even know how much we are rooting for her to kill Fucking Violet, another rival for Jason's affections. Basically everybody in there is in love with Jason Stackhouse. That's pretty awesome if you think about it.
...But of course, Jesus.
So then, you have Steve Newlin being denied and elbowed out of there by the almost all-lady group of vampires snacking down on the Billith of Nazereth buffet, which I guess that's also a metaphor due to him being a shitty example of a Christian, and then Eric walks in the open door that anybody could walk in or out of and holds Steve in the sunlight until he explodes and his last words -- as suggested by the beautiful and brilliant Michael McMillian -- are, of course, "I love you Jason Stackhouse!"
I mean, there's a Brokeback cut to Sarah up in the sunlight like that's going to hurt her feelings, but I'm so sure. I wouldn't want to think about it. Once you've become the prissy stereotype housewife gay to the King of Mississippi, as far as I'm concerned you are a sexual dead area. You are a sexual Superfund site. I can't see you the old way, with the choirboy hair and the crazed smile and all the things I loved about you, it all just goes down the tubes.
I am sorry you did not get to blow Jason Stackhouse. That seems like it would have been nice for you.
So now everybody is drunk on Faerie-God-Vampire blood, because Bill is the Apex and the Nexus and the Nadir and the Cathexis of everything on this show, he is everywhere and nowhere at once. Light and dark and the Progeny will lead the People to the Sun or whatever it is that will be happening week. And of course, because he is Bill, he does not know how to stop. So when the vampires walk out of the door that has been open this entire time, that's two reasons that nobody notices Bill is dying.
And I must say, as artsy and off-putting as some people found it -- or just straight inscrutable -- I really, really loved the drunk vampire love-in stuff that follows, once Pam has dispatched Dr. Psychiatrist. I remember back in the werewolf year when Russell got all obsessed with the idea of walking in the sun, and how so much of the pain of Godric's death was ameliorated by seeing him in the sun, and how Eric has never looked less pale or more lovely, and just... I'm nocturnal by habit, but I do love the sun. I love mornings more than any time, and sunshine when it's raining, and I only live in houses that are mostly windows. And if you think about it, how easy is it to understand this one science fiction idea of the sun, this universal sign of life and movement and strength and beauty, is just: Over with. You don't get that anymore. You don't get to feel it on your skin or warm you up or any of that. You never get to see the qualities of light change every hour, ever again. You only swim in the dark. Horrible. Maybe worth it, but sad. As the decades become centuries becomes unending darkness. Darkness without end.
And so while you have the previously discussed stuff about why Ben is special, and what is Fae blood versus human blood versus V, and how Sookie is meanwhile reconnecting with humanity and her specialness at the same time -- in the exact same cemetery that has always balanced the universe, macro and micro and in-betweeno -- and all that, life magic and death magic, you also have winding through them a very "All Summer In A Day" thing because literally that is what is happening: They get to feel the sun. Today. And then that's it. Darkness forever, again.
I mean, as viewers we're looking at the plot:
Season Six of True Blood is about, God spends nine weeks trying to keep His only begotten daughter from making herself a human sacrifice, and eventually dies in her place.
(Which is great because penance out of guilt doesn't count, and she is being an asshole by trying to shut it off and surrender to fate, but has even more profound implications in terms of the Book of Lilith as a counterpoint to the Bible, which would agree on this point.)
But these guys, they don't know what we know. They were scared, narrowly escaped poisoning, climbing the walls, crazed. They didn't know what was coming, they didn't have nine weeks of "previously on" to remind them where they were headed. They just knew they were being moved from misery to misery, and then just when things were at their darkest, an angel appeared to them and gave them a gift they had given up even wishing for.
And it won't last. And they're too high to remember that, so it looks to us now like it will look to them when they sober up: Like an impressionist painting of bliss.
Which is what grace always looks like, after the fact. If you could remember it, it wouldn't count.
The saddest and most beautiful story, but also I would say the most revelatory about this aspect of faith, is the thing from Wind In The Willows, "The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn," which is the religious equivalent of the Bradbury story, told in such a strange pagan way that it doesn't smell like church. Smells more, in fact, like this show:
"...and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward...
"'Rat!' he found breath to whisper, shaking. 'Are you afraid?'
"'Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. 'Afraid! Of him? O, never, never! And yet -- and yet -- O, Mole, I am afraid!'
"Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship."
ARLENE
"My placenta falls to the floor."
Just kidding but she was having trouble getting Mikey to latch, in the hospital, and wondered if it were because of her intense Refrigerator Mother resentment and fear that the child was Satanic in nature, and Terry told her that was dumb because he knew that love only begets love.
"We used to always say that the reason we worked was on account of we always took turns freaking out. One day it was his turn to be strong, the day it was mine."
That you never go wrong that way: That our service is big, no matter where it takes us.
"Babies aren't like us, Arlene. They only hear the good stuff. They filter out the bad, because they know they're loved, and that's enough for them."
They breathed, in and then out, and they were cleansed. The enormity of Mikey, of life and divinity and the infinite horror of infinity and the crushing weight: Breathe in and then out again, and suddenly you are not being crushed.
You are being held.
"For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before."
Maybe it wasn't the worst thing in the world, that she gave him peace before he went. Maybe it would be better to filter out the bad. He was loved. That's enough for me.
INSIDE
Violet cradles a near-dead Bill as the women dance in a circle around the puddle of Steve Newlin, singing a warped and off-key "Sound Of Music." Pam waltzes with the doctor's body. Jessica twirls; Tara leads the way outside. And when Pam asks who's left to kill, Jason remembers her. He chases her down, and the rest head drunkenly out into the glorious sun, as the Handmaidens arrive, to take Him home.
OUTSIDE
Big John Dixon, the subject of Lala's no-fault kitchen flirtations, whispers that he wants to sing in tribute, and takes the stand. ("There are a lot more Negroes here than I thought there would be," Grandma blurts.) Even Lettie Mae rejoins humanity as he begins to sing.
Jason drops Sarah, hard, on her face -- hunted, this time, by a man; no high heels -- and she swears that she is doing God's work, here. Which she believes, which is what makes her scary, which we've talked about before. But you can't sell anybody independence and you can't sell them complexity and you can't take somebody as formidable as Sarah Newlin and explain that they will never be at peace. You know? Why bother, even.
This is how powerful Sarah Newlin is, her heart: Her little black-eyed girl is the night itself. She is doing God's work because what she is doing -- genocide, of something that should never have existed and only preys upon the Good -- is such a very large undertaking. She is saving the world in the same way that real monsters do: Not by giving in to the dark, but by ignoring it. Or worse, hating it.
I suppose there are the occasional blackhearted people who do bad things because they are bad things to do. But the vast majority of evil acts... Well, first of all, the vast majority of harmful acts are the result of carelessness or cluelessness, not even malice. And then among the malicious acts there is a small fraction that could truly be called evil. But every single one of those comes from doing the right thing.
Which is Jason's problem with this: If Sarah can just elect herself as a mouthpiece for God, discounting anyone else's disagreement because of the purity of her faith, then how could she stop him, for example, from pretending that he's got Jesus Christ on the phone. The modern viewpoint being that of course, since God and Jesus are both imaginary, they shouldn't be telling people what to do anyway. Of course, that's true, but if you are trying to do religion that way, you're doing it wrong anyway, and you should shut up about your religion because all you're doing is fucking everything up. But more importantly, we tend to create the Gods we require, from the parts we find lying around.
I would only trust a God that pushed back, you know? Like how you never want to get so rich that people would say Yes to you as you turn into Michael Jackson: That's the kind of God you know is fake, the kind that is cool with whatever you are doing. But more importantly, you don't have to talk about God to see how true this is. If everything you do is for good reason, which it is when you are doing it, then you are always working toward the Good, no matter what you do. You are putting your words in the mouth of God, or morality, or whatever guides you, which is a disaster every time.
Tenderness leads to the gas chamber, is how O'Connor put it: The idea that once you substitute your own morality for one that benefits everyone -- identifying yourself with God, the same way an addict does -- you can justify everything and anything. And everybody wants to feel like the good guy, which means anything you do is a good thing (at least while you're doing it), which means that every monster got there by saving the world.
Most of the time, by taking something they felt weird about and trying to make sure nobody ever had to feel weird about it again. Saving everybody else from their own problems. I mean, just the words on the page look pretty heroic, imagine what a person actually undergoing that amount of ego inflation would feel like, thinking about that. "All these weak or prurient people who can make up excuses as to why vampires shouldn't be knocked out. They will thank me one day, when they're safe again. Or they won't. But either way, I have to save the world."
But it's not an argument you can ever really have, or should waste your time on, for basically the same reasons as Rule #1 For A Happy Life ("Thou shalt not explain privilege to a person while they're actively demonstrating it") -- some kinds of crazy you can't dig under, because you're only going to hurt their feelings. Him demonstrating the futility of her direct line to God has no effect, because how does that change the "fact" that she still has a direct line to God and he never did.
I mean, it's a self-regulating ecosystem up in there. Calling attention to things outside of it must be done sneakily, if at all, and only if you are honestly trying to help the person. Otherwise, you are just attacking them, even if they're wrong and you're right. You are using a thin excuse to call somebody out, and that's all you're doing, and I hope it feels good but you aren't helping anybody. You are getting yourself off. The rule is, Never have a fight you can't win, because if you go in knowing that then really you're just in the mood to get rude with someone, in a way you feel is socially sanctioned. Also, if you think it's possible to "win" a conversation, I'm sorry to tell you this but you're awful.
Which eventually -- after some nervewracking and strangely beautiful long moments of him, gun to her throat against an SUV, both of them screaming wordlessly in about the most intense possibly configuration of those things -- Jason understands, and sends Sarah off into the night. And I think you can tell a lot about a person by whether or not the words out of their mouth were, "That was stupid, he should have killed her."
Honestly, most of what you need to know.
BILL
From past the Veil, from Noplace, Lilith calls to Bill: His time on Earth is over. But he's not interested. That's the thing about immortals, they really don't respect things like the natural life-death cycle. I'm so sure a person who literally climbed out of the ground two hundred-odd years ago is going gently into that good sunlight.
Meanwhile the vampires are destroying the TruDeath beautifully: Eric launching cases of the stuff through the air with Chronicle-subtle special effects, the rest of them dancing in the broken glass (shoes on, of course) -- and most gorgeously, of course, Tara Thornton firing an AK into a pallet of the stuff.
But over in Honolulu, I'm not sure what's happening. The first deliveries are being made, presumably across the globe, and tonight the starving vampires of the region descend on the TruDeath truck and eat the driver, and I presume they are all now dying? It's mixed in with the celebration footage, but it occurs to me that they were in jail and probably didn't have time to call Vampire Central to warn anybody, because the first chance they had, they were high as fuck. So I guess the whole thing about "how does any of this Louisiana stuff matter when the world is full of vampires" might be answered by this? Maybe our TruDeath refusers (and strangely still-alive Gen Poppers) will end up being the only vampires, like ABCD and Sookie? And my main man Ben?
Before he can go to Vampire Heaven -- which ironically is the opposite of Faerie Heaven, taking place in a woodsy area, further drilling down on the idea that they are two halves of the same eternal effing -- Bill summons Jessica who, after accidentally smacking Eric in the face at one point, hilariously, takes James back in the silo, where Daddy's going down the tubes with a quickness.
James: "Maybe I can just give you some of your blood back? Kind of like the eternal butt-sucking of Warlow, but from the nicest nice in the whole nice nice."
Bill: "Ah am sure that will work, for We have kept this shit vague for a reason."
THE FUNERAL
When they shoot the guns, after all, Arlene jumps. But she doesn't cry, and she isn't sickened. It was family, family, family.
When they give her the flag, she accepts it gratefully; they give him such honor that she feels prouder than she even did before. They are practiced, humble, beautiful. He was one of them.
"Didn't love the gunfire, but how come it doesn't feel like the lie I thought it would? Not nearly as empty and meaningless as I feared. I actually think Terry would've been okay with this."
Sookie is proud, and relieved, and happy too, to hear Arlene think this. It wasn't a lie, it was family. Nothing comes from love but love, and nothing dishonest is necessary. We filter out the bad, as long as we can remember we are loved.
Terry taught us a lot. Mostly that it's a lie you have to feel safe before you can worry about other people. He never felt safe, but spent his life making sure everyone did. It broke him, and it bent him, and in the end it killed him -- but mostly it made it more important every time he would ask the questions: How does everybody get out of this alive? How can everyone be happy? What keeps us safe?
DAYLIGHT
It works, James nicely gives him a nice little bit of nice dinner containing the US RDA of both Faerie and Goddess, and he rejoins the drunkards outside as they walk slowly back to Camp Compton, where it appears he may offer to let them feed again? Fuckin' Bill. That's so goddamn Bill. But the funny or sad thing about it is that, between them being drunk and him being, you know, Bill, and they didn't even know his name or that he is God or any of it, it's kind of like a bunch of cheerleaders swarming a geek, or the gay kid, and playing with his hair and letting him sit at the table, but not really thinking of him as a human person. You know what I mean? Like he's so dorky and they are too high to care if he dies, but hey! Welcome to the party, that's cool that you didn't die.
Violet is all, "You are Mine" with Jason and it still can go fuck itself, and then it's just Pam, feeling the weather change around Eric, and then reading his choice upon his face. She begs him not to leave her again, but he's too sad to stay, and then he's gone.
WEEK
Welcome to the new age? I guess we'll find out what's going on with Eric, and the now-hungry daywalkers might have some things to say to humanity -- really, all vampires now have proof that they're not just being paranoid, so that makes it scary. It's interesting to think about the season to come, and how sad the Great Revelation has already turned out to be. I mean, the conclusion can't be that segregation or genocide are the answer, and the show's turned up the heat on itself so much that those seem like the best options, so it's got to be something else.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps Pretty Little Liars, Ray Donovan, Mistresses, and True Blood for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.