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True Blood: Let's Boot and Rally

Sookie: "Onward into the jaws of death!"

Gross out bodies in the asylum, burned bodies in the war zone, all those victims hanging in the morgue waiting for Russell to eat them, the unfortunate Luna and a decapitated Jesus? This might have been the darkest (or possibly the weirdest) episode they've ever done.

But there's something sort of hilarious about a committee slash SWAT team composed of two vampires, a werewolf, and a mind-reading fairy. (And Doug.) I have to say I'm really enjoying Sookie these past few episodes. The opener with her vomiting on Alcide's shoes (couldn't she have waited until he took his pants off?) followed by both of her exes showing up at the bedroom door and her seeing all three of them barking like dogs was a hoot. I also liked Sookie using her mind-reading powers to track down Russell Edgington, with all three of her honeys trailing behind her.

(Do I think those iStakes will kick in? Somehow, I don't think the producers of True Blood are ready to kill off both of their male leads simultaneously, so no.)

As I mentioned last week, I am now on board with the Tara reboot. It's fun symmetry that she's now tending bar at Fangtasia (I guess she has to work somewhere), and the way she connected with Jessica over their shared unwillingly-turned experience was cool. At least until Tara accepted Hoyt's invitation. So much for that budding vampire friendship. I guess Jessica still cares about Hoyt.

The other big plot element was the masked guys who are apparently trying to wipe out the supe community, probably with supplies from the Stake House that we saw earlier this season. They actually FIRED ON A LITTLE GIRL just because she's a little puppy werewolf, not to mention her unarmed mother and our very own Sam. They knew Luna, Sam and Emma were shifters. Suzanne and Emery, too. Damn, I rather liked Luna. What's going to happen to Emma?

And how does it relate to Jason's vision that his parents were killed by vampires? Or does it? Jason was seeing vampire fang wounds in Suzanne and Emery that weren't there. Was this a bit of fairy magic? I was a bit surprised that Jason and Andy woke up naked (thankfully, not with each other) and unharmed after their fairy-zapping. How does that work? Did the fairies take them home, strip them, and pop them into bed?

I'm happy that Russell is finally in the picture. His "storage locker" was sort of funny, sort of upsetting. Doug remembered that Russell's accomplice was a woman wearing the same necklace that the Authority counselors wear, so that makes the Authority traitor possibilities limited. I still think it has to be Salome, but now I'm starting to wonder. Eric said he never told Nora about what he and Bill did to Russell. But then Eric looked apprehensive. Nora certainly does act convincingly fanatical.

So there's a vial of the original Lilith's blood in the shrine. I'm betting it gets used somehow by the end of the season.

Bits and pieces:

-- We got a brief and disturbing minute or two with Lafayette praying for deliverance and getting a not-so-fun response from his (or Jesus's) voodoo altar. And then Jesus's disembodied head showed up with his mouth sewn shut. (I hated seeing Jesus that way.) Lafayette's crazy mother understood what Jesus was trying to say. More Alfre, please.

-- As soon as Terry and his buddy left their old friend, the nut, tied up in the bunker, I knew the guy was toast. We do know now that it's a fire monster called an "ifrit."

-- "Babcock Hospital" is a famous building in L.A. that has been used in numerous movies and television shows, including Buffy. More about it here.

-- Speaking of Buffy, like Spike, Tara can now smoke as much as she wants. And as quickly as she wants.

-- The shots of Russell being carried into the hospital were also gross. His skull was visible. Dan said he looked like Voldemort.

-- Roman doesn't believe the vial contains the actual blood of Lilith. Won't he be surprised.

-- Mike the coroner (John Billingsley from Star Trek: Enterprise) was back. Always nice to see him. I got to interview him at Paramount once, and he's a fun and very smart man in real life.

-- Not that he looks bad or anything, but how many Andy nude scenes are we going to get this season? I much prefer Jason in superhero pajamas.

-- In this week's hair report, Jessica's flirtation with weird braids appears to be over. Unfortunately, she's moved on to headbands.

Quotes (and there are a lot of them this week):

Sookie: "It's not gonna change. You say goodbye and the next thing, you guys are back in my house and a three thousand year old vampire wants to suck my blood. Must be Thursday!" Great delivery on that line, Anna Paquin.

Tara: "So basically I'm your slave."
Pam: "Pretty much."
Tara: "The more things change, the more they fuckin' stay the same."

Pam: "Listen, I saved your fucking life and lent you some truly exquisite clothes. But if you do anything to mess with Fangtasia, I will silver you and stick you in a coffin to rot until the next millennium. Do you understand me?"

Roman: "Chancellor Drew was a great man. I thought he was a great man. We drafted the vampire rights amendment together."

Jason: "Andy, those guys and all those strippers? They're fairies. Like Tinker Ball."
Another great Jason-ism. Tinker Ball.

Andy: "Those ladies are fairies?"
Jason: "Yeah."
Andy: "I fucked a fairy?"

Andy: "I don't care if those ladies are fairies or leprechauns or freaking Ewoks."

Jessica: "You okay?"
Tara: "Trade you makers."

Jessica: "We're gonna live forever. We're gonna be young forever. The world, it's like, wide open to us."
You could almost see Tara thinking, well, I hadn't thought of that. Maybe being a vampire isn't so bad, after all.

Sookie: "Alcide, are we gonna talk about the fact that I puked on your shoes?"

Molly: "If you don't make it, it's been rad serving you. Peace out."
Tina Majorino's character finally has a name!

Sookie: "First of all, I've seen enough horror movies to know you don't split up when you're in a big, scary asylum and there's a crazed killer on the loose. Second, I think it's fair to say my microwave fingers and the sun are about the only things around here that seem to have any effect on Russell. So the way I see it, it's me protecting you from him, instead of the other way around. Third, I got a headache, I gotta pee something fierce, so I'd just as soon get this over with."

Jason: "You know what's fucked up?"
Andy: "Pretty long list."

Alcide: "You okay?"
Sookie: "Yeah. Remind me to avoid peach schnapps in the future."

Doug: "If I die, I won't never have made it to the Big Apple."
Eric: "New York city smells like pee and the people are rude."

Three out of four rats. Or tinker balls. Or maybe glasses of True Blood, two parts O-neg, one part B-pos,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

10 comments:

  1. Sookie: "It's not gonna change. You say goodbye and the next thing, you guys are back in my house and a three thousand year old vampire wants to suck my blood. Must be Thursday!" Great delivery on that line, Anna Paquin.

    That reminded of Buffy's line from ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING: "So. Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday." Sookie's line would have been perfect had she said, "must be Sunday."

    I was on Tara's side as a vamp from S5, Ep 1. I knew she would accept it and level off and viewers would accept it and level off. I still hope Jess and Tara remain buds after their fight.

    Sookie needs to fairy blast the iStakes off Bill and Eric ASAP.

    If Luna is dead, I think Sam will find Emma, adopt her and raise her as his own. If not Sam, I can see Alcide and Sookie taking Emma in – her wolf grandparents are too creepy and we know her maternal gram is dead.

    I think Salome freed Russ. If Salome is THE Biblical Salome, she's close to or over 2,000 years old. Maybe Russell is her maker, so she'd have loyalty to him. It's not like it's compulsory (as far as I know) that vamps have to reveal their makers to other vamps, so maybe Salome has been able to hide that Russ made her from the rest of the Authority.

    Maybe Lilith is still alive? Maybe she freed Russell and is keeping a low profile. Are there any big name female genre actresses cast for this season?

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  2. I dunno, HBR -- I've been avoiding casting spoilers. But I wouldn't be surprised.

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  3. I wish the screentime that the Terry subplot got was as brief your mention of it in your review. The best scenes were the ones in Fangtasia, but I also enjoyed the stuff with Russell and Jason. Hopefully, Russell's return will spice up the Authority storyline, which is starting to frustrate me. I don't have a problem with the characters in the Authority, but we need something more than just Roman reciting the same thing. I am intrigued though, and I want to see what happens next.

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  4. I think this was the weakest episode of a really great season. It seemed like it was just more of the same really and that Tara-Jessica conversation was a big "Oh give me a break" moment for me :P

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  5. Poor Luna. I think Sam will end with Emma, at least for a while - not a bad idea, could give his character something new to do.

    I miss Jesus :( Real Jesus, not the severed head variety! Great to see Alfre back though. I've loved her since Star Trek: First Contact.

    I hate to confess this and it's because I'm a big old softy, but I'm kind of missing seeing the odd romantic scene between Sookie and Eric, or even Sookie and Bill. Not that I want her officially back with either of them, necessarily, but some kind of reminder that last week she was desperately in love with both of them might be nice. Alcide just isn't doing it for me. Hopefully she'll fairy-blast the iStakes off soon, to remind us that she does actually care whether they live or die at least...

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  6. I don´t like the way Tara speaks since she is a vampire. I hope a more positive attitude (if she ever get one) will change that.

    I think Salome hides her agenda not really well from Roman. The question is if he realizes that or is it just for us viewers this obvious? Salome has for sure something to do with Russels "awakening". Why else would she command the iStakes to be set.

    I loved the change of behaviour Eric had towards Sookie and Alcide since he saw them together. The barking scene was hilarious and you could see that Stephen and Alex had a hard time not to laugh.

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  7. I really liked this one and even Terry´s uninteresting plot didn´t bother me this time. And boy, did the time fly by!

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  8. I'm really liking Sookie this season, which is a nice change, and I agree that the vampire-werewolf-fairy team was a lot of fun.

    It will be interesting to see where they're going with the shifters' killings, but I wish they dropped the "Terry and the efreet plot", it's just doing nothing for me.

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  9. I just now noticed this from EW, but did anybody catch that the gang that shot Luna and Sam were wearing Barack Obama masks?

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  10. Roman, I just now saw that, too. First George W. Bush on Game of Thrones...

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