True Blood: Nobody Leaves

 

Let's do something a little different this week.  Let's discuss last night episode by character/plot.  Last night's episode began with Alcide carrying Sookie away from the battle.  Sookie is taken from him by Bill.  Bill tries to give her his blood, while Alcide asks, "does she even have a pulse?"  Can we just say right now that there was no suspense to this. Of course the minute that Sookie wakes up she barely thanks Alcide and proceeds to make plans with Bill to get Eric. In the first sensible thing that Alcide has done in a long time he tells her that he is done and walks out of the house.  

Unfortunately for Alcide, Debbie is awake when he gets home.  She pretends to sleep but you can see the tension all over her.  (BTW, thank you Alan Ball for the naked shot of my fav werewolf)  As Alcide snuggles up to Debbie, her eyes go yellow.  It's clear to me that Alcide needs to just take his fine behind away from both Sookie and Debbie.  Could any man really be that slow to catch on?

Creepy Debbie shows up at Sookie's place the next day with flowers, claiming to want to help Sookie.  Right after telling Debbie that she cannot forget the fact that she tried to kill her, Sookie listens to her thoughts and decides to trust her. Obviously, Debbie would only think what she wanted Sookie to know.  So thelma and louise head off to Goddess Emporium, where Debbie rats her out immediately.  Tara holds a gun on Sookie, and tells her how stupid she is for showing up, but I guess the idea of some good ole fashioned spunky agency was too much for Sookie to avoid.  Tara tells Sookie where Bill is and Sookie charges Tara and escapes.  One would think she would have clued in then that Debbie is up to no good, but Sookie jumps into Debbies truck. It's also worth mentioning that she showed no concern for the fact that Tara was being held prisoner and so her main target to help as Bill. Why is Tara even friends with this woman?

Antonia brings Eric back to MoonGoddess Emporium and lets the coven know that he is under her control.  When Tara asks why Antonia didn't take Bill's olive branch, Antonia asks everyone to join hands to protect the coven.  This causes a split because Tara makes it clear that she no longer wants anything to do with the coven.  Antonia sees this as a threat and locks the witches in the room and threatens them. After Sookie escapes, Antonia takes Eric to the conference and as expected he becomes her weapon. So far as the big bad, I have found Antonia to be predictable, but her inability to hold an accent, allows her to fit in well with the cast.

Of all the people to confide her concerns in, Jessica sits down with Nan to discuss, her relationship concerns.  Nan responds saying, "There have been times I must admit when I thought maybe I should put my career on hold and become a maker, but these last several hours here with you, have erased these doubts forever".  Only Pam could have pulled off a more flippant response. When Jessica tells her, "you are nothing like you are on tv" Nan says, Oh thanks. I loved this scene.

Hoyt wakes up and decides to pack up all of Jessica's belongings into a box which he labels "for you monster."  It seems that he wants to hurt her.  Lafayette walks in carrying the  baby and chases Hoyt out of the house insisting that the baby is his. At the Bellefleur house Andy grabs some V to hide it from Jason, who talks to Hoyt and learns where the baby is.  Terry attempts to joing them, and Andy says no and then proceeds to go into the next room and drain a vial of V.

Andy high on V bangs loudly on the door demanding that Lafayette let him in.  When he responds that she is not opening the door for a White man, Andy calls him a racist.  This really bothered me because Black people have a real reason to fear White police officers.  Jason in his magical cop uniform tells Andy that the protocol is to diffuse the situation.  I swear that uniform must function like a brain for Jason, because the moment he dawns it, his IQ goes up.  Andy responds with "fuck that this situation became pretty undiffused the minute that she/male broke into my house."  I sat there once again with my hanging open.  How the fuck did Alan Ball allow a line like that to be said on his show?  Not only is it homophobic, it's cissexist as hell. If that were not enough, when Jesus shows up to save the day, Jason asks, When you and Lafayette role play, does Lafayette ever turn into a woman?  Thankfully Jesus refuses to answer that question, but I still hated the fact that Ball had Jason say this.  I know that this would have been much worse had Jesus directly responded to Jason.  I guess the magic of the cop uniform only goes so far. 

As an aside, I think it is worth mentioning that instead of letting Jason become a werepanther, it seems that Ball has once again depended on Jason and Andy playing Laurell and Hardy and a love triangle to justify Jason's character.   I know that Andy's drug addiction is a serious matter, but I cannot help but think that sometimes it is played for laughs, though Jason's frustration seems legitimate.

Jesus gets Mavis to tell the story of how she and her baby were murdered by a White man.  He hands her the remains of her dead baby, and he tells her that it is time for her to move on.  He places a hand on her and casts her out of Lafayette's body. She then appears all in yellow with her baby and thanks Lafyette who promptly responds, "you're welcome bitch". Can we please have Lafayette stop calling women bitch as though it is a term of endearment because it most certainly is not.  Okay, is anyone else creeped out that the murder of a Black woman was used to advance the plot line?  Once again Ball has shown that he does not take the violence directed at Black women seriously. What happened to Mavis, was to give the viewer some insight into how Jesus and Lafayette are going to get Antonia out of Marnie's body. I suppose magic is only worth something when you are man and get set up to play hero.

When Bill interrupts the conversation Nan and Jessica, Nan asks, "what he has gone and fucked up now?"  She snarks about how decisive he has turned out to be, because he let Eric live.  Bill accuses her of only seeing the headlines.  She absolutely refuses to take responsibility for the fact that Bill has warned her from the very beginning that the witches were a problem.  She chooses to ignore him and says, "tomorrow's festival of tolerance is going on and the cameras had better find you in a festive and tolerant mood."  The rest of the interaction between the two of them throughout the remainder of the show is spent bickering, with Nan showing just how out of touch she really is with activism. Small note: If Black people had stayed home, there would have been no civil rights movement, and the analogy made in this scene was disgusting.  Living under Jim Crow, is nothing like humans holding a legitimate bias against vampires.

After putting her daughter to bed, Luna tells Sam, "trust me you do not want Marcus to be your problem."  Sam asks if she is afraid and refuses to leave.  Sam convinces Luna to go camping because apparently getting back to nature is not running away.  Am I the only who does not care about this budding love triangle.

As Tommy is writing a goodbye letter to Sam, Marcus appears at Merlotts.  Marcus gives Tommy a card and tells him that Sam had better show up at that location, or else Sam "will have a bigger fucking problem than he already got." Tommy shows up full of swagger, and of course Marcus and the crew beat the crap out of him.  Were it not for the intervention of Alcide, Tommy might have died. Are we supposed to see this moment as Tommy's redemption?  If that is the case, it failed because there is no redeeming a rapist and I worry that Ball will cast Tommy as the good guy now that he has sacrificed himself for Sam.

That's about it folks.  For me, last night's episode was filled with fail after fail. It was actually hard for me to look past. Normally I can love something in spite of the fails, but this episode really challenged me. What did you think of it?