Last
episode Eric managed to get into Willa’s room (Govenor Truman’s daughter)
and glamour her. He plans to kill her to punish his father – and does this with
lots of creepy, sexual assault overtones that are really unnecessary. As he
moves to bite her – her thigh of course – she babbles quickly about things she
knows – including about “experiments.” Which is when the guard team arrives –
to find an empty room.
In more drama, Bill has his new, shiny psychic ability
and just saw a lot of vampires, including most of the ones we know, burning up.
He’s, unsurprisingly, determined to stop it especially since Jessica is among
those getting an extreme tan
At chez Stackhouse, Warlow makes a blurring appearance in
the woods and Niall goes flashing out after him. And Jason decides to stumble
outside rather uselessly, with Sookie following because who needs that whole “vampire
can’t enter the house without an invitation” protection from supervamp? Niall
gets his grandchildren back inside (he must be realising by now that whatever
else they inherited, intellect isn’t one of them). Sookie doesn’t like Niall patronising
Jason (oh Sookie, Jason needs a little patronising now and then) and Niall doesn’t
like Sookie not being completely panicky – but Sookie, in perhaps her first
reasonable line for the last 3 seasons, says she’s ALWAYS in danger these days
so she doesn’t really panic any more. Niall goes out vampire hunting and we’re
reminded how special and royal Sookie is. Come to think of it, lots of
generational inbreeding with the noble families may explain a lot…
At Fangtasia neither Tara nor Pam are even slightly
impressed with Eric kidnapping the Governor’s daughter. Pam wants her dead,
Tara wants her glamoured and sent home – saying it’s savage shit like this that
makes humans hate them. Eric orders them to pack up and be ready to leave – and
Tara encourages Pam to stand up to him; it seems she will for a brief moment
before Eric shouts and Pam folds.
Willa claims to not be a fan of her father’s policy
either and tells Eric about a camp where arrested vampires are taken to be
studied. (Cut to that camp where Steve Newlin is dragged in to be experimented
on). In Fangtasia they’ve packed up their things but Pam makes it clear that it’s
the bar that matters to her – and Eric, no matter how he pretends. So they
leave – and take Willa with them, much to Tara’s and Pam’s objection.
Sam and Lafayette wake up after being beaten, helped into
Sam’s trailer by do-gooder Nicole and her boyfriend, Jesse. Jesse is all
curious – Lafayette gives him sound advice on zipping that curiosity and Sam
tells Nicole to leave when she offers to help getting Emma back. Unfortunately
Lafayette doesn’t take his own advice; making it clear he’s there to help Sam
because Sam gave him a job and doesn’t treat him like shit.
Poor Ginger thinks her dreams have come true when Eric
knocks on her door and wants to join her for a sleepover (no glamour needed oh
no). Oh and he brought some friends. More tension between the gang with Eric
continuing to shout and lay down the law, claiming the coffin and keeping Willa
away from Pam so she doesn’t kill her.
Over to Billith who has decided to take up sunbathing.
Jessica thinks this is a bad bad bad idea, reminding Bill that SOMETHING killed
Lillith so going through a list of all the things that kill vampires and trying
them all out is just not wise.
The sun rises… and Billith catches on fire – he staggers into the house where Jessica lets him in and smothers the flames with a blanket. Jessica can join Tara on the bus for people with an ounce of common sense leaving Bon Temps. A big bus won’t be necessary, there’s not a whole lot of people getting on. Billith gasps that he just doesn’t understand why a vampire burns in sunlight. Someone needs a refresher course.
Niall goes to the faerie safe club and finds it deserted,
wrecked and covered in blood stains. As he puts a sunshiny hand over the blood
he hears screams and fighting. Using his recap powers he sees one figure
slaughtering the fae and finds Claude, severely injured in the wreckage.
Communicating by thought, Claude tells him a vampire got in, a very powerful
one – then begs Niall not to leave him like that. Niall reduces him to dust.
Alas, we must return to the Stackhouses where Sookie
wants to take Jason to the hospital and he assures her he’s fine by telling her
he’s been hallucinating but it seems to have stopped. See, all better! Jason’s
upset that his hallucinations were racist (I’m not sure – but this may be
referring to prejudice against vampires in which case, again, True Blood STOP)
and he hates that he put that undeserved label on their parents. Sookie is less
inclined to deify their parents and tells him they had their faults (which she’d
know since she read their minds) and that their mother was afraid of her – and it’s
fine to love them if they’re imperfect, you don’t need to ice over the memory.
Time for a storyline we don’t give a damn about – Andy Bellefleur!
He’s got lots of anti-vampire toys assigned to him (bah, like Louisiana could
afford to give silver UV-emitting bullets to every tiny police department in
the state) and Holly arrives to complain about vampires outside her motel room
disturbing the kids; and getting disturbed herself by Andy’s rapidly aging faerie
kids (who he has given numbers not names). He decides to deal with Holly’s
worries by teaching her how to shoot – and trying to convince her that it’s
purely platonic; despite her thoughts giving her away to the kids (though I
kind of like how Holly handles that).
The only redeeming feature of this pointless scene is
Andy’s “girls! Hand lasers off!” to his faerie daughters.
Next storyline we don’t care about! The police want to
talk to Martha about Emma going missing, especially since her father has also
disappeared; Alcide and Rikki try to keep them out but they insist on talking
to Martha (with Emma inside). Martha has to go fake emphysema (of all the
ridiculous excuses) and talk to the nice police, while Rikki tries to menace
Emma into shifting. The police aren’t mollified and want to come in –
apparently not needing a warrant because the governor’s anti-vampire agenda now
means they can just enter any property for any damn reason, apparently. Inside,
Emma has, of course, shifted into a wolf puppy so the police ignore her.
When they leave Rikki is furious since taking Emma has
brought trouble to them. She adds that the police/authorities/miscellaneous “they”
aren’t that far from figuring out Shifters exist – and if they do they’ll be
treated like the vampires. Alcide tells her to shut up and Rikki’s force to bow
and creep to him. A large owl watches all this, despite it being daylight –
probably Sam.
Back to Eric, while I still care about this storyline, he
and Willa are sharing a coffin and she removes her gag to spill more of her dad’s
secrets; her mother had an affair with a vampire and ran off with him to California.
Why is she telling him all this? Eric thinks to convince her she’s a pro-vampire
person, I think it could be the result of being in bed with Eric. Eric starts
to bleed from the ear – which he puts down to being “meant to be dead during
the day” (I don’t remember any other day time vampires bleeding randomly) – she
touches the blood and almost puts her finger in her mouth when Eric stops her.
Lots and lots of sexual undertones going on here.
Back to the faerie field where
new-and-totally-unnecessary-character Ben is looking for the faerie hideaway
and finds Niall. Upon meeting Ben for the first time, Niall decides a massive
info-dump and recap is in order, as you do. Ben realises who he’s talking to
and kneels to Niall who apparently came to the club to assemble an army (since
that club full of fae were slaughtered by Warlow, I don’t think the army would
have been all that useful) and wants Ben to be the first recruit in the suicide
club - I mean, Niall’s soldiers.
Back to chez Billith where, after much arguing, Billith
sends Jessica to talk to Professor Hiro Takehashi at the university of North
Louisiana; he’s rumoured to be the man responsible for creating True Blood. She
wears something “inappropriate” to his lecture since Takehashi has a thing for
young women. There follows a request for private tutoring and a kidnapping
Back to Steve Newlin (a character best summed up as “we
thought this man was dead, why do I still have to watch his storylines?!”) who
gets a visit in his cell by Sarah, his wife back when he was a human
anti-vampire religious fanatic. She still is and after some snarling back and forth,
she tells him the canmp is about eradicating vampires. Oh and she’s in politics
now (+10 points True Blood for Steve pointing out it’s a paycut for her to move
from a megachurch into politics). A doctor comes to ask Newlin questions and he
folds after merely seeing a syringe.
Billith goes to see Sookie – he wants her help. She’s not letting him in. Shame the whole invitation thing doesn’t apply to Billith. Sookie screams for Jason (because Jason’s going to do so much) so we get to see him slammed into a wall by Billith’s telekinesis (ok, that was kinda fun to watch, so I guess screaming for him had some point). She wants Sookie so she can use Takehashi to synthesise her blood; with lots of grandiose talk that makes it clear that Billith thinks of all vampires as his “progeny.” Sookie throws plates at him, likely only minimally effective against any vampire, it’s not convincing against Billith. When she refuses to help and orders him to leave, Billith declares she’s dead to him and leaves.
Y’know, explaining things before breaking crockery,
breaking and entering and throwing Jason across the room may have helped. And
why does he need Sookie? Well, if you recall Sookie’s fairy blood allows
vampires to go out in sunlight.
Time for more pointless storylines! Nicole, Jesse and the
rest of their group are off to poke werewolves for funsies. Alcide is pissed
when he finds they’re carrying cameras and destroys one – and demands the rest
to destroy before kicking them out. Owl Sam watches the whole thing. Rikki
loses it, something she does on a semi-regular basis, it seems, wolfs out and
attacks – followed by several other members of the pack. Nicole runs and is
bitten, but Alcide stops the wolf (Rikki, I think) from killing her. Sam takes the
chance to grab Emma and run but insists on running with Nicole because she’s
injured and needs help.
Governor Truman calls Eric to beg for his daughter –
while someone tries to trace the call (which Willa warns him about – wow she
has jumped ship awfully quickly). While Eric takes the call and talks about
killing Willa, he and Pam leave her with Tara who, with vampire ears, hears
everything. When the trace is complete (Eric seems to want the call to be
traced, for reasons unknown), they check on Willa and find the room empty – it looks
like Tara has taken her to safety. Eric leaves a glamoured Ginger behind and
follows Pam after Tara.
Ben and Niall return to Sookie’s house where they all sit
around and discuss how bad Warlow is (in case we forgot). Sookie and Ben
continue their sexual tension and Sookie can feel Ben listening to her
thoughts, something she can’t normally do. He can also feel her. Apparently
sensing someone violating your most intimate privacy adds to sexual tension.
But then Niall senses a vampire outside. In the woods,
staring at the house, hidden very carefully – until Niall hits them dead on
with a fae blast then teleports next to – Nora. Who is also looking for Warlow
because of the vampire Bible thing. Then Jason collapses and that distracts
everyone from any plot development, alas.
And Bill, walking home, runs into Andy who’s very polite
and nice about it, but there is technically a vampire curfew. Where Bill learns
about Andy’s daughters – and seems happy about it. Ok… so he learns Andy has
children but how does he know they’re fae?
I kind of hate Lafayette risking himself for Sam; maybe
if he had a better reason, but the whole “you actually treat me like a human
being” is a really shitty reason for a marginalised person to believe they owe
a privileged person. Sad thing is the media adopts this a lot and it bleeds
over a great deal into real life; the idea that treating a POC/gay person with
respect and *gasp* employing them is somehow a gift that puts that person in
debt is pernicious. It suggests that straight, white people are doing a
miraculous service by simply being a decent human people to POC/GBLT people.
I’m increasingly waiting for the time Pam and (or at
least) Tara leave Eric because him dragging them around as an entourage who
have no say but constantly have to deal with his actions is getting tiresome.
And while I don’t particularly like Rikki, having Alcide be another
supernatural boss man making his ladies get in line is creating a trend here.
Willa becoming Eric’s love interest or lusting after him?
No I don’t like this – he glamoured her and seemed top sexually molest her
while doing so and now has kidnapped her. Don’t turn this into happy, sexy or,
even worst, loving it’s beyond creepy.
10 million storylines. Very little story progression.
