I’m a sucker for a TV party, so, as unexpected as last night’s big memorial party was, seeing as it’s only been three in-show days since the last Bon Temps gathering ended in mass casualties, any chance for lots of characters to bump up against (and/or stab) one another is cause for celebration.
So, yes, this was another human-centric and mostly not terrible episode of True Blood. And, like Andy Bellefleur, life in Louisiana marches forward. Just some people won’t be marching much longer.
And then the freaking Yakuza showed up. And True Blood was nauseating again.
Spoilers and saucy hand gestures after the katana cut…
Sookie
Time and tequila heal all wounds. Sookie spent most of the evening mourning Alcide, which I thought was nice. At least give the late werewolf an hour before we have to watch Sookie jump Bill’s bones. While I don’t quite agree that Sookie herself is a righteous cause worth dying for, whatever denial that gets Alcide’s dad through his grief is okay by me. As obnoxious as Sookie is, her own grieving process was a good heart for the episode. I especially enjoyed Arlene giving advice to Sookie, which set the stage for her last scene, post-party, alone in a too-empty house falling asleep in Alcide’s leather jacket.
It’s more of a goodbye than anything Tara got, dammit.
Bill
Glad to see HBO still getting some use out of those old Deadwood sets, though the past looked way too clean. I was wondering what the point of Bill’s pre-Civil War flashbacks were for, right up until the end when he revealed that he was infected with Hep-V. Will this war with the infected vamps be a lost cause like the last war he fought? I feel like it’d be really unfair if both Bill and Eric died before the finale, so I’m hoping that Bill being infected means that Sookie & co. will be forced to find a cure quickly.
Sadly, nothing about Bill’s flashbacks were as interesting as Eric’s last week.
Lettie Mae
Seriously? I still can’t believe that instead of Tara in the last season, we get her crappy mother. This will never be okay, not for all the choked-up toasts Lettie Mae gives. I don’t care if her Tara visions amount to something bigger at this point. Nothing about her is sympathetic, or maybe more accurately, trustworthy. Also she is the only person who wants Willa around. In short, fuck you, Lettie Mae.
Pam and Eric
“Republi-cunt.” “We can be assholes.” Yeah, I think it’s pretty clear where Pam and Eric stand politically. These two are getting all of the fantastic costumes this season!
It was easy enough for Sarah Newlin to be tracked down, through her hot and sassy sister. I’m surprised the yakuza didn’t find Amber first. But I was really, really surprised by how bloodthirsty the Japanese gangsters were. It makes NO sense for them, a shadowy gang with a traditionally strict code of conduct and organization, to very casually and very publicly shoot up a fundraiser. It was actually sickening to watch a bunch of innocent people getting shot in the head for no reason. It’s not like the gangsters were trying to draw Sarah out or only target her parents or anything. It was cold-blooded murder. That’s not what I want on True Blood. Or any show, really.
And I bet Sarah managed to sneak away yet again.
Ginger
Damn, a squeaky slide off a travel coffin is her final appearance on the show after she so rocked it last week? Go out with some dignity, lady.
Andy
Andy fumbling over his words as he proposed to Holly was about the cutest thing to happen on this show in some time. And it’s about time. Though I guess it does kind of put a damper on Adilyn’s romance with her future stepbrother.
Andy’s also a bigger person than most, forgiving Jessica for what she did to his daughters. Sometimes True Blood just gets those human moments right.
Lafayette and James
Oh, nice. Glad this situation finally boiled over. After Lala asked about James’ proclivities in a hilarious Lala-way—a dirty hand gesture—I was thinking “Get a room!” I had to amend it to “Get a car that your boyfriend didn’t buy with his girlfriend! Jeez!”
I loved Lafayette’s very meta defense of himself to Jessica and Jason. It was so spot-on. “Has it ever fucking occurred to you that Lafayette, that makes all you white heterosexuals laugh and feel good about themselves, that maybe I want a piece of happiness, too?” YES. It’s like he was reading people’s complaints when Jesus died.
Jessica
In defense of Jessica, James really wasn’t all that supportive of Jessica when she was literally being eaten alive by guilt. He basically whined that he wasn’t getting enough attention. So it’s really no big loss for Jessica when she gets it on with Jason again. Who, incidentally, also has a girlfriend so Jessica’s kind of a big ol’ undead hypocrite.
Yet I’m all for it. Only…
Violet
Ancient and sexy as hell, Violet’s got at least a hundred dead boyfriends and Jason is looking to be the one hundred and first. Also, she must play a long game because I was fully expecting her to lose her shit and destroy Jessica right then and there when she heard them having sex.
Girlfights, yakuza, and nudity. The stuff True Blood dreams are made of…
Next week: I take my annual trip to San Diego Comic-Con, but, alas, I won’t have a chance to gawk at Alexander Skarsgård in person as he’ll be filming Tarzan in the U.K. In other words, no review next week. Just occupy yourselves with thoughts of Alexander Skarsgård in a loincloth for two hours.
True Blood airs Sunday nights at 9 PM E/PT on HBO.
Theresa DeLucci is a regular contributor to Tor.com, covering TV and gaming news. She’s also a guest on the latest episode of Wired.com’s Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast discussing Game of Thrones. And the resident Hannibal fannibal at Boing Boing. Follow her on Twitter @tdelucci
that episode started to feel like a finale. then it drifted into fan service. i can’t understand how bill caught hep-v! my guess is they reintroduced sarah newlin who will know of a cure. that massacre was very confusing. what was the point? they could have run into erik in the back hallway without all that killing.
violet reminds me of anya on “buffy” with her out of touch comments. i expect her fury will be similarly destructive. while lafayette’s fit seemed organic it also feels like fanservice, maybe because viewers have been saying the same thing for so long. ginger was great. what she was in the past doesn’t matter since she has been significantly damaged in the ensuing years. it is surprising that she doesn’t want to be a vampire, though.
i’m not really clear what nicole is so freaked about. yes, she’s just been through some intense drama, but she came to this town seeking out it’s supernatural underbelly. then she went through some stuff and still decided to stay. get real, girl. mr. herveau got all the sweet, quiet moments.
one surprise: the reverend telling lettie mae she couldn’t go to the party. for all her issues, lettie mae is an adult. she doesn’t need permission.
Here I thinking how nice it was to have a anti-massacre episode then *BAM* the Yakuza show up and set the fundraiser ablaze with bullets and lots o’blood. DAMN! (BTW, Pam’s Texas hair was super awesome!)
Jason and Jessica. They go together like peas and carrots. That said, one would think they’d be a little more quiet in their activity given there was a houseful of party attendees just a floor below. Nope…..not on True Blood.
I noticed in various previews for upcoming episodes Lafayette and Lettie Mae chillin’ on LaLa’s couch in a state much similar to LaLa and James after partaking an accrutrement of pills. I wonder if it will soon be revealed to all, via a pill or vamp blood purple haze, that it was Lettie Mae who killed Tara, her own daughter, and not some starving, bald, bug-eyed, hep-v vamp…
Yeah, it doesn’t make any real sense for the Yakuza to come in, guns a’blazing, but then, these are the same Yakuza who didn’t bother to actually search the yogi’s house for Sarah.
My guesses as to how Bill contracted Hep-V are that either Sookie is a carrier from when she got splashed with Hep-V blood a couple episodes ago, or that Bill himself got splashed during the raid on Fangtasia.
-Andy
The Yakuza crash-in didn’t bother me so much for its gore as because it was so goddamned STUPID. They don’t even spy out the lay of the land, sneak around and try to spot Sarah, they just crash into a high-profile political fund-raiser with guns blazing and shoot everybody in sight? Very stealthy! I don’t know about the Yakuza, but this is certainly not the way ninjas, who are sneaky stealth assassains, are supposed to operate.
I would like to see Jason and Jessica make it out of the show alive and happy together (they make a much better couple than either of them did with their other lovers), and Andy and Holly probably deserve to get out alive too, but I’m not sure that anybody is going to. This goes back to my question from last week: who on the show DESERVES to make it through alive and be left happy at the end? I’m pretty sure that Sookie–who is the main character, after all–will be, but who else? Eric, Pam, and Bill are probably goners (and now that Bill’s infected, I’m not sure they’re going to have him and Sookie sleep together), and I suspect that Sam is too. I hope Lafyette makes it, but as a black homosexual drug-user, television logic stacks the odds against him. I realized recently why I gradually lost interest in BOARDWALK EMPIRE, which in almost every way possible (writing, acting, set dressing and design, direction) is a much better show than TRUE BLOOD, and it’s because NOBODY on the show deserves to live through it, they’re all evil people in one way or the other. TRUE BLOOD still has a few characters who deserve to make it through, although most of them probably won’t.
In the books they had an enchanted fairy artifact that saved the day in a similar circumstance. I’m wondering- they made so much of their grandmother’s ring. Maybe that will do something like save Bill.
@@.-@ Yeah, I think that’s why it’s called organized crime. Okay, maybe it doesn’t mean quite that, but how often does one hear about the Mafia or the Yakuza going on killing sprees without specific people targeted? Shooting up a party of random people for literally no reason is really amateur.
I feel like True Blood is maybe more of a crowd-pleasing show, so they could try to have more people alive at the end than you think. As we get closer to the finale, I’m going to start posting odds. I think Sookie, Bill (cured by Sarah Newlin,) Lafayette, Andy and Holly will be okay. Jason and Jessica are big question marks. I always wished Jason and Sookie were closer. Having Jason live as one of Sookie’s only support systems would be nice — especially if Bill does die — but if Jason dies, it can be just one more “distraction” for Sookie to lose before truly knowing herself or some BS.
I think Sam is a goner though. His girlfriend is pregnant with the next generation of shapeshifters (probably) and Sam has zero story now that Mayor Pretender is dead. I know the books are different, but on the show, he’s got nothing unique to do.
In the books, I believe that Sam ends up marrying Sookie at the end–but that’s not going to happen here. I agree that Sam is probably doomed. I think that the show will probably leave Sookie alive at the end, but I’m uncertain about anybody else. Either Bill will be cured, and left hooked-up with Sookie at the end, or he’ll die doing something heroic and self-sacrificing. Lafyette probably will die in the same way, probably saving one of the other characters, and Pam will die trying to save Eric, who will also die. Andy and Holly have a decent chance of making it through, although nothing is certain, and I think Arlene may go. I’m most worried about Jason and Jessica, who are the characters I’d most like to see get out of the show alive and happy, and who I think most deserve to be so (in spite of Jessica slaughtering Andy’s daughters), but who I think probably are not going to.
I’m not sure we’ve seen the last of Tara, by the way. From the first episode, I’ve been expecting her to come back as a ghost, perhaps possessing Lafyette.
The show’s being written now, though, by writers who don’t even know the show’s backstory. Bill’s Civil War past is now wonky, and there was that comment about how Sookie’s Grandmother always liked Holly–who didn’t come to town until after Sookie’s Grandmother was dead.
@7, I thought the comment was that grandma would have liked Holly. Though I agree, it does seem that there’s been a fair amount of revision to some previously-established stuff… whether intentionally or not, who knows.
-Andy
Thinking about it, I’m now fairly certain that either Andy or Holly or both are going to die. They’re happy together and have pledged Eternal Love, which is usually the Kiss of Death on one of these shows. The shadow of Joss Whedon is a long one.
I see no point whatsoever to the frequent Bill-in-the-Civil War flashbacks. They don’t tell us anything about Bill as a character that hadn’t already been established seasons back.
Mr. Dozois, I didn’t realize that George R. R. Martin was writing the final episodes. The death toll you are predicting would rank right up there with a Red Wedding… ;-)