These past few days, I had considered how I wanted to review the second half of this season of True Blood, mainly in order to sustain my writing interest (and your reading interest as well). My main thought was, “Well, what if I turn this into more of a snarky review/recap piece? After all, that’s what teh Internetz do so well!” But then, a funny thing happened with last night’s episode: it was mostly amusing… and not in the usually embarrassing way that True Blood usually is. In fact, it seemed, dare I say, self-aware, as we got a number of scenes that seemed to proclaim that the show is capable of doing the type of ludicrously over-the-top entertainment that it’s known to do from time to time.
Now, you may be saying to yourself, “But of course last night
was good! It was the first episode in which Russell was able to roam free and
wreak all sorts of havoc!” That is
certainly true, especially since the episode blessed us with those delectable
scenes of the Authority getting drunk on the precious blood of Lilith. Leading up to that, though, was the nice
sight of Russell decapitating an Authority member who refused to drink of
Lilith’s blood… a sign of sorts that the Russell we know and love is back to
full strength. And then – oh, and then! –
we were treated to the private party scene, leading to the priceless moment of
Russell joining in on a karaoke rendition of “You Light Up My Life”, before
commencing with a partygoer massacre.
And then, as our vampires gorge on the guests’ bodies, we’re blessed with
the hallucinatory entrance of Lilith herself.
One has to wonder to what extent Lilith’s villainous influence will
guide the rest of the season… although it seems so far that the only reason
Lilith was added to the cast was to provide some obligatory full-frontal
nudity. (Hey, it’s not TV! It’s HBO!
Remember that!) And then, as if Lilith’s appearance wasn’t enough, Eric receives a
mid-gorge visit from fan fave Godric (!!!!!), telling Eric that what they’re
doing is wrong. At that point, Eric
snaps out of the Lilith hallucination, just in time for the episode to end. As you can tell, all this Authority material
was fun, fun, fun…I don't want to reiterate what I've said before about Russell making this show a heck of a lot more enjoyable, but the proof is right there in front of us.
But it wasn’t just that, though. Take, for instance, the hilarious sight of
Sam Merlotte crawling around on the ground and sniffing out the Obama-masked
vampire killers: "I’m picking up 5 men, maybe 6… bad diets… and HATE… and ENVY!”
Oh, and we got to see Jesus’ severed head in a hand chair… because that’s just
how the show rolls right now! (Certainly,
this was the most memorable TV use of a hand chair since Arrested Development.) If
that weren’t enough, this segued into the quaint moment where Jesus’ grandpa
ties up Lafayette, stitches up his LIPS, and attempts to slice Lafayette's BRAIN open
so he can feed it to his unborn child and reclaim the family magic. Ah, but of course!
We also incurred a couple of flashbacks this week. For
starters, we got to see Salome as the one who broke Russell out of his cement
grave. But the most significant
flashback was an unusual one: the episode stopped for about 5 minutes or so
midway through, so we could see Terry and Arlene’s wedding video, which
occurred in the 11-month-or-so gap between Seasons 3 & 4. At the very least, we got to see Jesus back
in the flesh, for a rare non-decapitated-head appearance.
What else is worth commenting on? Well, despite what we’ve seen the past five
years on the show, apparently Tara is better served as an exotic dancer than a
bartender. You almost get the impression
that the show has depleted its Pam/Tara relationship material if it has to
stoop to this level… but oh, well. It’s True Blood. :-) Hoyt's finding love with a hate group... boy, this can't end well, but Hoyt's the susceptible type (as the fangbanger look has shown us earlier this year). Oh, and Sookie’s trying to empty her
luminescence tank… because if she does, she can finally be NORMAL!!!!! Who
wants to bet that this little bit of internal conflict will be resolved within
the first 90 seconds of next week’s episode? I mean, if anything, the show's trying to make people as out-of-the-ordinary as possible. (Case in point: Tara.) But again, we'll wait for next week's resolution on that. :-)
Random notes:
- Jason Stackhouse on Sookie’s luminescence: “Let’s plug her in and charge her back up!”
- Sookie Stackhouse on Sookie’s luminescence: “Fuck you, I’m depleting!”
- Hoyt, blindly responding to the death of a fellow bigot he didn't know at all: “Motherfuckers!”
- For more Anna Paquin fun, you can now check out the Blu-ray and DVD release of her film Margaret, which Paquin filmed way back in the fall of 2005 (nearly two years before the True Blood pilot was filmed). Why the long delay? About six years of editing-room chaos and litigation… but apparently, Paquin’s performance is nothing short of stellar. And hey, there won’t be any Sookie accent to contend with. ;-)
- Aw, why the heck not... let's listen to Russell belt out some Debby Boone one more time:
- Next week: I hope you like Gotye!
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