“Took you long enough,” utters an in-the-flesh Russell
Edgington at the tail end of tonight’s episode. And indeed, it took a while: we’re
now 5 episodes through a 12-episode season, and tonight’s installment –
particularly the final 20 minutes – really gave me the sense that we’re finally
heading into the meat of the season, as the point and purpose of various plot
threads began to make themselves clear. We’re
on the cusp of payoff… and tonight’s episode was a glorious tease of what’s
coming ‘round the bend.
Tonight’s episode had a nice sense of immediacy, because it
takes place within the span of a handful of hours. Now, that was primarily to
set up the suspense of Bill and Eric’s need to find Russell before dawn… or
risk the activation of their iStakes. (Yay for arbitrary ticking clocks!)
However, if there was one downside to the narrow timeframe, it was how quickly
Sookie came back around to Bill and Eric, after her epic denouncement of her
two suitors in the Season 4 finale. In
fact, given the brevity of tonight’s episode (44 minutes, without credits), it
may not have hurt to spend a wee bit more screen time for Sookie to acknowledge
where they had left things off… especially since Bill and Eric’s return
interrupted Sookie and Alcide in the heat of passion. Sookie did get some clever lines in,
acknowledging the vicious cycle she’s in – “A 3,000-year-old vampire wants to
suck my blood! Must be Thursday!” and “Onwards into the jaws of death!”
Sookie’s usefulness is quite helpful tonight, as she takes a
peek inside the head of Doug, the construction site manager who became an
unwitting accomplice to Russell’s revival.
Sookie’s exploration uncovers two key things: a female member of the
authority dug Russell out of his concrete grave, after which Doug carried
Russell to the Babcock Hospital, a former insane asylum. And so Sookie, Bill, Eric, Alcide, and a
perpetually-frightened Doug head to the asylum, where we quickly see evidence
of Russell’s recuperation – a hearty pile of drained bodies with rats crawling
all over them. If that weren’t enough, a
room in the asylum uncovers a bunch of still-alive humans, hanging in
straitjackets, waiting for Russell to take a drink. A
helpful, albeit freaked-out-of-his-mind, prisoner points the gang toward the
room where Russell is… and in the episode’s final scene, we find Russell on a hospital
bed, still looking somewhat weak. But it
quickly becomes apparent that Russell has more than a few tricks up his sleeve… beginning
with the swift capture of Alcide.
It’s weird to see True
Blood head into such spooky territory; for a show that’s so focused on gore
and sex, I’m not used to its attempts to provide some horror. Granted, it felt
a bit awkward – the whole creepy-insane-asylum setting felt made it easy to
mistake the Sookie gang for the Scooby Gang.
Still, it was a somewhat interesting change of place… and the brief,
brief glimpse of Russell was a delicious tease for what’s to come. The show’s finished the build-up; now we just
need the payoff… and it had better come next week in spades.
The second most significant plot of the night, surprisingly,
belong to Terry and Patrick, as we finally found out what the heck their story’s
purpose is. As it turns out, last week’s
Iraq massacre flashback had one unintended – albeit clichéd – consequence: One
of the Iraqi folks that was shot wasn’t quite dead yet. Patrick orders Terry to shoot her and finish
the job, but before he does, the woman places a curse on the soldiers: she
sends upon them an ifrit, which is
basically a fire-and-smoke evil spirit.
Now, if it weren’t enough to place a curse on poor Terry, we get a
pissed-off version of the Smoke Monster from Lost, too! And, fortunately
enough, we get our first moment of the ifrit in action: Terry and Patrick
manage to get Eller, their captor, to let them go… but Patrick knocks Eller
unconscious and ties him to a chair in the bunker… where the ifrit seeps in and
turns Eller into a Post Toastie.
Probably my favorite scene of the episode, believe it or not,
came from the Tara plot! (Cue shocked gasps!) Recognizing her bartending skills from
Merlotte’s, Pam has installed Tara as the bartender at Fangtasia. And wouldn’t you know it, one of Tara’s first
customers is Jessica… which leads to a nicely-written scene where the two
ladies compare notes on their transitions into vampire-hood, and even contemplate
being vampire girlfriends! (Aww…) It’s a nice sequence that really helps to
make the vampire experience seem a bit more tangible and accessible… and it also
helped for Jessica to recollect on her vampire experiences and provide sage
advice. (I still find it a bit hard to believe that Jessica’s been a vampire
since the tail end of Season 1!) However, Tara and Jessica’s mutual appreciation
doesn’t last, as they face off in a fierce battle sequence in the bathroom
after Jessica finds that Tara is feeding on Hoyt in the stall… and yes, Hoyt is
still looking like the world’s weirdest fangbanger.
The other plot threads were short-shrifted tonight… although
story-wise, they didn’t have much to offer anyways. Jason’s He-Man-Footie-Pajamas Dream seemed to
be another setup for the inevitable storyline where Jason will investigate The
Real Cause of His Parents’ Death. As for
Sam, it was nice to see him with some core cast members for once, as Jason and
Andy come over to investigate the scene of last week’s (or, to use series
chronology, that night’s) shape-shifter shooting. It was nice to see Sam’s portion of the show
gain some momentum, as both Sam and Nora are shot at the episode’s end by some
sort of anti-shifter group wielding shotguns and wearing Obama masks. (Given the recent chaos that stemmed from Game of Thrones’ use of Bush masks, the
HBO executive have got to be scared shitless about how people will interpret
tonight’s ending. Yay controversy?) Oh,
and lest we forget, we got a Jesús appearance tonight! Yes, even though it was
his severed, mouth-sewn-up head, he still came by to provide some sort of sign
to Lafayette (and his mama!) to combat the brujo
demon that took over him last week.
Hopefully, this side plot will get some traction really soon… especially
since next week is the midpoint of the season.
If nothing else, tonight’s episode gave the season some
much-needed momentum… and I have high hopes for next week’s episode – partially
because it was written by True Blood
creator Alan Ball (creator-penned episodes are always a giveaway as to their
significance), and partially because it was aggressively played up by HBO’s
promo department after the end of tonight’s show. It won’t be too hard for next week to deliver
the best episode of the season so far – so let’s hope it does just that!
Random notes:
- I wonder how much Arlene’s CGI hand cost in order to cover up Andy’s junk. (The eerily precise hand movement was a dead giveaway.)
- Did I hear that Bill and Eric went to the Kwik-E-Mart? I hope they said hi to Apu for me. ;-)
- The Authority’s janitorial staff must be pretty experienced in blood-stain clean-up.
- We be talkin’ about transubstantiation up in the Authority tonight! YEAHHHHHHH!
- “Are we gonna talk about the fact that I puked on your shoes?” “NOPE.”
- “I have a headache, and I gotta pee something fierce!”
- In the words of Eller, look Ifrit up! F***ing Google it!
- How soon into next week’s episode will Doug bite the big one? I encourage you to place your bets now. (I’ll guess 12 minutes into the episode… although I won’t exclude a possibility of a cold-opening demise.)
- So, here’s the plan for the next several weeks: the True Blood review won’t go up until Monday night, likely, because I’ll likely be watching Breaking Bad immediately afterwards. And, since it’s very likely that I’ll be giving write-up priority to Breaking Bad, True Blood might have to suffer as a result. Perhaps I’ll be really ambitious and get a True Blood review up Sunday night yet (especially if it’s really, really good)… but again, I’ll make no promises.
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