True Blood ‘I Found You’ Recap: The Brutal Indifference of Life

Sookie and the gang find a once thriving town gutted by the infected vampires and a famous Norseman finally reappears after going missing for an episode….

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

For all the compliments laid upon the doorstep of ‘True Blood’ for a solid season opener last week, the first scene of the latest episode took me back to the last few years of this show completely losing the vision and direction that made it one of the best on TV for a little while.

With only 10 episodes and thus about 10 hours worth of time left to close the books on ‘True Blood’, the producers decided to open this episode titled ‘I Found You’ with a completely pointless scene where Jason Stackhouse and Eric Northman engage in a little sex romp after some rambunctious foreplay. At the end of the five minute long scene, Jason wakes up in a church pew just after Sookie’s speech about vampires closed us out of the last episode.

Now to make it clear, I have no problem with Jason and Eric getting it on. As a matter of fact, I applaud ‘True Blood’ for constantly carrying an open door policy for relationships of all types while actually showcasing some strong, gay leads like Lafayette, who continues to be a show favorite. The problem is they wasted five minutes of on a dream sequence that’s already been done several times before on this series, and the moment Jason and Eric appeared, I immediately knew what was going on and shook my head wondering what the point of the it was and why was it opening the show? The best version of this same scenario happened a few years back when Sam opened his hotel room door and invited Bill inside while he was on the hunt for his family. Bill asked for the shirt off of Sam’s back and as the two of them started to go into the shower together, a few alarms went off that maybe this was a dream but then again maybe not?

This time around it was obviously a dream and it’s one we’ve seen dozens of times already. The point has been made — you drink a vampire’s blood, you get sexual fantasies about them, move on. There were of course those enthralled by Jason and Eric’s nudity and from the male point of view we did get Sookie and Violet last episode, so turn about is only fair play. Thankfully, the episode was redeemed by a few other bright spots so let’s talk about those instead.

Bon Temps Horror Story

One thing ‘True Blood’ has never been is a horror show or a series that shares many tropes with the typical horror movie despite the fact that there are any number of supernatural beings holding up shop in this tiny little Louisiana town. Over the last few years, vampires — once a staple of the horror movie genre — have been made into lovers, governors, tween dramas and some even sparkle, but what they haven’t done much of lately is scare anybody. The latest episode of ‘True Blood’ brought a certain element of fear sorely missed by horror shows of this day and age (if there any true horror shows left, maybe ‘Penny Dreadful’ qualifies?).

Following their church meeting last week, Sookie, Sam, Andy, Alcide and Jason head off for answers as to where this roaming band of infected vamps is coming from and where they are going to with the loved ones they kidnapped a week ago. If you remember Sookie running across the random dead body on last week’s episode, she decides to lead everyone back to the deceased young lady because she’s not a local and maybe the vampires decided to feast on her while driving to Bon Temps and her on the side of the road.

Sure enough, once they investigate the body she’s revealed to be a 25-year old woman from St. Alice, a town just a hop, skip and a jump from Bon Temps and after a few calls are made to the sheriff and mayor with no response, the team decides to drive over there and see what’s happening.

Like the town that dreaded sundown, St. Alice was boarded up and abandoned with biblical messages drawn across building fronts, pleas for help scribbled on the streets and threats of violence painted on the outside of houses hoping to ward off the latest vampire attack. It’s clear none of it worked because they soon discover a hallowed pit in the middle of town with dozens of dead bodies stacked one on top of the other, rotting in the sun after being drained of their blood days earlier.

Sookie and the gang find the house where their victim lived, and while in the middle of searching for clues Jason gets a Scooby snack — just kidding — but he does chomp on some leftover pizza and determines this crime took place two days ago based on the texture of the rubbery cheese and crunchy crust. His pizza forensics (great line by Andy) gives them a lead on how long ago this massacre took place. Upstairs, Sookie finds the room where their victim lived and she discovers a diary that documents this young lady’s introduction and then infatuation with a local vampire she meets named Henry. Her description of fright and curiosity followed by feelings of passion and lust almost sounded like the exact moment she met Bill Compton for the first time.

Sookie wanders back in her mind to those first days meeting Bill at Merlotte’s and their first ‘date’ where he took her to Fangtasia to help in her investigation to find the person who murdered her waitress friend. Things are getting awkward when she comes back to reality because Alcide is standing there staring her down, but he doesn’t have mind reading powers and since he almost always carries a big, dumb look on his face , there’s no telling if he was onto her daydreaming or just thinking about the weights he’s going to lift when he gets home, bro.

The gang heads out of the ghost town in time to get home before dark when the vampires can start roaming the streets again, and back at the house, Sookie insists that Alcide gets a shower before laying down in bed. He complies and the moment he switches on the water, she’s out the door, across the graveyard and knocking on Bill’s door in his only appearance this episode (outside of her flashback sequence). She frantically asks if she were to do something stupid and get into trouble, could he still feel her from all their time together and blood they shared?

He smirks and fade to black.

‘True Blood’ has long since abandoned the books that were the source material for the show, so how Charlaine Harris ended her series plays no real part in who Sookie will end up with when this series comes to an end in eight weeks. It appears she’s being drawn back to Bill and maybe that’s the show’s way of bringing it all back to the beginning again when they were the super couple around Bon Temps. It’s not likely she’ll fall into Eric’s arms any time soon and Alcide was out before he really got in. The only dark horse is Sam, who was always the good guy with the heart of gold that Sookie tramped over on her way to every vampire in town, but who knows maybe the show runners want a happy ending with these two nestled up together. Stranger things have happened.

This entire scene played out like a classic 80’s horror film with a town abandoned, everybody dead and a group of strangers wandering in looking for answers. Sookie reading from the diary while the others strolled around the house searching for any signs of life felt very creepy, and while there was no great scare or even a random person still alive (ala Aliens), the few minutes spent in St. Alice gave ‘True Blood’ a scare movie feel if even for just for a single scene.

Trapped in a Basement

At Fangtasia, Holly, Arlene and Nicole are still hoping their number doesn’t get called as the Hep-V infected vampires stew around upstairs while constantly feasting on the victims chained up in the basement. The vampires are having a bit of dissention in the ranks after one of them chomped through the witless deputy last week without sharing so he’s now in charge of keeping the time clock to allow them to sleep between feedings. It seems the Hep-V infected vamps can only nap for 15 minutes at a time and then they eat. With this guy being so irresponsible and taking down an entire human for a snackpack, the head vampire turns the key of ‘reaper’ over to a sweet, little old school teacher named Betty Harris. She’s got the patience and self control to unlock a human and bring them upstairs for the feast without losing it and sucking down all the red stuff for herself.

When she wanders downstairs for the first time, she locks eyes with Arlene and it only takes her a few moments talking with Holly to remember this is Mrs. Harris — a school teacher from Bon Temps who worked with her daughter Lisa as well as Holly’s sons Rocky and Wade. The next time Betty comes downstairs, Arlene pleads with her to remember their interactions and asks to please find a way to free them from this prison. Of course, Betty is resistant but Arlene’s request comes with a little philosophical gem — we’re all going to die, but the infected vamps know they don’t have long for this world so why not make the most out of it before being squashed out of existence.

So Mrs. Harris complies and makes her move while the other vamps are sleeping, but to have enough strength to get everybody out she needs some blood so Arlene gives her a taste. Unfortunately, mid-suck, Mrs. Harris falls apart — literally — and bursts into a pile of hair and melted Jello much to the ladies’ shared horror.

Go Get Your Guns

To keep the town occupied while Bon Temps’ authorities were out looking for answers, Sam asked everybody to pitch in and clean up his old bar so when Arlene came back, she’d have a business to run again. Everybody seemed fine with this plan until Vince popped up along with his apocalypse crew to remind the town that they were all in mortal danger and they needed to arm themselves and stop supporting a dog who turns into their mayor. It takes about two seconds of Bush-cringing fear tactics to whip everybody into a frenzy and they are off to the races smashing tables, chairs and anything else they can get their hands on to make wooden stakes and other weaponry.

In the middle of everything, Adilyn hears the secretary for the Bon Temps’ police department think about the stash of guns at the police station so she grabs Wade and they are off to war the cops that a mob of townspeople are looking for weapons.

Once they arrive, Adilyn and Wade warn Kenya, who is left in charge while Andy and Jason are in St. Alice, but before the guns can be moved, the mob arrives. Vince and his cohorts (along with Mrs. Fortenberry) put one over on Kenya, convincing her that she’s been played as a fool for far too long by Sheriff Andy Bellefleur and deserves better treatment. So she abandons her post, arrests Adilyn and Wade and hands out the weapons like Halloween candy. With Adilyn in trouble, Jessica wakes up but it’s 1:30 in the afternoon and if she walks outside she’ll be a pile of ash before she makes it to the parking lot.

Thankfully, Andy comes home but he’s horrified to learn that Adilyn let Jessica in the house, and he thinks she had another fairy good snack. Jessica convinces him otherwise, and they are off to rescue his daughter from the gun-packing hillbilly Bon Temps militia.

Once an Addict Always an Addict

Lettie May decides to pay Lafayette a visit to see how her wayward nephew is doing in the wake of Tara’s death, but once she arrives it’s clear she’s in this visit for one thing and one thing only — she wants some vampire blood.

The taste she had the other night gave her visions that allowed her to see Tara after her death, and she’s convinced more of the funky stuff will take her back to the netherworld where her daughter is stuck while trying to float off to heaven. Lafayette tries to convince her otherwise, but she’s not having it.

So she decides to deep fry her hand and then wake up the sleeping vampire currently residing in the church basement to get some blood. Willa is resistant at first but then gives in and immediately Lettie May floats back off into the weird spirit world where she sees Tara on a cross covered in albino snakes whispering something inaudible to our ears. Yep, it took less than a single episode for Tara to reappear as if we should be shocked in the least. Tara has continued to be a weight around the neck of this show for the past six seasons, and just because it’s the last and she’s dead shouldn’t stop the series from finding ways to keep bringing her back and back and back again. I’m convinced when Bon Temps finally blows up and the entire town is wiped off the map, all that will be left are cockroaches and Tara.

You Found Me

The final scenes this week take us to France where Pam has finally tracked down her maker, and as she wanders into the dank room where he’s staying, two young girls run away saying that he refuses to drink from them. Pam’s eyes wash over Eric Northman, sitting hunkered down in a chair, his hair brown not blonde, and a dark string of purple veins cascading across his chest.

Eric is infected with the Hep-V virus and it seems his thousand years on Earth are coming to an end, and he’ll soon be reunited with Godric and Nora in that big blood pool in the sky.

What did you think Truebies — will Eric survive this season? Is Sookie destined to end up back with Bill? And will Alcide finally get a clue? Make sure to come back next week for the latest episode of ‘True Blood’ with a full recap after the night’s action is over.