Sookie’s friends throw a big party to celebrate life instead of mourning death, but like every Bon Temps gathering, the bad s–t starts happening before the final drink cup hits the floor…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
When ‘True Blood’ started seven seasons ago, the character of Sookie Stackhouse was always going to be the central focal point for every major storyline and considering the original books written by Charlaine Harris did the same it all made sense. Sookie was the innocent young waitress with a heart of gold who could also secretly read minds, which meant she was more than the average human but not quite supernatural either. She was like spiked lemonade. Season after season, Sookie’s actions were either superfluous or ridiculous, but she always found a way to come out on top.
In this final season, Sookie has been more hindrance than help especially when it came to the life and death of her beau Alcide, who was celebrated for the majority of this episode as the entire town of Bon Temps showed up at Castle Stackhouse for a big party (because the last one at Merlotte’s sure went well, right?). As much as everyone wants to be the shoulder for Sookie to cry on, lest we forget that it was her decision to draw out the infected vampires while offering herself up as bait is the reason why Alcide is dead? He was on a mission to find her during another one of her hair-brained schemes that even the villains from Scooby-Doo would stop and say ‘seriously?’.
Still for nearly 45 minutes of the latest episode, (No. 5 out of the last 10 in case you were counting) the focus remained on Sookie and her sad sob story about losing Alcide when she was the reason he was dead not to mention she confessed just before his passing that she didn’t love him nearly as much as he loved her anyways. Maybe I’m just cold hearted, but this entire pity party for a woman who helped lead everyone down this path in the first place seems a little stupid, but it’s not my show — although I think a great many ‘True Blood’ fans would say this stopped being ‘our’ show about three years ago.
So to get past the ‘let’s make Sookie feel better’ portion of the show we will start this week’s recap right there.
Life of the Party
Sookie wants nothing to do this with this raucous party being planned by Lafayette, James and Alcide’s father, but with a little convincing she comes around. Bill even comes calling with a bouquet of flowers after receiving his invite to the party. Once the crowd shows up, this episode turned into a bad ‘Bon Temps’ house party with nothing really that compelling happening all hour long.
Arlene and Keith lock eyes at one point and he says she’s the most beautiful woman he’s seen in 300 years, but she’s a little drunk so she avoids him for the time being. He does drop the necessary ‘see you in your dreams’ comment, but for the love of God can we avoid that trip to sleepy land especially after the completely pointless imagined romp between Jason and Eric earlier this season.
Jessica is still putting off James no matter how much he tries to connect with her, so after yet another denial he seeks comfort in the eyes and arms of his new best friend, Lafayette. You see his gay-dar leads him to believe that the boy who James went to mourn after he died in the war was also his lover and sure enough he confirms it. From there James and Lafayette kiss before a little against the car sex — and of course Jessica watches them and freaks out in horror at seeing her boyfriend with another person much less a man.
Jason rescinds James’ invitation at which point he goes to comfort Jessica before Lafayette bursts in to drop some seriously insightful knowledge — it was clear that she never loved James, she didn’t care much about him or even where he came from or how he became a vampire in the first place. These were all secrets James shared with Lafayette, but Jessica never bothered to ask. Lafayette then proceeds to lambaste Jessica for ignoring him, but even worst to look at him like he’s some second class citizen only worthy of a booty call. No, Lafayette deserves loves as much as anybody in this town and if James is the one to give it to him the Jessica just needs to let him go.
Well said, Lafayette, well said.
Don’t Mess with Texas
Following a week of killing infected vampires to reclaim his bar and take back Bon Temps, Eric’s mission to find and finish off Sarah Newlin is now priority No. 1, especially with time ticking away as the Hep-V virus courses through his veins, attacking more and more of his body with each passing day. He summons Willa to his side, but she’s through taking orders from Eric after he abandoned her in the time she needed him most after being turned into a vampire. The problem is he needs information on where her former almost stepmother might have slinked off to so as an exchange he releases Willa from his bond as her maker, and she divulges that not only does Sarah have some family nearby, but one of them is a vampire.
A quick trip to Dallas locates Sarah’s sister, but unlike the story she told when we first met that little ray of sunshine a few seasons ago it seems her sister was just a fang banger who fell in love with a vampire. He turned her and they lived happily ever after until he contracted Hep-V and melted like a lollipop on a hot summer’s day and now she’s infected as well just biding her time until meeting the true death. One look at Eric and she’s enchanted, but once she hears he’s going to kill Sarah, sister dear gives up everything she knows.
At the top of the list are mommy and daddy, who Sarah goes running to every time she’s in trouble. Sarah’s parents are not only Texas socialites, but climbing to the top of the Republican ladder for a gathering being held in coordination with former President George W. Bush and Ted Cruz. So Eric and Pam decide they have to infiltrate this party to have any chance of finding Sarah.
Pam is dressed immaculately from head to toe (she says she looks like ‘a Republi-cunt’), and she even managed to get Eric some new digs. Before he can get dressed, however, as he takes off his shirt it’s clear that the Hep-V has taken hold of him and as the virus spreads, the time is ticking away on how long he has left before he dies. Pam follows orders and makes him up, but when they arrive at the party there are no amount of words to describe Eric’s attire. A picture is the best way to do it justice:
Eric finds Sarah’s papa rather fast, but while Pam searches for the mother, Sarah finds her first. Sarah explains how the Yakuza are after here (the Yakanomo Corporation/The Crazy 88) and she needs her parents help to get out of harm’s way. Just then the evil Japanese corporation shows up and it’s the gala all over again except instead of witches controlling undead vampires, these gunmen just want Sarah Newlin and they’ll kill anyone who gets in their way.
Sarah’s parents are both killed but as she runs down a back corridor to escape, the director from this episode of ‘True Blood’ did everything but including Arnold Schwarzenegger to rip off the famous scene from ‘The Terminator 2’ where Sarah Conner is running away, but from around the corner steps the murderous robot who nearly killed her and her unborn son back in 1984. Replace Arnold with Eric and Sarah Newlin for Sarah Conner and that’s what you got on ‘True Blood’ Sunday night. Oh also, Eric isn’t there to save Sarah, he’s there to kill her.
Unfortunately, the Crazy 88 show up and Eric has a grudge with them as well after they killed his beloved Sylvie (you know the love of his life that we didn’t know about until two episodes ago). He kills all of them including a rather gruesome execution where someone loses a jaw, but it’s clear Sarah got away during the ruckus.
Love Is in the Air
Jessica is still berating herself on the inside for eating a few of Andy’s fairy daughters, but her inner loathing isn’t doing anything to help their father move past the tragedy. Andy tells Jessica that her constant moping and regret about the dead fairies has not allowed him to move on from the event either and she’s done enough at this point to prove she’s not only sorry, but never meant to do it in the first place. Andy’s way of moving on is to ask Holly to marry him, and in one of the more romantic moments on the show that didn’t involve a whole lot of clothes falling on the floor, he borrows Sookie and Jason’s grandmother’s wedding ring to propose and of course she says yes. This comes after Violet scoffs at the size of the ring (it was supposed to go to Jason’s future wife) and Jason passes along some advice to Adilyn and Rocky —
“A word to the wise, I don’t know if you two are fucking or not, but if you are, it’s going to have to stop right now.”
Following Jessica walking in on James and Lafayette doing the dirty, she sits to talk things through with Jason and it’s clear from the second these two end up in a room together what’s about to happen. She sobs, he consoles, she kisses him, he takes off his clothes. I’m not opposed to a Jason/Jessica pairing — in reality it appeared this was the pretty couple the makers of ‘True Blood’ wanted all along and chemistry wise, they worked really well together. That was a big part of the reason why it made little to no sense to introduce characters like James and Violet if for no other reason than to drive a wedge between these two, knowing they’d end up together once it was all said and done. I mean who can forget the Little Red Riding Hood outfit and the romp on Jason’s couch? For all the sex they have on ‘True Blood’ that still has to rate as one of the steamiest and most jaw dropping scenes in show history.
There’s only one problem with this grand reunion — Violet happens by the door and hears Jason and Jessica going at it. Now it was clear from the beginning that Violet wasn’t exactly the most stable of vampires, but something tells me she’s about to make Glenn Close in ‘Fatal Attraction’ seem like a totally reasonable woman. Thankfully Jason doesn’t have any pets or they would definitely be boiling on the stove when he got home. Somebody might want to check on Hoyt though because he was Jason’s lap dog for about four seasons.
Flash Crap
Flashbacks have been part of television history for decades. ‘Lost’ was created and predicated on the concept of flashing back to a character’s past while helping to carve out the future story for the show. Flashbacks are a television trope as much as difficult romances and unsolvable murders have been over the years. This season ‘True Blood’ has fallen in love with the flashback, although with varying degrees of success.
Last week’s look back at Eric and Pam’s journey to build Fangtasia was a fun romp and hilarious interlude during an otherwise serious episode. This week the flashbacks all involved Bill Compton as The Civil War was about to begin, and maybe it’s just me, but there was absolutely zero point to any of these scenes. Bill didn’t want to join the confederate army because he knew they would lose, and from there he started leading missions as part of the underground railroad. Is this all to make us remember what a swell guy Bill was in the pre-Billith days? Is this so fans will fall in love with him again so it’s okay to stick him with Sookie when the show comes to a close?
Whatever the reason is, these flashbacks have been miserable and a ten ton brick weighing down the show this season. Hopefully they either stop or lead towards a grand conclusion where we find out what it all meant. Otherwise, it’s like kidnapping Walt, telling us he was special and then never explaining what the hell it was that made his so damn special.
Over the Edge
Lettie May’s insane ravings about Tara came back again this week after she put Reverend Daniels to sleep with a pile of allergy pills crushed up in his chili. She goes to Sookie’s and does manage to say some nice words about Tara and Alcide for that matter before she decides to grab a butcher knife and stab Willa so she can get some blood. Lafayette pulls her out of there and Will is of course just fine. This story can only inevitably lead to Tara’s mystical return to the show and when that happens, I’ll celebrate that we only have five more episodes to go because we already got about three seasons more of that character than we needed.
Following yet another crazy event, Sam’s pregnant girlfriend Nicole says what any normal person would say after living in Bon Temps for a few months — you are all batshit crazy. She storms off, Sam goes after her. Her raving statement had no real placement in the show but at the same time at least the writers seem to be poking a little bit of fun at how over the top this series had gotten over the last few years. Maybe this was their way of expressing frustration or saying ‘yeah we know we turned this show to shit, but at least now we realize it’.
Outbreak
The final scene in tonight’s episode came after Bill’s last flashback to the 1860’s where he did something with his family and some name popped up from Bon Temps history while he dealt with a moral conundrum of the time (it’s a vague description because these Bill flashbacks have all been exactly the same). Back in present day, Bill removes his shirt and it seems the Hep-V virus has taken hold of him.
At that moment, I realized they will find a cure before season’s end. It was bad enough to tease that Eric Northman was going to die (I never believed it) but when you tack on the other major character, something tells me the Yakanomo corporation along with Sookie’s fairy blood will play some role in curing the vampires of the world before she’s stuck making the same decision about Bill and Eric she failed to do a couple of seasons back. What better way to define ‘True Blood’ than to make the finale a failed triangular clusterfuck of a story?
Seems rather appropriate.
Tune in for next week’s ‘True Blood’ as Eric and Pam deal with the fall out from the run in with the Yakanomo corporation and Bill’s symptoms with Hep-V are getting worse in a hurry.