True Blood Season 6 Episode 8: ‘Dead Meat’ Recap and Review

By Damon Martin – Editor/Lead Writer
Follow on Twitter @DamonMartin

Over the past two seasons of True Blood, I’ve been pretty unrelenting in my criticism of the show and the absurd path its traveled down after at one time being a unique, shining light in the science fiction/fantasy television landscape.

So it was to my surprise that last week’s episode was again a beacon in the night as an example how the creative team at True Blood can still get one right—fast forward to this week where the wheels fell off again, and the gains made just seven days ago were all for naught.

This week’s episode of True Blood titled “Dead Meat” was so poorly written, directed and executed that I barely wanted to recap or review the hour long mess I just witnessed, but alas we will dive right in and see where everything landed.

Eric Is a Vampire Atheist

At the end of last week we saw a brilliant performance by Alexander Skarsgard playing Eric as he wept and sobbed at the loss of his sister Nora after she was injected by the deadly Hep-V virus by the government at the vampire prison facility. As the new episode opened, Eric questions Bill’s omnipotence as he was unable to secure Warlow’s blood in time to help save Nora. When Bill reveals that it was Sookie who actually had Warlow hidden away, and he couldn’t convince her to give him up, Eric’s had enough.

Eric questions Bill’s authority and standing as the one true vampire god, for which he is levitated and tossed about like a lone sock left in an empty dryer. Bill even invokes the name of Eric’s maker Godric, in an attempt to see if the Viking really has a death wish or just no longer wants to live with immortality the same way the vampire who bred him felt just before he met the sun in season 2.

Eric bolts from Bill’s house looking for a solution, and happens upon the graveyard where Sookie has Warlow stashed in a fairy land hangout. Knowing he can’t find his own way in, Eric decides to use the trick Sookie showed him when they were able to kill Russell Edgington last season—drink enough fairy blood that he can see and enter any fairy lair. Luckily for Eric in the midst of his weeping and mourning over Nora, he sniffs out Andy’s daughter Adilyn, who was in the graveyard for a little midnight romp with Holly’s sons. After glamouring the boys into forgetting they were ever there or even that one of them go to second base with the young lady (to his credit Eric apologized for that memory zap), he went after Adilyn for a snack.

Adilyn turns up running away a few moments later with blood streaming down her neck as Andy finds her in the road. She’s alive and well, just short a little bit of blood, and she falls into her father’s arms apologizing for getting into trouble.

Eric has plans for the fairy blood he just drank, and it had nothing to do with the sweet, sweet taste this has for all vampires. More on that later….

Sookie’s Awful Decision Making Continues

It’s always great when television producers and showrunners make shows around a great female lead, who is powerful and poised and rarely if ever plays the victim. Let’s just say while Sookie Stackhouse—as a character who was originally created and written by a woman—is just this side of terrible when it comes to the choices she makes during True Blood.

From trusting the wrong people to continuously falling in bed with the wrong men..err..vampires, Sookie is not exactly the compass for which direction should be correct that anybody in their right mind should choose. So just two episodes after stripping down in a graveyard to have sex with the vampire/fairy (Warlow) that’s been hunting after her for 6000 years, she’s now considering joining him as a hybrid fanger after being posed with an interesting proposition from Bill.

As Bill explained last week, many of Sookie’s closest friends including Tara are currently being helped in the vamp camp about to meet the sun. The only way to save them is for Bill to give them some of Warlow’s blood so they would be able to withstand the daylight. She couldn’t act fast enough to save Nora (thus raising Eric’s ire) but she is still trying to do the right thing to help her friends.

When explaining this to Warlow, she promises that if he helps that no harm will come to him via Bill, but he wants something in exchange as well. If Warlow gives up his blood to Bill to help the other vampires, Sookie has to pledge herself to him forever (and when he means forever, Warlow is talking full on vampire-live-with-me-for-eternity forever).

Sookie explains this ultimatum to Bill, and why she’s struggling so much with the decision, which he replies with a big “I don’t care”, which pretty much seals the deal that these two lovers are finished once and for all. Sookie then seeks out some advice from Sam, while also professing that deep down inside she always felt that they’d end up together. He lashes out at her as well saying that she should have told him this years ago, you know during that entire time he was pining over her while she was banging vampire after vampire.

So with every friend gone and no one to serve up some good advice (this is where Lafayette would have come in handy), Sookie decides to give up her human life and become a vampire and spend forever with Warlow. She heads back to the cemetery with Bill, and they enter the fairy wonderland, but uh-oh Warlow is in bad shape after being sucked dry by none other than Eric.

Eric took Warlow’s blood to allow him to walk in the light as well, while leaving the 6000 year old vampire to die.

Sam, Alcide, New Daddy and Dead Terry

I’ve pretty much said all season that the writers at True Blood have really lost the ability to give Sam or Alcide an even moderately interesting storyline and while last week’s effort wasn’t bad, it was back to the awful conundrum of missteps this week.

Alcide confronts his pack after they kidnapped Nicole and her mother, and Rikki decides to challenge his leadership in a fight to the death. She knows full well she’s going to lose the fight, but doesn’t believe Alcide has the stones to finish her off. After a brief and brutal skirmish, Rikki’s proven right because Alcide just can’t put her down for good.

So he returns Nicole and her mother to Sam—and that’s when we find out that Nicole is pregnant with Sam’s baby! Sam professes his undying love to Nicole and asks her to stay with him, much to the protest of her mother (“Nicole is 23 and how old are you silver fox?” probably the only stand out line this week). Lest we forget, Sam and Nicole have known each other for a grand total of about 2 weeks maybe at this point, and not only are they in love (I guess Luna’s death didn’t leave Sam all that rattled huh?) but they are with child (she doesn’t know yet but Sam can smell it on her).

Back at Castle Bellefleur, Arlene is told by Lafayette that Terry took out a $2 million life insurance policy four days before he was killed, which solidified the fact that he knew he was going to die. Arlene doesn’t want the money, but Andy assures her that Terry, even in his most misguided moment, still wanted to provide for her and the kids.

At the funeral home we are witness to about 10 minutes of family squabbling between Arlene and Terry’s grandmother about how his funeral should proceed. I’m convinced that some of this is literally time filler by the producers, because they have absolutely nothing else to put in the space. It’s a vaporous effort with characters that just don’t connect any longer because the stories they are attached to are just terrible.

Jason is Tasty, the Telephone Game Backfires and Sarah Goes Psycho

Jason is in general population of the female vampire camp, where he has been claimed by a woman named Violet, who proceeds to tell him that she will feed from him and that he will be hers forever. In exchange, no one else in the camp will touch him, much less feed from him.

As the True Blood samples start being doled out to the prisoners, Jessica (who tells James after their sexual romp not to drink it because it’s poisoned), Tara, Pam and Willa all refuse to drink the newly revamped blood substitute. Jessica’s loose lips sink this secret ship, however, because after letting James in on the secret he shares it with none other than Reverend Steve Newlin, who is back in captivity after assisting the doctors with a few key pieces of information about his fellow vampires.

Newlin is put into a giant hamster wheel to run while they ask him why he’s not drinking the True Blood. Sarah puts the screws to him, and Steve squeals like a pig giving everybody up about knowing the new blood is tainted. So Steve, James, Jessica and the gang are all put into one giant, circular room just like in Bill’s vision from earlier this season where they will presumably meet the sun.

While Sarah is dealing with all this, the representative for True Blood, who made the deal with the governor earlier this season to get the line back into production shows up demanding answers about where this supply is going. She’s shot down about meeting the governor and then comes face to face with Sarah Newlin, who proceeds to explain that Governor Burrell isn’t available and she needs to go.

Well, she’s not having it so after a long and tedious fight between the two women, the True Blood rep starts running around in circles with Sarah behind trying to catch her (it was kind of like that scene in Get Him to the Greek when P. Diddy is chasing Russell Brand and Jonah Hill except that was supposed to be funny). The chase finally ends with the True Blood rep tripping and falling, while in the men’s general population holding facility, and Sarah shows up to smash her face into the grate allowing her blood to drip down and get the vamps all riled up to suck her dry.

The scene was so uncomfortably shot and comically produced it was seriously a comedy of errors. If there wasn’t already a moment when True Blood jumped the shark, this farce of a chase scene ending with Sarah becoming a killer certainly lands in that category.

All that was right with True Blood last week fell apart again with this episode. Not only was the story painfully slow, the sequences as witnessed by the one described above, were woefully done and the script was even worse. With only two episodes to go this season it’s not too hard to tell where this story is going to end, but how they get there remains to be seen.

If True Blood doesn’t start performing up to the standards they set last week, the show will continue to crash and burn with all of the episodes looking like this one.

So what say you True Blood fans? Are we being too harsh? Was the show really great this week and we missed it? Let us know in the comments below!