In the second episode of season 7, True Blood rallies an angry mob, digs a mass grave, and teaches viewers what a foil is.
Some shows, in their final season, think it best to use their last episodes to tie up lose ends, answer lingering questions, and leave the viewer with an overall sense of fulfillment.
True Blood is not one of those shows. While the show still has so, so many unanswered issues, the writers have instead taken up the policy of "hey guys, I found this website called fanfiction.net and it's got some pretty good ideas."
Of course, I mean no offense to fanfiction writers, who have likely put as much if not more time and effort into their True Blood fanfictions than the writing staff. I trust fanfiction writers to at least try and create stories and plots that make sense. And so really, True Blood, you can't just take bits and pieces from everyone's fic and expect to make a show out of it. You just can't.
THAT WAS NOT A CHALLENGE I TAKE IT BACK
Last season, Eric took a break from destroying the vampire experimentation compound to heal a drained Jason Stackhouse with his blood. Keep in mind that was about a year ago, since True Blood only runs ten episodes every summer. But it's time to get out your list of “wait, who the fuck’s been drinking whom?” because on Sunday night, True Blood opened, without context, without warning, with the greatest gift of all: a Jason Stackhouse/Eric Northman romance scene.
How exciting it was, to sit on the couch and go, “Wait, is this happening? Is this happening in real time?” And it was, friends. True Blood didn’t just give us a romantic scene between two male characters. They gave us something straight out of the pages of an erotica novel, which, again, if the writers aren’t using fanfiction.net then they are definitely using the romance novel section.
And if you’re wondering why I keep saying “romantic scene” instead of “sex scene,” it’s because True Blood does sex scenes all the time, and those involve thrusting and making out and the implication of the action of sex. While sex is clearly where this dream sequence is headed (with Jason on top, in case you forgot this was obviously a fantasy) it is not what’s given to us, and so I don’t think it’s really earned the right to be called a ‘sex scene’ in a show like True Blood.
Quite frankly, I was even surprised that we got a male-on-male kiss. True Blood’s romances have been almost entirely heterosexual, and the same thing goes for their sex dreams. We’ve seen Sookie have a fantasy threesome with Bill and Eric, but Bill and Eric never indicated interest towards one another during the scene. And almost all of the homosexual fantasies, save for this one, have ended before the two male characters actually kiss.
Like I mentioned last week: for a show that loudly broadcasts that it is a metaphor for the LGBT community, True Blood certainly skimps on any kind of same-sex romance. And now they’ve thrown this in as what feels like a joke to viewers. I wish I could be more thrilled. I really do.
Do you know how much it pains me to have to look at this with a critical lens
Anyway, Jason wakes up in church slightly less horrified than he has been by his other V-induced gay sex dreams. So, progress, I guess?
Also, remember how Sookie offered to help the townspeople find the missing persons/kill the vampires/clean their garages last episode? Well turns out that their reaction to her, as well as Sookie’s ever-crumbling self esteem and an entire town labeling her a ‘slut’ really isn’t worth addressing, since by the time Jason wakes up the sermon is over and she’s outside talking to the cops. “Vampire slut,” the townspeople think as they walk by her, and I think “holy fuck, get over it already.”
So, apparently the police force in Bon Temps is down to three people, and the best lead they’ve got on dealing with these crazy vampires is Sookie saying “I found a body in the woods.” And I really expected everyone to just look at her and be like “so??” Because really, when isn’t there a body in the woods at this point? But apparently since the federal government has decided, like the writers and the viewers, “fuck Bon Temps,” they’re pretty much stuck going with the dead body lead.
“Ugh I know dead bodies are so boring gooood"
Then Reverend Daniels asks Sam to address the crowd, and he gets up on the steps of the church and he’s like “hey guys I know last night sucked but maybe we can go clean up my bar or something?” And the crowd is like “wait what about the vampires?” and I’d like to take a moment to address the problem that suspension of disbelief is starting to face in True Blood, where vampires have been out in the open for a good few years, here, and yet people are still a. afraid of them in the daytime and b. have no idea how to kill them. Meanwhile, the viewer is completely aware of both of these things, as well as the so-called ‘rules of vampirism’ in True Blood, so what we get is a very frustrating situation where the overall ignorance starts to become a hinderance to the plot. And not a hinderance in the sense of being an actual challenge. A hindrance in the sense that this is really stupid and shouldn’t be happening.
Shown: not a well-informed general public
All it takes is Sam telling the townspeople “hey vampires can’t come outside in the sunlight remember” and since everyone in this town is super easily convinced (remember this it will be important later) they decide that Sam’s making enough sense and that they should all go clean up Merlotte’s. It was not decided if they would sing a happy working song.
Adylin, who’s hair game is super on point, asks Andy if she can stay out with Holly’s sons. Andy relents because he’s new to this dad thing and doesn’t know how to say no to his babygirl, and there’s no way this can possibly go wrong at all.
“Bad things don’t happen to you when you’re this cute. Look. Look how cute I am.”
Back to the basement at Fangtasia. For one, we find out Ginger’s still alive for some reason, and we also find out that the vampires currently living in Fangtasia don’t seem to sleep during the day, for fear of their prisoners escaping on them. Cohesive thought in True Blood? This is not the show I signed up for. Take me back to church where everyone is yelling at Sam Merlotte.
Here’s the thing about our ‘bad guys,’ though: they’re just as helpless as the rest of the characters on this show, to a point. They are presented to us as a paradox: vampires who have to come to terms with the idea of mortality. The virus has infected all of them, and while they know they are going to die, they are also determined not to live like animals or starve to death. And again, this would be great if the show hadn’t decided that ultimately they are the bad guys, here. Which is a shame, because a few of these vampires actually seem really interesting, and if True Blood was trying to make an HIV/AIDS comparison with these sick vamps, actually giving them more than one dimension of character would be a good choice. Showing the vampires struggling with the disease is another. But True Blood has decided that the real victims here are the normal, heterosexual human beings, and that the vampires are the enemy. So you can see where the comparison no longer works.
Bit characters are becoming more appealing to me as the main characters spiral down the drain
We meet an older woman named Betty who speaks reason to the vampires, and of course Betty is a white, fairly well groomed woman with no discernible accent, and she used to be a teacher. For some reason, they decide to make Betty the “reaper,” which means she gets to pick who gets to come up from the basement to be eaten. She and Arlene share a moment, and then she picks some guy in the corner that we will never see again. After Betty leaves, Arlene and Holly realize that she taught their kids in school, and maybe they can get help from her? When other characters who aren’t Nicole express skepticism, Arlene says she did not spend seven seasons being a background character in a ridiculous show about vampires to die in the basement of a bar that hasn’t been important since season 3.
Truly it was a moving speech
Back to the woods! Sookie leads our team of everyone who is important to the plot minus Bill because it’s daytime to where she found the girl in the woods. Presumably, they had to step over dozens of other corpses to get to this dead girl, because the woods of Bon Temps are nothing if not strewn with corpses. Anyway, they all gather around her and they’re like “that’s a dead girl, alright,” and Jason gets her wallet out and pulls out what he thinks is her drivers license but is actually a Starbucks card.
This begs the question: are Starbucks still up and running right now and if not what’s the point of living
After finding her driver’s license, we discover that the girl’s name is Mary-Beth Grant, from Saint Elise, LI. Quite frankly, I’ve played found object games that require less tedious detective work. But everyone is like “oh hey maybe we should go check out St. Elise?” and Sam is like “But my bar...?” to which the group replies “Do you want to be a main character or not?” and that settles that.
“Get over it, Sam. It’s not like there’s an angry mob forming over at your bar, or anything.”
Also Sookie has a moment of staring at Mary-Beth and Alcide is like “Hey you good” and Sookie replies with “This is just weird for me because I’m blonde and she’s blonde and she’s kind of dressed like me and I think she’s supposed to be a foil for my character?” And Alcide replies with “Don’t be ridiculous she’s like, honey blonde and you’re more of a sandy blonde it’s totally different,” and it totally is.
Except no, it totally isn’t and we don’t even have the time to discuss why this is problematic right now
OKAY. Where are we in this episode? Ah, yes. In his only scene this week, Lafayette greets Auntie Lettie-Mae at his door, only to have Lettie-Mae being rambling about seeing Tara on the other side. Lafayette has the reaction we all had, which is “hell no, I’m not summoning Tara’s spirit,” but it turns out Lettie-Mae just wants some V so that she can speak to Tara again. Lafayette refuses, Lettie-Mae lashes out, they argue, and Lettie-Mae finally leaves after telling Lafayette that he’s going to hell. “This is it!” Lafayette replies, and it would’ve been a more powerful scene if everything else in this show was not going on the express train to crazytown.
Shown: not the train to crazytown
OKAY. We’re finally back to Merlotte’s, where Adylin and Wade are cleaning up vampire guts off the floor. Someone immediately steps into the puddle of blood and tracks it indoors, and surprise surprise it’s the not-mayor, who I’m sure has a name, but I’m not going to bother looking it up. “Hey, I’m talking loudly so everyone should listen to me” the not-mayor says and the citizens of Bon Temps are like “Yeah sure that makes sense.” Remember how I said the citizens of Bon Temps being easily persuaded was going to be important later? This is later. The citizens of Bon Temps are actually the worst.
jeanralphiotheworst.mp3
“Hey, why would you be working for Sam Merlotte like decent people when we can go totally batshit insane?” the not-mayor continues, and everyone is like “Not working? That sounds awesome!” Then the not-mayor announces that Sam is a dog, and instead of thinking that he’s just making a general insult, everyone immediately seems to know what the not-mayor is talking about? I’m having a hard time understanding thought capacity in Bon Temps, save for the fact that I don’t think there is any. Anyway, they all start talking about weapons, and the town comes to the realization that they’re all out of guns, to which I call bullshit. What kind of southern americana is this where they’re out of guns? I guarantee you that every person in that bar has at least one gun at home. It’s two o clock in the afternoon, people. Go home and get your guns. Oh, wait, no-they’re just going to trash the bar instead.
In the chaos, Adylin manages to overhear a stray thought, which tells her that there are still guns left somewhere in Bon Temps. Adylin quietly creeps away from the insanity, grabs Wade, and tells him they need to get out of here before things get really weird. Wade protests briefly when he realizes that Rocky isn’t coming with them, but Adylin points out that he’s already caught up in the mob and they’re not going to be able to sneak out if they try to grab Rocky. Wade concedes, and they leave.
We return to the basement of Fangtasia! This subplot really isn’t all that important to me, as these are side characters that have rarely been given much significance in the overall plot and it’s kind of hard to get attached to them now. In summary: Arlene and Holly convince Betty to help them out, and again I say “well this couldn’t possibly go wrong.”
ST. ALICE, HERE WE COME. Fun fact: St. Alice looks like every town in any zombie apocalypse game, ever. The streets are empty, there’s weird music playing, and the graffiti on the walls is exactly what you’d expect. Friends, we have arrived at the walker level, so check your ammo and grab an axe, or something.
Down the road they found doors that read ‘DON’T DEAD OPEN INSIDE’
Our team of main characters wander down the road a ways and find that vampires have drained and killed seemingly every resident of St. Alice, leaving them all in one fairly deep mass grave. Deciding that they don’t really feel like going through a pile of corpses for clues (an attitude which would not fly with Mystery Inc,) the team decides to head over to Mary-Beth’s house to see what they’ll find.
Over at the police station, Adylin and Wade show up to persuade Kenya to give them all the guns and ammo before the mob gets here. Kenya is originally like “wait how did you know about all the guns,” which is kind of a silly question to ask because, um, police station? So Kenya relents and starts giving Adylin and Wade the guns when, of course, the mob shows up.
Hi we’re the local angry mob and we were wondering if you’d like to join
One of the mob members, also a woman of color, tells Kenya that she doesn’t owe the Sheriff’s Department anything: she’s been working as Andy’s right hand for years, and Jason still got the deputy promotion over her. The mob member asks Kenya if she really thinks that doesn’t have to do with Kenya being a woman of color. Which, of course, is an excellent point, but has literally never been brought up before this moment and will never be brought up again. This is a perfectly rational thing for Kenya to be angry about, but to bring it up now, as they’re convincing her to join the mob and essentially turn her back on doing the right thing cheapens the sentiment and makes Kenya seem like she’s getting swept up into nonsense instead of actually caring about a legitimate issue. Politics: the True Blood way!
Kenya decides to side with the mob, and when she goes to handcuff Adylin, Adylin shoots her with a blast of fairy light. The mob totally freaks out and swarms Adylin and Wade, who calls out to his idiot brother for some help, please. Rocky does not come to their aid, and Jessica, currently in the Bellfleur attic, senses that Adylin is in trouble but is unable to do anything about it because it’s still daylight. Jessica calls Sookie, and we find out that Sookie somehow lost her phone in the woods, despite never having taken it out of her pocket even once.
Sookie’s phone has wisely decided that it no longer wants to be in True Blood
Anyway, the mob plays around with a bunch of guns and ammo at the police station and no one even dies or anything, so I’m not even going to bother talking about it in detail.
So, back to Mary-Beth’s house, where we find out she was living with her sister, her sister’s husband, and her sister’s baby. We have a few minutes of “oh look at these nice people they’re dead now,” and I think we’re supposed to feel bad but death has become so low-stakes in True Blood that I really don’t feel anything for them at all. We discover that the residents of the house were in the middle of having pizza when the vampires came, which makes me wonder how the vampires got into the house? If they were just calmly eating pizza? Like, sit inside and eat your pizza. Don’t go outside where the murder is happening. Why would you-You know what, forget it. Forget it, it’s too late now, anyway.
As it turns out, Jason can apparently tell how old pizza is by eating it, and hey, remember when Jason was supposed to turn into a werepanther? That would’ve been so cool! But he didn’t, and so now he and Andy wander around the house while Sookie and Alcide find Mary-Beth’s room. Mary-Beth has conveniently left her diary out on her nightstand, because we’re past the point of subtly, here. Subtly is as dead as Mary-Beth. So ignoring the fact that this is the most painfully obvious way to give the viewer exposition, Sookie reads Mary-Beth’s diary.
“Dear Diary, today will be different.”
We find out that Mary-Beth, in addition to being blonde and dressing like Sookie, also had a very deep and intense love affair with a vampire. What are the odds, right? Mary-Beth isn’t a particularly good writer, but her super sappy entries about being in true love with a vampire have Sookie flashbacking to her first night out with Bill, including a segment where she puts on a dress and then spins around in slow motion.
This is a real thing that happened in real time
So anyway after the flashback ends Alcide kind of stands there like “um, Sookie, are there any other parts to that diary?” And Sookie is like “oh you’re still here?” As it turns out, though, True Blood has only made it up to 2011, since the seasons always pick up in the same minute or so that the previous season left off, and even with the timeskip it actually hasn’t been that long. But guys, it’s still 2011. Megaupload is still around. Call Me Maybe hasn’t even come out yet! And now that the world is being ravaged by vampires, it’s possible that it never will. And on top of that tragedy, we find bloody fingerprints in the house and I think the baby’s dead. So, aside from the fact that we reiterated the fact that no one is capable of doing any kind of detective work, we didn’t really manage to accomplish anything, here. But also: no one died. So, go team?
Okay, we are so close to the end here, bear with me I’m gonna power through it. Lettie Mae burns her hand so that Willa will give her V, and when Willa is like “you need to go to the hospital” I’m like “are there even hospitals left?” Because really, hospitals are public buildings that vampires can probably just wander into, and they’re full of sick people that can’t get out of bed and also bags upon bags of human blood. I feel like hospitals are not doing so well right now. But anyway, Willa relents, and Lettie-Mae hallucinates that Tara is hanging from a cross with a snake wrapped around her. She speaks to Lettie-Mae in some kind of unintelligible language, and Lettie-Mae pleads for answers.
And really this is as good a tribute to Britney as any
In Alcide’s truck, Sookie worries about her similarities to Mary-Beth, and Alcide is kind enough to point out that this show isn’t about Mary-Beth, so who cares? He also tells Sookie that vampires going rabid and stuff like that isn’t her fault, which she needed to hear but is also something Alcide should’ve said to her last episode.
When they get back to Sookie’s place it’s nighttime, and Sookie tells Alcide to go take a shower and then decides she’s going to stroll through the graveyard and visit the Compton residence, located conveniently on the edge of said graveyard. Bill answers the door with the same hopefulness he’s been giving Sookie since season 3, and she asks if he can still sense when she’s in trouble. Bill makes a very sad face.
Specifically he makes this face
Andy discovers Jessica in the attic, and she tells him that they need to go find Adylin. Jessica hasn’t healed from where she bit her arm last night to give Adylin some of her blood because she hasn’t fed, but Andy has no idea and the two of them blindly run off to go save Adylin from the mob of angry villagers or whatever.
In France, Pam FINALLY finds Eric, only to discover that he’s infected. I’m not sure how he went from on fire to infected, but knowing True Blood it’s likely to be because of something ridiculous.
Eight episodes left!
N