("Those people." Racist.) Anyway, Franklin's home from doing whatever awful creepy shit he gets up to, and takes the tape off Tara's mouth -- but only after flirting about and taping a creepy bouquet to her praying hands. "Did you miss me?" he asks several times, knowing her mouth is taped closed. There is a quote "magical" thing about Tara that obsesses him, and makes him do these things, in addition to what I'm sure is his own native creepiness: Licks, rather than kissing. "We have so much ahead of us!" he says. Tara just stares, terrified and finally realizing just how far he's going to go with this.

(Last year a bridesmaid, this year a bride. But put it together with Sookie's whole marriage conundrum -- and Alcide's, and Russell/Talbot as the show's only married couple -- and Lord knows where we're going: Sam's family, Lorena, even Arlene.)

Sam puts Jessica to work hostessing, to start, and we talk about how she can't serve alcohol because she's not eighteen. Jessica points out that she'll never be eighteen, that she'd make a great waitress ("I used to be the best server at our church pancake night," she says, to put that in our heads for the next scene), and that she's "a vampire, not a fucking idiot." You don't really talk that way to Sam, Jessica. It hurts his feelings. She whisks the first group away and immediately there's Arlene with the bitching: Hostess does not a full-time Arlene's-load lifting employee make, also redheads make good tips, and the whole time Sam's all conciliatory and Arlene's all nuts, and then the hormones reverse themselves and she starts apologizing for being "emotional," but then remembers it's a secret and says she just doesn't want him getting railroaded.

"You let in every stray, Sam. I mean, first that old dog, and then your folks, and now Jessica? I mean, it's your business. It's not a charity." He tells her his parents are not a problem and no matter how adorably wee he is, he can take care of himself, but Terry points out that the Mickenses are still there -- grilling in the parking lot, matter of fact -- and Sam runs off to yell at their trashy asses some more. "One thing's for sure," Terry tells Arlene, with a sweet hand on her arm: "We'll never be as bad of parents as they are." Yeah, I can't see even Arlene doing... Whatever it is that they are doing.