Sooo gooooood. So here's what's going on: Sookie, um, runs around screaming and stomping her feet. That's per usual, but what's especially interesting is how, this season, she's so awesome doing it. The first thing that happens is Bill calls her and gives her the brush-off of all time. It's before the credits, so you know it's deep, but what you might not know is that it has the power of making you cry like a motherfucker.
Seriously, it's like five minutes in realtime, but watching it felt like every single cell of your skin (the largest organ) being peeled offa you slow-motionly. I didn't think it was possible to feel sorry for either of them, much less mourn their relationship, but somewhere between Bill saying they could never be together and he no longer gave a vampire hump about her -- and her crumpled Claire Danes no-vanity cryface -- I sort of fucking lost it. Turns out the only thing worse than the two of them being together is them breaking up. Like watching your Special Olympics brother drop the top scoop of his ice cream cone on a motherfucking hot sidewalk. Devastating.
So of course Sookie finds immediate parallels with hot fucking Alcide, whose ex also has dumped him in an ice-cream kinda way, and she's decided that the only way "he" can get closure is by going to her engagement ceremony to the ineffable (but yet so effable) hotness of Cooter. Which is interesting only because it turns out that, since well before WWII, Russell has been setting himself up as pretty much Actual Jesus for the whole Op Werwolf/FUCrew, down to letting them drink his blood which was shed for them, and so forth. It all ends in a bloody wolf-out orgy, which Sookie exits (not that she would ever leave a dangerous situation on her own) when the wolfing-out Alcide tells her to.
(But only after she's explained to the sort of brilliantly wonderful Debbie-the-ex exactly what's going on with Alcide, emotionally. This is important, and I'm sorry but it is, only because this show has managed to take the second-most repellent character in the books, Debbie, and make her awesome, while also taking Alcide's sister Janice -- in the books, a sort of classy nonentity -- and additionallying her into a similarly-amazing, and -beautiful werewolf version of Adriana La Cerva. Two birds, one episode. I now ♥ werewolves. I knew the second they created and cast Coot that we would be in for a treat, but these bitches? So much more awesome than you'd think, being bitches and all. Soooo ready to hate her, so unprepared by how much I loved her. We'll see.)
(And yeah, I am well aware that I'm a sucka for the character of Alcide, but welcome to Living-Color, For-Real Alcide because DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT? I'm all like Eric who? Sam what? Pam for real? Jason verrrrrrrrb? "There's this thing called shirts and pants, we gotta get rid of that." "Tell Tom Ford thanks for that movie but he is no longer required. We got pants and shirts crying out for obsolescence.")
Meanwhile, Russell has been dicking Bill around tantalizingly nearby, making him glamour a stripper from pretty much next door in order for him, Lorena and Bill to feed to the death, without ever knowing Sookie's minutes away, getting as bored by werewolves as we are. Needless to say, Lorena is fine after last week, and apparently back in Russell's good graces. Furtherly needless to say, what a fine week in which Talbot's presence is reduced to some hot pecs peeking out of his gaywad kimono. My prediction: Talbot and Lorena will end up by the end of this season being not only my but possibly everybody's favorite characters. In the meantime, though, go suck a duck. You guys are the worst.
Other than painstakingly outlining the very obvious parallels between herself and the as usual incredibly hot Alcide, Sookie mostly runs around yelling. As usual. But also being totally awesome the entire time, which is also as usual this season. Bill also, besides mesmerizing the ugly hooker and kind of sympathizing with her and eventually eating the entrails, does little else. Well, unless you count totally selling out Queen Sophie-Anne about selling V, which to me felt like the worst thing. (Including last week. And this week. It's just fucking rude.) And all the bullshit he has yet to unleash. Either way, his motive is clear: Protect Sookie if Russell's takeover doesn’t work, and do what he can to help that takeover, in the off chance that he can be with Sookie after all. (Like she would want him after all this nonsense!)
Jason is taking masculinity like he takes everything: Like it's a workbook he needs to finish before the end of the period. In this case, it involves not only eclipsing Andy's weird covetous obsession with his own personal junk (from the first season) but also recapitulating that same mess on some new quarterback. Who, hate to say it, actually is twice as hot as Jason. But don't you worry, because he has a new love interest in play...
Who right now is having trouble because her dad, Cal Norris -- a.k.a. my favorite man in the books besides Alcide -- is too busy getting pathetically limited as regards Lafayette, who is trying to sell the meth-town of Hotshot some delicious V that they can't afford. Cal tries to get rid of the blood-selling homo, in a less than elegant way, resulting in Eric flitting through the skies and stopping them mid-gaybash.
What both of them are secretly hoping turns into some awesome Renfield vehicular sex turns into a bunch of nothing when Eric gets the horrifying news that the Magister is raiding Fangtasia! looking for V, and ends up torturing our beloved Pam. Until she names Bill Compton as the culprit seller, with which Eric goes along, I think mostly because he loves Pam, so wait for that to get weird.
Speaking of weird, Franklin Mott the Britvamp gets a glamoured Tara to admit that Sookie is magic, Bill is whatever -- basically the entire first two seasons -- before tying her to the toilet, which was gross, but not as gross as when he makes her call Sookie and say the puppet words that are coming out of his puppet mouth. From a science fiction perspective, this scene is awesome. From the perspective of a lady, or anybody with an abusive boyfriend ever, it's pretty much the worst. He then gets her in the car and takes her to Jackson, MS, where Sookie's story is going down.
It seems pretty clear that we're going to burn (thankfully) through this idea -- Franklin's mind control recapitulates Maryann's, down to the bouquet of flowers he literally duct-tapes into her hands at one point -- as quickly as possible before Tara fucking gets real. I don't want her to stake him in the Buffy way, where it's all gasps and clouds: I want her to fucking cut him limb from limb, painstakingly, in a way that takes all night. Given that we've gotten this gross in this short a time, I feel like that's gotta happen. Or else she'll flip it on him by relaxing into the sheer comfort of his bullshit. Either way: How many times you gotta be sucked into marrying or bridesmaiding for the Devil before you actually look at yourself?
He wants to turn her and make her his vampire bride at Russell's house -- and I realize this recaplet is long, but it's not TV it's HBO -- which is pretty much the dark side of Bill's bullshitty proposal last season. Not loving the idea that Tara only plays out the opposing side of Sookie's relationships, but check it: She has more reason than anybody on this show to hate vampires. Even more than Bud and Arlene, whose lives have been substantially changed by the Great Revelation two months ago.
Which is especially funny, considering Arlene's Psycho Baby still hasn't come to light, and -- for this week at least, knowing her racist ass -- is more of a problem for her than Sam's new waitress, Jessica. Less delightful and easygoing, for old Sam, is the entirety of his family, who are living in a fucking trailer in the parking lot, as one might have expected. Total pedo Joe Lee and God Knows What Melinda interest Sam less than old horribly Tommy, though, whom Sam invites to Bon Temps as a sort of living experiment in what would have happened if either of them had had parents instead of abandoners and/or molesters. Half and a half men, if you will.
And yet still I still feel like I'm leaving like 30 things out. Welcome to this show, okay.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Sookie just loves taking care of people, doesn't she? I'm sure that's all it is. I'm sure taking three hours to sponge-bath every inch of Alcide's gigantic gorgeous frame is just that Southern caregiver Gran-thing in action. No other reason, no sir. She explains to him a bunch of things he already knows, like how that Were he took down last week in that shamefully stupid-looking were-bar was hopped up on V. (Says: "Bill's, in fact, so I know it's strong." Means: "I have a boyfriend! A vampire one! I suck his blood! We have sexual intercourse! You are not basically naked right now!")
Alcide is grossed out by the thought of werewolves doing V, and they talk about how mostly it's just the FUCrew that's into it, which is a problem for Alcide less than the Bill factor (not that Sookie would understand that even if you drew her a diagram) and more because his ex-fiancée Debbie is involved with them. Taking slightly more notice of the mountainous expanse of him, Sookie pries a little about Debbie, a little bit because Alcide is hot but mostly because check it out: Her fiancé disappeared too! So Alcide's relationship concerns have merit!
Debbie moved out a month ago, in what I'm sure was one of those crushing scenes, and he still hasn't gotten new furniture -- a "joke" Sookie can't wait to make -- because he's too busy brooding and I assume working out on what must be quite a punishing schedule. He still gets Debbie news occasionally, from his awesome sister Janice, who owns the place where Debbie gets her hair did. Looking at Janice and Debbie, as we'll be doing later, you wouldn't be amiss thinking that maybe Janice should find a new job. Or maybe work on the monster movies.
Sookie sort of loses track of herself for a second, because of Alcide being so sad and did you know she's so sad and how they are sad together with minimal clothes on, and Alcide looks back at her like, "Trailing your hand around my musculature is not very Florence Nightingale" and she's like, "Um?"
I always thought that the opposite of sexy girl-shaped cars and things should be met by the equal and opposite sexy boy-shaped things, and that this is where SUV's for ladies came from. The Tank Girl approach. So if Pam, let's say, is a Corvette, and boys aren't that weird for putting brassieres on their cars just to make sure you get it, then all women and certain fellas should be driving Range Rovers, and this is because of things like: Alcide.
Alcide looks at her and how pretty she is and how they both lost their affianced and he thinks about kissing her a little bit with his big sad eyes and then the phone rings and she ducks her head like somebody's chucking things at it, things like giant muscles with giant carbon footprints, and runs to answer. This is when things get awful.
Bill takes a while to speak once she answers, and their song starts playing. She asks if he's okay, what with the werewolves and all, and Lorena giggles on the bed, head right-side-front again and looking luxe. He assures Sookie nobody "has him" and that he's just giving up life in Louisiana and leaving Sookie for real. "Shut the fuck up!" says Sookie, because she is awesome this year.
Sookie points out that he just proposed to her like five minutes ago, and he thanks her for not saying yes, and she filibusters to the logical place, that somebody's there listening and he is a hostage or whatever, which gives him entrée to say the meanest thing he can say -- pretty much exactly what he did to Lorena last week, minus the head-grabbing neck-twisting hatefuck -- which is: "Lorena, actually. To whom I have just made love... We fucked like only two vampires can. I didn't hold back for fear of hurting her, like I do with you."
Which is awful on many levels, because first of all you're with the ex, second of all there's no room for maybe because he just said they fucked, third of all there's the racial part of it where Lorena is "real" and Sookie is just this naïve girl who thought she was In On It, fourth of all because of that Edward Cullen thing of fucking you until you are bruised and your bones are broken and how she kind of was always on the edge of that, and fifth -- and most of all -- because it means the whole time they were fucking and it was so romantic and he was knitting her body back together and killing her uncle and wiping her clean and saying he loved her, over and over, and taking it slow, and teaching her how he liked to be touched, and teaching both of them how she liked to be touched, and all the different maps and stories they built up together, as though neither of them had ever known another soul, in fact he was: Never actually there.
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