Gosh! Okay, humans first. After Sam darkly tells Tara about leaving your various shapeshifted shapes behind and pretending not to be a jewel thief and whatever, she says goodbye to her mother -- who has shapeshifted into a ho -- and Sookie -- who could care less about most things -- and takes off out of town with a brand new haircut. Between Jason's confession and learning that everybody but Sookie is a magical creature, as far as she knows, it's probably best. I'm assuming she'll come back awesome, because there's nothing horrible left for them to do to her ass, but I say that every season.
Sam may or may not shoot his illiterate brother Tommy in the back for stealing from him, and there's still not a huge point to any of that. Ditto Terry, who has some kind of manic gratitude episode that is as unnerving as it is touching. Jesus finally admits to Lafayette that he's a witch, and can thus help Lala with his quickly multiplying shamanic problems by training him in the ways of the brujo. I guess my wish for Tara to become a witch will just never come true, but then I can't see her dealing with Lafayette's talking dolls, much less the visions (Sam's bloody rage hands, Rene at Arlene's throat), with quite the same aplomb.
Jason tries to stop the DEA bust at Hotshot, but of course ends up getting Calvin killed and Crystal abducted by Felton, so now he's suddenly the pack leader of the Hotshot panthers, which is sort of exactly what he's been trying to get to all season. He might not be good enough for the Bon Temps PD, but he's more than up to the challenge of caring for a pack of inbred hillbillies. Back at the station, embarrassed in front of his crush the DEA agents and without even Jason to take care of, Andy thinks about trying V.
And finally, Hoyt narrowly escapes an intervention by Maxine and Summer before proposing pretend marriage to Jessica and getting a house for them to live in, complete with haunting baby doll reminding them of everything else they can't have. (In case you missed the memo, Hoyt and Jessica are the actual gay couple of this show.) Rebuffed, Maxine and Summer buy some guns at the local Crazy Christian Gun Shoppe for what promises to be a delightful farce about ignorance and gunplay. They really are cute as pigs. (Even cuter? Alcide, who between Bill's bullshit and Eric's manipulation is starting to look as good as a boyfriend as he does just generally. Can't wait to see him and Debbie next year.)
All-Star Sookie electro-blasts those silver handcuffs, dragging Eric inside Fangtasia!, beating the tar and fangs out of Russell and dragging him in as well -- as requested by Eric's crazy/actual visions of Godric pleading for mercy -- and finally learns all the Things About Bill. Namely, that her blood isn't just tasty but addictive, Bill was sent by the Queen to procure her, including letting her get beat mostly to death by the Rattrays long ago, but is now bent on "protecting" her magic blood by... Killing everybody who knows what she is.
A list which includes Russell, whom Bill and Eric encase in cement and silver -- Eric once again fighting back against the better angel of Godric's spirit in an unhinged but still quite sad fashion -- Eric, whom Bill tosses into another cement grave, Pam, whom Bill tries to have murdered by Eric's pet assassin, and the Queen. With whom we leave him, levitating in his parlor with fangs bared for what seems like the fight of the century. So what that means is basically, Bill's that Gollumy cokehead that always obsesses on hiding the coke from everybody before the party starts, and for the same reasons.
Sookie realizes that -- real feelings or not, and obviously they are quite strong on both sides, which is what makes this compelling -- their relationship's been from jump a particularly nasty kind of joke, and breaks up with him for the sixteenth time today. As for Russell's mysterious plan to reincarnate Talbot, possibly using said fairy blood, I have no idea, but most interesting by far, is the wicked laughter and faerie glee on Sook's face when she puts Talbot down the disposal in front of Russell: That's what the Fae look like. They are hard and they are joyful and they are terrible and beautiful, and Sookie's just getting started. To that end, Sookie has a little talk with Gran's tombstone and accepts Claudine's invitation to their realm, vanishing completely out of real life and zapping to what we hope looks less like a children's theatre set and more like Poland, or Libya.
Maybe a bit slow, especially after the Labor Day break, but the climaxes have been hitting for the last three episodes, and there's something exciting about the fact that there are no more secrets left, basically for anybody. All about moving forward now! Into even more horrible sexy stuff, presumably.
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Russell's take on the whole Viking massacre thing is that King Daddy deserved to be ripped apart by drug-addicted werewolves, for some reason, and that they were just there looking for goats to snack on. Also, Eric's dad was apparently a "self-important greedy little putz," et cetera. Russell is delivering this information to Eric, you remember, while they are lying in the sun like Sookie and Tara, sans SPF, smoking, skin flaking off.
Maybe because he is dying, maybe because he is crazy, but for whatever reason, Eric sees Godric looking down at him with a sort of distinctly Roma Downey glow about him. I haven't the time nor really the inclination to unpack this. There's a plot reason that this is interesting, because what Godric is saying to Eric has an effect on him, but it's for opposite reasons. And I don't know how the grief for Godric and the grief for the Vikings is connected.
And I don't know but that we all have better angels that show us the opposite of ourselves. Or that Godric went to heaven, because God's not as dumb as his people. It's weird and seems complicated, in a way that things about this show rarely are, so I'm going to say it's the usual ambiguity, as to whether Godric is real or not, but that he is also a voice of Eric's better nature.
It is my belief that everybody, down in the infinite chaos of the stuff you're not looking at, has tried every possible recipe, combining everything with everything else in fractal iteration, before arriving at the future perfect self, and that we're mostly just getting pulled along by that person. That the things that happen to you aren't scars or determinism but just the obstacles between you and that best possible person. Who maybe sometimes looks like Godric, if you're Eric, because that's how much you loved him. Who probably hands you just a little bit more than you thought you could handle, so that you grow a little more all the time.
So Godric wants Eric to forgive the King, to end the hate, before they die. They're just laying there, dying at pretty much the same rate -- even though Russell is as old or older than Godric was, no? -- because "forgiveness is love," and "Love is all." Probably that sounds less ridiculous in Viking language, but given Eric's response -- a sort of gut-wrenched childish scream -- maybe not. And when Eric says, "I swore to my father," he's getting at the very heart of the vampire issue, because he's telling Godric, father and brother and everything else, that this doesn't come under his emotional jurisdiction.
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