Daphne goes, "It's the end of the road," which is also imprecise and just meaningless enough to be kind of scary, and then she ceremoniously puts the bulls-head mask over Maryann's head, and Karl produces a ritual knife on a tray, and Maryann begins to chant her invocation, and to vibrate and to cut through the air the way she does, and Sam screaming his little head off, and it's all very Wicker Man.

Not that shitty misogynist one with Nicolas Cage and the bees, the real one. The one where the repressed, sexist Christian investigates a fertility cult, spends the entire time getting tempted and flirting with danger and generally being a prick, and eventually gets what's coming to him, essentially, for fucking with Maryann. Or as Alan Ball says, Six Feet Under was "about" repression, True Blood is "about" abandon. I would say, defining the limits and boundaries and outline of abandon.

More than anything, this episode reminds me of "To Love Is To Bury," thematically, because we've reached that halfway point, in the season, where things are breaking open -- last year it was Gran's funeral, which pretty much rewrote the entire direction of things -- and this time it's not about grieving and inaction and eating pie, but about action and passion and giving in, one way or the other. So another name for Maryann is Werewolf Boyfriend, if you look at it from that angle. It can't be Vampire Boyfriend all the time. Werewolf Boyfriend is just as scary, if you do it right. And can be just as beautiful.

Discuss this episode in our forums, then see who vlogger Sean Crespo thinks Bill will hook up with next in No Prior Knowledge!