So what have we learned? Anything you repress, it's going to come fuck you up in a resentful way when you least expect it. Nothing new there. But one of the neat things about this show is that it goes both ways: Whatever darkness we have in our consciousness, there's a compensatory unconscious brightness. That's always left out of the conversation because we're so used to being afraid of how we're going to fuck ourselves up unexpectedly. But if you think about how much negative stuff -- pain, fear, self-hatred, regret -- we carry around in our daytime selves, does it not bring you comfort to know that just under the surface there's something shining, just as bright?

The thing about Shadow -- shadow content, self-sabotage, whatever -- is that it bends the light in such a way that everything seems asymmetrical: What's under the surface, scaring you, surfacing in little moments and dreams, seems so much larger than the toys you bring out and play with all day long, even the ones that hurt. And it can make it seem like you're never going to fix all the problems, which generally knits them all into one big problem that is your life, which continues until you look at them, or they force you to look at them. But if you can remember that there's gold under there -- that no matter how many times Dark Godric shows up that's still not the truth about Godric, or the story of Eric, or you or me; that the crimes we do ourselves and survive in this world are more important than the imaginary crimes of people inside the stories that speak to us -- it gets a lot less scary to look: There is an asymmetry, for sure, but it's one angled sharply in our favor. I promise you that.

Next week: Who knows, man. It's the halfway point, which generally means everything flips over in a major way for the season, while still being about the Act Two things: Jason and Jessica (and Hoyt), Tara and Naomi (and Toni), Sookie and Eric (and Bill), Sam and Tommy (and Maxine), Arlene and Terry (and Satan), Lafayette and Jesus (and Abuelo), Alcide and Debbie (and Luna), Marnie and Bill (and Antonia), etc. If this next one wasn't going to kick ass -- which it will, it's Raelle Tucker's first script of the season -- it would only mean the one afterward would be even crazier. As it is, we get Bill tossing Eric all around and Debbie causing trouble for Alcide, two good things. And many more!