Love that girl. So we discuss how Sookie's psychic powers are always coming in and out whenever it's convenient for the plot, which is apparently now itself part of the plot, and they talk about how Sookie is magical, but only half-magical, and so maybe if she doesn't conserve her depleting luminescence, she'll stop being a magical type of faerie and just become a regular person like Jason?

For a show that prides itself on having everything be nature -- like the snake-fangs of the vampires or whatever -- we sure do get a pass on genetics, don't we? (Where in the world are the million werekittens of Jason Stackhouse? And can I have one? Just to like raise? It's not Jimbo, but I think it could be.)

Faerie: "Also there are other powers you have that you don't know about."
Sookie: "I prefer to be in as much danger as possible at all times, so I'll thank you to keep mum about that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must say goodbye to my cousin Hadley."

STAKE HOUSE

Kevin: "My shit is all fucked up and retarded and gay, as usual. Now, let's talk about this dead racist."
Mike Spencer: "Sorry I wasn't able to come over here immediately, but I was having sexual intercourse with a woman."
Kevin: "Nobody cares, Mike Spencer!"
Mike Spencer: "Did you already zip him into a bodybag? Damn. I was excited about seeing a crossbow bolt in somebody's chest. If only I were the town coroner and will be seeing that exact thing in like one second."

Kenya (!): "Sam Merlotte, why are you sniffing?"
Sam: "I am doing detective work! Look in this box. It smells like there are racist Obama masks in there."
Kenya: "Wouldya look at that."

Sam starts doing that puppy-wallow thing he did waaay back at the beginning of the show when Rene killed that one lady from Merlotte's, to get the scent of the people on him, and Kenya just stares and stares.

Sam, as embarrassing as ever: "Picking up five men, maybe six. I'm smelling ... bad diets ... and hate ... and envy."
Kenya, verbatim: "There something I need to know about you, Mr. Merlotte?"
Sam, hilariously terse: "No!"

First of all, Kenya! Second of all, that "envy" part really sticks out.

My favorite thing about last season was how everybody kept trying to die or turn into something else -- Tara, Tommy, everybody really -- because they couldn't handle who they were. And I was thinking about it today, how that would be a really lazy trope for a show about soups, this Sookie thing of "I don't want to be a thing anymore," except how we've seen Six Feet Under and we know that is Ball's deal: The twinned desires to be authentically ourselves, and at the same time authentically not ourselves. Eros & Thanatos. Everything that tears you apart. Everything that makes you proud, and makes you crawl. All of it, you.