After shooing all the well-wishers and Bill-haters out of her hospital room, Sookie and Bill have a heart-to-heart about how he tried to kill her and probably they should break up, so she can have a normal life and stop constantly being almost killed. It's pretty moving, actually. After this point, everything becomes a blur: The bad guys are coming to Sookie's house, and she doesn't want any help with that, because she is Sookie, and everybody on the show drops by to have that conversation with her before the bad guys actually show up.
Russell's party brings the Queen back to Jackson from New Orleans -- not sure if she's still in her birdcage -- and Talbot throws another wobbler about how Russell's always causing problems. Such as killing the Magister and bringing the Authority down on all their heads. Against Eric's not-very-believably uninterested protest, Russell sends a very angry Debbie to beat up (but not kill) Sookie, and then Eric pledges his allegiance with a whole kneeling/ring-kissing bunch of bullshit. Russell leaves Eric to babysit/fuck Talbot while he's in Bon Temps with the wolves. Right when you think you're going to have to watch them do it, Eric stakes Talbot!
Arlene has a terrible waking dream in which the dead serial killer Rene lays claim on her unborn son, then hires a witchy new waitress at Merlotte's named Holly. Adrift, Bill reconciles beautifully with daughter Jessica, and they train for the coming Russell attack while bonding over their parallel breakups with Sookie and Hoyt. Alcide heads home to clean up the various crazy messes Debbie is making, after promising to return and a pretty sweet moment in which Sookie and Alcide fully acknowledge that they should have fallen in love with each other instead of the various people that keep trying to murder them.
Jason decides that it's in Sookie's best interest for him to attack Bill in some way; Sookie calls him a racist. Still looking for some heroism to do, Jason's surprised by Crystal showing up wet at his house trying to throw the Hotshot boys off her scent. Apparently she told Fenton -- her fiancé from when she was four years of age -- that she wasn't into marrying him, and he beat the hell out of her. Her dad Calvin and Fenton come looking for her, and Tommy and Sam both smell something shifty or Were about them. Later, Jason goes to Hotshot to threaten the terrifying inbred meth dealers, and this sad crummy version of Calvin Norris takes notice of him for the first time. Also one of the Hotshot people is eating the guts of a deer in their kitchen, and hisses at Jason, and it's totally bizarre.
Tara spends some healing time with Lafayette, Sam and Sookie, the latter of which goes sour when she starts yelling at Sookie about Bill in a way where it's clear she's actually still pissed at herself for the Franklin stuff (which stuff now includes daydreams where she masturbates and he bites her), but completely over her suicidal ideation now that she's been tied up and threatened with being a VAMPIRE BRIDE. She's still kind of PTSD, but God knows how you're actually supposed to explain Franklin Mott.
Mama Mickens does the shit she does, once again, and once again nobody can explain why she's even with Joe Lee, but mostly it appears to be about sealing the deal w/r/t Tommy being Sam's ward. Sam tries to inspire him to become an awesome good man like Sam is, but Tommy thinks that's more than a little retarded. So he starts shit with Hoyt instead, which is like watching a hobbit and a giraffe in a slapfight. Speaking of scary mommies, Ruby Jean has escaped the mental hospital and come to warn Lafayette about the "vampires, witches, dogs and cats" that are coming for him. Lafayette calls Jesus to come get her, and they spend a strange evening together. In the morning, much is made of Lafayette's "power," and the dudes finally make out for real.
Eric sends the still-human Hadley to her cousin Sookie with a message: "Russell is coming for you. Don't trust Bill." Not sure what the second part is about, but the first part comes true. Russell, gorgeous Debbie and a couple of Weres show up at Sookie's house, but are met by Bill and Jessica, who take care of everybody but Debbie. She and Sookie have a total chick fight upstairs -- including a fairly insightful but totally mean point scored by Debbie about the men Sookie dates -- and Sookie ends up slashing her awesome face with some scissors and scaring her off with a shotgun. Meanwhile, Russell makes Bill choose between Sookie and Jessica, and he shockingly chooses his daughter: Russell sends her running, chased by a wolf, and beats up on Bill for awhile before psychically feeling Talbot get killed. He disappears back to Jackson, and everything is quiet.
...Well, for Bon Temps at least. What's really going on at the end of the night is Jessica killing the shit out of the Swayze werewolf and loving every minute of it, while Bill and Sookie run right back into each other's arms, and we end on an indelible tableau that's way more explosive and disturbing and sad and icky than anything with Lorena: Bill and Sookie, hate-fucking in the wreckage, with their hands around each other's necks. Which... Yeah, that's about the score right now. But kudos to the show for going there.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Well, it's Sunday so Sookie's doing her favorite thing, screamin', and Bill's doing his favorite thing, bein' appalled. In this case, he's appalled about Sookie screaming. She's screaming because he sort of killed her, and he knows that, but you know, he's a sensitive fellow. Everybody jumps and runs around and yells -- Tara because she hates vampires, Alcide because he has a chip about them too, and Jason because he killed somebody a while back -- and Sookie finally tells everybody to leave so she can discuss the whole getting murdered thing with her boyfriend. Alcide in particular gives Bill a bit of attitude before leaving, and then they discuss the situation like -- get this -- grownups.
Bill notes that her screaming probably means she's afraid of him, and can't really argue that she has the right to be. He swears he didn't mean it, which she knows, and that he was having a pretty bad day before that, which she also knows. "I don't know how to start forgiving you," she says, which pretty much covers it. Of course, Mr. Bill Compton and forgiveness go together like Hotshotters and heterozygous gene-pairings, so he broods powerfully about how he doesn't want to be forgiven, just punished and punished and punished.
Sookie's more about how they've only been dating for six weeks and in that time she has been fed vampire blood, had her own blood sucked a few times, attacked by vampires and werewolves in several instances, had to deal with Talbot, there was a demigoddess done fucked up her house, Debbie keeps calling her a bitch, Gran died real nasty in her kitchen, she cut off a dude's head with a shovel, rough sex in a graveyard, Eric is very confusing, there is some lesbian weirdness on occasion, watched a pocket gay self-immolate, brother started doing drugs and joined a couple of cults, and instead of getting like a second to catch her breath it was just more bullshit all the time. Maybe, Sookie suggests, just maybe this is not the life for her.
Sure, having a boyfriend whose thoughts you can't read worked out in the short term, but also and on the other hand, not knowing the person you're dating means sometimes getting stalked and/or murdered by that same fella. Bill responds that he wants her to have the finest things in life, like children and a tan, and they break up like grownups; once his arm is disconnected from her transfusion line he leaves, CGI blood tears dripping down his face. Maybe this way, we get out alive.
Meanwhile Sookie, always a champion of the ugly cry, forges ahead into new ugly-crying territory. There's no loneliness quite like hospital-gown loneliness.
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