Okay, so the BIG SPOILER THING is that the body in Andy Bellefleur's car is not, in fact, Lafayette: it's Miss Jeanette. This causes a little bit of a wobbler for Tara, who ends up in Andy's crazy boozy police station clutches before getting stuck in a tug-of-war between her horrible trainwreck of a mother and mysterious Maryann Forrester that results in one of the most deliciously brutal verbal takedowns captured on film since Julia Sugarbaker shuttered her interior design firm for good. On a completely unrelated note, the mystery creature that killed My Beautiful Jeanette scratched the shit out of her back, paralyzing her and removing her heart while she was still alive.
Sookie and Bill's relationship suffers two major mindblowing moments. First, Sookie finally meets Jessica after a hilarious series of scenes in which Bill is appalled by his new daughter in a variety of ways. Watch Bill teach Jessica to recycle! Watch Bill teach Jessica to choke down TruBlood instead of eating people! Watch his mind boggle! I must say I've never liked Bill as much as I do right now; even the overcooked dialogue between the two unceasingly verbal lovers has become delightfully campy. They break up at least three times, and then get back together with these amazing speeches about what you awaken in me and "you are my miracle" and things of this nature. It's amazing; it's enough to make you put on your whitest dress and go running around graveyards barefoot.
After the speeches, though, it's time for the makeup sex, which I suggest you not watch with, say, your in-laws, because it kind of goes into Tell Me You Love Me territory. Like at one point Sookie gets blood from her neck in her own mouth, I don't know what you would call that or if it's really even analogical to anything but it sure is uncomfortable.
Other hand, seeing Sookie turn Jessica's frown upside down, and the lost duckling stepdaughter love she immediately inspires, is pretty beautiful. I'm sure Sookie will manage to make it all about her in the long run, which usually calms her down immensely, but it's so sweet to see her identify and care for Jessica, and even better to watch Jessica roll over for it. That's going to suck when it falls apart, I guess.
The other thing -- which actually is all about her -- is a bit more of a bloodbath. Sookie also learns that Bill awesomely took care of Uncle Bartlett and threw him in the creek. So basically, Sookie finds out in one day two secrets that are directly related to her, that Bill's been keeping for a few weeks at least. Turns out dating the one living person on Earth whose mind you can't read has a downside, of course, but I think Sookie's more freaked out by the fact that her boyfriend is a gun she can aim at people, because what happens when she has a bad day? Because, I don't know if you've noticed this, but Sookie Stackhouse has the occasional bad day.
Shapeshiftin' Sam Merlotte remembers when he first met Maryann: he was running around as a shoplifting teenager and occasional puppy, and accidentally stole some important Jamiroquai statue that comes to us out of antiquity. Maryann responded by going cougar on his ass, and then doing that fucked-up vibrating thing mid-coitus, which caused him to feel spooked. He stole a bunch of astonishingly easy-to-locate cash and got the heck out of there, and has been afraid of her ever since. That vibing thing really is troubling, it's true.
In the present day Sammy tells off Sookie for jerking him around, and hires new waitress Daphne, while Terry Bellefleur and Rene/Drew's ex Arlene continue to be into each other in their separate post-traumatic ways. Maryann explains to Sam that she doesn't want his money, and isn't even really in town to dick with him: she's after Tara for her own reasons, which would seem to do with Tara kissing Eggs. This conversation is remarkable because for some reason Maryann decides to have it while replicating Pat Benatar's sideways '80s hooker look from the "Love Is A Battlefield" video. Maybe she is planning on shaking her shoulders at him if he does not relent. Or like vibrating them.
Good old Jason Stackhouse has managed to find his way right into the fang-bashing Fellowship Of The Sun, where his confused values continue to get twisted around and around while he cozies up to the leaders of the movement, last season's occasional talking head Steve Newlin and his terrifying wife. The blood money Bartlett left Sookie pays for him to go off to Texas with them, for freaky Jesus boot camp and reconciliation with Vamp Eddie, Strangler Rene and Witchy Amy's deaths, but honestly I don't know how you could leave Hoyt behind.
Which leaves, if you've been paying attention, two folks we love: not-so-dead Lafayette and the inscrutable Vampire Sheriff Eric. The former's alive, for now, and the latter is terrifying. Remember when the rednecks burned down that nest of poseurs and there was just the cute one Royce that was left, and then Eric said he was going to get it one of these days? Today is that day. For dealing V and for losing track of Eddie, Lafayette's been locked up in the Fangtasia! cellar for at least two weeks. He talks with his former AIDS-burger enemy in the last moments before Eric comes down the stairs and ... Um, eats Royce's kidneys out of his body and then tears off his arm and throws his body parts around and groans and grunts and drools blood. It's rather upsetting, on a level with the fucking we addressed earlier, but with guts and screaming instead. It's like what if that movie Saw were awesome and addressed the social ill of homophobia before they started pulling the people's nuts out their eyesockets. I swear, Eric is such a vampire sometimes! Even Lafayette's like, "This is everybody's favorite character? Meh, I still don't see it." Oh but you will, Lady. And then you'll write him the same pass we all do. But for real: thrilled to see you, and happy I didn't get spoiled about it.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Sam's got the trashbag full of money in his hands and I think he's going to just take off, speeding out the back of the bar after running into Maryann, but then he hears Tara and Sookie screaming about the body in Andy's car, so he tosses the money in his truck and comes running around to the front.
Andy's still drunk and moving kind of slow, and Tara starts screaming at him for cutting people up and putting them in his car, and Sam's like, "Seriously, WTF happened here" and Andy tells everybody to chill so he can check on the body, and Sam -- who's been too busy freaking out to know that Andy is the entire Martha Stewart Collection's worth of sheets to the wind, thanks to sympathetic Tara buying him drinks -- tells the screaming ladies to let Andy handle it, and there's a sort of collective patting between the two women and Sam that goes on for awhile. "Sam, call the cops!" shouts Tara, and Andy yells that he is the cops, and Tara begs God to make sure it's not Lafayette in the car, but it totally is.
Except it's not. Sookie grabs Sam's hand and Andy says that there's no pulse, because there's no heart, because it was ripped out of the victim, who screamed in terror as it was pulled out, and the fear is still painted across her face: Miss Jeanette. Tara starts screaming again.
Panic is a word with a lovely definition: "a sudden fear in lonely places." Shepherds caught under a full moon would hear a sound, or get a feeling, under that vast expansive sky, and their loneliness would become so exquisite, their smallness so apparent, that they would feel a sudden fear, and know the God was passing close to them. The other side of ecstasy (ex + stasis, "to be or stand outside oneself, a removal to elsewhere"), then, is panic. Not that far off from each other; both direct connection to the divine. Both responses to repression; both forms of abandon.
Later Sookie's in the usual murder-victim hoodie they put on you when you're at a murder site, and Kenya's there worrying about everybody, and Sookie can't fight off the echoes of Tara worrying about how she knew Miss Jeanette, that she went to see Miss Jeanette in the woods, that Miss Jeanette saved her. And later, when Miss Jeanette was revealed to be Nancy Levoir, disappointment and drugstore employee, and Tara shoved her and screamed at her. Kenya asks if she's ever seen the woman before, good instincts, and Tara swears she hasn't while Sookie stares.
"Careful here, son. Her leg will break off like a chicken wing if you hold her like that," says Mike the Coroner, with his usual charming creepiness. I like having him in the background of every death, putting it into perspective. How we all become meat when the lights go out of us. Andy whines that he just got his car detailed; Sookie's lips quiver with everybody else's thoughts. Bud arrives, and Andy drunkenly gives him just the facts: "Body's in full rigor mortis, Bud, which is consistent with the vic being killed elsewhere then brought here into the scene sometime in the past four hours, since that's when I... Drove over here." Andy's sister Portia honks from the parking lot, and Bud tells him to call it a night. When Andy whines, Bud reminds him that he's "overworked," not to mention drunk, and stomping Andy can only disagree with half of that statement.
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