That was kind of horrible, I think. It was boring and embarrassing and weird a whole lot of the time. It was also the eighth episode, end of Act II, so I'm not going to throw down about it, but it was not very enjoyable on a viewership level, for me.

One nice thing is Jason's continuing sweetness toward Sookie, when he talks her out of "depleting her luminescence" by virtue of appealing to the fact that she is being dumb and that having any powers -- even weirdly troubled ones -- is still better than having no powers. So they run back to Faerieland to find out more about the powers, but instead of having a conversation about that, Claude and his sisters drag them out to the bridge where their parents die for the first of the episode's several séances. In so doing, Sookie learns that the floppy-hatted vamp (who bears a resemblance to Bill Compton, for what it's worth) is named "Warlow" I think? And now she's hallucinating him? I think the faeries are sketch as hell and I think they are incepting Sookie to use her as a weapon to clean up the fallen world so they can come back. That's what I think.

The other one million years of the episode had to do with werewolves, so that was fascinating. It seems more and more likely that Martha will end up Packmaster and it's like, on the one hand, that's awesome, but on the other hand, who gives a shit. Alcide has sex with Rikki for a million years and fights with JD for a million years and everybody makes wolf noises and it's unbelievably dorky, and then Alcide quits the Pack, I think.

Over on the Hate Group side, there was some good stuff. A fake fangbanger lures Jessica into a trap -- of James Bondian convenient complexity, of course -- so that Hoyt can have the opportunity to kill her. Surprisingly, he does not. They do kill one of the boys, and Hoyt runs off for help. Meanwhile, Sam has intimidated her location out of the guy he tackled in the hospital, so it's actually Sam and Andy that end up saving her... Just as a lost Hoyt is getting kidnapped by them yet again. Possibly by this "Dragon," who may or may not be Maxine Fortenberry, who may or may not be involved in this storyline at all.

Oh, and Luna skinwalks into Sam so that Sam Trammell can be an awesome actor some more, and they end up having some super sweet conversations -- Luna-as-Sam and Sam -- but before they can do it, which is obviously the next thing that should happen, she turns back into Luna and then maybe dies. Is that how Tommy died? I can't even remember anymore.

Pam continues to be a kinda great mom, publicly dressing Tara down for being bitchy with a customer (one of Tara's many, many, infinitely many persecutors as a child) but privately serving the girl up, literally, down in the dungeon. Because of the other stuff going on with vampires in this episode, it seems more on-the-nose than it necessarily needs to be, but overall it's nice to see what Tara smiling actually looks like.

Um, either Patrick or Terry has to kill the other one if they want to end the ifrit curse; this is the end result of the séance that Holly and Arlene ask Lafayette to stage once he gets back from Mexico. Two cool things about this: Jesus carried a small vial of V in his first aid kit, which is obvious and neat in a worldbuilding way, and Jesus is now free to ride around with Lafayette holding gay hands together. For a storyline with a lot more going on in it than Terry's stuff, that sure didn't take long -- but now, like last year, they're starting to come together.

And then comes the Authority, who are now just Sanguinistas, and Eric resentfully becomes the Bill of the group while Bill becomes ... Whatever he is becoming. Nora pities Eric for not understanding her religious zealotry, Eric feels trapped by his sister-girlfriend and dork-boyfriend getting in over their heads, and Bill -- having joined a cult and become addicted to a drug made of God, then all weirded out by a flashback to his daughter back in the Civil War that makes the whole thing feel really overdetermined and sneaky -- comes up with the master stroke of this whole Vampire War they've been teasing: Blow up the five Tru Blood factories, and the starving mainstreamers will take care of the problem themselves. Which is genius.

Next Week: The new shape of the season will become clearer, one assumes, leading into the big finale. Bill joins Salome on a more permanent basis, we learn more about Sookie's weird connection to this mysterious new vampire, and the Sanguinistas bring the fight to Fangtasia! (and possibly everywhere?). Oh, and speaking of the multiple cults on this show, Russell makes his debut at the Shreveport Pack -- which could signal a doublecross. But then, the Authority has had so little consistency that Russell, Bill, Nora and Eric could be working as moles and nobody'd ever figure it out.