Sookie's grossed out by Eric's whole deal with buying her house and trying to own her, and explains the conundrum of being a Modern Woman. A Modern Woman who dates vampires, and is also part faerie, and whose brother is King of the Panther Crackheads. She is happy to see Tara back in town, but not enough to actually hang out with her, since she's got to go flirt/yell at Eric for buying her a microwave oven. His point, which Pam also tries to explain, is that vampires are going to eat her and she needs a vampire/manly protector, but you know she's not hearing that shit.

What she is hearing is Jessica, making out with adorable boys in the bathroom at Fangtasia!, and screaming at Sookie for acting like her stepmother for just trying to help her out. Jessica is, awesomely and terrifyingly, becoming quite the wild card. Meanwhile, Hoyt is finding post-Russell Edgington life to be rough. As a gorgeous, tall young white man with a great job, I think we can agree that Hoyt has seen enough oppression already.

Bill, good Lord so much cool Bill stuff, going around banging fangbangers and being King of Louisiana and a double- or triple-agent or whatever is still pretty dorky but also great at the same time. Turns out Nan Flanagan's SWAT team interrupted his parlay with Sophie-Anne last year and assassinated her, to put Bill on throne... Even though both Bill and Nan have been secretly helping the AVL undermine the monarchy (and Authority) since 1982. Brilliant, this bit.

Jason has been kidnapped by the panthers, including wonderful Timbo, for what we learn is a complicated Handmaid's Tale situation where Felton and Crystal want to get pregnant, using his sperm, but have to turn him into a werepanther to do so. So now he's locked up in this shack while they bite him and bite him and bite him. Glad we're not skimping on Crystal's total shittiness this season.

Sam hooks up with Luna, who lets everybody in on a secret thing where shifters can become Skinwalkers (shifters who can even do humans) by killing another shifter to whom they're related. Sounds suspiciously complicated, right? I sure am glad Sam didn't have any sketchy resentful family members around to hear that... Except for Tommy, who will either be murdering Sam shortly or make good on his plea to mend fences. I think they should team up and kill that awful mom of theirs.

Speaking of, Arlene and the Devil Baby have a staring contest that ends with her blowing a vein in her eyeball, which is amazing to be sure, but mostly enjoyable because she's the goddamn worst.

Tara accompanies the boys to their next witch meeting, but just about the time that Marnie's talking about raising the dead -- which sends the cousins running, but not Jesus -- King Bill sends his Sherriff Eric over to shut the witches down: Seems necromancy makes dead people uncomfortable on several levels. Before you know it, Marnie's gotten possessed by some Latin-speaking younger witch-ghost, Tara's trying to stake Eric, Lafayette is back in PTSD-ville just from seeing him, and then the spell's over, Marnie's back to being a sad-ass, and Eric is wandering the countryside all half-naked and amnesiac... And Sookie's the one that finds his helpless vampire ass.

See? All that "You're Mine" stuff -- which has now been going on for four years, which some of us have clearly forgotten -- wasn't just there to give you something to get offended about on Livejournal.

Next week: Witch War begins; more shifter and faerie dark side stuff; Eric is intensely adorable; everybody says "post-Russell Edgington" to the point that there are entire scenes of people just saying that phrase back and forth to each other.