THIS WEEK ON True Blood: You Smell Like Dinner

Still stuffed to the brim with hormonal beef, remnants of little alcohol atoms rocketing around my synapses, tired from the first day of work since Thursday, I sat down this afternoon and watched the second episode of True Blood’s fourth season. Be it the chemical-soaked flesh I munched en masse yesterday, the fatigue, the lingering hangover from too much frisbee and alcohol and too little water, but I enjoyed the episode.

I’m glad that the show isn’t shy any longer and is still trying to conceal the Virgin/Whore complex that it seems to stuff every female character into. Eric rolls up into Sookie’s house at the end of last episode and carries on purchasing Sookie. Also, double-daps for them finally up and being like “Yeah, Sookie’s pretty much a two-dimensional gap-tooth item for Eric and Bill to posture over. Oh, and Alcide. We don’t let him on set until his pecs have totally finished getting their swell on though.”

In a wonderful conversation, Eric tells Sookie that there’s two of her. A fancy faerie one that doesn’t take any shit, and the boring human one. The underlying notion being that Super Glowy Hands Sookie is totally sexually liberal and is bound to get up (and down, and up) on vampire pole and smack bitches and the what.

I’m still confused as to why Eric thinks that he can just picture Sookie’s house and that’ll get him the keys to the Kingdom. The dude has display some immaculate swagger throughout the centuries, and he thinks he’s going to claim his love-interest-turned-fetish-object just by buying her house? It seems a bit “Nah son” for a dude who is usually so cunning.

Maybe he just wanted to throw her a curveball.

The episode had some entertaining moments. They had me laughing with the faint scent of vomit working its way up my still stuffed esophagus. Guilty cackles from my part of the futon when Sookie aggravatingly tells Tara that Eric built himself a cubby in the old shithole that all the Stackhouses have lived in since they slithered out of some Faerie-Yokel union way back in the days.

Sookie runs off to Bill’s house, which seems like a bit of a bitch move. Sookie, either you’re giving the dude the Cold House Deluxe or not. No wonder the guy is a fucking mess. You dismiss him with but a whistle through your gap teeth and the next night you’re marching across his lawn and demanding answers.

She arrives in time just to see Bill cleaning up from crushing some indistinct but I suppose pretty dope ass. Not really certain what Compton was thinking there. He knew she was coming, and it had only been forty-minutes since his last epic declaration of his love for her. If you’re trying to win her over William, at least take measures to prevent her from realizing you have someone else’s insides slowly glazing over on your member.

Just sayin’ bro! Just sayin’!

Sookie’s visit to Bill was the lynchphin of the episode, serving to segue from one storyline to the other. Once she’s dismissed we get a hilarious flashback to Bill hanging out in London back in 1982. If there’s ever any moment that you think this show should be taken seriously, just gently recall this scene. It’s amazing. Stephen Moyer, ‘punk haircut’, hanging out in a ‘dive bar’, speaking with an accent. Which is weird since he is from across the pond. It’s actually some weird post-modern simulacra wank moment. A British man pretending to be Southern pretending to be British in a simulation of a punk bar. Oh boy!

Anyways.

You get to see how Bill’s been working the vampire system for the past thirty years, and now he’s aligned himself with Ann What’s Her Name and the Big Wigs. All that power and you’re still not happy! Oh, existence. Oh. Existence.

Being the King sucks, ’cause now once Sookie’s done trying to lobby for him to do something about Eric buying her house, that dude strolls in. Demands and problems, such is a politician’s life. Eric and Bill momentarily stare at one another, the distant but certain homosexual tension bubbling almost to the brink. Bill stares at Eric’s v-neck and contemplates what’s underneath, Eric is momentarily impressed by Bill’s accumulation of material items and how his suit coat fits.

There’s a problem afoot! Fucking Necromancers have run into Bon Temps, and the implication is that if they can control the dead, they can control vampires. Now the dork in me wants to point out that the vampires have agency and still maintain a consciousness, while the bird they resurrected clearly was an empty house. Unfortunately I’m not well verse in Necromancer nor Vampire lore, outside of this show and playing one in Diablo II.

Bill deploys Eric but not before momentarily staring at his impressive shoulders and how they line his leather jacket. Somewhere inside his heart, a tendrils flickers.

Man, writing this homoerotic stuff is really fun.

As Eric runs to the Necromancer Fun Store to meet up with the batch of douchebags and assholes who are summoning the dead – is this ever a fucking good idea – a variety of subplots unfold. There’s Terry and Arlene and their Devil Baby. I’m still struggling to give a fuck about that one. Now he’s some sort of telekinetic-killer-baby. I’ll be officially entertained when he lunges and bites into someone’s eye socket. Screaming and horror and someone, I don’t really care who, gives us the gratification of seeing a baby thrown off a wall.

That is gratifying to watch for you too, right?

Jason’s locked up in Yokelville, and he’s going to be turned into a Sex Panther. For some reason that is why he had to be tied up and hidden away, and eaten by Charlotte and her ex-boyfriend. That’s after Andy visits his little enclave looking for V.

Sam and his brother have a great naked heart to heart in the woods where his brother (Tim? Tommy?) tells him he just wants a sibling. Sam’s also getting into it with some fancy-pants saucy shapeshifter who can apparently transform into other humans. Speaking of women either being the Virgin or the Seductress, she opens up her relationship with him by sitting naked talking to him, and then giving him a chubby in his bar.

Things aren’t getting much better for Jessica and Hoyt. Like every broken relationship, they argue over nothing and it seems like plugging holes in a sinking ship. I still don’t get why that means that Jessica has to step out on their relationship. Other than you know, like I said, they insist on every female character either being helplessly submissive, or overtly sexual. Jessica can’t be a housewife? No shit! She’s eighteen and horny as hell and wanting to live life after being cooped up in a Christian Wunderhouse. I understand that. I don’t get why the natural reaction is to send her into Fangtasia and have her snack on some Jabroni’s neck.

I realize I’m asking too much out of a show that should be called Supernatural Fucking and Fighting. Yet I gripe. Yet I gripe.

Apologies.

Also, where the fuck is Steve Newlin at? I loved seeing him on posters and signs this episode. Bring him and his wife back.

Eric eventually rolls into the Necromancy and Patchouli Oil shop and begins to lay down the law. Tara’s there because she still exists I’m sorry I know, and she walks in on the throwdown between the Zombie Loving Hippies and Eric. Bonus points for her being all like “Fuck this town”. In a moment of coolness the raggedy lady running the show begins to channel something righteous and drop-kicks Eric the fuck out of the shop.

Sookie finds him wandering around the street shirtless. Why is Eric shirtless? You shut you fucking mouth. He doesn’t remember anything, but he tells Sookie she smells good. Apparently amnesiac vampires like the smell of fried food and sweat.

All in all, I enjoyed the show. Every season needs some sort of climatic battle to end things, so I’m looking forward to the inevitable karate-kicking and fang-baring brawl between the Necromancers and the Vampire Contingent.

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Thoughts?