True Blood: Idle Hands

After last week’s somewhat dull, precursor episode, I was hoping things would pick up in this week’s episode, Mine.  Things never stay too dull for too long in Bon Temps.

Sookie is introduced to Bill’s fellow vampires who happen to be visiting his mansion.  She comes across some new vamps, Diane and Malcolm, as well as one face viewers are already familiar with, Liam, the bald, tattooed star of Maudette Pickens’ vampire sex tape.  There are other vampires, along with humans off which they have been feeding.  As Diane, Malcolm, and Liam crave to taste Sookie’s virgin blood (second to babies blood) Bill, sitting in the shadows, stands up and commands them to let Sookie go, declaring, “Sookie is mine.”  They let her go and start feeding on the other humans.  Liam even commands one to give him oral sex.

As Bill attempts to feed on one, Sookie telepathically realizes the human has Hep D and stops him.  Bill explains to Sookie that Hep D is a blood born pathogen to which vampires are actually susceptible and she scolds him for calling her his.  He explains that was the only to way keep them from biting her, since they outnumbered him and that would have been the only way to stop them.  Sookie is even further disgusted upon learning that Bill once had sex with Diane, a vampire he “turned” in the 1930s who actually looks like she is stuck in the 70s.  When she tells him how mean she thinks the vamps are, he admits they are that way because they all live together in a “nest.”  Luckily, because he lives alone, he is more likely to have more human characteristics.  Questioning everything she had just witnessed, along with her fear of Bill and the recent accidental death of the Rev. Newlin and his family, she rushes back home, confused about her relationship with Bill.

Dawn goes back to her place to find that Jason has gotten loose from the hosiery she used to tie him to the bed earlier.  In his place is a masked man with a heavy accent who tells her he killed Jason and shoves her on the bed.  Thinking the man is a vampire, Dawn starts screaming, only to realize the man is Jason after he removes the hose from his head and starts laughing.  This makes me think that Jason really is as stupid as others called him in the last episode.  The guy, who just barely got off being accused for one murder, is still up to his old tricks with a woman who also happens to have vampire bite marks he noticed before on Maudette Pickens.  You think he would have learned by now, but as usual, after he stops laughing and Dawn gets over her scare, they go at it again.  But when Jason pictures Liam laughing back at him during sex, let’s just say, uh, he “loses interest”-hey, it happens to lots of guys, especially when they keep finding out their sexual partners have all been with vampires.  Jason and Dawn get it in a huge fight, and Jason leaves after Dawn points a gun at him, screaming about his “limp dick” and telling him to go back to his grandma.

After Sookie gets home, she is shocked to see Bill standing on her porch as she gets out of her car.  She screams at him not to sneak up on her like that, and he apologizes, admitting he had just gotten there.  Sookie asks Bill why she can’t hear his thoughts, wondering if he even has thoughts.  Suddenly, biology is also a concern, when she asks how he can digest blood if nothing technically works.  What else can a vampire like Bill tell her, but that it is magic-his magic being different from hers, of course.  Sookie, no fool, tells him she wants to stop seeing each other for reasons like the fact that he doesn’t breathe, his friends want to rip her throat out, and all the recent weird deaths.  When she asks him why she should keep seeing him, he tells her, quite matter-of-factly, that she will never find a human man she can be herself with.  They call it a night, and she goes inside.

Tara tries to get Sam to confess his feelings to Sookie and they both give up because Sam doesn’t have a chance against Bill.  Later, Tara joins Sam for drinks at his trailer, confiding in him about her alcoholic mother.  They throw back a few during which she asks him why he doesn’t have a girlfriend and if he is lonely.  He admits to being lonely and avoids answering the girlfriend question.  Tara, probably dreading going home, convinces Sam they should be friends with benefits.  Sam gives her all the obligatory reasons why they shouldn’t do it, but he has no chance against Tara’s smart arguments.  He gives in, they do it, and Tara ends up going home when she realizes Sam barks in his sleep.

Tara comes home to her mother who is sloshed but still able to hit Tara on the head with a Bible and call her a dirty whore.  They continue exchanging insults and her mother starts crying after falling to the floor.  Tara, trying to help her up and to the shower, is thrown off guard when her mother is able to gather enough strength to hit her on the head with a liquor bottle.  Having had enough, Tara leaves her house for good.

Sookie, still not sure what to do about Bill and trying to escape some pretty erotic dreams she continues having about him, does chores like mowing the lawn to forget about her desires.  When her grandmother asks if this has to do with the vampire doing “something untoward” her, Sookie admits she is having a hard time deciding between her head and her heart-or maybe libido-when it comes to Bill.  Sookie and her grandmother continue to discuss her anxieties about seeing Bill, and while it is obvious her grandmother likes Bill, she tells Sookie some vague story about how her grandfather had Sookie’s “gift” for seeing things and how he once saved his brother from killing himself.  She told Sookie when the time is right for her to know Bill’s purpose, she will.

The episode ends with Jason going to Lafayette’s leopard-print upholstered place in order to get some Viagra.  Lafayette tells Jason he doesn’t sell Viagra because it’s legal.  Jason claims he knows, but is embarrassed and would rather get it in the black market than buy it in public.  Lafayette takes a small vial filled with blood from his refrigerator and tells Jason it is V, or vampire blood, and is way better than Viagra.  He warns him to take it in small doses, otherwise, “it may make him intense and not in a good way.” To repay Lafayette for the V, Jason winds up in yet another video dancing around in his underwear with a mask on.

Sookie, for some inexplicable reason, goes to Bill’s house and sits on his porch.  As the colors of the trees change and begin resembling a watercolor painting, Sookie thinks about Bill and gropes herself.  Her phone rings, and it is Sam asking her to stop by Dawn’s home to see why she hasn’t come in to work yet.  Sookie ends up letting herself into Dawn’s place to to find her body sprawled across the bed.

While this episode’s plot contained far more flesh than last week’s, it’s still hard to tell where the story is currently headed.  The introduction of the new vampires has added to an already broad cast, which makes me worry that the spirit of the show may get dragged down by the side stories of some of the more insignificant characters.  And yet, like Sookie, I am very conflicted because I have grown to like so many of the less central characters.  In fact, I often find myself more absorbed in following Tara and Lafayette to whatever escapades they are up to, not only because they are so much more fun, but because they are interesting, complex representations of the South that have potential to be more than just stereotypes.

Sookie’s virginal Southern belle routine-albeit sassy-is becoming a bit predictable and starting to fall a little short with me.  I also couldn’t understand why she would be sitting on Bill’s porch feeling herself up.  Jason’s endless sweaty sex scenes are also growing old, although he does look pretty good without his clothes on.  I hope the additions of the new characters will allow for a more unified storyline that manages to showcase the potential of characters such as Tara and Lafayette.   While I understand the need for the inclusion of overt sexuality-this is a show about vampires in the sultry South, after all-I also can’t help but wonder if it is often being overly utilized as filler material.  The show also made its first Buffy the Vampire reference this week when poor, old, pathetic Sam wished Buffy or Blade would come to Marthasville-instead of the new Starbucks-so they could destroy Bill Compton.

True Blood (Season 1, Episode 3, Idle Hands)

Sundays at 9PM/8C, HBO
Photographs courtesy of IMDbPro