True Blood: And Then There Was One

It’s such a bittersweet feeling when a show approaches the end of the season just as the characters and story-line find a rhythm and merge into one juicy entity.  While never having fallen short on heavy doses of sexuality, violence, and Southern melodrama, True Blood has become truly entertaining.  This week’s episode, To Love Is To Bury, reached the kind of excitement that had me gripping on to the edge of my couch, already hungry for next week’s season finale.

That’s not to say the show lacked imperfections during its first season-some of which have been addressed and others that remain.  I still don’t understand the point of shape shifter, Sam, or the ridiculously mediocre scenes involving Bill and his newly “turned” victim, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll), who is about the worst representation of a vampire yet on the show.  And while Eric the Nordic vampire is easy on the eyes, he and Pam really just appear to serve as overly obvious mechanisms to continually drive a wedge between Bill and Sookie’s rocky romance.  Despite all this, the show has managed to wrap up its first season with characters and subplots that have evolved enough to keep me watching.

Bill and Sookie continue their time apart this week, while Sam continues to keep his promise to Bill about watching over Sookie, with the transparently ulterior motive of trying to spend more time with her.  After Sookie realizes she read the killer’s mind at Merlotte’s, she and Sam encounter a strange sort of domestic bliss while trying to track down a waitress at Big Pattie’s House of Pies that Sookie is convinced is one of the killer’s victims.  There, a local pie lover gives them the waitress’s name, Cindy Marshall, and tells them she was killed.  He also gives them the name of Cindy’s brother, Drew Marshall, who disappeared just after the murder.  Sookie works her telepathic magic to get the local police to agree to fax her a picture of Drew Marshall.  And despite all that, Sookie and Sam still manage to enjoy the long drive back home.

The honeymoon is over at Jason’s, as he and Amy try to clean up the very gelatinous and bloody remains of Eddie.  After puking in the red puddle of what was once Eddie, Jason is furious at Amy, and tells her they are through unless she quits dealing with V.  Amy promises she will quit, and later, after cleaning up Eddie’s remains, makes Jason a dinner she learned to cook from her French nanny.  After the feast, she whips out a vial of V she insists will be their last hit.  They take the last drop together, eventually falling into a deep sleep while having the usual nature-themed psychedelic trip.  As they sleep, the killer sneaks into the house, strangling Amy with a belt and leaving Jason behind to take the fall yet again.  While Jason is dragged back to the sheriff’s office for questioning by Sheriff Dearborne and Detective Bellefleur after calling in Amy’s murder, the faxed picture of Drew Marshall comes in, revealing-drumroll, please-that he is none other than Rene.  But a chatty office assistant accidentally buries the picture under a pile of folders.

Tara is also dragged to jail for driving under the influence after being pulled over for crashing into a fence.  She appears even more drunk when telling the police officer she was trying to avoid hitting a naked woman with a giant pig.  Lettie Mae comes to see Tara, but only to tell her that she will not bail her out and that she will no longer allow her to live at her house.  Tara screams that Lettie Mae wouldn’t even have a house if it wasn’t for her.  After disowning her mother, Tara is visited by a complete stranger, Maryann, who bails her out and offers to let her stay with her.  Tara, remembering she has no home now, reluctantly agrees, leaving with Maryann who drives back in her brand new red convertible to the large white mansion with a bright red door she calls her “informal halfway house.”

At Merlotte’s, Lafayette is disgusted with his john, State Senator David Finch, who hypocritically renounces vampires and homosexuals on television.  Lafayette dons a nice suit and pays the surprised Senator a visit, giving him a strong handshake and letting him know that “So many things can happen to bring down a fine person such as yourself.”

At Sookie’s, she and Sam end up kissing on her couch just as Bill finally returns.  Fangs extended and hissing, Bill attacks Sam who fights back.  The two struggle as Sookie screams at Bill.  She gets in between them and tells Bill to leave, rescinding her invitation to him to enter the house.  He begs her not to, but is forced to leave, as she slams the door in his face.

While True Blood found itself tweaking such kinks as a large cast and some less than riveting subplots this season, its innovative attempts to modernize vampires in a small, Southern community and bold confrontations with sexuality and drugs continue to keep it a dramatic platform for whom Lafayette would call “the poor and disenfranchised-especially the vampires and the gays.”

Season 1, Episode 11: To Love Is To Bury (originally aired November 16, 2008)

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Photographs courtesy of HBO and IMDbPro