True Blood Review: Ending With A Shocking “Twist”

Sit back and relax a bit, vicarious Bon Temps residents. This week’s episode of True Blood managed to quiet its frenzy of character introductions and surplus of subplots a degree or two as the atmosphere and pacing seemed less frantic and more intent on actually expanding on the contents of already-present plotlines. What a concept! Now, with the more subdued vibe came a slightly unsettling presentation of the ubiquitous gore and graphic sexual frivolity, causing me to realize more clearly which storylines I continue to think about when the show’s not on, and which ones I have immediately forgotten until I’m forcibly reminded of their existence. You’ll likely figure out which ones are which as we delve further into the review.

Per usual True Blood fashion, the final scene of last week’s episode is precisely where this week’s begins, with Sookie’s werewolf-targeted gunshot inside her home. Time slows down so viewers are able to track the bullet’s path, Matrix-style, as it heads directly toward the lycan intruder. Eric, however, is able to use his supersonic vamp vision to lunge himself in front of the bullet, which pierces him squarely in the chest and causes the stalker to immediately distract himself with the sudden available presence of V (courtesy of Eric’s fresh wound). Eric’s intentions are apparently to keep the werewolf alive in order to question both his motives and the identity of his master. Wolfie manages to weaken Eric and exponentially strengthen himself by ingesting some of Eric’s blood, but Sookie smartly shoots him in the leg before he can capitalize on his newfound advantage and escape. The gunshot injures him just enough to keep him localized, but cognizant enough to acknowledge Eric’s demand to know who he works for. Instead of answering the question, of course, the wolfman defiantly replies, “If I tell you, I’m as dead as you are. You might as well kill me now.” Eric, spying the ominous Evil Symbol on the intruder’s neck, responds by impulsively chomping on his jugular as if it were a deep-fried turkey leg, revealing a chunk of blood-dripping werewolf carcass in his sheepish grin.

Sookie, she of the telepathic ability, had managed to hear the name “Jackson” in wolfie’s garbled thoughts prior to his grisly demise. As she and Eric bury the body, she suggests it could be the possible name of an important person, while Eric says it’s more likely in reference to the city, since the werewolf’s accent sounded more Mississippian than Louisianan (“Can’t you people tell the difference?!” he exclaims, exasperated. Hee!). With this revelation, Sookie makes immediate plans to head to Jackson, since it’s the most promising lead she’s found on Bill’s whereabouts since he went missing. When Eric confirms he’ll be able to sense if Sookie gets into trouble on her trip, she asks, “How fast can you get to Mississippi?” After a pause, Eric solemnly replies, “Probably not fast enough.”

Meanwhile, at Edgington Palace, King Russell and his continually unimpressed, hilariously high-maintenance companion, Talbot (a sublime Theo Alexander), are doing damage control amidst the aftermath of Bill setting Lorena (Mariana Klaveno) on fire. Talbot’s main concern lies with the antique rug Lorena ruined in the midst of her stop-drop-and-roll, causing Russell to quip, “Ugh, it’s like Armageddon in here every time someone chips a dessert glass.” Heh. Lorena skulks away to heal the burns in her own private pouty place, while Russell advises Bill to cool it with the “unprovoked violence” if he wants to maintain his good standing with the Edgington kingdom. Bill apologizes and explains to Russell that Lorena has Fatal Attraction-esque ulterior motives, thus igniting his ire. To Bill’s surprise, Russell says he is aware of Lorena’s eternal flame for Bill, and admits she expressed desire to make Bill watch Sookie being brutally murdered – a request that made Russell shudder with disbelief at how someone as “old” as Lorena could be so “unclassy.” Russell suggests Bill “turn” Sookie (into a vampire, that is) so they could viably spend eternity together, just as he had done with Talbot centuries ago. When Bill declares this an impossible task, Russell plainly informs Bill he can’t have his cake and eat it, too. According to Russell, Sookie will need to be subjected to “the vicissitudes of mortality” if she doesn’t become a vampire — a statement about which Bill seems rather bummed.

Adorably naïve Jessica is still in a tizzy over the trucker she accidentally drained and his now-absent corpse. In lieu of Bill’s absence (and overall suckitude as her maker), she calls her impromptu mentor Pam for guidance, catching her in a, um, compromising position with the same Estonian stripper we caught Eric in a, um, compromising position with during the season premiere. “Fangtasia — this’d better be good,” drawls Pam upon answering the phone. Jessica explains her dilemma, to which Pam asks if she had gotten the “theoretical chainsaw” from the “hypothetical hardware store” they had discussed earlier when Jessica asked for advice concerning this (speculatively, of course) problematic situation. When Jessica mentions the body in question is actually missing, Pam incredulously replies, “So, your problem is that you don’t have a dead body in your house?” Touché.

One of the more mysterious new characters we’ve met so far in Season Three is James Frain’s creepy visitor Franklin Mott. Last we saw of him, he and Tara were pummeling a couple of hicks in back of Merlotte’s. This week, the two are knocking boots in a cheap motel. Grief seems to lower both Tara’s standards and inhibitions. After the bizarre, tantrically eerie romp where Tara’s eyes spent most of the time in the back of her head, Franklin tries to ask deeply probing questions like, “Are you married?” and the offensively invasive “What’s your name?” Tara, already feeling the regret and disgust seep out her pores, bolts before she even ties her shoes.

Franklin shows up later at Jessica’s doorstep, causing her to instigate a pretty cute fang-off between the two when she doesn’t realize he’s also of the undead persuasion. He enters the house (Bill hadn’t explained that vampires only need to be invited into human homes — poor Jessica’s really been left to her own deficient devices) and interrogates Jessica about the dead body most viewers with any deductive reasoning skills have figured out Franklin himself removed. When she doesn’t acquiesce to his questioning, he proudly presents the trucker’s severed head from a shopping bag and uses the evidence to shake Jessica down into divulging everything she knows about Bill and his acquaintances in Bon Temps. Clearly, Franklin is a man with a plan. Ripe with newfound information, he’s off to find Tara, whom he now knows, courtesy of defenseless Jessica, is the best friend of one Sookie Stackhouse, who is the fiancée of one Bill Compton – Franklin’s biggest investigative target. After a touching scene with Tara and Sookie attending Eggs’ funeral (generously paid for on Sookie’s dime) and letting bygones be bygones, Tara has taken Sookie up on her offer to move back in with her. Wasting no time, Franklin promptly arrives before she’s even had time to unpack, and glamours his way inside — like Tara needs to be under the mind control of another supernatural creature. Sheesh.

Back at Merlotte’s tavern, Sam and his increasingly leechy degenerate family have shown up for a surprise visit, to Sam’s chagrin – considering the murderous stunt Tommy pulled last week, he’s rightfully suspicious. After they visibly case the joint and offer thinly veiled compliments galore, Sam reluctantly offers them lunch on the house and the Mickens clan sticks around past sundown. By now, patriarch Joe Lee (Cooper Huckabee, whom I can now sadly say I’ve seen in his underwear) has practically emptied the liquor inventory and allowed underage Tommy to imbibe to his heart’s content. Sam is rightfully peeved and asks them to leave, but still somehow seems surprised when he catches Tommy fleeing his office in the middle of the night, clearly intending to rob Sam blind. Personally, I heard the plinking of banjo strings well before the writers decided to condescendingly hit us over the head with the trailer park savvy of this crew. Poor Sam.

By now, Sookie has been introduced to her traveling companion, werewolf-with-the-heart-of-gold Alcide (Joe Manganiello, further skewing the male-to-female attractiveness ratio on this show – no offense to the lovely ladies), a highly anticipated character for fans of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, so I’m told. Eric has sent him to look after Sookie in Jackson, a job clearly needed when they head to werewolf-friendly dive Lou Pine’s — ha – and Sookie is told upon arrival that she “looks like dinner.” Uh-oh. After dangerously flirting with a group of menacing, canine-leaning thugs, Sookie catches a clairvoyant glimpse of one’s involvement with Bill’s kidnapping. She follows him into Lou Pine’s version of a champagne room and nearly gets herself gutted. Luckily, Alcide naturally swoops in and clobbers the gang, leaving Sookie intact to cluelessly read the mind of the next maniacal wolfman who comes along, from whom Alcide will surely need to rescue her. Again. That Eric Northman knows what he’s doing.

Aside from several comic relief subplots involving Jason’s dimwitted, delusional dream of becoming a cop and his inane study sessions with Hoyt, as well as despicably deceptive Arlene letting Terry think he’s responsible for her pregnancy (apparently it’s Rene’s baby – yikes), and Bud’s hysterical walk-out off the police force when the trucker’s headless body is discovered, it simply wouldn’t be a complete episode of True Blood without a melodramatic flashback.

This week’s involves a trip back to 1868, where Bill has been a vampire for three years and makes the ill-fated decision to visit his wife, Caroline (Shannon Lucio). Upon his arrival, she gives him the devastating news their young son has died of “the pox.” Bill begins to uncontrollably cry, revealing the unmistakable streaks of blood tears to his terrified wife, who is rendered all the more frightened when she shoots Bill in the shoulder and watches the wound heal before her eyes. Unable to properly explain without causing her further psychological damage, Bill is emotionally bludgeoned among the grief for the loss of his former life and the harboring resentment towards his eternal new one. Per her duty as Bill’s maker, Lorena arrives and informs Bill he must glamour Caroline into forgetting she ever saw him in this state and can never, under any circumstances, fool himself into thinking he can visit her again. “The only way to show your love for a human is to stay away forever,” she insists to a heartbroken Bill.

This scene provides a multitude of explanations for Bill’s particular hatred of Lorena during present time, as he has surely never forgotten the words she spoke more than 140 years ago and their possible pertinence to his relationship with Sookie. His indignation, however, takes a dark turn as he and Lorena share the final scene of the episode engaging in a horrifyingly brutal pseudo-rape where Bill’s rage takes such a macabre form he twists Lorena’s head in a whole circle to avoid looking at her (the obvious comparisons to a certain scene in Death Becomes Her had already hit the internet by the time it had occurred to me). When she still says she loves him even as he’s enforcing such vicious abuse, he shrieks with sickened misery, nearly tearing his hair out in anguish. Whoa.

While I’m pleased this week’s episode seemed to propel the horde of pertinent storylines forward without wasting too much time on the less important fluff (sorry, Ryan Kwanten – Jason’s pretty doesn’t begin to make up for his lack of substance), I’m not sure if the shock value of the final scene exhibited artistic controversy or shameless misogyny. Perhaps the intention was simply to display Bill’s centuries-old sorrow over the fact he’s never really accepted becoming a vampire, even after all this time. As a True Blood viewer who has not read the Sookie Stackhouse novels, I’m curious to find out if this entire season will keep Sookie and Bill apart and focus on developing their characters outside the confines of their relationship. With the introduction of Alcide, and the increasing chemistry between Sookie and Eric, I have a feeling Sookie’s betrothal to Bill is beginning to breathe its last breaths. Regardless, Bill has a lot of soul-searching to do, and certainly all the time in the world to do it.

For another opinion on this episode, check out Vampires and Werewolves With Real Problems by Bilal Mian.

Season 3, Episode 3: It Hurts Me Too (originally aired June 27, 2010)

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