True Blood Review: Hit The Ground Running

Welcome back to Bon Temps, True Blood enthusiasts! In lieu of a recap last week, yours truly instead partook in a joyously bizarre jaunt to Comic-Con and caught an exclusive sneak peek of events to come for our favorite supernatural Southerners. Needless to say, we have much to catch up on. I’m pleased to report Sunday night’s episode seemed to contain more storyline consolidation and less needless fluff – with the exception of the particularly hilarious Jason and his top-notch one-liners – than in recent installments, providing the biggest plot developments for Sookie and friends thus far in the season. With apologies to fans of Arlene (anyone? Bueller?), Jessica (all right, I missed her charming naiveté a smidge), and Franklin (likely letting his head rearrange itself after Tara’s bludgeoning – holy hell), whose noticeable absences were varying degrees of inconsequential this week, the primary storylines were given sharper focus in the aptly titled “Hitting the Ground,” and rightfully took off running upon the first frame. Let’s try and keep up, shall we?

We begin at Russell Edgington’s elaborate palace, where Bill has been deemed traitorous and sentenced to death. After grudgingly acquiescing to Russell’s instructions to whack Bill herself, Lorena has slowly, torturously drained him to the point of exhausted delirium while proclaiming her eternal adoration for him and their history together. Sookie has intercepted the macabre execution to try and save Bill’s life and kill Lorena in the process. Lorena, seemingly admitting defeat, ceases feeding on Sookie and tells “William” she’ll always love him. Bill, even in his weakened state, manages to hold Lorena down while Sookie stakes her old-school style, courtesy of a conveniently available (and conveniently sharp) wooden staff, screaming to her nemesis, “You wouldn’t know love if it kicked you in the FANGS!”

The fact Lorena is offed within the first 30 seconds of the episode proves less shocking than what physically happens to her upon her death. The maroon geyser of viscous blood that shoots toward the ceiling and falls to the ground with grisly splats and splooshes no amount of onomatopoeia can describe is easily the grossest visual sequence in True Blood history. After Lorena is reduced to gooey sludge in mere seconds, swathing Bill and rendering him unconscious in the process, an understandably distressed Sookie screams for help. With Lorena and her delusional charm whisked off of True Blood’s radar so quickly, it seems the second half of Season Three is really kicking into high gear and taking no prisoners.

Alcide and Tara show up with the getaway van, trying to convince Sookie the unresponsive Bill is dead. No way, insists Sookie. “When vampires are dead, this is what they look like!” she declares, gesturing to Lorena’s gelatinous remains covering the scene. Oh, say Tara and Alcide’s faces. Dead set on taking Bill with them, Sookie convinces a reluctant Tara to help her wrap him up in a tarp while Alcide prepares the vehicle for their impending escape. A jonesing Debbie suddenly darts into the room, presumably to score some fresh V courtesy of Bill and the recently departed Lorena, and puts quite the damper on our heroes’ plans. Spying Sookie and Tara’s handiwork, she hilariously comments they must have made a “vampire burrito,” just for her. Hee.

As Debbie whips out a pistol, Alcide steps in to try and sweet talk his former fiancée into letting them leave unscathed. Sookie reads Debbie’s thoughts and discovers she’s actually terrified and trying to pull herself together, but her drug withdrawal is too strong and prevents any logical thought process from taking precedent. Alcide brings up their relationship, admitting he knows things ultimately didn’t work out between them because Debbie wanted children and he was against spawning more werewolves into modern society. Trying her hardest to remain immune to Alcide’s nostalgic anecdotes of their tumultuous past, Debbie insists her loyalties now lie with Operation Werewolf and pointedly makes note of her fresh branding scar, outlining the symbol that marks her true intentions to blindly follow the laws of the creepy cult.

Tara, meanwhile, has telepathically instructed Sookie to distract Debbie so she’ll let go of the gun. Screaming bloody murder at nothing in particular, Sookie succeeds in diverting Debbie’s attention, allowing Alcide to grab the pistol and shoot an unsuspecting Cooter as soon as he bursts in to check on Debbie. Whoa! Alcide pops not one, but two caps in Cooter’s skull, leaving a wailing, and royally pissed, Debbie to be locked in the shed with Cooter’s lifeless body as Alcide, Sookie and Tara get in the van with the tarp-wrapped Bill burrito. Ah, Cooter, we hardly new ye.

Alcide and Tara ride up front and challenge the werewolf guards nipping at the van’s tires while Sookie shacks up with Bill in the back. Out of sheer desperation, Sookie literally saws her arm open to feed a fading Bill, apparently in the midst of a starvation trance as he begins to hungrily suck Sookie dry upon the first taste of her replenishment. Tara discovers Sookie’s nearly bloodless, comatose body too late and furiously kicks the clueless Bill, clearly unaware of what he’d done during his famine-induced stupor, out into broad daylight as she and Alcide head straight to the hospital in nearby Ruston. Bill, confused and beginning to smolder in the sun, speeds off in the opposite direction.

A dramatic montage of Sookie unsuccessfully receiving blood transfusions follows, along with her doctor’s revelatory remark to Tara and Alcide that Sookie appears to be sans blood type (!) and unlike anything the medical world has encountered. A dumbfounded Tara is left no choice but to contact Jason, Sookie’s only known living relative. Tara’s phone call interrupts Jason as he is asking Lafayette for some meth with which to bribe Crystal’s jailed cousin for information on her. Oh, Jason. Ever since the mysterious Crystal ditched him in the woods and pretended not to know him in front of her “fiancé” last week, Jason has been terribly lovesick and, to his amazement, depressed – an emotional state he had told Hoyt earlier he didn’t think he was “smart enough” to experience. I repeat: Oh, Jason.

He and Lafayette head to Ruston where a pushy organ donor prompts Jason to worry about the responsibility he faces as Sookie’s next of kin. Jason’s bewilderment is not without merit, as he divulges to Tara, Lafayette and Alcide that Sookie has never “really been sick” before, and wasn’t even born in a hospital. Combined with her lack of blood type and increasing occurrences of “microwave fingers,” in addition to the ever-present telepathy, I sense this is all a heavy dose of foreshadowing into exactly who, and what, Sookie Stackhouse really is. Before my predictions begin to fully form, however, a prophetically enlightening dream sequence is unleashed as a comatose Sookie is shown in a dreamy limbo of sorts with a hugely anticipated character from the books: Claudine!

Alan Ball had alluded to Claudine’s impending introduction at Comic-Con, but not that she would turn up quite so soon. As a complete neophyte regarding the Sookie Stackhouse novels (read: I haven’t read them), my knowledge of Claudine is limited to what my more well versed friends and colleagues are willing to tell me without major spoilers. In other words? Not much. Claudine appears to be a spiritual mentor, guiding Sookie through an in-between world where others share her gifts and everyone prances through paradise, drinking liquid light and being one with the universe. Or something like that. Claudine implores Sookie (telepathically, of course)  to leave her life on Earth and stay with her. When Sookie notes the symbolism of water in their surroundings, Claudine cryptically says, “It wasn’t the water that killed them,” presumably referring to Mom and Dad Stackhouse who drowned years earlier. Before Sookie can get a straight answer as to what the hell that’s supposed to mean, a dark cloud appears and casts a shadow upon her new world. Simultaneously, back on Earth, Bill has just arrived in Sookie’s hospital room. Claudine warns Sookie to take heed: “He will steal your light,” she warns. Am I still watching the same show? I wonder to myself.

At the hospital, Tara freaks at Bill’s unwelcome presence, bristling as he explains he had no idea he put Sookie in this position. He tells Jason the only way to heal her is to let her drink his blood. Jason reluctantly agrees, much to Tara’s chagrin. Indeed, Bill’s blood brings Sookie back to life and away from Claudine, whose message had clearly taken a toll on Sookie’s perception of reality, instilling petrifying fear towards who had once made her feel safest. Upon first sight of Bill, a blood-curdling scream escapes Sookie’s throat and seems to nearly reverberate through the television screen.

Elsewhere, we’re intermittently reminded other characters exist on True Blood as Sam’s ongoing (and going, and going) saga with his hillbilly parents makes actual progress as he breaks into the dog fighting ring Tommy’s been forced into by a desperate, ignorant Melinda and a downright disgusting Joe Lee and his “saggy underpants.” Sam infiltrates the mind-bogglingly horrific outfit, gloriously freeing all the doggies (I think I cheered out loud) and taking a sheepish Tommy with him. Smell ya later, Ma and Pa.

Queen Sophie-Anne, meanwhile, is first shown trapped inside a giant birdcage in her own house. Eric has held her prisoner and taken her beloved servant, Hadley, hostage until Sophie-Anne fesses up about her intentions toward Sookie. As Eric ferociously digs into Hadley’s jugular, a visibly upset Sophie-Anne remains tight-lipped, but Hadley’s had enough and musters the strength to whisper to Eric the pivotal fact that she’s Sookie’s cousin. She seems to inaudibly elaborate further, but the details of everything she divulged remain unknown for now. Eric’s piqued curiosity, however, is unmistakable as his delight at this useful information is plastered all over that perpetually smug mug of his.

Back at Fangtasia, the merciless Magister is having his way with a fantastically droll Pam, playing along with the surely agonizing torture with remarkable aplomb. An exchange between the two regarding Pam being a “Tiffany’s girl” and the Magister’s intent to pierce her eyelids with sterling silver earrings from the famed jewelry landmark is one for the time capsule. Eric swoops in just in time, informing an increasingly impatient Magister he hasn’t, in fact, brought Bill with him as promised, but rather the real V dealer, Queen Sophie-Anne, who framed him. As the Magister begins arrest proceedings for Eric and Sophie-Anne, King Russell struts down the stairs and informs the Magister his authority is being usurped and he is ordered to officiate his marriage to Sophie Anne. An insidiously thunderstruck Magister is forced into the same torture position Pam had just been in, and does his best to uphold his integrity toward the wishes of the ultimate vampire “authority,” an entity referenced so vaguely Russell appears to nonchalantly wave its importance away with a flick of his wrist. In the episode’s jaw-dropping final scene, the Magister, with a stake primed squarely at his chest, succumbs to Russell’s wishes and makes his marriage to Sophie-Anne official. “I’m so happy I could bleed,” declares Sophie-Anne, dripping with sarcasm and barely concealing an eye roll. Russell at first seems pleased with the Magister’s compliance, then suddenly changes his mind. After launching into a tyrannical diatribe about the existence of “only one law: the law of nature,” Russell proceeds to decapitate the Magister, rendering him a pool of Lorena-esque jelly, to the shock of Eric, Pam, Sophie-Anne and me. I guess there’s a new sheriff in town.

While I don’t think this is the most elegantly presented True Blood episode of the season in terms of fluidity and script, the content of “Hitting the Ground” is nothing short of earth-shattering considering what it means for the progression of the overall story, and has definitely given me, as a viewer, plenty to ponder. The introduction of Claudine during Sookie’s coma proves to be a huge development, particularly because it implies further revelations about Sookie’s background and the implications of Bill’s presence in her life. The shocking deaths of Lorena, Cooter and the Magister were both unexpected and sudden, and follow suit with the upheaval in Louisiana and Mississippi’s vampire political scene. Poor Sam and his third-place storyline can’t hold a candle to the Edgington kingdom and Stackhouse folklore, but Jason’s comic relief seems less superfluous than before and now almost necessary to help break up the gruesome melodrama. Here’s hoping Franklin has gotten his head together (pun intended) in time to join us for next week!

Season 3, Episode 7: Hitting the Ground (originally aired August 1, 2010)

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Photographs courtesy of HBO and IMDbPro