***SPOILER ALERT***
As the end of the season sadly fast approaches, many storylines are beginning to wrap up, while others that are being set up early for next year are only just starting to be teased. This episode, 310 ‘I Smell A Rat’, was certainly big on revelation.
Now you might think it’s simply a coincidence, but I think that someone on the TB writing team read my blog last week. Either that or they’re all a bunch of telepaths like the intrepid heroine of this show, because, after having alls I could take with their constant leaving us on a cliff edge last week, this week they open the episode with the big reveal of just what Sookie is! Ok, so I knew already, and everyone else probably figured it out too, but I’m glad they just spat it out already. And her reaction was just perfect, because lets face it; fairies aren’t really all that cool. They’re also apparently rapists (they liked to breed with humans without the humans always agreeing) and all supes believe they were wiped out by vampires. Which explains everybody in fae-land being afraid of vamps when Sookie took her little visit there while in the coma, and Claudine’s ‘he will steal your light’ mumbo jumbo. But it doesn’t explain how she could say it. You know…if they’re wiped out and all. Do they mean wiped out on earth, but not in that alternate universe type deal where everything is pretty and sunny and everyone wears white linen?
Despite this quite baffling little slip, this opening scene was great and got the necessary information out concisely and with a good deal of humour. I’m also very glad that they then right away tackled the issue of Bill possibly being with Sookie only because of her ‘delectable and intoxicating’ fae blood. Lately Sookie has been ignoring far too many of Bill’s questionable actions and excuses, to the point where the audience is starting to see it less as love and more as stupidity. Well, maybe it was stupidity caused by love, but nevertheless I think it’s a positive for the character that she was the one who bought it up and not, say, Eric, who also had an extremely juicy scene with Bill. Stephen Moyer and Alex Skarsgard always work well together, but their scenes together this season have been greatly improved by the fact that the good guy/bad guy lines between their characters have been far less cut and dry. We’ve seen that there’s good and evil in both of them, and who appears more trustworthy is constantly shifting, even during this one scene. Bill certainly came off as the more elusive one I thought, and Eric hinted even more strongly that Bill did not return to Bon Temps and pursue Sookie on a whim. Actually, they seem to have answered one big question and replaced it with another-instead of asking ‘What am I?’ every 5 seconds Sookie now seems to constantly be asking ‘Why can’t I trust Bill?’
The love triangle that they push on every magazine cover seems to finally be starting to actually happen on the show. Persuasive Eric was able to fill Sook’s mind with just enough suspicion that she left the safe haven of Jason’s house to go to Fangtasia and probe him more. Except he was all emotionally frazzled from making wills and pondering his seemingly impending true death and wasn’t in the mood for talking; he just wanted to kiss her so he wouldn’t have any regrets in the vamp version of afterlife. So they kissed. And it wasn’t a dream, for the first time ever, and it wasn’t exactly short and she definitely enjoyed it just as much as he did. Huuuuge moment there, and I’m sure the book nerds/Eric fangirls (are they one and the same?) were messing their pants with joy. I thought the circumstances that led up to it were a bit bizarre, and her reaction was downright weird. It was basically ‘I know I’m irresistible to you because of my drug-like fae blood, but I’m so over it already and I wish you would all control yourselves so I didn’t have to kiss so many beautiful men.’ It was probably meant to be some sort of deflection of the guilt she felt at kissing another man, but left me somewhat perplexed and grateful that Pam interrupted things with a typically fantastic Pam line.
Oh, and all those other characters (you know, the ones that we care about less when things get interesting with Sookie and her pair of lovers) did stuff too. I kid. I actually cared more about Jason that I have for the whole season, because he had a cracker of an episode. Not surprisingly, the key to getting him interesting again was getting him away from Crystal, although they finally gave her big reveal in this episode too. After turning Franklin into a Super Awesome True Blood Staked Vampire Geyser of Blood ™ last week, he and Tara had an amazing scene where she harked back to him protecting her in her childhood days (remember at the very beginning of Season 1 Tara was in love with Jason, and had been since they were both very young) and they had a brief kiss before she freaked out and he spilled the beans about shooting Eggs. Jason is not just an imbecile, and Ryan Kwanten can act and this scene showed both. He was also great in the scene where he kicked Bill out of the house, and then capped off his rather interesting day by finding a panther in his bedroom. Yep, Crystal = were-panther. That big kitty sure got some claws. Meow!
Our other fave vamp/human couple, Hoyt and Jessica, are now even more like Bill and Sookie in gender reverse because now they have the blood bond going too. Hell, even they have their own triangle going on with Tommy interested in Jess, which is how the sucking of the red stuff came about. Hoyt gave Tommy a much-deserved smack in the face (another sign someone important read my blog last week as I also called for a Tommy face-clocking), and he then shifted into his nasty pit bull form and mauled poor Hoyt. As Jess ran out, presumably to jump into his arms and say ‘I love you too!’ he was bleeding profusely from the arm (and maybe even had rabies, who knows what Tommy gets up to in dog form), so she delivered some vamp-style first aid and opened up her wrist. And it was beautiful. Please let these two live happily ever after now. Hoyt could become a regular at the Compton-Hamby residence and have Wii battles against Bill! Oh the comedic possibilities…
Russell Edgington has done a Ken Bruce and gone completely mad, and by mad I mean brilliant because that’s what he always is. This week he picked up a hooker who had a passing resemblance to the late, great Talbot (oh, how I miss him), talked to him like he was Talbot, and then staked him so he could make up for not being with Talbot at his moment of death. Denis O’Hare. Emmy. Next year. Make it happen, award gods.
And Sam got a couple of flashbacks. He was clean-shaven, had a girlfriend, stole a lot of jewellery, got fleeced by his girl and another dude, and then accidentally on purpose shot both of them. I think something like this was the last thing anyone expected from a Sam back story, although it does explain why he seems to have started a whole new life in Bon Temps and some of his anger issues. I think it’s too early to know where this is going an whether it’s going to be good or bad, but I really think they need to somehow get Sam back into the action of a central storyline next season and not have him separated from the other main players completely in his own angle like he was with the Mickenses. They seem to have forgotten that he has feelings for Sookie too. Get him back in the mix somehow and let him shine!
There are still a lot of questions going into the final two episodes, but we found out a lot of things this week and I think they were delivered extremely well for the most part.
8/10.
Now you might think it’s simply a coincidence, but I think that someone on the TB writing team read my blog last week. Either that or they’re all a bunch of telepaths like the intrepid heroine of this show, because, after having alls I could take with their constant leaving us on a cliff edge last week, this week they open the episode with the big reveal of just what Sookie is! Ok, so I knew already, and everyone else probably figured it out too, but I’m glad they just spat it out already. And her reaction was just perfect, because lets face it; fairies aren’t really all that cool. They’re also apparently rapists (they liked to breed with humans without the humans always agreeing) and all supes believe they were wiped out by vampires. Which explains everybody in fae-land being afraid of vamps when Sookie took her little visit there while in the coma, and Claudine’s ‘he will steal your light’ mumbo jumbo. But it doesn’t explain how she could say it. You know…if they’re wiped out and all. Do they mean wiped out on earth, but not in that alternate universe type deal where everything is pretty and sunny and everyone wears white linen?
Despite this quite baffling little slip, this opening scene was great and got the necessary information out concisely and with a good deal of humour. I’m also very glad that they then right away tackled the issue of Bill possibly being with Sookie only because of her ‘delectable and intoxicating’ fae blood. Lately Sookie has been ignoring far too many of Bill’s questionable actions and excuses, to the point where the audience is starting to see it less as love and more as stupidity. Well, maybe it was stupidity caused by love, but nevertheless I think it’s a positive for the character that she was the one who bought it up and not, say, Eric, who also had an extremely juicy scene with Bill. Stephen Moyer and Alex Skarsgard always work well together, but their scenes together this season have been greatly improved by the fact that the good guy/bad guy lines between their characters have been far less cut and dry. We’ve seen that there’s good and evil in both of them, and who appears more trustworthy is constantly shifting, even during this one scene. Bill certainly came off as the more elusive one I thought, and Eric hinted even more strongly that Bill did not return to Bon Temps and pursue Sookie on a whim. Actually, they seem to have answered one big question and replaced it with another-instead of asking ‘What am I?’ every 5 seconds Sookie now seems to constantly be asking ‘Why can’t I trust Bill?’
The love triangle that they push on every magazine cover seems to finally be starting to actually happen on the show. Persuasive Eric was able to fill Sook’s mind with just enough suspicion that she left the safe haven of Jason’s house to go to Fangtasia and probe him more. Except he was all emotionally frazzled from making wills and pondering his seemingly impending true death and wasn’t in the mood for talking; he just wanted to kiss her so he wouldn’t have any regrets in the vamp version of afterlife. So they kissed. And it wasn’t a dream, for the first time ever, and it wasn’t exactly short and she definitely enjoyed it just as much as he did. Huuuuge moment there, and I’m sure the book nerds/Eric fangirls (are they one and the same?) were messing their pants with joy. I thought the circumstances that led up to it were a bit bizarre, and her reaction was downright weird. It was basically ‘I know I’m irresistible to you because of my drug-like fae blood, but I’m so over it already and I wish you would all control yourselves so I didn’t have to kiss so many beautiful men.’ It was probably meant to be some sort of deflection of the guilt she felt at kissing another man, but left me somewhat perplexed and grateful that Pam interrupted things with a typically fantastic Pam line.
Oh, and all those other characters (you know, the ones that we care about less when things get interesting with Sookie and her pair of lovers) did stuff too. I kid. I actually cared more about Jason that I have for the whole season, because he had a cracker of an episode. Not surprisingly, the key to getting him interesting again was getting him away from Crystal, although they finally gave her big reveal in this episode too. After turning Franklin into a Super Awesome True Blood Staked Vampire Geyser of Blood ™ last week, he and Tara had an amazing scene where she harked back to him protecting her in her childhood days (remember at the very beginning of Season 1 Tara was in love with Jason, and had been since they were both very young) and they had a brief kiss before she freaked out and he spilled the beans about shooting Eggs. Jason is not just an imbecile, and Ryan Kwanten can act and this scene showed both. He was also great in the scene where he kicked Bill out of the house, and then capped off his rather interesting day by finding a panther in his bedroom. Yep, Crystal = were-panther. That big kitty sure got some claws. Meow!
Our other fave vamp/human couple, Hoyt and Jessica, are now even more like Bill and Sookie in gender reverse because now they have the blood bond going too. Hell, even they have their own triangle going on with Tommy interested in Jess, which is how the sucking of the red stuff came about. Hoyt gave Tommy a much-deserved smack in the face (another sign someone important read my blog last week as I also called for a Tommy face-clocking), and he then shifted into his nasty pit bull form and mauled poor Hoyt. As Jess ran out, presumably to jump into his arms and say ‘I love you too!’ he was bleeding profusely from the arm (and maybe even had rabies, who knows what Tommy gets up to in dog form), so she delivered some vamp-style first aid and opened up her wrist. And it was beautiful. Please let these two live happily ever after now. Hoyt could become a regular at the Compton-Hamby residence and have Wii battles against Bill! Oh the comedic possibilities…
Russell Edgington has done a Ken Bruce and gone completely mad, and by mad I mean brilliant because that’s what he always is. This week he picked up a hooker who had a passing resemblance to the late, great Talbot (oh, how I miss him), talked to him like he was Talbot, and then staked him so he could make up for not being with Talbot at his moment of death. Denis O’Hare. Emmy. Next year. Make it happen, award gods.
And Sam got a couple of flashbacks. He was clean-shaven, had a girlfriend, stole a lot of jewellery, got fleeced by his girl and another dude, and then accidentally on purpose shot both of them. I think something like this was the last thing anyone expected from a Sam back story, although it does explain why he seems to have started a whole new life in Bon Temps and some of his anger issues. I think it’s too early to know where this is going an whether it’s going to be good or bad, but I really think they need to somehow get Sam back into the action of a central storyline next season and not have him separated from the other main players completely in his own angle like he was with the Mickenses. They seem to have forgotten that he has feelings for Sookie too. Get him back in the mix somehow and let him shine!
There are still a lot of questions going into the final two episodes, but we found out a lot of things this week and I think they were delivered extremely well for the most part.
8/10.
