So, recap package rolls, HBO logo snaps crackles and pops, and we’re…in Fairy Land! It’s as naff looking as ever and all the fairy folk are still dressed like hippies and looking like they’re on ecstasy when Claudine and the Sookster beam in from Bon Temps cemetery. Sook barely has time to berate Claudine for being such a sucky fairy godmother (yes, that’s actually what she is) before a familiar face from all the way back in ancient times (that’d be Season 2) shows up. It’s Barry, the adorable telepathic bellboy from the vampire hotel. His godmother, a dude, is all like ‘Haaiiii’, he’s all like ‘This place is unreals, yo!’ the fairies are all like ‘Eat our glowing fruit, it’ll make you feel reaalll special!’ and Sook is all like ‘WTF? Oh snap, double WTF, cos there’s my granddaddy, and he’s Lumbergh from Office Space!’ Turns out Granddaddy Earl Stackhouse, played really well by the uber-prolific Gary Cole, ain’t dead after all, he’s been floating around in Fae World for 20 whole years, having a grand ‘ol time and scarfing down luminescent produce (Barry: ‘It’s like biting into pure happiness!’)
Which is all fine and dandy, until MAB (just pronounced Mab and not em ay bee, but the way this woman said it definitely calls for capital letter emphasis and she will always be MAB to me) shows up. She’s a tall, slightly scaring looking fairy queen I guess, and she does not have good intentions for all the humans that have been lured into their world. She and Sook have a hilarious little exchange where they talk all over each other and then…ok guys you’ll have to tell me what happened next, because the copy of the episode I watched for some reason turned into another show here. Not sure what it was, but it was something in the sci-fi genre. And…oh! They got Anna Paquin to guest star!
Hmm, what’s that? That wasn’t another show? That was still True Blood? To quote the great Zack Ryder, are you serious, bro?! Ok, I’m being silly as usual. But damn, the whole landscape really did turn into another planet, and the fairies turned into ugly-ass troll/alien thingies. They’re slinging glowing balls of pure destruction at Sook and Granddaddy, and it all looks very cool even if I was totally confused at this point. MAB starts yelling something like ‘Close the portal!’ or something similar that was giving me some serious Thor vibes, and all looks doomed for the Stackhouses until a small group of rebel fairies come to the rescue, led by…Claudine’s brother! This is the point where I tell you all that not only will I not bitch about TV Claude being a million miles from book Claude, but that no comparisons to the books will be made by me in any of my reviews. I only mildly enjoy the books while I’m crazy about the show, they are two separate entities by two separate creators to me, and book nerds who take up forum space with their rants are by all means entitled to do that, but quite frankly get on my fucking nerves. Ok…glad we got that out of the way!
Claude manages to get them to jump through the portal in the nick of time, and hey presto, we’re back in Bon Temps cemetery. I found this whole opening sequence, which took about a whole quarter of the episode, pretty great for the most part. Very glad there’s more to the fairies than dancing and microwave fingers, the special effects were great for a TV show (if things start looking shoddy later on we’ll know its cos they blew the budget here) and it was just an overall jolt of complete strangeness that set an amazing tone for the new season. It was like announcing in a big, bold voice ‘We ain’t rehashing shit this year, so you better pay attention, junior!’
Not surprisingly, too many electric apples and the ordeal of going through the portal are too much for Granddaddy Stackhouse, but at least he manages to see Gran’s grave before he carks it. Sook has a nice little cry in the graveyard before heading back to her perpetually trashed abode. But wait! Trashed it is no longer! There’s a renovating crew there putting the finishing touches on a complete revamping (no pun intended), finally removing all the trees and meat from the Maryann days and all the werewolf blood from the, um, werewolf days. Once again, poor Sook has a complete WTF face. The reno crew call in the law, deputy Jason fuckin’ Stackhouse, complete with sheriff’s office uniform and cop goatee, comes in, freaks out over seeing his baby sis and informs her that the whole town thought that one of the vamps had done her in, because she’s been gone for over a year. Sh-wing! Okay, I think everybody who watched at least one trailer for the season knew this was coming, but its still put a massive smile on my face to hear it. I honestly think this is the best thing the show could have done to be completely new and exciting, considering that the previous three seasons took place in such a short amount of time narrative wise. And this was a really clever way of doing it, because I was actually just expecting a plain old ‘1 year later’ title to pop up.
Oh hey, that reminds, there are other characters on this show aren’t there? Actually, there are a metric arseload. Lets see what they’re up to before you get bored and stop reading, shall we? Lafayette (now mohawked, still completely awesome) and Jesus (just me or is he better looking now?) pull up to something called the Moon Goddess Emporuim. At least that’s what I think it was called. There’s a seriously eclectic mob in there doing whatever ritual shit witches do, including Holly the Merlottes waitress, some girl with glasses called Katie and another guy who looks like a biker crossed with a hillbilly. And sitting there on a beanbag (thank you Brian and Andy from Camp Blood for pointing out how hilarious that was) is Aunt Petunia from Harry Potter, in the throes of being possessed by a spirit or some shiznit like that. She calls Laffy over, says its someone called Eddie (! The sweet gay vamp that got staked all the way back in Season 1) then gets full on possessed by him and freaks poor Laffy and your humble scribe completely the fuck out. Seriously, that woman is terrifying me already. Um, bravo, I guess?
We get to see Arlene’s spawn of a serial killer baby, actually a cute ‘lil fella named Mikey. Cute, but he is decapitating dolls already. This whole evil baby storyline could turn out to be totally stupid, but as long as Terry is on screen I won’t mind if it sucks.
Jess! Hoyt! Jess + Hoyt! I heart those two! But, ruh row, the honeymoon is definitely over. Shit, they’ve been living together for a year and they’re already acting like an old married couple who hate each other? What went wrong? Apparently it all has do with Hoyt being a total guy and wanting dinner cooked for him after a hard days work laying asphalt, and Jess being totally grossed out by nasty dead human food. They have a pretty awesome tiff (I love a good couple fight on TV), where there’s a blink and you’ll miss it moment where they mention Mama Fortenberry trying to shoot Jess. Remember at the end of last season we saw her buying a Steve Newlin approved vampire hunting rifle? This is the first indicator that just too damn much happened back then and they just won’t be able to go into detail about it all. Anyway, this scene was entertaining as hell, especially when she cracks a whole carton of eggs into a pan, fries them for about 5 seconds and serves them up to him. And poor Jim Parrack actually had to eat them. Later on at Fangtasia they seem to have patched it up, but she’s still ‘eyefucking fangbangers’ all over the place. That line could have only come from one person, couldn’t it? Jess and Pam have another great scene in the ladies room, there seems to be quite a ladies room tradition developing, where Pam of course gives the absolute worst advice possible but is of course completely fucking owning as usual. Seriously, I think Pam needs a spinoff.
Tara. Just…OMFG Tara. New Orleans. Cage fighter. Lesbian cage fighter. I really don’t know what to say about this except 1) The phrase ‘I certainly wasn’t expecting that’ became the biggest understatement of all time, and 2) It’s completely perfect for her. Bury that pathetic victimised Tara of yore under a mountain of ass-kickery and girl on girl action and never let her surface again, I say.
And Sam? Um, he’s still Sam. He’s still a bit grumpy, still a bit angry, still completely exasperated at Sookie’s Little Miss Danger antics, still completely gorgeous. Oh, and he didn’t kill Tommy. Tommy’s just got a leg brace and has been adopted by Maxine Fortenberry or something. Ooookay. Sam’s also going to anger management. Shifter anger management. Which apparently involves getting sloshed on red wine, then shifting into horses and going for a little run. Wicked.
My favourite part of the episode was the alternating scenes of Eric and Bill both doing good public relations to try and repair the image of vampires that was ruined when Russell Edgington ripped out a guy’s spine on television. After another classic Pam moment where she deadpans her way through a scripted message (seriously, they should change the term deadpanning to ‘dead-Pam-ming’) Eric takes over and delivers a perfect PSA, where he turns on the charm and even makes a few jokes. ‘We’re always happy to serve humans at Fangtasia…and I don’t mean for dinner.’ Loved it! So did Nan Flanagan. I see her maybe trying to recruit Eric as some sort of official spokesperson or ‘face’ of the AVL. Meanwhile, Bill is off speaking at a ribbon cutting ceremony for an old folks home, one that I’d say he poured his own cash into as it’s named after his wife. We also see Andy’s sister Portia here for the first time, played by Courtney Ford aka the Trinity Killer’s daughter from Dexter (I love when my favourite shows start crossing over!) Her and Bill seemed to be making eyes at each other, and she was also thinking about Bill when Sookie read her mind in Merlotes. I’m calling it now: they’re already banging.
A lot of big stuff also went down at the end of the episode. Jason is obviously still the carer/leader/whatever of the hillbilly werepanthers in Hotshot as he’s bringing them a bunch of food, and Crystal is still AWOL. And how do the hillbilly werepanthers repay him for his kindness? They shove him into a freezer and lock the thing. Which leads me to think that Crystal is actually going to be back soon, and it doesn’t look good for the newest member of the Bon Temps police force.
Eric shows up in Sook’s house. While she’s naked, obviously, because somebody has to be naked in every episode of this show. And it’s not a dream this time. Oh, and he’s actually the one who bought the house. So that apparently gives him the right to say ‘Sookie. You. Are. Mine.’ FANGS! Okay, interesting.
But my personal favourite of the surprises, the bit where I would have jumped up and said ‘FUCK YEAH!’ if I wasn’t actually in a hostel at that moment: Bill is the freakin’ King of Louisiana! We don’t know how the hell it happened yet. Did he kill the Queen? Did he have help? Is the (ex) Queen still alive? But the possibilities this creates are tantalising. What kind of ruler will he be? Will he abuse his power? What will this do to his relationship with Eric? With Sookie? Did he want to be the King? Does he have a crown? Does he still have his Wii in his fancy new house? Does he have an army of servants that address him as ‘His Majesty, sir William of Compton’? I am dying to find out all these things.
And that was this season premiere’s biggest success. There is just so much to be excited for, and the fact that after one whole episode we still don’t know hardly anything of what went down over the last year is in my opinion a stroke of genius. So hope you enjoyed the first blog of Season 4, they won’t all be this long I promise! Well, I’ll try anyway, I am prone to getting carried away. Y’all come back next week, ya hear? And episode 4.01 sets the bar at a pretty high standard with a score from me of:
9/10.
