Lafayette Reynolds – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

True Blood: Season 5, Episode 7–In the Beginning

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 7 YET.

“I have been born again. Made again, in my new Maker’s image.”

After the glut of action last week, it was back mostly to intrigue and plotting in this week’s True Blood. Hardly a surprise, as the season’s only halfway through – I really don’t think they could have maintained (and stepped up) that level of madness for the next six episodes!

Foremost in the intrigue was the ongoing backstabbing in the vampire Authority. After his deliciously feral rampage last week, Russell Edgington was contained surprisingly easily by Authority security, though not before amusingly hanging Eric from a nearby pillar. Given the sheer power Russell had displayed and his apparent madness, it seemed odd that he should be so easily overpowered. But as usual, there was a reason. As speculated last week, the whole thing had been deliberately orchestrated by Salome as a kind of palace coup. With Roman out of the way, Salome was free to let her Sanguinista beliefs all hang out. Escorted to her chamber, Bill and Eric found her luxuriating in her newfound power, along with the now freed Nora. And – surprise, surprise – a newly contrite, ‘born again’ Russell.

I was as sceptical as Bill and Eric about Russell’s claim to have turned over a new leaf, but I needn’t have been. Whatever Russell’s true intentions, the Sanguinistas’ agenda of subjugating humanity is pretty much in line with what he’s always wanted anyway. As a consequence, we got to see Denis O’Hare back to his sinister, manipulative turn as the deceptively friendly Russell, all laid-back charm and convincing Southern manners. He’s still the best villain the show’s come up with, and it’s nice to be reminded that his evil encompasses far more than just unrestrained ferocity.

Russell may or may not be a believer in the Sanguinistas’ fundamentalist religious beliefs, but he’s certainly playing along convincingly enough. As Salome assembled what was left of the Council to commit the ultimate heresy of drinking Lilith’s long-preserved blood, Dieter was the only dissenter; and for his pains, he got a lightning fast decapitation at Russell’s hands. The Authority are falling like dominoes – Roman last week, and now Dieter. I shall miss actor Christopher Heyerdahl in the part; he does this sort of thing so well that he’s pretty much typecast (see also his bloody terrifying turn as the demon Alastair in Supernatural).

After that demonstration of the rewards dissenters can expect, it was no surprise that the remaining Council members were jumping over themselves to join Salome in her ‘heresy’. Of course, Bill and Eric aren’t ‘believers’, but don’t see the harm in playing along. After all, as Eric says, “it’s just vampire blood. What could happen?”

Quite a lot, as it turns out. As the mother of all vampires, Lilith’s blood plainly has quite a kick. Hence the immediate jump cut to the whole fang gang stumbling through the party thronged streets of New Orleans, plainly in a trippy/drunken state, and eager for confrontation with the ‘”cattle” of humanity. Russell seems to have found a new soulmate in ‘gay vampire American’ Steve Newlin, who admires his Blues Brothers-style disguise.

Bill and Eric were just as affected as the rest, joining in as they terrified an impatient cab driver who dared to sound his horn at them. The cabbie got off lightly though. In a darkly comic scene, the vampires showed up to slaughter a pretty nauseating wedding party at a nearby bar, their appearance heralded by Russell suddenly joining the bride in singing ‘You Light Up My Life’. Frankly, after that I’d have been tempted to slaughter them.

And it seems the slaughter has been capable of actually summoning up Lilith from beyond the grave, as she formed herself from a pool of blood and stepped out full-frontal nude to join her subjects. It wasn’t clear whether this was real, or a hallucination brought on by her powerful blood. But Eric had a different vision, as a spectral Godric popped up to tell him that what was happening was wrong. It seems ironic that Eric, previously shown as pretty amoral, is now becoming the conscience for other vampires. But it was nice to see Allan Hyde as Godric again; being as natively Swedish as Alexander Skarsgard meant that they could carry on a fluent conversation in that language.

So, perhaps unexpectedly, Eric’s conscience may be humanity’s only hope. It’s a measure of how well done True Blood is that I really don’t mind seeing the plot of vampires trying to subjugate humanity yet again – even this show has been there before, with Russell’s plans in the third season. Strategically though, it looks a bit dodgy. After all, humanity all know about vampires now, and they outnumber them millions to one. Surely even with their powers, those are odds the vampires can’t beat? Stay tuned, I guess, and we shall see…

If the Sangunistas’ plans seemed rather familiar, so too did one of this week’s other main narratives, as Hoyt became increasingly caught up with the gang of good ol’ boys going around shooting supernaturals while wearing Obama masks. They may be a bit more amateurish, but this surprisingly diverse hate group are basically a rerun of season two’s Christian hate group (and Steve Newlin’s old outfit) the Fellowship of the Sun.

Still, the show’s having some fun with them – they got some laugh out loud dialogue as Hoyt proclaimed “I’ve felt more love and affection in this hate group than I have anywhere else”, to which their leader passionately replied, “that’s right, hate groups are about so much more than just hate!” They may be pretty dense, and the dialogue may be pretty funny, but there’s a good underlying point there about the feeling of community and shared identity that presumably holds hate groups together. Perhaps it will be developed further in later episodes.

Sam and Sheriff Andy got their fair share of this plotline too, as they continued their investigation into the shooters. So we got treated to the spectacle of Sam writhing around sniffing at the floor to track them while a deputy looked on in some surprise, and Andy paying a visit to his crusty predecessor as Sheriff, Bud Dearborne, for a bit of professional reassurance. It was nice to see the ever excellent William Sanderson back for a cameo as Bud, who was none too sympathetic at being interrupted by Andy when he had a hot tub appointment with his fancy woman in his wife’s absence!

Lafayette’s brujo demon problem also got some prominence this week, as he travelled down to see Jesus’ uncle Don Bartolo, unsurprisingly the one behind the whole thing. As nasty as ever, Bartolo promptly clobbered Lafayette, sewed his lips shut and prepared to sacrifice him to retake the ‘magic’ that Jesus had given him. I expected Lafayette to be last minute saved by Jesus’ ghost, but in the event it was Don Bartolo’s abused wife who stepped up and stabbed him from behind. Like the Master said in Doctor Who after a similar plot development, “it’s always the women”. But are Lafayette’s problems over? Somehow, I rather doubt that…

There was also time to pay quick visits to some of the other plotlines, just to keep them bubbling along. Tara and Pam got one significant scene, as Tara’s reformed alcoholic Christian mom turned up at Fangtasia to disown her while she was pole dancing. A comforting chat with Pam showed how she’s mellowed as a character, despite trying to hide it; she now thinks of herself as Tara’s real mother. It was a nicely played little exchange, though I kept being distracted by Pam’s new frizzy hairstyle – I don’t like it. Nice to know I’m paying attention to the dramatic details that really matter.

After a scene of Arlene watching her and Terry’s wedding video (presumably a new recording, as it was clear this happened during Sookie’s absence in fairyland), we got to see a quick look at the man himself as he waited resignedly for death at the hands of the fiery Ifrit. But as it turns out, the Ifrit isn’t ready to kill him or Patrick – yet. It popped up, laughed at them, and buggered off. I’m guessing they’ve made a strategic miscalculation here – the curse was that “you and all you love will burn”. I think Arlene and the kids are probably next on the charbroiling list, and Terry had better get back to Bon Temps pronto.

And finally, Jason and Sookie were dealing with the revelations from their fairy cousins. Jason, trying to reconcile his friendship with Jessica with the newfound knowledge that vampires killed his parents, ended up in an almighty fight with her at Bill’s mansion. Only in True Blood could a domestic tiff end with one of the participants being shot in the head after having tried to drink the blood of the other, with both able to come back for round two at a later date!

Sookie, meanwhile, had been told by Claude (more of Claude, please) that, being only half-fairy, her magic was finite and could be exhausted. Leaving her, basically, as normal and human as anyone else (which isn’t many people in this show). It was an interesting dilemma, summed up in a conversation with Sam – if you’re in a minority group trying to fight prejudice from ‘normals’, would it count as giving up to simply succumb to the temptation to join their number?

Given the show’s recurring subtexts, it was hard not to see this as another comment on real life outsiders like homosexuals, particularly with the myriad, usually religiously-backed, ‘ex-gay’ therapies so common in the US. Sookie maintained that even as a ‘normal’ she could continue her fight against prejudice and injustice, but even so it was disappointing to see her decision to try and exhaust her fairy magic and give up her identity. Jason was rushing off to investigate, so perhaps he’ll talk her out of it…

It would be easy to criticise the show this season for a few things – primarily, redoing plots it seems to have done before, retreading past glories by bringing back previous villains, and cramming so many plots in that it’s hard to keep up with them. But True Blood does it all with such gusto that it’s still hugely enjoyable, a mad, OTT supernatural soap whose excesses are hard not to love. There may be little here that’s new, but I’m still enjoying it immensely.

True Blood: Season 5, Episode 5–Let’s Boot and Rally

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 5 YET.

“I keep thinking that if I just made the right choice, the madness would end and life would go back to normal. But it won’t ever end, will it?”

Looks like episode 5 is the point where the steamy gumbo of True Blood finally starts to boil over, as plot setups finally give way to action, revelation and yet more twisty, turny backstabbing. All laced with a delicious soupcon of meta self-awareness, as several characters begin to mock the sheer supernatural insanity that makes up everyday life in Bon Temps.

The first of those, unsurprisingly, was Sookie Stackhouse. Having dragged Alcide to her bedroom then somewhat spoiled the moment by puking on his shoes, she couldn’t resist a good laugh as Bill and Eric turned up to dragoon her into the search for Russell. Her half-amused, half-weary resignation as she headed for the door, keen to get yet another supernatural civil war out of the way – “must be Thursday” – was pretty funny, if somewhat reminiscent of similar humour in the later seasons of Buffy.

I must say though, her ability to almost instantly sober up after having been, a few minutes before, so drunk that she couldn’t keep her stomach contents in, stretched plausibility. This is actually a pretty common trope in many thrillers, film and TV, supernatural and conventional. A key character will choose to drown his/her sorrows, getting completely blotto, at which point something vital to the plot will occur. Said character will then become instantly capable of action (perhaps with complaints of a headache to show that drunkenness wasn’t completely forgotten about). As opposed to most real people, who would stagger about, fall over, keep needing to urinate, and probably get killed.

Still, Sookie’s not real, and we’re not looking at gritty realism here (quite the reverse, if anything). And maybe being part-fairy gives her a pretty high tolerance for alcohol. So off she went with the bickering trio of lovelorn supernatural suitors, to use her mindreading ability to probe the glamoured memory of Alcide’s boss Doug, the only witness to Russell’s exhumation.

Her mind probe (“no, not the mind probe!”) instantly revealed that Russell had been dug up by a) a woman and b) a member of the Authority. Given the way previous episodes have shown the Authority to be a hotbed of subversion and religious sectarianism, this was hardly a surprise. But in order to maintain some level of suspense and uncertainty, the woman was conveniently wearing a face-shielding hat. So which is it? Nora? Salome? Rosalyn? Or perhaps someone we haven’t even seen yet?

Further mind probing led our bickering heroes to that old staple of the traditional horror tale – a scary, dark, abandoned hospital which they would have to explore by torchlight. Again, Sookie took the lead in pointing out that they were, basically, in a cliched B movie, and subverting that by saying that no way were they going to split up and investigate separately. And for that matter, that her ‘fairy magic’ was pretty much the only weapon in their arsenal that had previously been effective against Russell, so this time she was protecting them. The point was amusingly underlined as the hulking, bearded Doug, quivering in fear, clung desperately to Sookie’s mind reading hand for comfort.

Cliched or not, the exploration of the creepy hospital was as well done as any iteration of this trope. The usual suspects were present – sudden, jump-inducing rats; dismembered body parts; a ‘larder’ full of hanging, terrified victims-to-be. For Bill and Eric, the stakes (as it were) were raised by the revelation (from the Authority’s relentlessly chipper tech geek) that their iStakes would kill them at dawn if they hadn’t found Russell.

But find him they did, surprisingly quickly. I must admit, I’d half expected him to have been spirited away by his unseen Sanguinista sponsors; but no, there he was, looking deceptively frail and shrunken on a gurney. Great to see Denis O’Hare back, with his former louche Southern accent as Russell. And since this is only episode 5, I’m willing to bet that he’s not nearly so infirm as he seems – I’m expecting some serious trouble with him next week.

Also confronting the bizarre proliferation of ‘supes’ this week were the Bon Temps PD, in the dogged forms of Andy Bellefleur and Jason Stackhouse. Investigating the mysterious shooting of Sam’s shifter friends, Andy received the news that Sam was yet another supernatural creature with a kind of weary resignation. Poor old Andy, it must be starting to seem to him like there are barely any mundane humans in the town he’s responsible for policing.

It didn’t help when Jason explained the identity of those hosting the party they’d been so unceremoniously thrown out of last week. After some initial comic confusion about the word ‘fairy’, Andy just seemed to give in out of despair, asking Jason to just not mention it again. I don’t think that’s really going to help. But it is amusing that the show’s characters, in-universe, are starting to find the whole thing pretty implausible now, and it helps subvert similar criticisms from the audience. Of course, whether those criticisms are justified is an entirely subjective thing.

And as if to give the finger to those critics, we had yet another supernatural being introduced as Terry and Patrick were told the tale of what was really responsible for the recent deaths of their old army buddies in mysterious housefires. Turns out it wasn’t their hyper-paranoid comrade Eller after all – he was the only one to remember, through their stoned recollection of the massacre of Iraqi civilians, that they’d been cursed by a woman (shortly before Terry himself, shockingly, silenced her with a shot to the head). The purveyor of that curse (“you and all you love will burn”) has finally come Stateside; and in keeping with the style of the show, it’s not a vengeance-crazed jihadi or a traumatised GI. It’s an Ifrit, an ancient Arabic fire demon.

Nicely visualised as a Supernatural-style cloud of black smoke, embers glowing from within, the Ifrit showed up to off Eller now he’d served his function of telling the other characters what’s going on. Patrick, now revealed as the main culprit for the massacre, didn’t believe a word of it (what’s the betting he’s next?), but it rang all too true for Terry. Thing is, now he’s been shown as complicit in a war crime, how much will we now care if it comes for him? It’s a brave tactic to show a formerly sympathetic character in such a horrible light, one which, hopefully, might get viewers asking themselves a few questions about the US’s recent Arabic ‘adventures’.

Elsewhere, Lafayette is once again being seriously put through the wringer this season, understandably driven to near-distraction by his uncontrollable propensity to transform into a malicious Brujo-style demon at inconvenient moments. Unlike anyone else in the show, he’s told absolutely no-one about his troubles, which weren’t helped any by the not-entirely-unexpected reappearance of his dead boyfriend Jesus. Well, actually Jesus might have helped if it weren’t for the fact that he appeared as a gruesome severed head, trying unsuccessfully to speak through a sewn-up mouth. Luckily for Lafayette, help might just be at hand, as his mom too can see the apparition, and unlike him, she can understand what it’s trying to say…

And lastly, Tara, pressganged into bartending at Fangtasia, had a nice bit of bonding with Jessica as they discussed the tribulations of being a newly-made vampire, in a conversation freighted with the show’s frequent analogy between vampirism and homosexuality. “It gets better”, Jessica insisted, in case we missed the point.

This parallel is quite common in recent, liberal-leaning vampire tales – True Blood, with its ‘God Hates Fangs’ movement and ‘coming out of the coffin’ euphemism, is more overt than most. It’s an obvious comparison, you’d think – these vampires are (mostly) sympathetic characters struggling against mainstream society’s refusal to accept the ‘other’.

And yet it often disturbs me a little. As Tara and Jessica point out, vampires are consumed with a desire to rip apart all the humans around them, and their ability to restrain this urge is what makes them civilised. Taken to its logical extreme, the parallel would be that all homosexuals are filled with a near-uncontrollable urge to have sex with everyone of the same gender around them. The analogy is well-meaning, but speaking as a homosexual myself, I sometimes find that being compared to a species of genuinely dangerous predators makes me a little uncomfortable.

Still, Tara and Jessica’s newfound bond didn’t last long, as Tara took to feeding on newly-minted fangbanger Hoyt, and Jessica took exception to that. Their fight was nicely intercut in a montage narrated by a speech from Authority head honcho Roman that seemed to sum up the point the season has reached – and it’s a point of no return. From hereon in, expect the action to ramp up week by week!

True Blood: Season 5, Episode 3–Whatever I Am, You Made Me

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 3 YET.

“Seriously Sookie, this is your plan? Pretend none of it ever happened?”

This week’s episode of True Blood continued to restlessly stir the overseasoned pot of plotlines in this year’s supernatural gumbo, with plenty of steamy Southern Gothic soap to enjoy. Bill and Eric continued to be held in the clutches of the vampire Authority, which is increasingly being revealed to be full of unscrupulous, backstabbing political operators with secret agendas. Tara is not adjusting well (to put it mildly) to being a vampire, while Sookie is discovering that burying a corpse doesn’t make all your problems go away.

That last has become a surprisingly major plot point, in a show that often treats such deaths in a fairly cavalier way. Usually, the deaths that result from Bon Temps’ supernatural hijinks are quickly dismissed, but Sookie’s shooting of Alcide’s girlfriend Debbie is plainly coming back to haunt her in a big way. After discovering Debbie’s abandoned car last week, dogged sheriff Andy Bellefleur is making a typically sloppy Bon Temps PD attempt at investigation, but the arrival of Debbie’s parents has upped the stakes a notch. To add to the worry, Sookie’s going to find keeping the death secret rather difficult, given that she’s just turned one of the major witnesses into a vampire who’s none too happy about that.

There was a lot of focus on Tara this week, as her frantic flight from chez Stackhouse has rendered any attempt at keeping her vampirism secret a moot point. She’s really not happy about her new life, and not thinking too clearly; fleeing to Sam Merlotte for sanctuary, she makes him promise not to tell Sookie where she is. She seems to have forgotten that Sookie can READ MINDS, making that somewhat pointless. Add to that the fact that Sam’s ‘resourceful’ attempt at hiding her from daylight amounts to putting her in the diner’s freezer, where anyone could walk in and discover her, and you realise that Tara really didn’t think this through. Perhaps that shotgun blast left her mind more damaged than we thought…

But such are the problems of the newborn vampire, and they’re usually the responsibility of that vampire’s Maker, as Pam found herself unable to ignore however much she wanted to. The script drew parallels with the circumstances of Pam’s own turning, in more of those gradually unfolding flashbacks to 1905 San Francisco. All credit to Kristin Bauer van Straten, she manages to make her performance as the still-human Pam distinctive from the hard-bitten vampire we know today. She’s no less cynical, but still has some idealism about being a vampire; so much so that she forces Eric to turn her, slitting her wrists and declaring, “let me walk the world with you, Mr Northman, or watch me die.”

There was much musing on the making of vampires, and the responsibility of turning one loose on the world. We got to see Bill’s Maker Lorena again, as it turned out that the killer stalking Pam’s brothel was none other than Bill Compton himself. Later, Eric laid down the law about the responsibility of making a vampire, not willing to condemn Pam to that state (or to take responsibility for it).

Pam’s story was intertwined with Tara’s, to make the point that they had more in common than Pam was willing to admit. She may be willing to ignore Sookie’s frantic pleas for help (receiving a blast of fairy magic for her callousness), but when it comes to it, she can’t ignore the vampire she made. At the end of the episode, it was with an exasperated, resigned sigh that Pam put aside her pen to go to the aid of the suicidal Tara, currently cooking merrily away on a tanning bed.

The theme continued amid the Machiavellian intrigue among the vampire Authority, still divided over whether to execute Bill and Eric or take them up on their offer of hunting down Russell Edgington. Each season of True Blood has revealed a little more about the hierarchy of vampire ‘society’; previously, we’d only seen Zeljko Ivanek as the Magister, representing a higher authority. Now, we’re seeing that Authority itself, and while their machinations are fun, I can’t help feeling that we’ve seen them before – in Blade, for a start.

Still, there’s little truly original left for vampire stories to do, so that’s one we just have to take on board. And the bickering Chancellors of the Authority are good fun, especially the commanding performance of Christopher Meloni as hunky leader and Guardian, Roman. Clad in an immaculately tailored suit, it was still obvious that he was pretty buff underneath it; it was therefore no surprise that he finally got naked for a scene with the other most interesting member of the Authority – Salome. Who, as it turns out, actually is that Salome, the one who asked Herod for John the Baptist’s head on a plate.

I said last week that the ‘vampire Bible’ might cause concern for more devout Christian viewers of the show (assuming there are any). The presence of Salome is sure to exacerbate that, as she details the real story of what went on at Herod’s court, as distinct from what is said in “the human Bible.” We’ve already had Godric claiming to have met Christ back in season two, and now here’s another two thousand year old vampire to put the cat among the religious pigeons. She’s an interesting character, wily and seductive, and as incarnated by Italian actress Valentina Cervi is certainly easy on the eye for those who like girls. Bill and Eric obviously think so, as she manages to bed each of them in turn, plainly up to something.

Which, it turns out, is to try and discover whether either really is working with the Sanguinista fundamentalist movement (based on shagging, she concludes that they aren’t). We learned more about these fanatics this week, and it’s looking like they’re going to be the major plot for the season. Their intent is to rule the world, farming humans like cattle (again, we’ve seen this before – Ultraviolet, Daybreakers, Blade again). Not surprisingly, they consider the deranged Russell Edgington a hero (“the vampire Osama Bin Laden”). It’s therefore looking extremely likely that they’re the ones who dug him up and are currently feeding him luckless passersby.

So Bill and Eric are to be sent out as bait after all. But the Authority don’t completely trust them, so they’re equipped with self, destructing, Battle Royale-style “i-Stakes”, an amusing application of modern technology shaped like a crucifix that will administer a lethal pointy bit of wood should they misbehave. As commented by the vampire techie fitting them, “there’s an app for that” – ie, if Bill and Eric don’t do what they’re told, the press of a virtual iPhone button will turn them into piles of goo. I’m betting this will be a crucial plot point in upcoming episodes…

Back in Bon Temps, there wasn’t much of Terry Bellefleur’s mysterious ex-army-buddy subplot this week, just a quick altercation with Arlene as he took off on a ‘need-to-know’ basis with Patrick. Three episodes in and we’re already finding episodes being selective about which plots they feature; a necessary factor when you’ve got this many of them to deal with. Bearing that in mind, I was surprised when yet another was introduced; the tormented Lafayette, his conscience pricked by Arlene’s contempt for turning Tara into a vampire, went to the Dark Side for a mo, his visage turning demonic as he poured bleach into the diner’s gumbo. He recovered quickly enough to pour it away, but this does not look good for his culinary career.

Terry’s cousin, Sheriff Andy, was distracted from his already lackadaisical pursuit of police work by the revelation that his butt was all over Facebook, a result of his dalliance with Holly being discovered by her white trash kids. Touchingly, this made him decide to “go steady” with her – not a result I would expect from this scenario.

Fortunately, Bon Temps’ Police Department still has the razor sharp forensic skills of Jason Stackhouse. But Jason too is distracted this week by his ongoing existential crisis about meaningless sex. Perhaps he’s been talking to Don Draper. As a store clerk memorably comments to Jessica, “God gave him a penis and a brain, but only enough blood to run one at a time”. Actually that seems a fair description of a lot of men, but to give Jason credit, he seems to be realising this. Not that it stops him revisiting his schooldays when the teacher who ‘initiated’ him into sex returns to Bon Temps. He just feels bad about it afterwards.

Bad enough to actually turn down Jessica when she arrives on his doorstep, flustered after an encounter with a pretty young man who ran off when he saw her fangs. Who is he, what is he, and why does he smell so good to her? It’s enough to make her want to sit down and chat with poor tormented Jason rather than bang his brains out, which I’d be tempted to do. Perhaps that “only enough blood” comment applies equally to me…

So, plenty more to bite on this week, with at least two new plotlines – Lafayette’s ‘dark side’ and Jessica’s mysteriously nice-smelling boy – added to the already crowded mix. As I say, there are hints of having been here before with the vampire storyline, but if it’s done well enough that needn’t matter. And the rest of the overheated supernatural melee that is everyday life in Bon Temps has plenty we haven’t seen before to keep us interested as we go.