Tara Thornton – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

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 4–We’ll Meet Again

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST SUNDAY’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 4 YET.

“Oh yeah baby, you survive. You always do. But goddam, do you leave a trail of bodies behind. You know what, you the fuckin’ angel of death.”

This week, True Blood was mainly beating Sookie Stackhouse with a big guilt stick.

I mean sure, there was as usual plenty going on. But more than usual, Sookie was being dragged into it to face the consequences of her actions. Consequences, as she was reminded by Lafayette, Tara, everyone in Merlotte’s (via their thoughts) and finally herself, that usually leave a lot of people dead.

The biggest problem (ie arrest and conviction) about Sookie’s ‘murder’ of vengeful, V-addicted werewolf Debbie may actually have gone away, thanks to the selfless actions of her friends. Alcide came clean with Debbie’s parents that she was dead, but then lied and blamed it on the now equally dead Marcus Bozeman. Having overheard Sookie’s tearful confession to her brother, ‘ace cop’ Jason Stackhouse of the Bon Temps PD, helpful vampire Jessica contrived to glamour Sheriff Andy into forgetting all about the case.

Still, even if the matter is all cleaned up for everyone else (and that’s by no means certain), it isn’t for Sookie. She’s always been portrayed as an oasis of almost impossible goodness in the steaming pit of iniquity that is Bon Temps, but she can’t escape the fact that, however good her intentions, they always leave a trail of corpses in their wake. But Sookie is basically a nice person, so this realisation is weighing heavy on her conscience.

It doesn’t help that these days, when Lafayette gets pissed off, he does a Hulk-like transformation into some kind of evil Brujeria-style demon. And since it’s Sookie he’s pissed at, he takes it out on her elderly Honda Civic, bewitching it to accelerate unstoppably to speeds that must have been magical – a 1980s Civic couldn’t hope to go that fast without supernatural intervention. Sookie has the presence of mind to jump out, but the Civic gets wrapped around a phone pole – yet another of the show’s major characters that’s now met its maker (Soichiro Honda, presumably).

By this point, the viewer couldn’t help but sympathise with Sookie when she took refuge in the only course of action left – getting roaringly drunk on every bottle of spirits left in her house. Ironic, really, since it was largely ‘spirits’ that caused so many of her problems. But even in guilt-driven drunkenness, Anna Paquin maintained that perky optimism that defines Sookie as a character – perhaps it’s her fairy ancestry. Where most of us might revel in self-pity, Sookie found herself entwined in the understanding arms of the hunky Alcide (finally!), who’d popped round to tell her she was off the hook with Debbie’s parents. But whether it’s entanglement with the law or her own tortured conscience, I doubt we’ve seen the last of this theme about the consequences of Sookie’s actions.

The vampires too were faced with consequences from every angle. Pam had to face up to her responsibility as a Maker by commanding Tara not to destroy herself, while Eric, trying to find a lead on the missing Russell Edgington, faced up to his own responsibility as the Maker of Pam herself. Since only four people knew about Russell’s location, and Pam was one of them, Eric had to mercilessly interrogate her, leading to some all too real tears of betrayal on his progeny’s part.

Having already been dragged unwillingly into caring about Tara, that was plainly a bit much for her to cope with. Weeping tears of blood, it was actually kind of tear jerking when Pam begged Eric to release her from his command. Ultimately he did, but out of his own compassion – he doesn’t want her caught up in what’s to follow (“either Russell will have our heads or the Authority will”). Alexander Skarsgard was back to his icy, commanding demeanour but with hints of some compassion beneath, while Kristin Bauer van Straten brilliantly conveyed the depth of feeling she has under her bitchy facade, at least where her Maker’s concerned.

Back at Authority HQ, the political wrangling and backstabbing was carrying on rather excitingly. They’re a shifty bunch, the Chancellors of the Authority; keen on coexistence they may be, but I wouldn’t trust a one of them. Neither, it seems, does the Guardian who leads them, joining with Salome to browbeat the captive Nora into naming her apparent collaborators.

It still seems unconvincing to me that Nora is a mole for the Sanguinista movement, but if she’s not, it’s a role she’s playing very believably. It would be a bit of a waste of a good actress like Lucy Griffiths if spitting curses in a cell was all she got to do, so I’ve a feeling there’s more to this than there seems. And while we didn’t see it, she did lead Roman and Salome to another traitor – Drew, representing the stock-since-Anne-Rice vampire child.

Jacob Hopkins carried himself rather well in the part, exuding the necessarily unnerving adult confidence in a child’s body, so it felt like rather a shame when Roman staked him with the Authority’s Special Stake – whittled from the branch where Judas hanged himself, and tipped with silver cast from the thirty pieces he earned for his betrayal. The show’s sailing satisfyingly close to the wind on its religious overtones this year. Not only have we had the Vampire Bible and Salome explaining the truth of her story in the regular one, this week we had Dieter’s comment on the vampires’ holy text: “It’s just a book! I know the guy who wrote it and he was high the whole time!” A cheap shot maybe, but I smirked.

Again, these two plots took up the lion’s share of the episode, making me think that they’re going to be the dominant ones this year. But there was room for other subplots too. Terry and Patrick were off in South Dakota looking for their army buddy who might be setting all those fires, leading to another Iraq flashback that (perhaps) explained what it’s all to do with. Looks like Terry’s unit, defiling a mosque while stoned, half-assedly instigated a massacre of innocent civilians. No wonder he’s been so traumatised. Surprising though to see such a trenchant critique of such a recent war in a show like True Blood, where political allusions are usually oblique at best. Terry and Patrick found their old comrade in an underground bunker lined with murals of burning buildings – but I’m still not convinced he’s the man responsible.

And we found out about the mysterious young man who smelled so good to Jessica last week, in a pretty unexpected way. Sheriff Andy and the loyal Jason were invited to a debauched secret club night by the local judge who they’d helped out by ripping up his son’s speeding ticket. Suspicions were aroused when the busty beauties conveying them to the club insisted they be blindfolded, then hardened into certainty when they were thrust through a mystical invisible gateway to a party full of beautiful people dancing around semi-clad. Yes, the fairies are back!

This may not go down too well with some of the show’s fans, who found the inclusion of the fair folk in last year’s season a bit much to stomach. But I like the way True Blood’s fairies are shown in a very old school way, as tricksy, deceptive creatures to be trusted as little as the vampires they’re hiding from.

That they are hiding was confirmed in an infodump from Sookie and Jason’s cousin Hadley, last seen dejectedly giving blood to Louisiana’s now deceased queen vampire Sophie-Anne. At that point, she was dropping hints to Sookie that she knew just what she was; now she’s hanging out with the fairies for real, that’s pretty much confirmed. She assumes Jason’s come to hide too (which makes you wonder whether he too has some fairy blood, being Sookie’s brother and all), then drops some very heavy hints that their parents were actually killed by vampires, not a flood as everyone previously thought. This led to, predictably, a ruckus that involved Jason and Sheriff Andy being bodily thrown out of the invisible gateway, with two angry fairies giving them the old energy blast from the hands…

So, the plot thickens – but we can now be pretty sure that the main focus is going to be on the potential vampire sectarian conflict, and on Sookie’s growing guilt about her actions. How will the fairies fit into this? Despite their unpopularity last year, they didn’t actually feature all that much, but this year I have the feeling that they’re going to e quite heavily intertwined through the other plots. As, pretty much, an ongoing supernatural soap opera, True Blood has an enviable consistency of quality in its episodes (though not always brilliant) which means it’s easier to critique whole seasons than individual episodes. On the basis of what we’ve seen so far though, I’m not disappointed.