Oh, True Blood. How much more water can you tread? With only four episodes left, it doesn’t really seem like we’re going anywhere, does it? I mean, this is an episode that took 24 minutes to get to Sookie, but only after checking in with every other boring character. And when characters are doing more boring things than Sookie, your show is in trouble.
But look, at
least Eric and Pam exist. At least they’re teaming up with the Yakuza. And at
least they didn’t die, I guess? I don’t know, guys. I’m grasping at straws
here. And let’s grasp at them together, with the five craziest things that
happened in the episode “Karma.”
+ “Eric, stand the fuck down, and you, shut the fuck
up about your stupid corporation! Sarah Newlin’s going to be having the last
fucking laugh, shopping at Barney’s and having a manicure, if you two don’t
stop measuring your dicks and make a fucking deal!” Why doesn’t Pam
run the world, you guys? Pam would be an excellent dictator.
Captured by the
Yakuza and about to die with Eric beside her (“our first sunrise together,”
Eric says sadly), Pam forces Eric to team up with Mr. Gus Jr. (played by the
very handsome Will Yun Lee, most recently in “The Wolverine”), an executive at the
Yakanoma Corporation who notes that because of Sarah Newlin, he’s the “North
American President of, well, shit, Shit Blood.” So both Mr. Gus Jr. and Eric
have reasons to want Sarah Newlin dead, of course, so they decide that Eric
will kill her (“I’m going to wrap my hands around her neck and snap her little
blond bobblehead right off!”) but Mr. Gus Jr. will get the body. Win-win for
everyone! (Although, let us not address how incompetent the Yakuza were for
attacking Eric, WHILE HE HAD SARAH NEWLIN IN HIS CLUTCHES, and then letting her
escape. What the fuck was the point of that?)
Anyway, they
think they can rely on Sarah’s vampire sister Amber to rat her out, but little
do they know that Sarah Newlin ingested all
of the antidote for Hep-V, and that, coupled with her found religion, has
her convinced “We are all of us Buddhas! … I’m literally a different person now
… I really am a new me!”
Amber calls bullshit on that (“You can’t just dye your
hair and blow a guru and absolve yourself of all the horrific shit you’ve done
in your life!”), but when Sarah dangles a cure in front of her face, Amber can’t
resist. So when Eric, Pam, Mr. Gus Jr., and the Yakuza enforcers show up at
Amber’s doorstep, they’re shocked to find her veinless—“How come you’re healed?”
indeed.
+ “Bill Compton is one tough motherfucker ... He was
a bonafide vampire god six months ago!” Thanks to Jason Stackhouse for dropping
some self-awareness into this episode of True Blood, because Bill Compton WAS a
vampire god six months ago, and to see him now being ravaged by Hep-V makes no
sense … mainly because Hep-V itself MAKES NO SENSE. Vampire AIDS has no rhyme
or reason to it! This show has been terrible at maintaining the consistency of
this disease! BLERGH.
Regardless, the
unsubtle comparisons between Hep-V and HIV/AIDS continued to work for me in
this episode (loved the guy who saw Bill’s blackening veins move to another
seat in the waiting room), especially the ruthless, terrible lawyer who is
trying to con vampires out of bribe money before they die. Yes, she was a
laughable caricature, but I loved Bill stabbing her in the throat with her own
letter opener, and then killing her vampire assistant. Angry Bill might be my
favorite Bill!
Although again, this
felt like a waste of time. Bill was all about being a leader for the vampires
barely some months ago; shouldn’t he be out there trying to fix this whole
mess? Why has he so fully resigned himself to just moping around his mansion,
doing nothing? And why does Bill even consider playing in the system anymore?
Just find a way to pass everything onto Jessica and tell the law to go fuck
itself. And finally, I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW SOOKIE PASSED HEP-V TO BILL.
HOW. HOW. HOW. (Perhaps this was answered in the two episodes I skipped earlier
this season, but I have no regrets; I’m not devoting additional hours of my
life to catching up on this terrible
show. No thank you.)
+ “Dear Jason: Relationship not working for me. Over
it. Violet.”
Let’s talk about the worst development of this season so far, which is Violet.
Everything about Violet. EVERYTHING ABOUT VIOLET. She is a character that has
made no sense for two seasons now, and the writers continue going down the path
of “Ugh, goddammit” by making her spurned ex-girlfriend a legitimate villain as
we go into the final stretch. I mean, really? Jason has fucked over a lot of
women in his time, and been fucked over (never forget his cougar rape, even
though the show has) in return, but this whole Violet thing is nonsensical. Why
was she so into stupid, simplistic Jason? If she was such an abusive,
controlling lover, why did no one in
Jason’s life say anything months ago, when she was forcing him to go down
on her endlessly? Is this really a commentary on the friendless, lonely plight
of Jason Stackhouse, so beautiful but so alone? WHAT IS HAPPENING.
Anyway, so yeah,
Violet forces some oral sex on Jason—guilt trip, I guess?—but is then furious
when he runs to Jessica in the middle of the night, barely hours after coming
home to her. (Granted, Jason is an asshole.) She then flips out, destroys their
basement bedroom, leaves the note for Jason (which he, because he is an
asshole, thinks is totally fine and absolves him of having to break up with
her), and then tracks down Adilyn and Wade, who have run away from home to be
together before they turn into stepsiblings. The best revenge against Jessica,
of course, is to hurt Adilyn, who Bill’s progeny had sworn to protect. But
because everyone in Bon Temps has the attention span of a gnat, Jessica left
Adilyn to her own devices after seeing James having sex with Lafayette and then
in turn having sex with Jason and then returning home to learn of Bill’s
Hep-V-positive status. STOP BEING SO SELFISH, JESSICA, THAT HALF-FAIRY TEENAGER
NEEDED YOU.
+ “How many times you seen God? … There’s more evidence
of this Tara shit being real than God is.” In the “Another supporting character
we don’t care about bites the dust” category falls Lettie Mae’s husband, who at
that outburst from Lala leaves his wife to her obsessive mania that Tara is
speaking to her through vampire blood. But now Lala has jumped on the
bandwagon, too, thanks to a shared trip where he and Lettie Mae both saw Tara,
removed her from the cross, and followed her to their old house, where she
started compulsively digging in the front yard. “What the fuck” is the proper
response to this, I think.
But now they
think Tara is waiting for them at the South Ward, where the old house is, and
without a husband to hold her back, it looks like Lettie Mae and Lala are going
on one last ride together. And maybe James will come along, too, since he fled
to Lala’s place after the breakup with Jessica? As Lala pointed out, “I know
you got a good heart, boyfriend” … and let’s hope he keeps it, because a
broken-hearted Lala, once again denied of romantic love, is not something I
want to see.
+ “I don’t think screwing their siblings is what
they meant by bad times!” I’m just going to leave that quote here. Bless your
heart, Andy Bellefleur. At least you understand the Lannister-like implications
of Adilyn and Ward getting together. (And really, if Violet’s death comes by
Andy Hulking out and ripping off her head or something, I’m fine with that.)
And finally, some random thoughts:
+ Lala had some great faces in this episode. Here, let's look at them!
+ “Who am I to
stand in the way of true love?” Wait, so are we to believe that Violet really
believes she was in love with Jason, or is she just angry that someone else
stole her chew toy? SO CONFUSED.
+ “I’m scared all the time.” And again, if Jason was frightened by Violet for however long they were together—a little more than six months, I guess?—then why was he so pumped to finally have sex with her against that cop car a few episodes ago? SO CONFUSED.
+ So do the Yakuza just happen to have cars straight of the "Tokyo Drift" installment of the Fast and Furious franchise? How does that work, exactly?
+ “I loved
Alcide. I suppose I loved Eric too, in my own way. There’s something about the
first …” Hold up. Sookie thinks she loved Eric “in my own way”? No no. You
loved him in the way we all love him—UNDENIABLY AND A WEIRD AMOUNT. And if
Sookie loved Alcide, we certainly never saw the development of that. The
shortchanging of that relationship by this show remains ridiculous.
+ “This town is
fucking crazy. You, you’re the mayor of crazy!” Oh, just ride off with Nicole,
Sam. Just do it. You stopped being relevant years ago.
+ “Have you
looked outside? Everybody’s dying.” That lawyer may have been a bitch, but at
least she was truthful.
