‘True Blood’ recap: ‘You drank the whole fairy -- Now you’re going to your room’
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You know you’re in for a good ‘True Blood’ episode (and plenty of fantastic dialogue) when Nancy Oliver’s name is on the script. The Oscar-nominee delivered yet again with Sunday’s ‘I’m Alive and On Fire’ -- which nearly neatly summarized what happened to our drunken Viking after he downed all of Claudine’s intoxicating blood and decided to go skinny dipping in the sunshine. That, of course, was after he made a few adorably inappropriate advances toward Sookie and took off in a flash, leading Sookie to call upon Alcide (who disrobes and assumes wolf form) to help her track Eric down.
The vampire isn’t too pleased to have his sunbathing interrupted (lest anyone have forgotten, fairy blood enables vamps to walk in the daylight, if only for a limited amount of time) -- let alone have a wolf-turned-large-naked man standing beside his lady protector. The shirtless growling/fang-baring stand-off that ensues wins the prize for most amazingly awesome homoerotic moment in Season Four, no question, with Sookie trying to get her two suitors to calm down and back to her house before Eric gets a tan from which he won’t recover.
With Mr. Northman safely squared away in downstairs, Alcide takes Sookie to task for living with someone so dangerous -- Eric is slowly beginning to understand that he wasn’t always the nicest guy -- but she chastises him right back, given that he’s reunited with his formerly dangerous ex-girlfriend Debbie. They agree to a truce with an embrace that seems a little bit more than friendly.
Meanwhile, of course, Lafayette, Jesus and Tara are frantic to find a way to restore Eric’s memory before Pam can make good on her threats to harm them. The trio goes to see Marnie, insisting that she must reverse the spell she cast, but the witch can’t manage to summon the spirit that took hold of her when she performed the initial incantation (that powerful sorceress, we learn, was burned at the stake in Spain hundreds of years earlier).
Until, that is, Marnie and the trio, believing they’ve found a spell that will do the trick, venture out into the night with Pam, and the impatient vampire berates Marnie once too often. Then, the ancient witch possesses Marnie and spits out a curse at Eric’s progeny that leaves the flesh on her face mottled and rotting. Screaming, Pam flees into the darkness.
Pam’s fate, though, might be preferable to Jason’s. Sookie’s brother was indeed -- as at least one commenter pointed out last week -- being put out to stud at Hotshot, having sex with not just Crystal but seemingly all the ladies in the inbred pack, who are in need of some non-relatives to mate with. Jason, wounded and desperate, finally convinces young Becky to free him, and he stumbles through the woods, pursued by Felton in panther-form. Despite being injured, Jason manages to scramble up a tree and, literally, get the drop on Felton, coming down on him with a crudely fashioned stake and impaling him. (I think I speak for everyone when I say that Felton will not be missed.)
Crystal, who had been trailing them, certainly isn’t broken up. She’s downright exuberant about now being ‘big mama kitty’ and she tells Jason that Bon Temps is no longer his home, since, at the next full moon, he will turn into a panther and find his way back to her and the clan in Hotshot. Jason stumbles away and eventually makes it to the side of the road, where he’s discovered by Hoyt and Jessica, who gives him her blood to heal him.
Over at Merlotte’s, riled ‘lioness’ Maxine confronts Sam about Tommy’s whereabouts, but her newly adopted boy has gone to find his real mom, Melinda. She’s finally left the violent, cruel Joe Lee, she announces, and she’s proud to learn that her son can now read. The family reunion doesn’t stay joyful for long, though, when Joe Lee resurfaces with a choke chain and promises to teach wayward Tommy the true meaning of loyalty and obedience.
Before the episode’s end, there are more equally surprising revelations about family for the other Bon Temps locals: Terry and Arlene discover the haunting message ‘baby not yours’ scrawled on the living room wall; after dropping by unannounced, Sam meets Luna’s daughter Emma and learns about Luna’s past with a bad-boy werewolf; Bill finds out that he’s related to his new lady friend Portia Bellefleur during an awkward parlor encounter with brother Andy and her grandmother Caroline.
From there, Bill heads to Sookie’s to search for Eric, but Sookie refuses to allow him into her home, pointing out that she’s never lied to him before, and he has no reason not to trust her when she says that Eric isn’t there. But, of course, he is there, lying dejected on his bed downstairs like a mournful adolescent, saddened by the fact that he’ll never see the sunlight shine on Sookie’s hair again. A kiss from a fairy, he tells her, would make him happy, but of course, just then Bill comes to the door.
Still, seems like Eric’s likely to get his kiss very, very soon...
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-- Gina McIntyre
