True Blood Retro: Episode 1.4, “Escape From Dragon House”

Um, I read. You’re not the first vain-ass, body-conscious ex-jock to overdo the V and wind up with an acute case of priapism!

So where were we? When last we spoke of the events of season 1, Bill was hosting a vampire orgy at his house, Lafayette was conning Jason into a little on-camera dance off, and Sookie discovered the murdered body of her co-worker and sometimes paramour of her brother, Dawn. This episode picks up right where the last left off, mid-Sookie screaming. Jason shows up suddenly behind her, shocked as only a box of hair can be. No, Dawn is not all right, Jason. That is not what all right looks like.

Given that two of Jason’s bedfriends have turned up dead in as many days, it’s no surprise that Jason is hauled off to the station to answer a few questions. Unfortunately he’s carrying a vial of the illegal V and despite Lafayette warning him to moderate his intake, Jason tosses the whole thing back like a champ, right in the back of the squad car.

This, like many things Jason does, is a bad idea.

We find out that Sam owns a lot of rental property in Bon Temps in addition to the bar. Rene and Arlene live in one of Sam’s places near Dawn’s house, so they’re waiting outside when Sam shows up to let the police into Dawn’s storage unit. Hoyt is there too, but more importantly, so is Hoyt’s mama.

It doesn’t take long for the V to kick in. A tiny drop of V was all Jason needed to deal with his performance issues; a whole vial is raising some sort of legendary erection in his pants. Given that he’s being questioned for a murder, this is”¦ inconvenient. Before he can embarrass himself too much ““ aw, who am I kidding? We will never see the limit on Jason’s embarrassment threshold. Anyway, before things get too out of hand, Tara shows up at the station, raising the kind of hell she can raise, claiming that Jason had spent the night with her and demanding his release. Andy and Bud are powerless in the face of Hurricane Tara. She sweeps out of the station with “her” man.

Unaware of what’s going on down at the police station, Sookie and Gran confer on how to best help Jason.  Gran suggests that Sookie put her talents to good use and listen in around the bar for clues. People in the show are far more aware of Sookie’s actual talent than those in the books and they’re not shy about bringing it up. I can’t believe that someone, like Jason, hasn’t suggested that she spy on people in town before. As it goes, Sookie didn’t really need to listen in on a bunch of stranger’s thoughts when Arlene is willing to drop a huge clue in the middle of a heartless rant about how Dawn inconvenienced her shift by getting murdered. Dawn (and Maudette) spent a lot of time up at that vampire bar.

Jason puts in an appearance at Merlotte’s to talk to Lafayette ““ oh, and to brush off Sookie’s concerns that he might actually be the murder-didly-erder. But he really needs to talk to Lafayette. Right now. He limps into the kitchen and based on this exchange alone, I would like to petition HBO for a Lafayette-Jason spin off. They can solve crimes while traveling around in a VW van with a large dog.

Lafayette: Ain’t no antidote to V, boyfriend.
Jason: When my grandpa was alive, he had gout. And he said just the weight of a sheet on his big toe was too much to bear. So help me God, that’s exactly what this feels like.
Lafayette: Maybe you should try rubbin’ one out.
Jason: Were you listenin’ to me? I got gout of the dick!

 

Later, Tara finds Jason in the walk in freezer with his pants down around his thighs and a frozen steak on his genitals. The jokes write themselves.

 

Because she is blinded by the crush she’s had on Jason since they were both about 10 years old, Tara is somehow willing to take Jason into the ER to deal with his problem. And then sit there with him and that blue sheet draped over his dick. And then to hold his hand while he has his eggplant-like penis drained of blood. Ain’t no one gonna be the same after that.

In an admirable Nancy Drew effort, Sookie convinces Bill to escort her to the “vampire bar in Shreveport” so she can spy on people’s thoughts and/or ask around about Dawn and Maudette.

Bill: Fangtasia.
Sookie: Fang-tasia?
Bill: You have to remember that most vampires are very old. Puns used to be the highest form of humor.

I don’t care if Sookie wanted to go there to file her taxes and read aloud from the collected works of Ayn Rand. Because once we get to Fangtasia, we get to Eric* and Pam, and a little bit of Eric and Pam makes everything better.

 

 

Fangtasia obviously caters to the World of Darkness, Anne Rice, Underworld, early NiN demographic ““ in my many years playing WoD games online, I can’t tell you how many times I came across characters who were dressed like Pam and this random henchwoman here, like, all the time. Need to get some coffee? Put on the rubber dress. Returning books to the library? Demonia platform boots and dred falls and a rubber dress. I get that all the cool kids have moved onto the Vampire Diaries and Twilight and whatever, but the joke, of course, is that people from Bon Temps think this is what vampires look like. I said in the first episode recap that preconceptions and appearances are important to this story ““ it hasn’t gotten any less true.

So Bill takes Sookie on a not-date to Fangtasia, where Sookie with her pretty blonde hair and her sweet little sundress stands out from the black-clad vampires and the hicks who come to gawk at them. Eric, our brooding Viking, dramatically lit and posed on a black freaking throne, zeroes in on her like the hunter he is. Yes, he had Dawn, he tells Sookie but not Maudette, who he thought was pathetic. Before too much can come of this exchange, Sookie overhears an undercover police officer thinking about the raid his comrades are about to conduct on the bar, looking for illicit vampire feeding. Sookie warns everyone just in time ““ Bill, Eric, Pam and Sookie high tail it out of there. Her parlor trick certainly caught Eric’s attention. She’ll come back to Fangtasia, he lets her know.

On their way home, a cop pulls Bill and Sookie over. Bill flashes some more of his true nature, threatening the cop and glamoring him into letting them go. It’s a brief flash of brutality. Sookie doesn’t miss it:

Now, you listen to me, officer. I do not take kindly to you shining your light in the eyes of my female companion. And as I have more than 100 years on you, I do not take kindly to you calling me “son.” So the next time you pull somebody over on suspicion of bein’ a vampire, you better pray to God that you’re wrong. Because that vampire may not be as kind to you as I’m about to be. I’m not gonna kill you. But I am gonna keep your gun. Does that sound fair?

As a special treat at the end of the episode, we get to see Sam break into Dawn’s house and roll around on her bloody bed, sniffing her sheets. Yes, it is as creepy as it sounds.

* I promise you, readers of the Internet, that we will have a Spike-Eric fake Internet boyfriend face-off, vampire edition. You may make preliminary arguments in the comments.