If you could use your magic hands or your super snatch or whatever power it is that you have over Eric to fix what’s broken between us, and you’ll still owe me one, you’ve got yourself a deal.
At this time last year, the premiere of the new season of True Blood had inspired a lot emails and blog posts with the excessive use of exclamation points and the cordoning off of the television at 9 p.m. on Sunday so that I wouldn’t miss a hot second of the episode. And then Season 4 happened.
When the premise of a show involves a mind-reading bar waitress, thousand-year-old vampires living in backwoods Louisiana, werewolves, shape shifters, maenads, and one of the dumbest pretty boys to ever grace the small screen, you give the show some slack in its storytelling. But what should have been a fantastic season – a witch-vampire war, hell yeah! – rammed itself off the rails early on and never quite found them again. Is there a category beyond “hot mess”? It even managed to ruin the Sookie-Eric romance, which readers of the books had been anxiously anticipating from, I would guess, the show’s filming started.
So I have to say, my excitement level wasn’t nearly as high for this new season. Russell Edgington and Detective Stabler roped me back in.
“Turn! Turn! Turn!” packed what seemed to be an entire series worth of subplots and setups into an hour, including an absolutely frantically paced intro, and managed to be more coherent than the second of last season. We picked up right up where last season left off – in fact, we started in last season, with Sookie being cornered in her kitchen by Debbie Pelt and Tara’s death. Let’s see where our favorite supernaturals and the humans who love them ended up:
[fancy_header variation=”red”]Sookie, Tara, Lafayette[/fancy_header]
Fortuitously, Pam breezes her way into Sookie’s home in time to come across her and Lafayette cradling Tara’s body. Last season, Pam and Tara were at each other’s throats, so she’s not exactly predisposed to help the gang out. Sookie trades a favor (which certainly won’t come back to bit her in the ass later) AND the promise to fix the rift between Pam/Eric to convince Pam to turn Tara, or what was left of her. Pam ominously (yet offhandedly) mentions she’s been a maker before, “not that it ended up that great.” I predict flashbacks!
Tara’s resurrection is kept to the very last moments of the show, when she explodes from the grave a wild, feral thing headed straight for Sookie.
I can’t say that I’m particularly thrilled with this turn for Tara. The show has given such short shrift to her storylines and repeatedly shown they’re not sure what to do with her, that Tara-as-vampire seems a recipe for failure. TB really loves to kick Tara when she’s down. What better way to do it than to make her a vampire, after her disgust and distrust for them has been a constant for two seasons? Is she going to “come to terms” with Franklin abusing her? Is she going to “understand” the undead better? Is she going to be an object lesson about why you don’t turn people who are missing half their brains?
In a cast this large and sprawling, the show has to get serious about killing some of the characters off. Otherwise there’s no sense of danger to the show. Why do we worry about Tara being shot in the head? She’s just gonna get turned into a vampire.
[fancy_header variation=”red”]Bill, Eric[/fancy_header]
The King and Sheriff are hot to cover up their assassination of Nan, which for the record, was a total waste. They speed clean, scrub spots of Nan out of the carpet, and plan to get the hell out of dodge. All for naught – the Authority is already at the mansion and the two are captured for “questioning.” Then they spoon. Sometimes the show is generous in its fan service.
We get introduced to Eric’s “sister” Nora, an Authority operative who helps break the boys out of bondage and sets them up in their new life. Ball seems as determined as possible to keep the show firmly Bill-Sookie, since Eric both loudly proclaims “fuck Sookie” when the vamps sense her in danger, and he starts balling his sister within 24 hours of Sookie breaking his heart. Not that he’ll have time for nursing his “broken” heart – Bill, Eric, and Nora are promptly recaptured by a vampire SWAT team.
[fancy_header variation=”red”]Big Dumb Jason, Jessica[/fancy_header]
Vampire Reverend Newlin shows up at Jason’s to declare himself a gay undead American who is in love with Jason Stackhouse. Jason’s pretty and all, and he looks nice with his shirt off, but in love? Unfortunately for Vampire Reverend Newlin, Jessica kicks his ass out pulling rank as an older vampire (by, maybe, a year) and the child of the King of Louisiana. Which, now that Bill is “out of town” kinda makes her the Queen. Their interactions were fantastic and the season preview shows that we’ll have more Baby Jessica-Newlin to look forward to.
Jessica, who is maybe 19 chronologically and only a couple of years into vamp hood, continues to act the way 19-year-olds who are just discovering their power and desirability act – by refusing to commit to puppy-dog-eyes Jason, making out with strangers, and throwing a party in her daddy’s mansion. Jason, being on the other end of moonstruck lover, finds himself reconsidering his lothario behavior. But not so much so that he stops fucking Hoyt’s ex-girlfriend. Which Hoyt points out, repeatedly.
[fancy_header variation=”red”]And the rest[/fancy_header]
There are a lot of B-plots shoved into this episode. Sam gets called to the carpet after Marcus’s pack discovers he’s missing. Alcide shows up opportunely throughout the episode – in the parking garage where Russell has been dug up, at Sookie’s house after Debbie gets cleaned up, and in the woods where the pack is about to disembowel Sam. Andy Bellefleur gets it on with Holly the waitress, gets caught butt naked by her teenage sons, and takes a bribe. Terry’s old army buddy refuses to leave town and implies that the mysterious house fire at Arlene’s was not caused by the pretty ghost, Mabel, but is somehow connected to something that happened in Iraq. More flashbacks! You get a flashback! And you get a flashback! There will be flashbacks for everyone!
Bonus Content: What lies in store
11 replies on “New Show Recap: True Blood, Episode 5.1, “Turn! Turn! Turn!””
I was as underwhelmed by season four as you were. The first episode of this season made me all jittery and tingly in a good way again. Maybe we’re turning back to the good side of hot mess, although Tara ..I really don’t understand why they gave up on her after season one. She could have been so much.
Was anyone else annoyed as shit with the brand spanking new information about how vampires are made? With Steve saying “I woke up in a grave with some woman and then she just left me” and then Sookie instructing Pam that she had to wrap her arms around Tara in order for the “Making” to work? It struck me as a really forced “Oh let’s think of how we can make our mark on the vampire mythology and then cram it down everyone’s throat and make them feel stupid if they didn’t know that was how it was done from the very beginning of time”. And maybe I am a little too worked up about this particular thing. It just struck me as weird and again, forced. Never been mentioned before, and now all of the sudden Sookie is instructing Pam in proper vampire making?
Jon kept asking me if certain things happened in the books, to which I replied, there is not ONE fucking thing in this episode that happened in the books. I know they are separate things, but the source material is so fun and campy, and the show, I don’t know. I’m still going to watch it, but I can’t promise I’m going to like it.
I saw this elswhere and LOLd a lot, even though vampire siblings aren’t sibling-siblings.
I watched this at my boyfriend’s place due to my lack of television right now, and it was…interesting? I don’t think he lost too much respect for me, but that’s partly because I held back on my usual amount of squealing.
Likes:
The Lafayette/Alcide interaction.”Don’t fucking growl at me!” I giggled a lot.
The Bill/Eric epic bromance. I feel that this is going to be really entertaining.
Gratuitous Alexander Skarsgard nudity. I admit that seeing that man naked is what keeps me watching this show when it gets slow. (I just finished watching Generation Kill also, so my crush is at an all-time high). Also, Bill waiting outside when they were banging was hilarious.
Dislikes:
Tara not staying dead. After all the crap the show has given her recently, and how annoying she’s become, I was hoping they’d just let the poor girl rest in peace. Although I’m really looking forward to seeing Pam in her role as Tara’s maker.
Sam’s storyline bores me to tears. And I like Sam.
Too many damn storylines. They can keep all of the characters, but show them interacting with a few main plots, rather than everybody getting their own drama.
Overall I think this season is going to be better than Season 4, which is a relief. I’m so glad PMag is doing recaps for it!
If it’s vampires on TV, I’m usually your girl. Unless its Vampire Diaries, then Dellbot is your bot.
They really are packing an awful lot into the show. I love a number of the secondary characters — Terry, Arlene, Hoyt — and I love that they seem fleshed out. But in a season that short, a little pruning is in order. A whole season of Melrose Place was just introduced in this episode!
Just watched it. Man, was it messy. So.many.subplots.
Dislikes: How many people is Eric supposed to have Deep And Meaningful Feelings for? We’ve had Godric, Sookie, Pam, and now Nora… I know (some/most?) vampires are polyamorous and all, but surely there’s some dilution effect that kicks in at some stage. The Sookie/Tara flashbacks. Werewolf mama eating Marcus -hurrrgggh.
Likes: Lafayette. Lafayette shaving his head. Gay Undead American Reverend Newlin and naked Jason hiding behind the door.Jessica singing Cherrybomb. Pam in a yellow tracksuit.
Alcide can growl at me all he likes, though.
I don’t think they are showing Eric having too many Deep Meaningful Feelings- he cares about all of those people in different ways. Godric was a father/friend, Pam is his daughter/friend/comrade, Nora is a sibling + lover, and Sookie was just a straight up lover. 3 deep attachments from a millenium of existence, and 1 current passion.
I do actually think that Eric had more than son-ly feelings towards Godric, but I admit I’m colored by the book’s portrayal of their relationship. I’ll give that he’s a thousand years old and might have loved a lot of people over that period of time, but they’re all hanging out in Louisiana? Really?
Pam in the tracksuit and Gay Undead American Newland were the total highlights of the episode. “I’ve got dirt in my bra.”
Yeah, exactly! And it seems to be a similar plot point from before: someone mysterious from Eric’s past shows up, flashbacks, Feelings+/sex, yada yada.
Mixed feelings. Well, at least they’re trying to patch up the mess of last season? I’m not about to get my hopes up just yet though. I doubt they’re going to think of something worthwhile to do with Tara – I’m not in the “kill her off already!” team, as there are so many other characters I’m more sick and tired of, but really… At least they came back to the real world enough to give hiding the dead bodies some concern for once. And they remembered that Sookie’s a telepath for a change, at some points at least.
If there’s anything to get hopes up for, for me it’s the mysterious vanishing corpse Jesus subplot. Because, Lafayette. And I really liked them together too, no matter how bad the script was… However, while I should hardly complain over them adding more male nudity and gay undertones, it came across as very calculated in this episode.
Oh, I totally agree with you. The gay undertones between Eric and Bill were totally played up and I bet we’re going to see a lot of them in tense and tight situations this season. For science.
I don’t know if I am team ‘kill Tara’. I’m more team ‘but she was already dead’. They just have really done the character a disservice in the previous seasons and I’m sort of tired of the show screwing her over.
Thanks for reminding me about the Jesus subplot. I knew there was something I missed in the recap!