New Show Recap: True Blood S7E8 — “Almost Home”

“From the very first moment that we met, you reminded me of what it was like to have my human heart. The problem was, it was only a memory. All I had was my darkness to give you in return.”

Violet, Jessica, Adylin, Wade, Jason, Hoyt

Violet showed up last year in the detention camp and laid claim to Jason when he was thrust into her cellblock. After Bill sprung everyone, she moved into Jason’s house and was known as Jason’s girlfriend and… nothing else. We, the viewers, literally knew nothing about her. Her accent was inconsistent (is she Eastern European? French?), her motivations a mystery, and her characterization was “that sort of bitchy, bossy girl Jason lives with.”

Apparently, Violet is a woman who goes coco puffs when she gets cheated on. Sure, she stays away from the boiled bunny stereotype, but let’s be real here – she’s Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, with fangs and a better wardrobe. After tricking the completely gullible Adylin and Wade into going to her previously unmentioned mansion in Monroe, she handily captures Jessica, strings the three of them up, and lures Jason to her bizarre sex dungeon.

Things we discover about Violet: she has an extension collection of sexually themed torture devices, she used them when she was a human, and she picked Jason because he was dumb and she wanted to be worshiped because she was pretty. Ok then. Thanks, True Blood. This was a masterful rendering of human nature. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more disturbed by anything on this show – and season 7 has really ratcheted up the gore factor – than listening to Violet describe how she was going to violate Jessica with a red hot dildo.

Luckily for all concerned – and that includes us, the viewers – Violet’s revenge plot is ended when Hoyt bursts in and shoots her with a wooden bullet. Though he doesn’t know it that shot also avenged his mother’s death, though he would have defended all them anyway, because Hoyt is a stand-up guy at heart. Late in the episode he donates a bag of his uninfected blood to Jessica for Bill, because Hep V vamps need to eat frequently or they die. It’s enough to make a redheaded gal forget all about the time his friends kidnapped and tormented her.

Post rescue, it’s apparent that Hoyt and Jessica still have a connection, despite all of his memories of her having been erased. It’s sweet to see them edging around each other, but I can’t imagine that they could get back together without Jessica revealing their history. Oh, and he’s got a girlfriend, but that’s likely going to be resolved by thrusting her off on Jason.

 Lettie Mae, Tara, LaLa

Lettie Mae convinces her husband, the nice reverend, to trip balls with her, because sometimes you just have to trust in god or something, and manages to make it seem like he’s an asshole if he doesn’t trust an addict who wants him to get high with her.

So he does, all some poor unnamed family get to watch Lala, Rev. Daniels, and Lettie Mae follow Tara’s ghost on a tour of her childhood. Tara’s dad was an abusive asshole, and Lettie Mae tried to protect her, presumably in the years before she became an alcoholic. During a traumatic birthday party, young Tara had taken her father’s gun and actually pulled it on her dad when his back was turned, but instead of killing him, buried the gun in the yard where he couldn’t get at it. Ghost Tara, who suffered quite extensively in life at the hands of her mother, apologizes for not murdering her father, and doesn’t allow Lettie Mae to similarly apologize for being an abusive, neglectful parent. She wants Lettie Mae to forgive herself and let Tara move on, because it was Lettie’s grief that was keeping Tara around.

I am perplexed that the death of a major character on this show was turned into character growth for a secondary character who we haven’t seen or dealt with in years.  True Blood never quite knew what to do with Tara, but this last story arc is just a slap in the face.

Eric, Pam, Mr. Gus, NewMe

Still in the midst of her breakdown, Sarah/NewMe decides that the correct course of action is to embrace her impending death at the hands of Eric, so that she can be reborn as the savior. And let’s be real – it could happen! Bill drank all the blood of an ancient vampire god, exploded, and was reborn, so it’s hardly outside the realm of True Blood possibility. Eric, for his part, is happy to satisfy her wish, even if it means his own death, but Pam threatens to kill herself if he does. If he dies, she dies.

These kids, you guys.

Sarah/NewMe is easily taken in hand, and through the magic of Japanese technology – way more advanced than boring old American technology — within hours her blood has been synthesized and the cure is ready. But as Mr. Gus points out, where’s the profit in the cure? If they give a limited-life-span cure and require vampires to consume a continual supply of New Blood to stay healthy, Mr. Gus and his new business partners, Eric and Pam, are going to rake in billions.

At some point, Eric sneaks off to tell Sookie that he’s been cured so she doesn’t worry, and gets to make a saucy comment to her about nailing Bill. Which means he finds out Bill is sick and needs Sarah/NewMe’s blood, but if he tells her about the cure, he’ll lose all those billions of dollars. What’s a capitalist Viking to do? Fly off, that’s what, back to Fangtasia before anyone notices he was gone. What do you think he told them he was doing? Taking a leak?

Sookie and Bill

Luckily, Sookie knows what to do, and that’s to get in Alcide’s truck and drive to Fangtasia to berate the secret out of Eric. I thought it was a nice touch that she takes off in her recently deceased (as in, not even buried yet) boyfriend’s truck after sleeping with Bill, to drive to the workplace of her another former lover. Once there, she’s taken in by the Yakuza, who are guarding the bar, and Eric is forced to fake glamor her to keep Mr. Gus from killing her.

Hey, remember how Sookie is a mind reader? Oh, she is! It’s an important part of her character. Sometimes. She’s able to parse that there’s something in the basement from Mr. Gus’s thoughts, breaks in through the MacGuffin tunnel, and finds Sarah in the basement. Instead of taking Sarah – which, honestly, I thought she was going to do because that’s exactly the kind of short sighted scheme Sookie would hatch – she runs back to Bon Temps to pick up Bill.

While Sookie is gone, Bill has a dream in which he gives Sookie a negative space baby, symbolizing how he can’t be her future because he’s a vampire. Oh, and there’s all those times he tried to kill her, or drain her blood, or force her to become the consort of a vampire/fae hybrid, or stole her blood, or allowed her to get beaten up to within an inch of her life to trick her into drinking his blood and becoming in thrall to him, or when he came to Bon Temps specifically to spy on her for Sophie Anne.  But this one time, Sophie Anne wanted him to kidnap her so Sophie Anne could breed her own stable of part-fae, but he didn’t do it, so it’s all totes ok.

What I’m saying is, Buffy  did it better when Angel had a dream that he married Buffy and she burst into fire when they left the church.

Sookie drags Bill and Jessica to Fangtasia, a drive that’s a significant distance, but doesn’t apparently tell them that the cure is Sarah/NewMe, because Bill seems awfully surprised to see her there. Jessica is delighted to find Sarah all tied up, since she tried to force James to rape Jessica, but holds her anger in check so that Bill can get cured.

Bill approaches Sarah, who is tied up, gagged and terrified, surrounded by a bunch of people who look positively gleeful at her horror, and, rather predictably, refuses to take the cure.