True Blood: Brain Off Enjoyment On

Hi there Gasmii, well after nine long months we get another taste of the best show about southern vampires that features actors from New Zealand, Great Britain, Sweden, and Canada. It’s time to talk about getting kidnapped by angry break dancing crews, what to do when that body of that long haul trucker you have stashed under the floor boards begins to turn ripe, and while slutty veterinary students may come back to your house for a three way, they don’t want to hear about you picturing them with bullet holes in their taters. Yep My Gasmastic friends, it’s time to talk True Blood.

Our Episode starts with four quick little scenes that catch us up to date on the plots that are going to kick off the new season. Sookie is pitching a fit with the lady who owns the restaurant, because her vampire boyfriend went missing before she could officially turn him into her vampire fiancee. Well Sookie maybe if you hadn’t have disappeared into the powder room to check out that engagement ring with a jeweler loupe, you would have gotten to accept your undead boyfriend’s marriage proposal. Just saying.

Jason is quietly freaking out at Merlotte’s because he shot Eggs, but Andy is telling people that he shot Eggs in total self defense, so nobody will wonder how Jason was supposed to be wandering around with a concealed handgun when he wears skintight jeans and tee-shirts at all times. Err, I mean because Jason wasn’t supposed to have that gun in the first place.

Over at Bill’s house we see Jess come home and find the flowers Hoyt left for her to try to make up for their fight. Aww, and that’s just what Jess says, aww. We all immediately start feeling all sentimental because our favorite couple on the show (okay, my favorite couple on the show) might be patching things up. This is right where we hear some guy groaning, and Jess drags that trucker she was chowing down on at the end of the last season into the house by his leg. Awesome. You know if stuff like this had ever happened on Friends I might have given a crap about Ross and Rachel. Okay, maybe not, but it’s still awesome here.

Remember, no eating in bed; it’s messy

We then find out what happened to Bill, sort of. He’s in his car with a bunch of yahoos who’ve looped a silver chain around his neck. We don’t really know who the yahoos are, but they do introduce themselves to Bill as the Fuck You Crew. Great, Bill’s been kidnapped by angry break dancers. This isn’t going to end well, and we cut to the best opening credits on TV.

When we come back to the show, Sookie is getting all bent out of shape because Kenya doesn’t understand that Bill’s been kidnapped. Kenya points out that when you don’t say yes right away to a marriage proposal because you have to go in the ladies room to check out the four C’s of your engagement ring, your sweet baboo might wander off. Sookie pitches a very low key fit, buy Kenya won’t issue a missing person report on someone who has been missing for 20 minutes.

Lots of people make this face when they have to deal with Sookie

Back at Merlotte’s, Sheriff Bud is interviewing everyone to find out what happened with Eggs getting shot. Andy is elevating looking guilty to an art form, as Arlene is pretty much backing up his story. This is right when Tara proceeds to go bat shit, because she had a smoking hot boyfriend with six pack abs, and now he’s gone to the big casting room in the sky. Arlene proceeds to turn the situation into a race thing in the most awkward and stupid way possible. Luckily for us in the audience, Lafayette is around to hustle Tara out of the bar and get off one of the lines of the night when he says “And we gonna steal this chere bottle of tequila, but I doubt that surprise any of y’all.”

We cut over to Jess, who is spending some time with her snack, I mean that truck driver she bit. The truck driver’s in a bad way, and wants to go to the hospital, but Jess doesn’t want to explain the big hole in his throat. This leads to the truck driver calling her a whore, and not surprisingly doesn’t lead to a trip to the emergency room for anyone.

Not that it matters, because Sookie shows up looking for Bill. Sookie notices that Jess kind of looks like a mess and has been crying blood again, for I think the 6th or seventh episode in a row now, but Jess says it’s just because she and Hoyt broke up. This is good enough for Sookie, because she really just stopped by to look for Bill, and to get Jess to promise to call Sookie if she hears from him. Then Sookie wanders out of the scene, so she can find more people on the show to remind them that she is the main character.

Oh I’ve just been hanging around the house, doing sodokus. What I haven’t been doing is eating truckers!

Speaking of Bill, he and the Fuck You Crew are really getting along now. Okay, no they aren’t, The F U Crew is using Bill like a Slurpee, getting high off his vampire blood. A guy in the front seat of the car wants to stop so he can get a hit off of Bill, but the head F U says they need to stay on the road. He tells the guy sitting next to him to spit Bill’s blood in the other guy’s mouth, but the potential blood spitter doesn’t want to do it, because it’s “gay.” The head of the F U Crew points out that spitting blood in another guy’s mouth isn’t any more gay then playing with your nipples in front of a car full of other guys, which is what the potential blood spitter was doing. Sigh, it’s a sad situation when the head of the Fuck You Crew becomes the voice of reason.

We cut over to Jason, who’s gone home so he can throw beer bottles at the wall and curl up in the fetus position on the floor. Not to worry though, because a magical man has come to make everything all better. What? No, not Santa, but he shares the same body type as the big man in the red suit, it’s Andy. Andy has crawled in through Jason’s back window to give Jason a much needed pep talk.

Come to think of it, Andy is just like Santa, with a bad tie

Andy reminds Jason that they need to stay on message, translation, that Andy shot Eggs after he confessed to killing all those people last season, because Eggs was coming at him with a knife. Andy says that this story, unlike the truth, that Jason shot Eggs from behind, will keep them both out of jail, as long as they behave normally.

Well, normally for Jason and Andy. Andy explains that this means Jason has to try to have sex with everything that moves, because this show is on cable and people expect a certain level of nakedness when they are coughing up 12 bucks a month. I mean because Jason is a world class poon hound. Jason isn’t to happy to hear this news because he was all set to become a more serious and responsible person. Andy tells him tough noogies, and has the line of the night. “Conscience off, dick on, everything will be all right.”

You know, if it were up to me, the show would just be Andy and Jason. They are gold every time they get together.

Seeing as Sookie has made sure that everyone in Bon Temps knows Bill’s missing, she takes her act on the road, and heads over to Fangtasia to see if Bill has maybe shown up over there. Pam tells Sookie she hasn’t seen Bill, so Sookie immediately demands to see Eric. Pam says he’s indisposed, but Sookie doesn’t want to hear about it, so Pam takes Sookie to see what are favorite room temperature stud is up to.

It turns out he’s bonking some girl he’s got tied up in the basement. Sookie is minorly appalled by this. Incidentally, Pam immediately jumped five places on my Christmas card list for fictional characters in this scene. So thanks to Pam, Eric gets to wander around naked, and Sookie gets to try (unsuccessfully by the way) not to check out his doodle. I mentioned Pam rocks, right?

We children of the night spend our time doing situps. Lots and lots of situps

Sookie announces that Bill is missing, and that she thinks Eric kidnapped him. Not surprisingly Eric doesn’t immediately confess, but he does have some good news for Sookie. If Bill has been kidnapped, it’s Eric’s job as vampire sheriff to find him. Of course if Eric did kidnap Bill, it’s going to probably make that whole finding him part moot.

Anyway Sookie checks out Eric’s peen one last time, snippily mentions that he owes her 10 thousand dollars for when she went to Dallas last season, and exits stage right.

We cut from that back to Bill and the F U Crew. It turns out that one of the F U Crew is now riding on the roof of the car and having a good old time, because what’s the worst that could happen in this situation? Well in this particular situation, that would be Bill breaking the car’s driver’s neck so the car goes flying off the road killing the whole F U Crew. You know, it’s bad for them, for Bill it’s an improvement over being used as a sort of human bong. Seeing as Bill is already dead, he can’t get killed in the car crash and proceeds to stagger off into the night.

We head back to Bon Temps, where Sookie is ready to call it a night, after making sure everyone in the state is aware that Bill is missing. Lafayette has brought Tara home, and Tara proceeds to tell Sookie about Eggs getting killed. Tara points out that the whole part about Eggs confessing to all the killings has to be BS because he couldn’t remember any of the stuff Maryann had him do.

Oh, isn’t this awkward, because now Sookie has to admit she used her mind reading powers to help Eggs remember that stuff, but how could she have known that something bad would happen to a character whose story arc was over?

Tara goes completely ballistic over this news and attacks Sookie. I think Tara has figured out there is no way the writers give her another love interest on the show who could pass for an underwear model. Eventually Lafayette pries Tara off of Sookie, and they exit out the door, stage left.

He had six pack abs! Six. Pack. Abs!

We cut back to Fangtasia where we find out that Eric didn’t have Bill kidnapped. We find this out because Eric is screaming into a bluetooth at somebody who was supposed to kidnap Bill, but found out that someone had beat them to the punch. Eric is freaking out because Bill can link him to that V ring, and the vampire queen (or as we like to call her around here, Not-The-Dita), wants Bill out of the picture ASA-frigging-P. Pam tries to get Eric to calm down, but it doesn’t work, so she doesn’t even try to mention that an open robe with track pants is kind of a fashion no-no.

Hey who wants to talk about Sam now? Well too bad, because they have the camera pointed at him.

Sam is at some motel up in Arkansas trying to track down his real parents when there is a knock at the door. It turns out Bill is in the neighborhood, and wants to use Sam’s shower. Well first he wants Sam to take off his shirt, and then he asks Sam if he wants to shower with Bill, because the water is extra hard, annnnnnnnd…

Sam gets woken up by his cell phone.

By the way, all of us regular watchers of the show know this racy dream doesn’t make Sam gay, because when people drink a vampire’s blood they have super sexy dreams about said vampires. And, as we all know, Sam had to drink a poop ton of Bill’s blood last season when Maryann almost cut his heart out, so this dream is totally not gay. The one where Hugh Jackman rides Sam into a long train tunnel made out of fudge while Liza sings “It’s Raining Men”? Not only totally gay, but flamingly gay.

Anyway, luckily for Sam’s straightatude, some faceless lady has called him with mounds of exposition to keep his part of the plot in motion. It turns out that address Wheezy McVentilator gave him at the end of the last episode isn’t good any more because those people had their house foreclosed on. The good news for the plot is faceless lady just happens to know that the son of Sam’s real family works at some tire place. Sam thanks the faceless lady and hangs up so he can spend more time not thinking about whether the TV in his room gets the Logo network.

Well, it’s a brand new sunshiny day, so Hoyt and Jason are out cramming dead brush into a wood chipper. Who says a high school education doesn’t prepare you for the real world?

Hoyt is catching Jason up to speed on him finding out his mom had been lying to him all those years about his dad to keep him at home, and how Hoyt broke up with Jess and he needs a place to stay. Jason isn’t really paying attention to what Hoyt is saying, because, well, paying attention to things isn’t Jason’s strong suit. Finally Hoyt has to flat out ask Jason to stay at his place, and Jason says sure, but there is no reason to get snippy about it. This is right where Hoyt figures out that living with his mom maybe wasn’t all that terrible.

We then cut over to Lafayette’s where he has to go to work and is leaving Tara with her mom. Tara’s mom starts right in thanking Jesus that she and her baby girl get to spend some time together. Lafayette isn’t the best audience for this bit, because he is still pissed at Tara’s mom for shooting that rifle at him in the last episode. Oh Lafayette, really? Why if my family held grudges against each other for inter-family gun play, nobody would ever show up for Thanksgiving every year (and the cops would get bored too). Still Lafayette says there will be no bridge building, and exits stage left.

Every day is causal Friday for Lafayette

Sookie hasn’t reminded anyone that she’s unhappy for hours, so she has headed down to talk with Sheriff Bud. Sheriff Bud isn’t much help, because he doesn’t really think Bill is a person. Sookie asks him if her imaginary friend put that 2 1/2 caret engagement ring on her finger? Sorry, I mean she points out that she and Bill are in luuuvvvvvv, and should have the same rights as everyone else, so there. Then Sookie and her big honking rock exit stage right.

Sam heads out to that tire place and sees a guy wearing a jumpsuit with the same name that the faceless phone lady said the kid he’s looking for has. The only thing though is that this kid says he’s a completely different Tommy and unless Sam wants a deal on some bald tires, he’s poop out of luck. Sam says he might pick up some tires when he leaves town, but right now he needs to go back to his motel and not dream about Bill with his shirt off. Sam then exits stage left and the daylight portion of tonight’s episode is officially over.

As the moon comes up, Bill wakes up from his dirt nap. Wow, he’s moving awfully stiff. Wreaking that car with the F U Crew must have taken a lot out of him. I mean just look at his hair. Oh wait, it looks the same way it did when he left to pick up Sookie for their date the night before. That’s so sad, but for completely different reasons. Anyway, Bill wanders out of the scene and we cut back to Bon Temps.

Say, your Bill Compton crop seems to be coming along nicely

Jess gets woken up by a phone call from Hoyt. Hoyt just wants to know if she got the flowers he left for her the night before, and Jess thinks this is so sweet. The only problem is she stuffed that trucker under the house, and not only is he dead, but he’s starting to smell a little funky. This is why we don’t get a cool make up scene with Hoyt and Jess.

What we do get, is another trip to Fangtasia, and Not-The-Dita has shown up with that Magistrate vampire, who made Bill turn Jess back in Season 1. If Eric could poop, he’d be popping out one the size of a bundt cake right now.

Only guy on the show who doesn’t need makeup to look like a vampire

After they clear everyone out of the bar, Eric finds out that the Magistrate is in town because somebody is selling a bunch of V, which means a vampire must be involved. Vampires have super strength, heightened senses, and in some cases they can actually fly, but apparently what they can’t do is recognize facial expressions. At least that’s my only explanation for why the Magistrate doesn’t immediately figure out that Eric and Not-The-Dita are who he is looking for, because guilty signs start flashing on their foreheads as soon as he brings up the subject

Anyway, Eric promises to put a stop to this V ring just as soon as he figures out who to frame for it. Sorry, my bad, I mean who’s responsible for it. They get the Magistrate out the front door, and Not-The-Dita tells Eric not only are they going to keep selling V, but they are going to mark it down to half price and dump all they have left by tomorrow night.

Eric tries to point out, that not only is the Magistrate breathing down their necks, but Bill is out wandering around and he can link Eric to this V selling. This prompts Not-The-Vita to hop about half way up his chest, dig her shoe into his crotch and put her fangs up to Eric’s throat. She tells Eric she’s got the IRS breathing down her neck, so Eric better get her that V money, or, or it will get worse then a foot in your groin and fangs on your throat. Oh man, I feel for Eric here, and this is also reason 22 why I never got into middle management.

You know what? Fangtasia sucks tonight, lets go to a happy bar. Over at Merlotte’s Jason is trying to put Andy’s plan into action. Jason is doing well on the scoring tail front and has found not one, but two slutty girls on their way to veterinary school. With pretty minimal effort Jason gets both girls to come home with him and Hoyt. Yes, our Hoyt, but to be fair, Hoyt points out that he’s not really comfortable with this, what with him and Jess only being sort of broken up. Jason doesn’t want to hear about this, because he expects his roommates to pick up the slack on the occasional “pussy overflow” over at Casa de Jason. Hoyt doesn’t look to happy about this news, but as far as the weird stuff roommates expect you to do for them, banging slutty vet students ranks pretty low on the totem pole.

Ladies this is Hoyt Fortenberry. He just moved out of his mother’s house

We like puppies and penises

We cut away from Hoyt’s rocky new career as Jason’s wingman, to Sookie’s house where Pam has stopped by with a check for Sookie, and a valuable clue to keep the plot moving. While Pam is giving Sookie her Dallas money, Pam suddenly closes her eyes and shudders much in the same way I do at the grocery store whenever Tootsie Rolls go on sale. She explains that Eric sent her a sort of psychic phone call, and she exits stage left.

Pam’s not done spreading joy for the night, because she stops by Merlotte’s and drops off a mess of V and tells Lafayette he has to sell all of it by tomorrow night. When Lafayette points out that this is crazy, Pam offers to bite his throat out if he calls her a hooker again, or doesn’t have the money by tomorrow night. You know, after rereading this paragraph, maybe saying Pam is out spreading joy isn’t the phrase I was really looking for. Well, too late now, the plot waits for no man.

The winner of the sales contest gets a new Cadillac, second place gets a set of steak knifes, third place is you get your throat tore out

We see that Sookie has hauled butt over to Bill’s and after explaining the whole psychic phone call bit to Jess, asks her if Bill has checked in with her. Jess says she felt something the night before that made her feel sick to her stomach, like that time she tried Kulula. Oh and she also had a feeling that Bill was out there, “somewhere.”

That’s good enough for Sookie and she demands that Jess come driving around with her until they find Bill.

Just as they are getting ready to leave, she asks Jess what stinks so bad in the house. Jess tells Sookie a possum crawled under the house and died. Possum, long haul trucker, tomato tamotoe, what’s the diff, right Jess?

Speaking of Bill, we cut back to him, wandering around out in the woods without his shirt. He finally comes up to this house in the middle of nowhere and a sweet little old lady on oxygen lets him in. She then makes the mistake of asking Bill if he’s hungry and out come the fangs.

We cut from Bill using the elderly as human pudding pops, to people being used for other less then savory pursuits. Namley, Tara’s mom has had her minister come over to tell Tara that her getting used to further a maynad’s plot, and her hot boyfriend getting shot is all part of God’s super extra awesome master plan. Tara politely excuses herself to take a shower. This is fine by Tara’s mom because she is trying to get in the reverend’s holy scriptures. God, I liked her a lot better when she was completely estranged from her only daughter.

Hey you two, save some room for the Holy Ghost (also am I the only one who’s noticed the back of this guy’s noggin looks like a pack of hot dogs?)

We cut from that back to Sam, and he’s followed that kid from the tire store back to the kid’s house. Sam waits for the kid to go inside, and then checks the mailbox, jackpot! The people really do have the same name as Sam’s real family. See? It really does pay to follow young guys from the tire store back to their homes. You know, if you can turn into a collie, and are searching for your long lost family. Otherwise it’s super stalky. Still, it worked for Sam here, so yay!

Back at the sin bin that is Jason’s house, well there isn’t a whole lot of sinning going on. The slutty vet student Jason paired off with is playing his passion piccolo,and well, let’s just say Jason can’t hit a B sharp tonight. Not that Jason isn’t being game about the whole thing, even when the other girl wants to play, because Hoyt is too busy talking about Jess, Jason tries to get up for the situation. Too bad Jason keeps seeing both girls with CGI bullet holes in their heads. Eventually Jason makes the mistake of sharing this info with the slutty vet students, and the making the sexy time is officially over. Oh man, when erectile dysfunction happens to someone else it is a barrel of laughs. Not that it happens to me. Lately. Hey who wants to talk True Blood?

We cut back to Bill and the old lady. Bill is glamoring her, which is pretty easy, because she’s older then dirt and her short term memory is for poop anyway. Bill also gives her some money, and tells her that it’s from her son and that he came to visit her. That’s kind of nice of him, considering he just sucked about a quart of blood out of her.

Bill then gets the old lady to tell him where he’s at, and when he finds out he’s in Mississippi he looks like the world is coming to an end. This is odd, because normally only people from Alabama get this expression on their face when they unexpectedly end up in Mississippi.

We are in the home stretch of the episode, so we don’t spend any time thinking about that, because Lafayette is home after a long day of almost getting his throat bitten out. He asks Tara’s mom where Tara is at, and she tells him about Tara going to the shower. Lafayette freaks out when he hears this, and it makes sense, because Tara has locked the bathroom door and if wolfing down every pill in Layfayette’s medicine cabinet. So if Lafayette can get the door open in time we can look forward to Tara getting her stomach pumped next week, but this week still isn’t over.

There’s nothing really funny about this picture, I just like the idea of Tara’s mom reading Men’s Health

We cut over to Sookie and Jess, and they have found Bill’s car flipped over on the side of the road, and the dead members of the F U Crew. Sookie makes Jess pull one of the bodies out of the car, but they don’t find any ID on the body. They do find a weird sort of mark on the guys body that looks just like a symbol that Jess looks up on her phone and sees is associated with something called “Operation Werewolf.” Sookie goes werewolf? Yes Sookie, werewolf. Am I the only one who watches the previews around here?

And we cut to Bill running super duper fast through the woods and running into a whole mess of wolves. Bill then proceeds to have a Doctor Doolittle moment, because he warns the wolves he just fed, and then out come his fangs. The End.

Well, the first episode of the season in the books and I thought it was a pretty good one for the first one of the season. Between reminding everyone about what happened last season, and getting this season’s plots in motion there usually isn’t a lot of time to spend with the characters. Hopefully we’ll get to spend more time with people as the season goes along.

I hope I wasn’t too negative about Sookie for some people out there. Sorry, but the way she just seems to wander around completely convinced that everyone wants to do whatever she wants gets on my nerves. I don’t know, a nice reader last season pointed out that in the books, Sookie is the narrator of the stories so the stories are built around seeing her internal logic which we don’t on the TV show. Then again maybe Anna Paquin is notso hotso as an actress? As Flipit pointed out in that trailer recap; “Beeeill’s in Dan-JUR.” By the way, once you give somebody a Golden Globe for acting, you’re stuck with their accent for the rest of the show. Sorry just the way it works.

Oh, I didn’t mention it in the recap, but what did you think about Arlene announcing she was pregnant? Was I the only one who started counting backwards to see if Terry the Cook was the dad?

Speaking of Arlene, I loved when she told Tara, “so you were dating a serial killer, who hasn’t done that?” Also was I the only person who was surprised to find out that in real life she’s married to the guy who played Ben on Lost?

So what did you guys think? Was this episode worth the wait? Are you excited to check out this whole werewolf thing this season? Anything else you want to talk about?

Anyway, thanks for stopping by.