True Blood: Stepping In Bull Stuff

Hey Gasmi, how’s it going? How was your week? Do anything exciting, like get attacked by a minotaur, held hostage by vampires, agree to go to Dallas to get vampires to release your friend, go to bible camp where you dreamed about vampires, hung out at a wild Bacchanalian orgy, or maybe just went on a date with an under aged vampire who can’t control her fangs? No? Well your life obviously isn’t going to hold my attention for 60 minutes, now is it? (Don’t feel bad, the only times my own life holds my attention for that period of time; it usually involves me interacting with shiny objects or string) Well, lucky for me the good people at HBO just put out a new episode of True Blood, so let’s make the jump and talk about people much more interesting then you and I

Our episode starts with Bill, Sookie, and Jessica in the car coming back from Jessica’s folks’ house. Bill is so pissed he pulls over on the side of the road, so he can bitch out Sookie. Bill is raging about Sookie undermining his authority, Sookie is saying it wasn’t her fault, because Jess didn’t do what she was told, and Jess said she hates Bill. Wow kind of like the drives back from family gatherings when we were teenagers, huh? What’s that? You say that never happened in your family? Ummmmm, me neither?

Just to get everyone up to speed, Sookie, took Jessica to look at her family’s house because Jess missed them. Once they got there Jess knocked on the door and got her mom to invite her in. Jess’s dad got home and acted like a colossal jerk, which is when Jess decided to suck the life out of him. Bill showed up at the last second and kept things from getting messy.

Well we come to find out this week that Bill glamoured (think of it as vampire brain washing) Jess’s family to forget any of them were ever there. Sounds nice, but how did they explain what Jess’s family was supposed to think about the front door blown off the hinges, and that broken plaster from Jess slamming her a-hole daddy into the wall? If I was Bill, I’d blame it on that pesky neighbor dog that won’t stop peeing in their azaleas.

Bill’s mad at Sookie. Sookie keeps apologizing, and starts getting mad when it becomes painfully obvious that Bill isn’t accepting her apology. This gives Sookie the perfect opportunity to get out of the car and storm away threatening to walk all the way home. Bill lets her walk away, even though Jess rightly points out that what Sookie wants is for Bill to follow her and tell her that he “luvvvs” her. It’s the right call, but seeing as Jess was recently thiiiiis close to turning her dad into a human Pez dispenser, we’re not appointing her the True Blood Miss Manners just yet.

Sookie hears a noise behind her, but thinks it’s just Bill trying to scare her to come back into the car. Say what you want about dating a vampire, but when you’re out at night you usually don’t have to worry about any scary creatures. Only in this case Sookie does, because when she finally turns around there is a scary man bull thing behind her.

Sookie starts running, but it’s hard to outrun 7 foot tall bull/man. The thing knocks her down and swipes her with some pretty nasty claws. Bill hears her screaming and finally gets his butt out of the car. He does his super duper fast vampire run, but by the time he shows up whatever swiped Sookie is long gone.

Bill offers Sookie some of his blood, which normally heals whatever is troubling Sookie, but this time she starts puking. Bill’s a little stumped when this doesn’t work so he has Jess bring the car. The next we see they are hauling ass into the Fangtasia parking lot. Bill sends Jess home, and takes Sookie inside.

When Sookie wakes up, some creepy looking little old lady is examining her. It turns out she’s a doctor, well that or she just really likes wearing scrubs and funny hats. Oh and did I mention she’s really crabby? Like Larry King is a repeat crabby? She lets Sookie know that she’s poisoned, probably dieing, and it was done by a super komodo dragon.

She chases Bill and Eric out of the room which gives them the perfect chance to talk about the “bull man” who attacked Sookie. Eric says he’s never heard of anything like it in a thousand years. Wow I just had a thought, if Eric is 1000-years-old, does that mean he watches Larry King too?

Eric is curious enough about the whole thing to call in his goon squad of Pam and Chow. Pam and Chow are vampires. Pam wears pumps, and Chow…doesn’t. Eric sends the Bobbsey twins off to investigate the woods and to get those damned neighbor kids off his lawn.

Bill hears screaming in the other room and when he comes in Granny Sourpuss is pouring some stuff out of a blue bottle into those big honking claw marks on Sookie’s back. Then once she gets Bill to hold Sookie down, our little doctor starts scooping these little round dealees out of the wounds. When you match up this scene with the scene last week where Lafayette was digging through the homophobe’s body like he was looking for the secret surprise in a box of Cracker Jacks is becomes official that the producers aren’t going to be happy until the day I yak up my Sunday dinner.

Meanwhile, back at Merlotte’s, Daphne, the world’s worst waitress, stops by Sam’s office. The good news is Sam is no longer a dog. The bad news is he turns into a raging a-hole when Daphne announces she’s 64 dollars and eight cents short. Daphne, if you’re reading this post, here’s a tip for future reference when you have bad news for Sam, scratch him behind his ears; I hear he loves that.

After Sam finishes yelling at Daphne, the world’s worst waitress, Tara walks in and tells Sam he needs to be more supportive and nurturing and Sam snaps at her too. Sam, bad boss, bad! No milkbone for you!

Sam calms down enough to tell Tara Maryann is bad news and she should get away from her. Tara wants to know what Maryann ever did to Sam, but he can’t bring himself to mention how she just turned him into a collie, so he just comes off looking like the aforementioned raging a-hole.

Over at Camp HateAVampire, Jason wakes up in the middle of the night from a bad dream. He rolls his finally honed torso over to go to sleep, and oh snap! Eddie, the lovable gay vampire that Jason’s semi-psycho-V-addict girlfriend from the last season killed is in bed with him. (By the way, how often does anyone get to write a sentence like that last one recapping American Idol? Thank you HBO!) Right when Eddie sinks his fangs into Jason, Jason wakes up again.

Yeah, that was the real nightmare; the first part was just a tune up. Jason decides to get in touch with the man upstairs, and he does a little praying. It turns out our little Jason is confused, (you can insert your own cheap joke here) and he’s asking God for another sign as to what to do with his life. If I was God I’d think twice about sending signs to Jason Stackhouse, mainly because he’d be signing up for a 24/7 workload, constantly sending signs like, “your underwear is on backwards, again.”

Jason does get a sign. His roommate, and new mortal enemy, The Lukeinator, hits Jason in the head with a pillow and tells him to shut his prayhole and go to sleep. Well Jason, what can I tell you? The Lord and the screenwriter work in mysterious ways.

Back at Fangtasia, Pam and Chow get back. They didn’t find anything. Well they found human footprints and it smelled like a filthy animal, but no bull men were out in the woods.

Doc CrabbyDepends tell Bill Sookie is okay, and he can give her his vampire blood. Eric slides in and tries to get Bill to let him give Sookie his blood, but Bill isn’t having any of that. Bill opens up a vein, and Sookie latches on to it like she is about to do a keg stand.

Eventually when they get Sookie topped off on vampire blood, Bill says that he doesn’t want to move Sookie, and Eric is all sure dude, you can leave your girlfriend with me, no problemo buddy. Bill then gets a little hell to the no and says he wants to crash there too. Eric’s got a spare coffin in the back and the next thing you know it’s a vampire sleepover, with smores and fixing each other’s hair.

Cut to the next day over at Maryann’s. Tara is wandering into the kitchen where Maryann and her creepy butler type dude are huddled over a big pot of something (I want to say it’s bouillabaisse, but as far as I can tell they never say what is in the pot, and come to think of it I haven’t heard of a lot of recipes that use juniper berries in bouillabaisse, so I guess we’ll just have to go with a big pot of something.)

Tara starts off the day with a breakfast of coffee, and decides to ask Maryann why Sam hates her. Maryann says Sam hates her because Tara is just so spanking wonderful that he can’t stand to see Tara spending time with Maryann now instead of him. Yeah, that must be it, but the possibility that this hostility may be caused by Maryann turning Sam into a body double for Lassie at will is never really explored.

If Tara put 10 seconds of rational thought into what Maryann just told her, she might get a little suspicious, but Maryann promptly offers her a Bob Marley joint. Pot for breakfast? You know, if Maryann walked around all day in a ratty bathrobe, lived on Fruit Loops, and mac and cheese, and set up her academic career around catching repeats of I Dream of Jeanie, she could be the soul mate of a roommate I had in college. I wonder if she was geology major too?

Well the good news is Sam isn’t taking Maryann’s turning him into a dog the night before lying down. Nope, he’s handling this situation the way any grown man would. He’s packing up his car so he can get the hell out of town. He’s called Terry the cook down to ask him to take care of the bar

Terry the cook isn’t too happy to hear this news. Terry doesn’t like pressure, mainly because even though they’ve never flat out said it, the show really hints that the poor guy is suffering from post traumatic stress disorder from serving in Iraq.

Terry tells Sam if he were Sam, Terry wouldn’t be his first choice, and Sam admits he wasn’t. He would have asked Sookie, Tara, Lafayette, Arlene, and the coat rack by the front door, but they’ve all fallen through for not being around because they got mauled by a minotaur, living with a witch who can turn Sam into a dog, being held hostage by vampires or possibly being turned into a vampire, still getting over the fact they got engaged to a serial murderer at Red Lobster, and/or being an inanimate object. Terry is the last hope Bon Temps has of getting shooters and wings for happy hour, so how can he say no?

Terry says he’ll do it, but get pissed and accuses Sam of running away, which Sam quickly denies. This denial would be a lot stronger if we didn’t see a box in the back of his truck marked “den.”

Over at Camp HateAVampire, Jason is at a prayer circle/why we hate vampires meeting where everyone is supposed to talk about how vampires ruined their lives. The only problem is even a dim bulb like Jason knows the fanged set isn’t really responsible for his problems. Jason gets a little ticked, and tells everyone the only reason he came to camp is he was looking for a sign from God, but seeing as his underwear is on backwards, again; it’s obvious the Lord has forsaken him. Jason then walks out of the meeting.

This causes Sarah, or as I think we’ll call her from now on, The Plastic Preacherette, to come after Jason. She tells Jason about how she used to like vampires too right up until her sister got hooked on V and disappeared, so that’s why them danged old vamps are evil. She gets Jason to stick around, and they get down on their knees and pray that God can get Jason into his briefs the right way tomorrow.

Sookie wakes at Fangtasia and checks out her back. Everything is good as new, just like it was all makeup, never happened. While she’s looking in the mirror, the waitress with a worse dye job then Sookie’s brings her a peanut butter and chocolate syrup sandwich. (Which if it had been on graham crackers would make her the ideal candidate for this waffleboy’s personal chef). While Sookie and the waitress, whose name is Ginger, are shooting the poop, Ginger says something that gets Sookie to read her mind, and Sookie finds out Eric is keeping Lafayette down in the basement. Sookie also reads Ginger’s mind and finds out about the gun under the cash register and makes Ginger take her down in the basement.

The mystery of what happened to Lafayette last week gets answered. Eric didn’t turn him into a vampire, and Lafayette looks like a guy who got shot, had a bunch of vampires treat him like a steam table at an all you can eat buffet, and has been locked in a vampire’s basement for two weeks. That is to say, he looks like poop. Sookie tells Lafayette not to worry because she is going to get him out of there and stomps off to have a snit.

Back at Maryann’s Eggo is playing the guitar and Tara who is slinking around in a long slinky dress (the prefect outfit for slinking) tells him he’s great. Eggo launches in to another long spiel about how Maryann turned his life around and blah, blah, blah, it turns out Tara is 45 minutes late for work and she Eggo are too drunk to drive, so she just isn’t going into work, and if she gets fired, well it won’t be the first time. Yeah Tara, that’s true, but it will be the fist time you get canned by a guy who can turn into a beagle, and that’s not something you see on a resume every day.

I guess the sun has gone down, because Bill is up, and Sookie can’t wait to tear him a new one for Lafayette being locked up in the basement. Bill becomes the first vampire in history to flash a who farted look because he thought she was still pissed about their argument from the night before, but he’s getting hit with something completely out of the blue. I don’t know if it’s funny or sad that an unholy creature of the night can get the shell shocked boyfriend look, but I’m leaning towards funny at this point.

Luckily for Bill Eric shows up and says yeah he put Lafayette (or as Sookie keeps calling him “La-FI-ette”) in his basement, because Lafayette was trading sex for vampire blood with Eddie, the lovable gay vampire, which is a pretty serious vampire crime. Serious enough to get locked up in the basement of a theme bar anyway.

Now that Eric has shown up, Sookie can really cut loose. She gives him a good piece of her mind about how he can’t just chain people up in his basement, and La-FI-ette is a friend of hers. Then she gives Eric a good hard slap in the face, and generally behaves like a main character that has zero chance of getting eaten in the next ten seconds for getting mouthy. Eric actually thinks the slap is kind of funny, but when Sookie mentions going to the police, out come his fangs.

Eric tells Sookie he doesn’t respond well to threats, but if she and Bill will step in his office he is sure they can work something out. Uh oh Sookie, be careful, when they get you in their office that’s where they try to sell you the undercoating option.

Over at Merlotte’s Sam’s leaving a voice message for boozy Tara telling her it’s okay if she doesn’t come into work, but just to watch herself over at Maryann’s. Arlene comes in and she’s late and apologizing. She tells a good story about her kids watching Next Top Model, and her daughter giving her younger brother a nose piercing which made me laugh. It could have been worse Arlene, if you’re kids really imitated Top Model, they’d go on a tick tacks and cigarettes diet. Sam kind of gets a kick out of the story too, and tells Arlene just to get ready for work.

Arlene comments on how Sam’s a lot more likeable when he’s not being a complete a-hole, but in Sam’s defense, he hasn’t been turned into a dog tonight, so maybe he’s normally not that bad. The scene ends with Sam looking at pictures over the bar and pining over a picture of Sookie whom he’s always had kind of a crush on and him making a semi-sad panda face.

Over at Bill’s Jess is literally crawling out of her hole. She’s kind of disappointed that nobody is around and wanders around the house for awhile. Hmmm, what is a young vampire to do?

Well in this case, Jess gets all dolled up and heads over to Merlott’s. She looks pretty good, but seeing as she’s wearing the same dress as she was the night before and apparently wore it while sleeping in a hole under a house, you have to wonder about the funk she’s giving off. Then again, Eric was wearing the same track suit from the day before, and seeing as Bill pretty much only owns one set of clothes, I’m really starting to hope vampires buy Febreze in bulk.

Jess is walking through the bar with every guy checking her out and it looks like she can have her pick of the men in the place, so she sits down by, Hoyt? Don’t get me wrong, Hoyt is probably the sweetest character on this show, and he’s a super nice guy, but honestly, Hoyt??

Hoyt comes over and starts to talk, and oh boy, it becomes pretty obvious pretty fast that he and Jason are not only best friends but have the same room temperature IQ. Hoyt tells her she has a pretty smile, which is a good start, but then launches into a rambling restaurant review of Merlotte’s where he ends up describing the chicken fried steak as a crispy fried baby.

Jess likes Hoyt (Hoyt? Really, Hoyt??), so she just orders a bottle of True Blood. After a moment where we can literally hear the gears grinding in Hoyt’s head, he asks Jess if she is a vampire, “for real.” Jess is like ‘fraid so,” and Hoyt thinks this is awesome because who doesn’t want a girlfriend who looks at the vein in your neck like a chicken fried steak? Anyway, Hoyt heads off to get Jess a bottle of synthetic Japanese blood, and a chicken fried steak for me, because it really did sound good.

Sookie and Bill are in Eric’s office and Eric lays out his offer. He’ll let Lafayette go if Sookie will go to Dallas to help look for the missing vampire. Bill doesn’t want Sookie going to Texas because it’s too dangerous. Really Bill? I wonder what the stats on minotaur attacks in Texas look like?

Sookie doesn’t seem too worried either, because she tells Eric she wants five grand and for him to let “La-FI-ette” go. Eric makes a witty little comeback, and Bill says Sookie wants 10 thousand dollars, for Bill to go with her, and to let Lafayette go.

Eric ends up agreeing and Pam brings Lafayette up from the basement. Eric comes over before Lafayette leaves, and tells him they will see each other soon. Lafayette tries to let him down easy and tell him this was more of a Rosie Cruise you can lock me up in your basement for two weeks, shoot me, and maybe suck my blood, but we’re really probably not going to see each other once we clear the airport type deal. Eric doesn’t seem to be getting the message and what makes this scene extra creepy is that when Eric is making Lafayette squirm, it’s pretty much the happiest we’ve seen him on the show.

Over at Maryann’s the party is really kicking into gear. It has to be the centerpiece on her entry table. It’s like Martha Stewart always says, if you want to get people drinking, dancing and dry humping each other, you can’t go wrong with a good centerpiece.

Judging by the number of girls taking their tops off, Maryann must have a kickass centerpiece for this shindig. Everyone is dancing, drinking and eating up that big pot of whatever the creepy butler type guy was cooking up earlier. Tara and Eggo are in the hot tub now, and Tara notices that Andy Bellefleur has shown up at the party.

Tara grouses that maybe Andy should be out trying to catch a murderer (oh yeah, anyone remember that body they found with the big hole in its chest where the heart used to be?) instead of at a party. You know what Tara? Maybe you should be at Merlotte’s pouring Bud Light and Vodka cranberries into the local rummies. Let’s keep the stone throwing from your glass house to a minimum, okay toots?

Andy takes in the sight of all the boobie flashing, and older unattractive people grinding on each other and making out, but something really catches his eye. That big pig that was with Maryann when she first showed up in town is in this little playhouse. Andy asks what the pig is doing there, but the pig isn’t saying anything until it gets lawyered up.

Just then Maryann shows up, and Andy tells her there have been complaints about the noise from the party and Andy wants to know what’s the deal with the pig. Maryann is all what you talking about Willis, because when Andy turns back around, the pig is gone. Andy freaks out a little bit, but Maryann gets him to have a drink. Good idea Andy, enforcing the law is always more fun when you’ve got a buzz going.

Is anyone wondering what is happening at Camp HateAVampire? No? Too bad, because the screenwriter and the director are, so it looks like the rest of us are stuck going along for the ride. Jason is having dinner with the plastic missionaries. Reverend Steve is laying out his philosophy to Jason. It runs along the lines of, sure the bible says it’s wrong to hate, but vampires are evil, so hating them is like loving good. Yeah, it’s a rich crock of creamery butter, and only someone with a icebox temperature would buy into it…things aren’t looking too good for Jason right now, are they?

The Plastic Preacherette shows up with banana pudding for dessert, and Reverend Steve-o makes a crack about how the Plastic Preacherette must really like Jason because she doesn’t just whip her pudding out for just anybody. You know what? I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that statement isn’t 100% true.

Jess and Hoyt (Hoyt?) head back to Bill’s place. Hoyt says “hey, you have a Wii?” and poor Jess gets this look on her face like “Oh my God, I didn’t think this dress was that short! Hoyt explains a Wii is for playing video games and offers to show Jess how to play. He’s holding her hand, and Jess starts making out with him (Hoyt?).

Things are getting a little heated, when Jess’s fangs just pop out. Jessica is mortified because she can’t control it, it just happens, much like a teenaged boy popping a boner. Here’s a tip Jess, you better enjoy it while you can because there is a pretty good chance that by the time you turn 50 you’ll have to take little blue pills to get that reaction.

Hoyt tells Jess that it’s okay, because it’s natural and who she is, and he likes her a lot. Hoyt is as dumb as a rutabaga, has the survival skills of a lemming, is quite possibly the most prefect boyfriend ever.

Bill and Sookie drop off Lafayette and drive over to Bill’s. On the ride over, Sookie starts moaning about how disillusioned she is because vampires can do evil things, yadda, yadda, yadda. Bill chimes in about how vampires can be good or evil, just like people, and I can’t help but notice that when it comes to these two, the less clothes they wear, the more interesting they become, and they are fully clothed right now, so you do the math.

Tara and Eggo are still trying to break the record for longest time spent in a hot tub when suddenly tragedy strikes. A large breasted, naked, licensed massage therapist comes over and slides into the tub. She gives Eggo a massage, but she makes it pretty clear she’s an equal opportunity massager. Well despite the offer to pop her back Tara’s a little bent out of shape when the licensed massage therapist shows up, mainly because the licensed massage therapist is about a D cup and it’s painfully obvious Tara isn’t. When will this irrational discrimination against large breasted licensed massage therapists come to an end?

She gets so miffed she starts checking out the party. We’ve got all sorts of very attractive topless extras running around (Cable neeked, YAY!), people making out all over the place, and a fat drunk guy running through the party without any pants, so we can almost see his doodle.

That’s it; Tara hops out of the hot tub. The party is over for our little missy. She makes such a fast beeline back to the house she doesn’t notice that some people’s eyes are getting completely black which means some supernatural monkeyshines are afoot.

Eggo catches up to Tara in the house and tries to get her to come back to the threeway, party, but Tara makes it clear that any sort of swinging is not an option in her relationships. Being a convicted armed robber, drug dealer, or somebody who plays the acoustic guitar at parties? Tara can do a work around for all this stuff, but bring one little big boobed massage therapist into the mix (Who I might point out is licensed, with like a piece of paper from the state with a stamp on it and everything) and Tara is ready to go back to eating soup for one. Eggo tries to get Tara to come back outside, but she decides to go to her room.

Sam is getting ready to flee the country, call it a night when a dog shows up. It is the dog that Sam sort of uses as a model to shapeshift into. Sam tells the dog he wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, and then he and the dog go running off into the night as Sam sheds his clothes. Kind of hard to believe this guy is single, huh ladies?

Bill and Sookie get back to his place, and are ready to start making with the vampire sex, but Bill glances over into the other room and sees Jess crawled up on top of somebody. Bill does the super fast vampire run across the room and throws Jess across the room into the corner. Jess’s fangs are out but she is swearing she wasn’t going to bite Hoyt. Hoyt’s okay, but his shirt is off which pretty much means Jess got to second base with him. Bill’s fangs are out, and Sookie is telling him to calm down, welcome to living with a teenager Bill.

Dog form Sam and his friend the dog run down this pier and Sam jumps into the lake where he turns back into Sam. The real dog won’t jump in the water even though Sam tells him the water is fine. He seems kind of concerned, like there might be danger afoot, or he’s worried that the international banking system may be primed for hyper-inflation. Hey Collies are a smart breed. What do you mean they don’t keep up with current monetary trends?

The dog takes off, and Sam keeps swimming which is good for us because Sammy doesn’t exactly have the most cable neeked friendly body on the show. While he’s swimming, somebody walks up the dock. Hey it’s Daphne, the world’s worst waitress. She and Sam flirt for a little bit and then she decides to join Sam for a little swim. She peels off her top, and we see one of those big minotaur scars running up her back. The End.

Well, that’s this week’s episode, what did everyone think?

Oh, after ripping everyone on this show a new pooper for almost 5,000 words I should mention the parts that I thought were really good.

For all the crap I give Jason Stackhouse for making morons look dumb, Ryan Kwanten, the guy who play him does a great job bringing that quality dumbness to the screen. You can really see this with the little things he does in his scene with Reverend Steve-o. That little bit with him awkwardly getting a piece of food off of his fork while Steve-o was talking, and him turning around outside expecting to see a battle when Steve-o said there was a war out there, were two nice pieces of physical comedy.

I didn’t say anything about when Lafayette got home, mainly because it was too good a scene. If everyone in this series acted as well as Nelsan Ellis did in this scene, I’d be forced to make fun of Rock of Love spinoffs.

“You get to live here? Pretty Cool.”
“Not Really. It’s full of his creepy old stuff and he makes me sleep in a hole.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean; my momma stores her doll collection in my closet.”

A great bit of dialogue in a really sweet scene with Jess and Hoyt (Hoyt?)

Anyway, that’s it for this week’s excitement. I guess I’ll see you all after the next episode