Kildy’s 3 R’s – Recap-Review-Rant – True Blood Season 4 Ep 1

She’s Not There – Season Premier

Hi, this is something new I’m going to be trying.  I’ll be doing a weekly recap of each episode of True Blood this season.  A couple of things you should know . . . First, this is a recap, it is meant to be read AFTER you watch the episode so it will definitely have spoilers in it.  Second, I have never read the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris, so I won’t be referencing them.  Now . . . let’s jump right in shall we.

‘I Wanna Do Bad Things With You.’ This is when I start doing my happy excited dance in my chair at ‘Battlestation Kildare’ (Suzy named it . . . you’d almost have to have been there). Unfortunately it’s also where I keep my head turned for most of the intro. I have a weak stomach and if you’ve ever seen the intro for True Blood then you know it has a few really gross parts in it. That’s okay at least I have a great song to grove to while I wait.

‘Umm yeah okay’, those were pretty much my only thoughts during the first eight to ten minutes of the Season Premier of True Blood. I’m not a big fan of the whole Sookie in faerie land thing although the fact that faeries weren’t just these beautiful ethereal beings and instead look a little more like hobgoblins was cool. It kind of explains Sookie’s gap teeth. Yeah that was tacky but I couldn’t help myself.

Sookie meets her ‘Grandaddy’ Earl in faerie land and being blonde she somehow thinks that telling him telepathically that they need to get out of there, all the other mind reading faeries won’t hear it. Yeah that was a brilliant move there, Sook. Enter Queen Mab and we learn that they are harvesting all the human faerie hybrids before closing off the portal to faerie forever. In a crazy chase scene we see how powerful the power beams coming out of their hands can actually be and we meet Mab’s brother who doesn’t want the rift permanently closed. Before Mab can close the rift ‘Grandaddy’ Earl grabs Sookie and they fall through the portal returning to our plain. The whole thing played like bad sci-fi from the 60’s or 70’s. During the chase scene I was vaguely reminded of Logan’s Run for some reason.

Not surprisingly you see Eric and Bill’s eyes pop open in their coffins the second Sookie lands back on earth. She gets to suffer through the death of another relative, since ‘grandaddy’ had eaten the light fruit in faerie land he couldn’t be there. She drags him over to the family plot and he leaves her a little proof of where she was in the form of a pocket watch before he turns into faerie dust himself. At this point in the show my excitement about the new season is starting to wane. Really . . . with the faerie land stuff . . . it did nothing for me, and watching Sookie cry about another dead relative, maybe I’m just a heartless bitch but, it just wasn’t moving me.

I guessed even before we saw Sookie’s renovated house that she was gone for much longer than it seemed to her. I understand the reason for this jump, after all the first three seasons of True Blood all occur in the span of like weeks and they want their characters in a different place now. But I still couldn’t help feeling that the show was cheapened by using such a blatant common tv ploy to move the story along. Again I understand the reason for it and it’s going to be fun discovering how the residents of Bon Temps ended up where they are now, but I was feeling a little disappointed at this point.

It was daylight when Sookie returned so she has time to see her brother and learn that a year has passed. Jason is now a real deputy, looking and behaving much more with it and together than I’ve ever seen him before. It was funny to see the rolls reversed when Andy Balfour arrives and we learn that Andy is now the V addict and Jason is the one actually using his head for a change. Andy’s angry rant fills us in a little more on how the town reacted to her disappearance and all the man hours that were invested in trying to find her. Of course everyone believed Bill had killed her.

Speaking of . . . Bill and Eric arrive at practically the same time the minute the sun goes down. Eric claims he’s the only one who didn’t give up on her. I guessed even before the big reveal near the end of the episode that Bill was now King of Louisiana by the way Eric obeyed him when Bill told him to leave. Bill helps Sookie out with an explanation for Andy of where she was for the past year. ‘Vampire business’ was the only explanation Andy got and an offer to pay for all the time and expense that was put in to the search for her. If you hadn’t guessed Bill’s elevation by Eric’s submission than this was another big clue. Sookie tells Bill that to her it was just a few hours ago when he broke her heart but she seems a little upset when he puts up no argument and leaves.

Now we finally get to the fun part . . . seeing what’s been happening with everyone else in Bon Temps and the episode gets better. Lafayette (my personal favorite on the show) is sporting a ‘fro Mohawk and the same outrageous flair. He hasn’t had a vision in ten months and Jesus is dragging him to another ‘witchy’ kind of thing that he is reluctant to go to. He agrees to five minutes, ten if they got ‘dranks’ and they enter a building where ‘old air-fresheners go to die’. The waitress who tried to help Arlene last season (her name escapes me at the moment) is in the coven and greets them and then we are introduced to who I believe will be the villainess of the season, Marnie.

Besides Marnie and the ‘waitress’ they spend a lot of time showing us another strawberry blonde witch with glasses. We learn at the end of the episode why the camera men made sure we remembered her face when we learn she is a spy in the coven for Bill, and we hear him addressed as ‘your majesty’ for the first time. Still like to see just how he beat Sophie Ann. I’m sure we’ll see it eventually, or at least the end of it.

We get to see Arlene next and maybe I’m just a sick bitch but I couldn’t help but laugh when she enters the house and finds her new baby, Mikey, sitting on the floor surrounded by decapitated Barbi dolls. Arlene’s ready to have kittens but Terry assures her that all normal little boys pull the heads off of dolls. She picks up the baby and reminds him that killing is wrong. If he wasn’t born with the predisposition to be a serial killer she is going to make him one.

Then we head to New Orleans where we find Tara fighting in a caged ring against another equally hot female and I’m thinking, ‘okay, she’s finally worked out a way to release all of that anger’. It skips over almost immediately to Jessica and Hoyt where we see what anyone would have expected. The honeymoon is over. The ridiculousness of their argument eventually makes them both laugh and it seems that maybe the love hasn’t been destroyed completely . . . yet. I mean this is Bon Temps. I always thought the Jessica/Hoyt romance was sweet and I’m rooting for these two, but I’m almost positive this is all going to be destroyed by the end of the season. I hope they prove me wrong. They mention during the fight that Hoyt’s mother did make an attempt on Jessica’s life. We saw her buying a shot gun at the end of Season 3. I would have liked to have seen that exchange but maybe we will eventually.

Sookie is a little mad that Jason sold her house but she’s going to find out who bought it and see if she can’t give them the money back. By this time I’ve already guessed it was Eric who bought it, but we don’t learn that until the end of the episode. FINALLY we get to see Pam (my second favorite character on the show) her dry and unemotional sarcasm as she films a PSA to ‘reassure the human public’ that vampire businesses are perfectly safe for humans is brilliant. Pam thinks it’s idiotic that the AVL believes the public is naïve enough to buy into all this, and I laughed out loud when Nan Flanders shoots back that she has scientific proof that people are far dumber than they realize. LOL. Sorry couldn’t help myself.

Eric does the PSA right (or at least the way Ms. Flanders wants it done) and the show takes us back and forth between Eric and Bill each giving speeches.  It is not lost on any one that Eric is being portrayed here as the handsome trustworthy business owner while Bill is being portrayed as a politician.  I’m sure I’m committing some kind of True Blood blasphemy here, but . . . meh on both of them, BRING ON ALCIDE PLEASE.  Eric is kind of sexy, I wouldn’t throw him out of bed for eating crackers.  I have NO attraction to Bill at all, but Alcide, ummm okay yeah back to the recap.

Oh wow Tara’s a lesbian now.  I wasn’t expecting that, but somehow I’m not surprised, not after what she’s been through.  She also has her anger issues under control, seems the cage matches are working.  The old Tara would have ripped the balls off the lush propositioning her and her girlfriend, with her bare hands.  Oh and her girlfriend keeps calling her Toni.  I know they are giving Tara a chance to grow and get over all the crap she’s been through, but it just doesn’t seem like the same show to me without her behind the bar at Merlotte’s being her grouchy opinionated self.  I’m sure she’ll be back in Bon Temps soon, however.

Sookie goes back to Merlotte’s, and Lafayette tells her that Tara is gone.  When Lafayette goes back to the kitchen Jesus shows up and tells him that he’s running away from the thing that makes him special by running away from magic, but Andy shows up and runs Jesus off.  Andy demands Lafayette sell him some V and Jason shows up just in time and proves that he is all up on proper police procedure now.

Finally we learn that Sam didn’t actually kill Tommy, of course it wouldn’t have really upset me if he had.  He is being babied and taken care of by Hoyt’s mother, I’m not even sure I want to know how that happened.  Sam asks him how the physical therapy he is paying for is going and Tommy declares he’s going to need a few more months.  ‘How’s that anger management class going?’ Tommy shoots back.  ‘Might need to go more often.’  Sam replies tossing a towel onto the bar.  I couldn’t help but laugh out loud here.  I prefer my comedy understated and subtle like this, so to me that was a brilliant little scene.

It wouldn’t be True Blood without a sex scene so we are treated to a hot little scene between Tara (Toni) and her new girl, but they are interupted when she gets the text from Lafayette that Sookie has returned.  She tells her girlfriend that there’s been a death in her family, but she’ll just send flowers.

Sookie is trying to find out who bought her house and the lawyer she hire’s is a pretty little brunette we saw earlier at Bill’s speech.  Sookie reads her mind and learns that she knows Bill and that he has hardly mentioned Sookie during the past year.

We skip back to Fangtasia, and Jessica doing a sexy little dance out on the floor while Hoyt watches from the bar.  A ‘fang banger’ tries to hit on her and she realizes she would desperately love to eat him. She escapes to the bathroom and yay more Pam.  ‘Toilets are for humans only, do I need to explain why.’  I love her.  She tells Jess that the ‘tree with the plaid shirt seems sweet if you’re into that sort of thing’, but she knows Jessica wants more.

Now to Sam who is meeting with his ‘anger management’ group.  They all agree that their anger is a primal thing and then they decide to move past the wine they’ve all been swilling.  I already guessed they were all shape shifters, like Sam, so I wasn’t surprised when they all started to strip down for the change.  I was surprised to see them exit through the forest as a herd of horses though.  I had expected all their preferred shapes, Sam’s dog and then whatever the other’s usually changed in to.  I don’t know exactly why but it just felt a little hokey to me.  The entire scene did really the horses just topped it off.

Jason takes food to Hot Shot, which he has apparently been doing for the entire year, but for some reason this time they knock him on the head and lock him in a deep freeze.  I’m not really into this whole Hot Shot storyline really and I never liked the Crystal character in season three.  I’ll just have to see where it goes from here.

Lafayette decided to show up for Jesus’ coven meeting but refused to join hands in the circle while they do a ritual to ease Marnie’s dead parrot and familiar Minerva to the spirit world.  Marnie then changes the chant to indicate they aren’t trying to help her to the spirit world but bring her spirit back into her body.  Her head snaps over to Lafayette and she orders him to join hands.  It kind of surprised me that he obeyed instead of just walking out hips swaying and all attitude.  He gives the witches the jolt of power they need and Minerva comes back to life flies across the room and then drops dead again. Lafayette tells Marnie that he’s sorry her bird is still dead and she smiles an insane kind of smile and tells him it doesn’t matter.  He looks at her exactly how I would have, bitch be crazy.

After learning Bill is now King of Louisiana we return to Sookie’s house where she’s just gotten out of the shower.  Eric shows up and catches her tossed robe, turns out since she doesn’t own the house any more, her invitations or lack of them don’t really matter, at least not for Eric since he owns the house.  As I said in the beginning that one was just too obvious.  She asks him why he bought it and he states that he knew she was still alive and that by owning the house he owned her.  The last thing we see is him popping his fangs as he stalks up to her.

First thoughts as the credits began to roll had absolutely nothing to do with Sookie and Eric.  NO ALCIDE!!!!  AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!  (pant pant) Okay getting over my anger and disappointment now.  To be honest I really was a little disappointed with this first episode after the long wait since the season three finale.  But . . . that being said, the show  was setting everything up to get roaring as the season moves on and from the trailers and teasers we know we’re going to find out pretty much everything that happened during the past year as well as what’s happening now in fairly stunning fashion.  There were things I loved about the episode and things that I was really kind of ‘meh’ about.  Still excited for next week and the rest of  the season, but I better see some Alcide soon or my head may explode.

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