True Blood S05E05: Let’s Boot and Rally

I imagine the writing sessions at True Blood Towers consists of a lot of excited people smooshing dolls together and babbling excitedly about who should be bffs with who before handing their ‘ideas’ over to a bunch of wizened hacks who insert as much self-referential eyerolling as humanly possible without exploding the fanbase. This week we dropped a lot of the Authority business, barring one Melonilogue about blah blah Vampire Bible, totally scrimped on the Pam allowance (boo) and gave extended screentime to the dumb shifter and Iraq plotlines. Once again, start with the good.

Happy recapper reason 1: snarky Sookie. They’re totally going the right direction with this. The Sookie who says ‘3000 year old vampire wants to drink my blood? Must be Thursday!’ and realises, finally, exasperatedly, that there really is no such thing as a normal life is the Best Sookie, and kudos to the TB team for realising she needed a makeover. The opening scenes of her puking Peach Schnapps onto Alcide’s shoes, imagining Eric, Bill and Alcide as barking dogs and then exiting via her broken back door are flawless, and if this attitude successfully translates into the plot proper, this could be one interesting TV show.

Her plotline involves taking the whole Ladyporn Scooby Gang to the car park where Russell had been dug up, then unglamouring the attendant who helped unearth him, whose name is Doug. Why Doug was left alive is anyone’s guess. Their psychic adventures take them to the old abandoned mental asylum (natch) where Russell has been hanging out with a bunch of ready meals, and that he was freed by a female member of the Authority, which unless we still suspect the awesome Texan lady with the cool hairdo means it’s either Terrible Nora or Salome. It’s totally Salome. Calling it now. So the show’s big conclusion is their confrontation with a bedridden Russell in the dark spooky corner of a remaindered set from Every Horror Film, where Eric suddenly remembers his plot motivation for killing Russell (the whole ‘murdered my family 1000 years ago thing). This has not been mentioned at all this season and I was all like ‘oh yeah he killed Talbot because Russell topped his folks’.

 Anyway, Russell totally remembers Eric and the episode ends with him saying ‘give it your best shot’, then Alcide getting chumpkilled out of nowhere by what sounds like a returning Nazi-wolfpack. Knowing the True Blood law of cliffhangers though, he’s totally fine. Things I loved about this thread: Sookie giving everyone the lowdown on her ‘microwave fingers’ (sorry TB, it’s ‘hadouken’ now and always will be) while nursing a gnarly hangover, Bill shushing that one guy, and this:

Back in Jasonville, he has a fantastic dream sequence where he wakes up as a kid on Christmas in He-Man jimjams and sees Monty Python-style blood-gushing fangwounds appear on his parents’ throats, because of reasons. Because these are TB reasons, his mother offers him sexual favours to cheer him up and then he wakes up totally naked. A thousand gifs were born that day.

Anyway, Andy has found himself in the same predicament and they have a brochat about their faerie dalliances while investigating a double murder, because True Blood. I’m all in favour of the whole Jason discovers he has a backstory thing, and putting him and Andy together cranks up the loveabledoofusosity to dangerous levels. Jason realises that vampires have been literally getting away with murder for millenia, and later visits his parents graves, and whuh-oh I think Jason is about to go over 9000. Anyway, he and Andy are out investigating the deaths of Sam’s shapeshifter friends, but on this short notice I really find it difficult to care, which is a real shame because guess what, sports fans:

Yup, Luna is officially dead and Sam is bleeding from a gunshot wound to the stomach. There’s a group of anti-supernatural hillbillies in Obama masks (b/c TB) running around and this is what has happened. I half-called this one earlier in the scene, mostly due to Luna’s total lack of committment to her cry-acting (cracting), and let’s face it, her sudden lack of plot armour after the werewolf thread got unceremoniously ditched. Her wolf in pjs kid got away though, so hoorah for that. This gunshot scene goes in slow motion and Sam shouts LUUUUUNNNNAAAA NOOOOOOO like he’s in 300 and Luna does the lamest squib acting and it’s totally hilares.

The only other plotline of interest is the show’s sudden interest in making Tara and Jessica hang out. I mean, I get that they’re new vampires and makes sense to share eating-people-stories and have sleepovers, but I am not on board with the Hoyt love triangle thing. Not even broken, emotional nadir eyeliner-wearing Hoyt deserves that. Tara is the new bartender at Fangtasia, and Jessica does a Vampires Are Disenfranchised Just Like Gay People speech and actually says ‘It Gets Better’ just in case TB was being too subtle. That is a problematic analogy and I have no idea what’s going on with her eyebrows in this episode.

In brief:

• The Iraq storyline continues, turns out Terry has been cursed by a magical Iraqi woman and is now being pursued by an ifrit, which is in TB terms a fire Pokemon. This is an increasingly dumb and clumsy idea and I would like it to end now please.

  

• Judging by the speechifying coming out of the Authority, something awesome is about to go down. Which means it’ll actually happen in about two weeks.
• Kudos for using Tina Majorino just enough as an adorable little expositionator. Peace out.
• Terrible Nora is still alive and doing her crappy excuse for screaming in searing agony. The number of people in this show who can scream like champions, you’d think one of them would have a word.
• Joe Mangianello and this gif.
• Jesus is back! As a severed head with his lips sewn together! And Lafayette’s mum is back too! Hooray?
• Despite short screen-time and an I Don’t Even wig, Pam remains the best.

So another pretty exciting episode! The superteams that work work very well indeed, and even the B-plots have enough about them to keep things ticking. Next week we finally get to see Russell back on his feet and wreaking delicious havok, and also Hoyt covered in vampire blood that is in no way Jess or Tara’s.

I would like to note that I have no earthly clue what ‘let’s boot and rally’ means.