Sunday, September 14, 2008

True Blood recap S1E2 (09/14/08)

We pick right back up with Sookie getting badly beaten by the drug-dealing couple, really badly. The “dog” comes to growl at them semi-menacingly but before they can shoot him, the husband drug dealer is thrown against a tree and now he’s the one that looks really bad. Must be Bill the vampire to the rescue (finally). Next, the wife is thrown into the trees and dropped from a great height – yeesh. The “dog” whimpers and skulks away as a man walks up and reaches down for Sookie.

During the still-excellent credits, “God Hates Fangs” is on a quickie-mart store sign and there’s also possum road kill.

Ah, the sheriff, another guy and Jason watch the video of Jason having sex with the currently deceased Maudette on tape. And oops, yes, it appears that he’s the one who strangled her and left her hanging there by her wrists. But wait, there’s more: psych! She was faking being dead. “I didn’t kill her,” Jason exults. “Well, somebody did,” grumps the guy who is not the sheriff. Jason thinks maybe it was the freaky vampire on the videotape he saw.

Bill the vampire has taken the wounded Sookie to a secluded spot and rips open one of his veins for her to drink. “I don’t want to be a vampire,” she wheezes, but he assures her she won’t. At first she chokes on it, then she starts sucking, hard. We can see Bill’s vitality draining away. Gosh, that’s not at all a sexual metaphor.

Tara comes home to find her momma drunk on the couch. She calls her cousin Lafayette (the over the top and out of the closet line cook who is thus far the most entertaining character on this show). He agrees to come pick her up to get her out of the house. Meanwhile, not-a-murderer Jason shows up at the doorstep of the brunette bar waitress with whom he often has sex, drunk and crying and soon creeping under her robe.

Sookie regains consciousness while Bill is licking the blood off her forehead. Um, thanks? She tells him that she is telepathic but that she can’t hear him, and finds that peaceful. He asks how she manages a social life; she laughs that she doesn’t date. They talk about her telepathic abilities for way too long, actually. I’m bored. As she gets up to go, she realizes that drinking Bill’s blood has completely healed her. Doctors don’t know about this effect and he asks her to keep it a secret.

Jason and the brunette waitress have loud and athletic sex. He may have an addiction, I’m thinking. In the morning, he notices that she has fang marks on her neck and is discomfited by it.

Bill was 30 when he was turned, in 1865. Sookie guilelessly notes that he looks older than that. She asks if he was in the Civil War (he was) and if he’d come talk to her grandmother’s group. He asks if it would make her happy if he did it. She says yes and he agrees to do it. Anna Paquin sure makes some strange choices when she’s going for “flirty” and “sexy.”

The next morning at breakfast, Sookie appreciates the sausage flavorings much more intensely than usual. I’m neither using a euphemism nor kidding. Tara shows up after having been out all night and the girls apologize to each other for the argument at the bar. Grandma gets a call just as Jason arrives for breakfast; she shares the news: a tornado touched down last night and crushed the drug dealing couple under their trailer. Yeah, Tornado Bill. Sookie goes to check it out (wearing a green and white polka dot bikini and nearly buttoned cover-up - seriously, why is she dressed like such whiskey-tango?). The sheriff and the coroner show up and the suspicious sheriff questions her about her association with Bill.

Grandma tells Sookie that Jason and Tara will be at the house tonight when Bill comes to call. Sookie rolls her eyes. That evening, Bill arrives at the house and Sookie doesn’t know that she has to invite a vampire into her home. Inside, everyone is awkward except for Grandma, who has lots of historical questions. Bill’s family, the Comptons, lived in town for years and he knew one of Grandma’s forefathers. Tara has some pointed questions about slave owners; Bill says his dad owned some slaves but he himself never did. Jason is belligerent and rude until Grandma rebukes him in front of everyone.

Sookie and Bill finally escape the house and take a walk. She asks about his feeding options, which are the synthetic True Blood; buying pints of real blood from a local clinic; or putting a “love glamour” on a human that will cause them to forget being fed from in the morning. Bill admits to having fed on the drug dealers when he killed them because Sookie had drained so much of his own blood. She asks what the side effects of that will be for her. Answer: heightened senses, revved-up libido, and he will be able to sense her and find her quickly, no matter where she is. Sookie gets a little flustered.

Tara and Jason pout on the couch together, drinking beer. She has such a crush on him. They start to flirt a little, and it’s cute, but then he’s forgotten something (the brunette waitress) and bails. Tara throws her head back and laughs.

Sookie and Bill are still walking. She asks if he’s able to put a glamour on her but he doesn’t want to try. She insists and so he tries to work his mojo … and is completely flummoxed when he can’t do it. She laughs at him, realizing that he doesn’t like it when he can’t control a situation. He notes that she is not much freaked out by his vampirey ways but she replies that what with her growing up telepathic, there’s not much that does freak her out anymore. Blah blah blah: flashback to Sookie’s mind-reading childhood.

Sookie asks him if he can turn into a bat, levitate or turn invisible. No, no and no. She scoffs that he’s not that great a vampire and he points out that he was able to bring her back to life. He asks her to let down her hair. He runs his fingers through it and inhales her scent. Revved-up libido indeed: she grabs him and muckles on for a serious kiss. It’s pretty hot until he breaks it off because his fangs have popped out. That’s awkward. He says he’ll walk her home.

At the bar the next evening, Sam calls Sookie into his office. She apologizes for reading one of the waitress’s minds earlier but he assures her that it’s okay. He asks if she can read him but she says she won’t – she’s had to quit every job she’s had because she heard her boss’s thoughts, and she likes this job. He assures her that she’ll always have a job at his bar and she thanks him, running back to the dining room. Sam sighs and the camera pans to a bad painting on his wall of a dog sitting next to a girl. We get it: HE’S THE DOG.

After seeing a television news report that an anti-vampire advocate and his family had been killed in a freak accident on some Louisiana highway, Sookie rushes over to Bill’s house. There’s a strange car in the dooryard with the license plate “FANGS 1” and a bumper sticker reading “Vampires Suck.” There’s music coming from inside the house and she hesitates. Two new scary not-Bill vamps answer the door – no, make that three new scary vamps, and I think the third is the freaky one from Maudette’s sex tape. “She smells fresh,” they growl, fangs popping. And once again, I end a True Blood episode recap by saying, where’s old Bill?

Previously on True Blood / Next time on True Blood

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