Loaded Couch Potatoes

The tenth episode of True Blood, “New World in My View”, is reviewed.  ***There are a lot of potential spoilers that follow if you haven’t read all 9 of the Sookie Stackhouse novels.***

“Humans are shockingly susceptible to just about every form of thought manipulation.”

In the latest episode of True Blood, the stackhouse siblings finally return home, only to find their small town ravaged by the chaos of the maenad controlled populous.  Sam is a living sacrifice on the run, Tara is possessed beyond reason, and Sookie’s house is overrun by a powerful creature.  Finally all our stories are running back together now that everyone is in Bon Temps.

This episode was only 44 minutes long.  44 minutes! Every other episode this season has run from 52 minutes to 57 minutes.  So a full 10 minutes missing off the end of my show did not go unnoticed!

This episode starts with the only Eric moment of the entire episode.  Sookie, on her long drive home, is napping in the car.  She dreams of consoling the maker-less Eric, now that Godric is gone.  A very hot scene, thank goodness, because now Eric is back and Shreveport, and won’t be seen until someone has a reason to get him or go to him.  But hopefully he’ll be in the two last episodes, helping get rid of the maenad with Bill and Sookie (like in the book).

The funniest moment of this episode was Jason Stackhouse posing as “the god who comes”.  Using a gas mask, flares, and a spotlight, and assisted by a drunken Andy Bellafleur, Jason convinces the crowd of Mary Ann followers that he is the god they are capturing Sam for.  When Terry Bellafleur points out that he doesn’t have horns, Andy gets a branch and Jason pretends to grow them.  It’s hilarious!

The maenad, Mary Ann, is up to all sorts of things this episode.  When we first sees her she is building a giant… thing, maybe an alter, in Sookie’s front yard.  Eggs and Carl are helping her decorate it with meat, flowers, vegetables, feathers, and who know what else.  It is disgusting!  You can hear the flies buzzing around and the next thing on Mary Ann’s list to add, is organs.  Yuck!  Also, I guess Carl is as crazy as Daphne, because he seems to be going along with the insanity with no “black eyes”.  Unlike Eggs.

***Spoiler Alert***

She also has a very interesting altercation with Bill and Sookie.  When Sookie comes over to see what has become of her house, Mary Ann attacks her, and Sookie realizes that she is what attacked her in the woods.  When Bill bites Mary Ann, he becomes violently ill and throws up her blood (which is black by the way).  When Mary Ann gets a whiff of something special about Sookie, Sookie shoves her away with her hand, which glows brightly and shoots out light (and I think it shocked Mary Ann, electrically).  This is very interesting because there are all sorts of possibilities for what happened: a.  this is some sort of power connected to her telepathy that only works on Mary Ann.  b.  it only works on Mary Ann because she had her poison via the clawing.  and c.  it is connected to Sookie’s “heritage”, since she is 1/8 fairy. (which we find out in book #8 From Dead to Worse).

The development of the conclusion of this season is finally starting to unravel.  But will Mary Ann’s fate stay with the book?  Or will it be rewritten for the show?  In the book, she is an all powerful maenad, who basically has to be coaxed to leave, since she cannot be killed.  But in the show she is much more involved in the lives of the people she is effecting.  So, do they kill her off? Could be.

Next weeks episode is “Frenzy”, and is as always on Sunday night, 8:00 pm cst Sunday on HBO.