Season 2 is sadly over, but left us all wanting more.  The show happily tied up every loose end it had, even if it took it’s sweet time doing it.  The twelfth episode, “Beyond Here Lies Nothing”, was a very powerful close.  After turning everyone in the town upside down, it was all made right again, in just under an hour.

Mary Ann is dead, which I’m sure made many fans of the show happy.  In the book, she is never killed.  But in the book she also didn’t have as big a part to play in Bon Temps.  The maenad, Calypso, shows up only twice, once to hurt Sookie as a message to Eric Northman (her employer), and the second time to visit an orgy she inspired and kill them all with a madness.  Of course, she only kills several people instead of almost killing the whole town.

The death of Mary Ann was very fitting because of how much more was going on with her character.  Mary Ann was the character from the book times 10 and on crack.  She messed with everyone!  Sookie, Bill, Sam, Tara, LaFayette, Arlene.  It made sense to kill her off, instead of letting her just choose to walk away.

This episode also had a great cliffhanger.  Not as intense as last season, which ended with Sookie and Tara screaming bloody murder.  This season left a half way engaged Sookie wondering, “what has happened to Bill?”.  Along with everyone watching.  Now anyone who has read the books, knows who took Bill.  But do we actually know?  The show has taken an increasing amount of liberties with the material that it is inspired by.

In the books, Eric is not selling “V” for the Queen.  Could he have “taken care of Bill”?  The Queen also was none to thrilled about Bill knowing anything.  She clearly has the means to kidnap Bill.  Let’s see, who else.  I suppose the Fellowship of the Sun has to always be a suspect in vamp-napings.  But not many other people come to mind, but the one who is responsible in the book.  STOP READING if you don’t want to know…

That the person who kidnaps him in the book is none other than Lorena.  To be honest, I’m really not to worried about them changing this up.  Lorena was prematurely introduced in season 2 for 1 reason and 1 reason alone.  So that people wouldn’t think, “who the hell is this!?”, when she shows up to randomly abduct Bill.  Which was a really good idea.

Now that it’s over, I can definitely say that season 2 was better than season 1.  I can’t wait until season 3.  And not to mention the next installment in the Sookie Stackhouse series is due out in May 2010.

“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.

Hah-hah!  Made you look!

2×3, “Scratches”

This episode is the best of the first three for the season … which is a good sign for how this season is going to go.  No sophomore slump in evidence, that’s for sure.

The episode starts off with a standard bit of Sookie/Bill contentiousness, in which Sookie gets mad at Bill and storms off.  This time, though, she gets mauled by a werebull, or a minotaur, or some such beastie.  What the hell is that thing?  Other than creepy, I mean.

Roll credits, and can I take this moment to mention that this show’s opening credits sequence NEVER gets old?  Because it NEVER gets old.  The credits sequence seems to be something HBO puts a bit of emphasis on as a general rule; many of their shows have awesome credits (such as The Sopranos, and Deadwood, and Six Feet Under, Carnivale, Big Love, Rome, and so forth), and that’s something that seems to be a bit of a dying art-form over on the networks.

Sookie gets taken back to Fangtasia, where a healer of some sort is called in to treat her.  Her life is saved, but apparently not by much.  There is an interesting shot in which she starts screaming in pain, and we cut to Jason, bolting upright out of his sleep and screaming.  This is revealed to be a dream sequence, but I still can’t help but wonder if the editing there is significant.  Can Jason somehow sense when Sookie is in pain?  It’d make a sort of sense; they are siblings, after all, and since she’s got some extraordinary abilities, there’s nothing that says he can’t, too.

Speaking of Jason, well, Ryan Kwanten continues to be one of this show’s most V of MVPs; the dude steals every scene he’s in.  This week, he’s got a great one at a Fangbangers Anonymous meeting, or whatever that support group is.  Jason is such a moronic, imbecilic character … but what he lacks in book smarts and common sense, he makes up for with a kind of emotional honesty and an (apparently) innate, if underused, sense of goodness.  He’s not above fucking up in those areas, of course, but he’s got enough niceness about him that he can barely tolerate these meetings within the context of the Light of Day message of intolerance toward vampires.  Seeing Jason defend Bill — whom he himself once hated — as being an apparently good match for his siter is just touching; and he is right on the money morally when he points out that his best friend, a human, did things as bad as or worse than the things these people are accusing all vampires of representing.

What makes this a great scene is that it’s not played overbearingly.  Like many of Jason’s scenes, it’s played for broad comedy, and that allows subtle drama to emerge from it.  So far, it’s a beautifully conceived and executed storyline, and I’ll be honest: if that’s all the show was, I’d still happily tune in every week.

Sookie’s overnight convalescene at Fangtasia leads to her learning that Lafayette is chained up in the basement, and this leads to Eric manipulating her into agreeing to go to Texas in search of Godric, the missing vampire … in exchange, of course, for his setting Lafayette free.  I’ll confess that I’m a little disappointed that that’s how Lafayette managed to get out of the basement, but I’m more than willing to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, and see where this all ends up going.

My favorite scenes of the episode — Jason Stackhouse and his holy-rollin’ homies notwithstanding — were the scenes involving Jessica and Hoyt.  I’ll just admit this right up front: if it meant I got to put her to the penis, I’d be happy to let Jessica drain off a bit of my blood with her teeth.  No prob, babe, ouch, ouch, ouch, cool, now sit on this for a few minutes.

Wow.  I almost offended myself there.

Putting her bonerliciousness aside for a moment, Jessica really is a wonderful character, and Deobrah Ann Woll is just great in the role.  I don’t know what Jessica’s intention are when she strolls into Merlotte’s — does she just want to be out of the house, or is she on the prowl and looking to draw some real blood? — but it’s clear that she’s utterly charmed by Hoyt’s feeble-yet-gently-persistent pursuit of her.  She’s never been allowed to be chased by a boy, and she’s clearly knocked out by the thrill of it the very first time it happens.

This episode was written by co-producer Raelle Tucker, and I’d be curious to know how much of the Jessica/Hoyt storyline is hers.  Compare the scene between the two once they take the party back to Bill’s house — “I’ve always wanted to see where Vampire Bill lives,” Hoyt says, with that goofy sincerity he’s always got — to any scene in Twilight between Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, and tell me True Blood doesn’t do a better job of portraying the burgeoning romance between two young people.  Go on, do it, so I can call you names and accuse you of having had a rhesus monkey for a father.

I’m no Twilight hater, like so many are, but I think the movie is almost entirely lacking in subtlety and charm when it comes to its romance.  Compare that to here, when Jessica breaks out, reluctantly, in a smile when Hoyt tells her to not be ashamed of what she is.  That Hoyt, man, he’s kinda smooth once he gets going.  He’s played by Jim Parrack, whose career thus far has mostly consisted of being a day player on various television episodes.  As Hoyt, he’s been doing quiet but excellent work since the first season, and I’m happy to see him get some juicy material.  I’m sure that means he’ll get killed at some point, but perhaps he’ll at least get to verify the drapes’ shading prior to expiring.

Speaking of Maryann’s place, not that we were, what the hell is that in Carl’s soup?  I’ve got a bad feeling about what that is and where it might have come from.  Why do I get the feeling that Carl occasionally grows horns outen his head, and lopes through the woods in search of blondes wearing Daisy Dukes?

Back in Texas, Jason gets invited to join the Newlins for dinner, and Steve, upon hearing what Sarah has cooked for dessert, tells him that Sarah must think he’s pretty special.  “Really?” Jason replies, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to him.  “Well,” Steve says, without an apparent hint of knowledge of the word “entendre,” “Sarah doesn’t whip out her pudding for just anybody.”  Ah, now that’s a delicious scene.

Speaking of delicious scenes, Tara finds herself smack dab in the middle of a near-orgy at Maryann’s, and she’s not too happy about it.  I continue to be more or less uninterested in this plotline, except when Michelle Forbes is on the screen; then, I’m very interested.

The episode ends with Sam, who is about to leave town, getting sidetracked by a run through the woods with his doggy friend, which ends in some skinny-dipping.  He’s surprised by Daphne, who is also apparently looking for some in-the-water cavorting.  She takes her shirt off, and we see that she’s got scars on her back that are the same as the cuts Sookie got from the werebull.

OOOOHHHHHHHHH!!!!  Pretty good end to a good episode.

2×4, “Shake and Fingerpop”

I’m sure that title must mean something, but I’ll be durn if I know what it is.

The episode beginds with a great scene in which Jason, returning to his dorm from dinner with the Newlins, gets punked by Luke, who has the other campers on the ground covered in ketchup, pretending to be vamp victims.  Jason, unamused, takes umbrage, and then takes the educational high road, preaching to the other campers about how vampires are not a joke, but are very dangerous creatures.  He’s accompanied by some amusing faux-martial score by Nathan Barr.  He gets to sock Luke in the nose, which is funny, and gets to angrily whip off his clip-on tie, which is hilarious.

This episode was written by series developer Alan Ball, who hasn’t personally written an episode since 1×3 last year.  Good to see him in the captain’s seat again.  He’s got some great dialogue between Jason and Luke later in the episode.  We come in in the middle of the conversation, and hear Jason, who is stuffing a waffle into his mouth, say, “I don’t know who Lazarus was, but he sure as hell was not the first vampire … everybody knows it was Dracula.”

Later in the conversation, Luke warns Jason, menacingly, “One thing you can be sure of: God will make sure evil gets punished.”  Jason, nonplussed, jaw-droppingly replies, “Oh yeah?  Well, explain Europe to me.”  Luke, unsurprisingly, can’t, and Jason leaves secure in the knowledge that another round has gone to him.

At some point during all of this, he also gives Luke his definition of evil: “Evil,” he says, “is makin’ the premedicated choice to be a dick.”  Never has a “c” taken the place of a “t” to such comic effect.  I’d be willing to bet that all across Hollywood, writers go to bed at night wishing they could get paid to write dialogue for Jason Stackhouse.

Back in Bon Temps, Vampire Bill — Hoyt calling him that cracks me up every time, because it’s so bizarrely sweet — is barking mad to find what appears to be Jessica feeding on Hoyt.  Turns out she wasn’t, though; they were just making out a little bit.  It’s another winning scene for this little subplot.

At the coroner’s office, in a rare instance of this show putting both William Sanderson and John Billingsley to work (E.B. Farnum Meets Dr. Phlox), we find out that Miss Jeanette’s heart had been removed while she was still alive, and that she has some big ole scratches on her back.  (Why do I get the feeling that I know what was in Carl’s soup last episode?)  One of my occasional frustrations with this show is that it has two fine actors like Sanderson and Billingsley, but doesn’t do much to find good work for them to do … or any work at all, most episodes.  Hopefully, that’ll change at some point.

Another piece of evidence for my Carl-is-the-werebull theory: when Maryann’s group scares Tara at Sookie’s house, she is watching a program about a bull-run gone wrong.  Can’t be an accident.  Probably also not an accident that Carl brings a wedding cake.  Maryann is obviously trying to engineer the relationship between Tara and Eggs; for what reason, beats me, but I’m sure we’ll find out, and probably in some fucked-up fashion.

The Jason/Sarah relationship gets furthered a bit this week.  He has a bit of a reverie about her at one point while she’s cooking ribs, and later, after she and Steve have made Jason a soldier in their “army,” Luke and the rest of the fellas seem amusedly convinced that she’s on the prowl for his dick, and they sound as if that’s not exactly an uncommon occurrence.  Sure enough, we end up getting a scene in which she comes to Jason’s new room in her house, wearing a nighty and looking like she could supply cream for a city’s worth of Starbuckses.  It leads nowhere … not this week, at least.

Thing is, I’m thinking ole Steve wants to taste Jason’s dick almost as bad as Sarah does.  I’m sure we’ll find out one way or another.

The Fellowship of the Sun is into more than stifled adultery, though; it’s apparently also into hiring cast members from Breaking Bad to kidnap humans who assist vampires telepathically.  Or at least that’s what I take away from the scene in which Dean “Hank Schraeder” Norris tries to abduct Sookie.  Vampire Bill comes flying out of his (hilarious) air-travel coffin and puts a stop to all this real quick.  The sight of Jessica’s coffin rolling onto the ground while she’s trying to figure out how to exit it is also hilarious.

The three of them have arrived — via Anubis Air — in Dallas, and stay at a vamp-friendly hotel which shows fanger porn via pay-per-view.  That’s awesome.

Intercourse With the Vampire: The Sexual History of Vampires — awesome. 

His First Fangbang (“Who will he choose?”) — awesome. 

Co-Ed Chowdown (“real fangs,” “hot vamp-on-vamp action”) — awesome.

I’d've titled one Cold Snatch and Hot Beef.  Or Cold Rod and Hot Boxes.  Something like that.  Maybe Bleed On it, Bitch! I’ll stop now.

Room service will bring your hot readheaded vampire ward a human with the bloodtype of her choice.  But oopsie, the room-service waiter, Barry, is apparently just as telepathic as Sookie, and runs off once they both realize it.  God only knows where that will go.

In other developments, Tara finally brews up some coffee for Eggs, by which I mean she lets him fuck.  Rutina Wesley steadfastly refuses to show us her boobs, which I kinda admire, but that’s only the non-perv side of me, so only about twelve percent; the other 88% wants to see ‘em.  Maryann seems to grow more powerful during this, and the guests at her party start smearing pie on their faces and eating dirt, so that’s kinda weird.

At that same party, Sam and Daphne make out a little bit, and Daphne tells him, “I know what you are.”  She takes him by the hand and leads him out of the room, but we don’t find out what any of this means.  I’m starting to like Daphne; Ashley Jones is kinda like a hotter version of Kathy Baker, and Baker was pretty hot to begin with.  There’s that 88% again.  The other twelve says that Daphne needs to develop a bit more as a character before it is going to get too interested, and that’s fair enough.

Bill questions Eric a bit about why he’s so attached to the missing Godric, and Eric says that Godric is a powerful, kingly vampire.  Twice as old as he is, is how he puts it.  Now, this interests me a bit.  Eric, if I’m not mistaken, is about 1000 years old.  That would make Godric roughly 2000 years old.  Earlier in the episode, Jason and Luke had some dialogue about the possiblity that, since Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and commanded people to drink his blood, Jesus might have been the first vampire.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t Jesus live a bit more than 2000 years ago?

Could be a coincidence, I guess…

“Shake And Fingerpop” begins with Jason at his Fellowship of the Sun camp ground.  Luke, “the Lukanator”, pranks his former friend by jumping him and posing as a vampire.  He bloodied Jason’s lip in the process, officially crossing the line from friendly prank into mean prank.  Jason took the opportunity to punch Luke in the face before going off into a holy war campaign speech.  Thus beginning the fourth episode of season two.

In this episode of True Blood, we finally start down the path from the novel Dead Until Dark.  Sookie and Bill go to Dallas, on assignment to find the missing vampire Godric.  Jessica tags along to Dallas, which is a departure from her non-existent self in the book, but makes for some fun parental bonding time between her and Bill.  Bill teaches Jessica how to glamour people and almost has trouble reversing the process after Jessica has too much fun.  The “training” of Jessica is sure to be some of the silliest material for the show.  On a show as dark and graphic as True Blood, a source of comedic relief, alongside Jason’s “blond moments”, is never unwelcome.

LaFayette is finally back on his feet, so to speak.  LaFayette was finally released from the Fangtasia basement in the last episode, but was sporting a bullet hole in his leg and several bite marks.  However, an impromptu visit by the luscious blond Eric, and his 1,000 year old blood, takes only a minute to not only heal him, but send him into cartwheels and a ridiculous dance medley of grinding up against furniture! It was pretty hilarious.

Mary Ann finally reveals her big secret towards the end of the episode, when she begins to transform into the creature that attacked Sookie.  Mary Ann only does this after being energized by the gluttony and debauchery of Tara’s birthday party.  The new waitress with the huge scars (much like Sookie’s injury’s), revealed that she knows “sam’s secret”.  Sam’s number one secret is his shape-shifting ability, but who knows if that’s what she knows or not.  However, if it is, how would she have found that out?!  Mary Ann possibly?  Some thing to learn in future episodes.

The next episode is “Never Let Me Go” and this time will thankfully not take two weeks to get here.

The 2nd episode of True Blood was delightfully more exciting than the 1st in my opinion.  The 1st episode was a great starter episode, but the 2nd really started to reinvest us in the new troubles of our Bon Temps residents.  Since I’m really comparing the episodes to the books, I didn’t have a lot to say about this particular episode.  There is almost nothing in the episode to compare to the book.  Simple changes in the 1st season and the opening of this season, have created a Sookie Stackhouse alternate reality of sorts.

The story of LaFayette was cut short at his death, and since his death has become the death of Ms. Jeanette, his entire story from now on is completely new to fans of the books.  This is probably because of how popular his character is.  I’m more than happy to go along with this, not only because I’m a huge LaFayette fan, but because it gives me something new, that’s not in the books to look forward too.

The other change from the 1st season is the death of Long Shadow.  Originally, the hero that swoops in to save Sookie was Eric.  Whether Eric saved her out of a selfish desire for vengeance against the vampire who had stolen from him, or other reasons, is debatable.  But one thing is for sure, the Stackhouse universe has been completely transformed (at least in these first 3 episodes) by the presence of Jessica.  And Jessica wouldn’t even be here if they hadn’t changed Long Shadow’s murderer to Bill, who created Jessica as part of his punishment for killing another vampire.  So, Sookie running around with Jessica to help her deal with her new vampirism and meeting her folks, is all very entertaining, but does nothing to advance the plot of Living Dead in Dallas.  Better news is that Eric is finally showing up enough to keep me happy.

The 3rd episode hits the ground running with the attack on Sookie.  Finally, something inspired by the books!  I say inspired by the books because it seems that is the only way to watch the show.  The show not only adds but subtracts and makes far too many changes to actually be directly written from them.  It’s more like the show was written by someone who had read the books years ago and tried their best to recall as many bits as they could.  But “Scratches” finally finds some familiar territory for the book fans.

Sookies attack is a great interpretation of the book.  The way it’s shot is very suspenseful and it’s a great way to keep the attacker’s identity a mystery.  The injuries are wicked gross, especially when Dr. Ludwig starts digging around in them!  I was disappointed by the healing process.  Dr. Ludwig sprinkles something on Sookie that makes her skin burn and smolder, and the doctor finishes off the cure by having Bill give Sookie some blood.  This is a huge and fairly distressing departure from the book.  In the book, Sookie’s poisoned blood is drained by Eric, Bill, Pam, and Chow.  Followed by a transfusion of human blood.  I suppose the reason this is so distressing to me is this is the first real glimpse at how much Eric wants Sookie - and Bill’s jealousy over the whole thing.  As long as they make up for the specifics with something else that gets the same point across, I’ll be okay.  I was just hoping they would do it sooner rather than later.

The last thing I have to say is how great the Jason Stackhouse plot line is.  I love his story, especially this season, because of the much needed comic relief Jason ussually provides.  Ryan Kwanten does a great job, and his southern accent masks his Australian one flawlessly.  I think this plot line with the Fellowship of the Sun is a great addition.  Jason Stackhouse has almost nothing to do until the fourth book, and giving the viewers a more in depth view of this extremist church is a great idea.

The next episode “Let’s Take a Trip Together” is July 12th, at 8:00 pm cst Sunday on HBO.

I would describe this episode as being one of moments in which our characters all take the time to try and figure out how best to survive in the new situations they’ve found themselves in.  Lafayette is doing his best to merely stay alive as a captive in Eric’s basement; Jessica is trying to figure out how to cope with her new “life” as a vampire; Sookie is trying to figure out how her relationship with Bill has been altered by Jessica’s presence; Tara is trying to figure out the extent of her relationship with Eggs, and also (less directly) of her relationship with Maryann; Sam is worrying over Maryann’s re-entrance into his life and what it might mean for his livelihood; and Jason is simply basking in his new existence as the Light of Day camp’s favorite student.

Of these, I’d say I’m probably the most interested in Lafayette’s story.  Nelsan Ellis, of course, was probably the best character of season one (although Jason was close in my opinion), and it looks like that streak may continue.  Ellis is getting an opportunity to play all kinds of interesting new sides to Lafayette, including a ruthless determination to survive no matter what the cost, and no matter what the terms of that survival.  And yet, it seems totally consistent with the more brash and in-control Lafayette we remember from the first season; the character hasn’t changed, we’re seeing the same guy in wildly different circumstances.  As usual, he gets some of the best dialogue.  For example, upon being called a prostitute by Pam: “I’m a survivor first, a capitalist second, and a whole bunch of other shit after that, but a hooker dead last.  So if I got even a Jew-at-a-Al-Quaeda-pep-rally’s chance of gettin’ up outta this motherfucker, I’m taking it.  Now, what you want to know?”

Lafayette also has a great scene with Ginger, an incredibly skanky-looking woman who work sat the bar where Lafayette is being held captive.  (I’m still not quite sure if that’s Fangtasia or not.)  She freaks out, shoots Lafayette in the leg, and then starts screaming at every little thing.  The best moment is in which she grabs some towels to stop the bleeding, looks at them, screams, and then hollers, “These are dirty!”  True Blood is great at that sort of broad comedy, but it never feels cheap.  Michael Bay, please pay attention: this is how you integrate humor into a non-comedy.

This all leads to some terrific involvement from Eric, who is finally getting some, uh, juicy scenes after being mostly wasted during the first season.  He gets Lafayette to tell him that Jason Stackhouse might have been responsible for the disappearance of the vampire character Stephen Root played last season, and later confronts Bill, telling him that he’s going to be taking Sookie to Texas to help find Godric, another missing vampire.  Eric — and actor Alexander Skarsgård — makes a cool sheriff, and while I’ve never seen a sheriff wear a running suit while on duty, Eric seems to be able to get away with it.

I’m also having a lot of fun with Jason’s plotline, involving his newfound entrance into the Light of Day camp.  There he is, riding on a bus, blithely saying “shit” after a group singalong, kicking ass at flag football, totally throwing himself into the role when asked to take part in an acting exercise in which Sarah Newlin pretends to be a vampire sympathizer … Ryan Kwanten plays the hell out of all of these scenes, injecting Jason with a wide-eyed innocence and enthusiasm for his surroundings.  But Jason, an occasionally foolish character, is no fool; Kwanten has a moment, when the words “vampire sympathizers” get roudly booed by his fellow campers, in which he allows a subtle amount of uncertainty and maybe even disdain to play across his face.  This is what’s so great about Jason as a character: to a certain extent, he gets blown by the wind and goes wherever it takes him, but he’s also never entirely closed off from seeing the wider world.

Jason gets good dialogue this episode, too, and most of it comes in tandem with a new character, a fellow camper named Luke (played by Wes Brown) who is obviously jealous of Jason’s immediate favorite-son status.  “Luke McDonald,” he introduces himself to Jason on the bus; “no relation to the restaurant.”  Jason’s reply: “Any relation to the farm?”  “What farm,” comes the answer; and Jason looks at him with a sort of blank disbelief before changing subjects.  Later, after Jason wows the crowd during the vampire-sympathizer playact session with Sarah (after a bizarre and hilariously apt moment in which Sarah dons astoundingly fake fangs and reveals her character to be not just a vampire sympathizer but an actual vampire!, Jason freaks out, snaps a flagpole in half, and only-sorta pretends to prepare to stake her with it), Luke confronts Jason.  “You think you walk on water, don’t you?”

Kwanten has an awesome moment in which he cockily snaps off a piece of dental floss before delivering what must, in his head, seem like the ultimate rebuke: “I’m pretty sure that was Moses.”  Luke replies, disgustedly, “No, it was Jesus; Moses parted the Read Sea.  And what the hell was with you snapping the American flag in half like you was some Muslim Buffy with a dick?!?  That was all kinds of messed up.”

I’d have to say I’m also enjoying Sam’s story, which involves Maryann showing up at Merlotte’s to fuck with him, her intent unknown.  She orders plate after plate of food (I’m reminded of seeing that ginormous table of food in her house when young Sam broke in); it’s not clear if she’s eating it or not, which is probably something the episode should have taken a moment to show one way or another.  Later, she does something to make the entire bar full of people lose their inhibitions and sart dancing; even Andy, who describes his softshoe abilities as being akin to an epileptic on meth, and he’s not kidding.  Michelle Forbes is awesome in this episode; I always thought her younger self was hotter than balls playing Ensign Ro on star Trek: The Next Generation, but she’s even hotter here in her more mature guise.  It’s that danger in her eyes, which is almost palpable.  Some of the vampire cast could learn a thing or two about being menacing by paying attention to this lady.  I don’t know where this storyline is heading, but I suspect it will end in Maryann’s death, and I miss her already.

The Sookie/Bill plotline has long been one of my least favorite elements of True Blood, but the addition of Jessica into the mix seems to be perking it up a bit.  I continue to enjoy how fussy Bill can be; the hilarious scene in the clothing store when the saleslady, upon seeing how Bill behaves toward Eric, makes the assumption that the two are a gay couple is one of the best moments of the seris to date.  Also, Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer seem to have a bit more chemistry together lately than they did last season.  Their relationship has never exactly been a weak link for the show, but it hasn’t been a highlight, either, at least not for me; but it seems to be improving.

As for Jessica, well, she’s played by a hot redhead (Deborah Ann Woll), so I’d be interested in her even if I wasn’t interested in her.  But she continues to be a promising character, capable of playing humor and pathos at the same time.  She also does pretty well with the anger she feels, both at Sookie and Bill for causing her to become a vampire, and at her parents for making her former life such a miserable and sheltered one.  This is an interesting dynamic; Jessica is caught between one set of parents in her previous life, and a new set in her current one.

Sookie gets at least one great moment during her scenes with Jessica, after the new vampire has broken her promise and gone into her old parents’ home.  “I don’t normally cuss,” says Sookie, “but you have completely fucked me here!”  That made me chuckle.

To start with season 1 left us on a huge cliffhanger!  Is LaFayette alive or dead?  This is actually the reason I started reading the novels by Charlaine Harris.  LaFayette is one of my favorite characters and I had to know what happened.  Nelsan Ellis plays LaFayette, the flamboyant but tough fry-cook of Merflotte’s.  The last episode, showed LaFayette attacked monster-cam style, and it looked like he was probably attacked by a vampire.  Then at the last moment of the episode a dead foot with brightly colored toe nail polish fell out of a car.  In the books I was sad to find out that this was LaFayette’s foot.  He was most definitely dead.  But, back by popular demand, this season we find him chained up in Eric Northman’s basement.  In the books we know very little about LaFayette other than he’s the chef at Merlotte’s and he’s gay and that Sookie is friend’s enough with him to try to solve his murder.  But with the back story that we were given in season 1, it’s obvious that LaFayette’s days of dealing “V” and the fact that his “V” supplying vamp mysteriously disappeared, has all finally caught up with him.

Unfortunately, now there is no need for Sookie to solve this mystery, which accounts for about half of the book.  A possible theory about why Sookie would want to solve this mystery, which is now the death of Ms. Jeanette, would be if Tara is considered a suspect and Sookie has to help clear her name.  If they stick to the book and Andy Bellefleur is the main suspect, we could find out a little earlier that Bill Compton is related to the Bellefleurs.  But enough about that, I’m glad LaFayette is still around and I’m pretty excited about the fact that anything that will happen to him is a complete mystery to me.

I really don’t have a lot to say about this particular episode though.  There are a lot of exciting things that happen to Sookie in this book and not one of them happened in this episode.  It was a great opening to season 2 though.  We found out the identity of the body in Andy’s car, we got to see Jessica begin integrating herself into Bill’s life (she is not in the books what-so-ever), Sookie finally found out that Bill killed her uncle, we saw via flashbacks the previous relationship of Mary Ann and Sam.  All in all it was a perfect starter episode.

The last 10 minutes are particularly good.  There is some serious nudity from Sookie and Bill after the two exchange their first “I love you” ‘s.  Apparently, that sex scene had to be seriously edited down even for HBO’s standards.  And last but not least, Eric’s first appearance, played by Alexander Skarsgård, was saved until the very end of the episode.  Very disappointing to the members of “Team Eric” , but the next episode looks promising for more Eric content.

I’ll be once again counting down the hours until the next episode, “Keep This Pary Going”, at 8:00 pm cst Sunday on HBO.

The season premiere picks right up where the final episode of season one left off — with Sookie and Tara screaming at the discovery of what appears to be a dead Lafayette in the back of Andy’s car.  Happily, it’s not Lafayette; less happily for any big fans of Aisha Hinds, it turns out to be Miss Jeanette, the faux-exorcist who supposedly cured Tara’s mom of her alcoholism last season.

Like many a show’s season premiere before this one, “Nothing But the Blood” seems to primarily be serving to set the pieces in motion for the rest of the season.  Maybe this explains my ever-so-slight disappointment with the episode; it felt more like pieces being moved around a chessboard than it felt like a genuinely satisfying episode in its own right.

Here are what I took away from this episode as being some of the major elements the show will be exploring this season: who (or what) killed Miss Jeanette, and why; the devlopment of Bill’s reluctant “parenthood” of Jessica, and how it will affect his relationship with Sookie; Jason’s puppyish attraction to the Fellowship of the Sun Church in general and to the Newlins in particular (I’m going to go ahead and predict that he fucks the Reverend’s wife … because, really, why wouldn’t he?); Tara’s relationships with Maryann, Benedict, and her mother; Maryann’s mysterious origins, and her relationship with Sam; the new Merlotte’s waitress, Daphne (played by Ashley Jones, who IMDB claims was in nearly 600 episodes of some soap opera!); the downward spiral of Andy Bellefleur; and, of course, whatever the hell is going on with Eric Northman’s Saw-meets-Conan the Barbarian contraption … which is in a basement somewhere and just so happens to have Lafayette attached to it.

I’m interested in every single one of those plot threads, so I definitely enjoyed this episode … and yet, I find I have almost nothing of any substance to say about it.  I think that may be because it is an episode built out of an hour’s worth of individual moments rather than an episode with a strong central plot or theme.  I’m okay with that … for now.

Let’s talk about some of those fine moments.

*  Bill recycles; now, that’s the sort of fastidiousness that I admire in a vampire.  I also enjoyed later in the episode when Jessica, in a fit of pique, demonstrated how little she cared by putting an empty bottle of True Blood in the recycling bin for paper products instead of the glass bin.

*  The entire scene between Lafayette and Royce was gold.  I have to admit that I am very disappointed Royce got killed off; there was probably more 10-karat nuggets of comedy to be mined out of that situation.

*  It also made me chuckle that Eric was in the process of getting his hair done when he decided to go down and tear off some arms.

*  Pretty much every time Jason did anything was amusing.

*  This season is obviously going to give Michelle Forbes some juicy scenes as Maryann.  I’ve been a fan of hers ever since her Ensign Ro days on Star Trek: The Next Generation, so I’m pleased to see her landing a quality role like this one.  (She was awesome as Admiral Cain on Battlestar Galactica, but was in far too few episodes for my tastes.)  Speaking of Maryann, I’m curious to find out exactly what she is.  She’s obviously not the devil.  I’m going to guess the Greek references (to Pan and whatnot) are fairly meaningful.

*  A fine moment between Steve Newlin and Nan Flanagan came when Newlin said to her, very faux-pleaantly: “It’s a bright sunny day, I wish you were here!”, or something like that, and she responded, “Give me twelve hours and I’ll be right there!”  Flanagan has been popping up here and there ever since the first episode of the series; I wonder if she’ll become a more central character at some point?

*  I noticed something that might be purely coincidental.  It might also be attributable to my extreme lack of knowledge about makeup.  In any case … Tara is wearing a dark-purple-based outfit during the opening scenes, and has purple eyeshadow that looks pretty awesome on her.  Later on, when we see Sarah Newlin, she is wearing a lighter shade of purple (there’s probably a word for this color, but I don’t know it) and a small amount of corresponding eyeshadow.  Is this meant to subtly imply some sort of thematic connection between these two characters?  Probably not, but I noticed it, and now I’m passing that info along to you.

*  I loved how nonchalantly threatening Maryann was when she came to visit Sam at Merlotte’s.  Something about the way she squatted down to investigate Sam’s garbage sack full of money seemed very … authoritative.

*  William Sanderson in a squaredancing (or was it linedancing?) outfit.  Say no more.

Set to the new Bob Dylan single “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’,” the clip is below.

The new season begins on June 14.