“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.

“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.

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.

My wall needs one of these.