The pilot episode was directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Steve Buscemi as Nucky Thompson, a politician with mob ties.

The series will co-star, amongst others, Kelly MacDonald, Michael Pitt, and Dabney Coleman.

Based on the book by Nelson Johnson, the series is expected to debut sometime during 2010.

HBO has a number of intriguing projects officially in the pipeline.  In addition to Boardwalk Empire, they have a series from David “The Wire” Simon, Treme (set in post-Katrina New Orleans), a history-of-Hollywood miniseries from David “The Sopranos” Chase, the Spielberg/Hanks WWII miniseries The Pacific, and a soon-to-film pilot based on the fantasy novel series A Game of Thrones (starring Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, and, as THR reported today, Lena Headey).

“I Will Rise Up,” the ninth episode of the season, followed right in line with the rest of the season as another amazing episode.  The episode begins with “the Luke-inator” standing in the middle of the Dallas vampires’ house.  Outside, Bill tells Lorena it’s over, once and for all, and she heads off.  Seconds later the windows explode, along with some of the vampires.  Bill races in to look for Sookie, to find Eric Northman has thrown himself in front of her, protectively.  Eric tells him to go after the humans who attacked them.  Which he does, and the credits start as Bill bites into a guys neck.  This episode is probably the best hour of plot direct from the Sookie Stackhouse novels.  From the attack by the fellowship, to Sookie standing with Godric (Godfrey in the book) as he meets the sun, and a whole lot of Eric, this was possibly the most exciting episode for readers.

However, the closer the show gets to the book, the more it deviates in detail.  As if it would be such a horrible thing to actually give a couple line for line, blow for blow scenes, from the book the entire show is based off of.  Oh well.  Before the opening theme song even begins, there’s already a lot going on.  In the book, the fellowship actually surrounds the house and opens fire.  They inflict just as much damage as the suicide bomb, and the end result is the same.  The other differences, after the opening credits, are a little larger in impact on the story.  The “biting the bullet” scene, from Living Dead in Dallas, was a scene that I wasn’t holding my breath about.  I really wanted to see it happen, and thought of it as a very pivotal scene in the series.  But thankfully so did the writers of True Blood.  In the show of course, it’s silver shrapnel, not a bullet that Sookie has to suck out of Eric.  Big whoop.  In the book, Sookie sucks out the bullet for Eric, and then Eric, no doubt turned on by her bloody lips, grabs her and kisses her.  Then sends her off to find Bill, who Sookie doesn’t even know is alive or dead from the attack.  On the show, Bill first checks on Sookie and then is told by Eric to get the people who attacked them.  He does and then after biting the guy he catches, lets him go.  Then he comes back to find Sookie sucking her second piece of silver out of Eric’s shoulder.  Something she is very proud of, since she thinks she has just saved Eric’s life.  Bill of course lets her know she has been duped by the mischievous viking.

Then Godric sends everyone to the Hotel Carmilla, where Bill and Sookie discuss the consequences of the blood exchange.  Everything in that conversation is pretty well matched with the book, except for the part about Sookie being sexually attracted to Eric because of it.  That’s never mentioned (at least not from this first blood exchange).  Now back to Bill and the attack by the fellowship.  Bill Compton never comes back to check on Sookie, he’s to busy wreaking bloody vengeance on the attackers, and killing, what I assume is more than one of them.  When Sookie (after kissing Eric *sigh*) goes to look for him, he is coming back from doing this.  She is of course, none too thrilled with her vampire-boyfriend’s lack of level-headedness.  She (big difference from the show here) leaves Dallas on the spot and basically considers herself broken-up from Bill.  The two don’t reconcile until Sookie sees Bill out with Portia Bellefleur  (who is trying to get Bill to help her break into the maenid-controlled sex parties in order to clear Andy of Lafayette’s murder) and gets quite jealous.  But eventually they reconcile.  I really bet this is all throwing anyone who hasn’t read the books for a loop.

Meanwhile, in Bon Temps, Tara and Eggs wake up with the bruises of a night of “Hunter’s Souffle.”  While reminiscing and regretting their recent black-outs, the two get an emotional lecture from Mary Ann on control versus chaos.  She gets very preachy and thinks what they are experiencing is actually a higher state of consciousness.  She talks about the “fake civilization bullshit” falling away and people losing themselves to unite with their god. It’s actually quite compelling and pumped with passion by Michelle Forbes (playing Maryann).  Later, Lafayette, who is back to his bold bad-ass self again, is shocked when Tara turns up at Merlotte’s covered in those bruises.  He rightfully flips out and Eggs tries to attack Lafayette, but just ends up smacking Tara (again).

In Dallas, blissfully ignorant of their text bound dopplegangers, Sookie and Jason Stackhouse talk about being the only family they have left.  Jason feels like the Newlins preyed on his desire to be liked for something other then his “athaletics, good-looks, and sex abilities.”  I really enjoy the bond between brother and sister in the show, and if anything it is something that I wish had been in the books.  In Jason-related plotlines down the road, it will possibly add depth and emotion to the situations to a larger extent.  In a bit of comic relief, Sookie and Jason flip across the Newlins, whose marital problems are really coming across on t.v.

In Bon Temps, Hoyt asks Jessica to meet his mother.  Hoyt (a character in name only in the books) and his mom have it out later, when he tells her he wants her to meet vampire girlfriend (and eternal virgin) Jessica.  His mom is making him what looks like a grilled cheese sandwich with potato chips in the middle (yum?)!  And Hoyt calls his controlling mom out on her hateful ways.  Apparently she hates Methodists, Catholics, African-Americans, people who don’t take care of their gardens, people who park their trucks on the lawn, ladies in red shoes, people with too many kids, checkered-curtains, cats, dogs, bait, and every girl Hoyt has ever liked.  Wow.  Later on, Jessica does get to meet Hoyt’s mom, who arrives twenty minutes late.  The tension begins to build and finally some heated words are exchanged between the two women.  Until Hoyt’s mom lands a low blow by reminding Jessica she can’t give Hoyt children.  Jessica is crying blood before you know it, and Hoyt storms out saying he’s never coming home.

“This is the beginning.” Sookie has a steamy dream sequence, where her and Eric lie in bed together.  They pillow-talk about what type of vampire she would make (something almost completely absent in the books, I blame the Twilight madness for this topic being injected into True Blood).  As they talk, Lorena taunts Sookie and tells her she has already let Bill go.  As Sookie keeps wondering where Bill is while she’s wrapped around Eric, Eric says “This is the beginning.”  Very, very interesting.  This not only speaks of what is to come on the show, but is oddly reminiscent of where the last Stackhouse book leaves us.

So, next Maryann, who is insane about finding Sam, looks for him at the jailhouse.  When she doesn’t find him, she releases all the prisoners, who are all there because of her influence over them anyway.  Maryann doesn’t let Sam’s disappearance keep her down though.  She and Eggs and Tara are having a chaos-filled game of strip-poker, when in storms Lafayette and Tara’s mother to rescue her.  Tara attacks her mom for her sudden sober concern (and I really felt like the women had it coming for all the crap she pulled in season one).  But before you know it Tara’s choking her mom, and Lafayette is kicking Eggs, and then Lafayette scoops Tara up, and makes a break for it.  They get away, but you can tell if Maryann isn’t worried about you escaping, you’re probably not out of the woods yet.  Maryann finishes up the episode by storming (literally) into Merlotte’s, referring to herself (I think) as a god, and demanding Sam be brought to her.  Yikes.  Good thing that Sam has chosen to bunk with Andy Bellefleur, the only person crazy enough or sane enough to be on his side.

Finally, back to Dallas.  In the books, Godric (Godfrey) is a vampire who like to kill (among other things) children.  Godfrey is disgusted with himself, and decides to commit suicide.  He embraces the fellowship, since they agree with him and want to help him “meet the sun”.  Sookie, grateful for not being raped by Gabe, goes to watch and be with Godfrey.  She cries and he says “That’s nice.  Someone to cry for me at the end.  I had hardly expected that.” True Blood does a lovely interpretation of this.  While getting lectured by the blond vampire from the news, it comes out that Godric let himself be taken by the fellowship and had no intention of stopping them from killing him.  He doesn’t fight to keep his position as sheriff, and instead says he will make amends for the lives lost.  Only Eric realizes what Godric means.  After Godric leaves, Bill punches Eric, for creating the blood bond with Sookie, at kinda of an inappropriate time (what with Eric’s maker suicidal and all).  Eric doesn’t even seem to notice and is only upset by Godric’s decision.  Sookie tells Bill she wants to go to Godric.  She says she’s just “gotta be there,” even though Bill is resistant to the idea and clearly doesn’t like what all has happened in Dallas.  On the rooftop, Sookie finds Eric and Godric arguing.  Eric is furious, sad, and the performance by Alexander Skarsgård is brilliant.  He threatens to keep Godric alive by force, but Godric says it would be cruel and that “we’re [vampires] not right.”  Eric begins to cry as he begs Godric not to do it (it’s a six-foot-tall swede weeping openly, you don’t see that every day).  When he finally accepts the decision, he tries to stay and meet the sun too, until Godric commands (as his maker) him to leave.  Sookie tells Eric she’ll stay with him.  Godric says it won’t take long at his age for the sun to kill him (a small nod at the survival of Bill in the sun).  They talk about God and forgiveness briefly.

Sookie:  Are you very afraid?

Godric:  No. No, I’m full of joy.

Sookie:  But the pain…

Godric:  I want to burn.

Sookie:  Well, I’m afraid for you…(begins to cry)

Godric:  A human with me at the end, and human tears.  2,000 years… and I can still be surprised.  In this, I see God.

Sookie:  Goodbye, Godric.

Sookie watching this remorseful vampire meet the sun loses nothing in the translation from text to screen.  The emotional impact is even greater, and the inclusion of Eric in this plotline (in the books Godfrey wasn’t Eric’s maker) gives the audience a glimpse at something in Eric that is good and loving.  Something the show hadn’t demonstrated at all yet.

Next weeks episode is “New World in My View”, and is as always on Sunday night, 8:00 pm cst Sunday on HBO.

My first question about that is: How can I possibly have been ign’ant enough to think Jason might have actually been killed?  The answer: I don’t know anything about guns or paintball.  If I did, I assume I would probably have been immediately cognizant of the fact that Sarah was obviously wielding a paintball gun, and that the worst Jason might suffer was a nasty ball-whackin’.  Which, this week, he did.  I laughed out loud when Sarah told Jason he was worse than Judas, and Jason innocently and with no sarcasm replied, “Why?  What’d he do to you?”  Ah, the glory.

Jason gets more good moments throughout, including: clueing Steve in that he’s explored Mrs. Newlin’s meat cave; posing as a Rambo-esque vampire hunter; not quite knowing how to take Godric’s benevolence toward him; and being threatened by Eric with severe reprisals if he should fall off the v-wagon.  Ryan Kwanten is customarily brilliant in all of these scenes.

Speaking of Eric, and of customary brilliance, Alexander Skarsgård is also pretty awesome in a number of scenes, not the least of which is that threatening of Jason; it’s clear that he’s basically just kinda fucking with poor Jason, and that makes me chuckle.  Skarsgård also gets some big laughs during a scene in which he pretends to be human, adopting a whiny redneck accent.

Most of all, Skarsgård shines during his scenes with Godric.  It can’t be easy to play imperiousness and subservience at the same time, but Skarsgård pulls it off.  It makes sense for the character, too, since it’s obvious that Eric draws great strength from his fealty to Godric.  However, this does beg a question: If Eric is that subservient to Godric, why is he in Louisiana instead of by his master’s side?

Until I get an answer, I’m not going to worry about it too much, and to whatever extent my brain needs to fill in that blank, it’s going to do so by assuming that Godric has sent Eric to Lousiana so that he has someone he can trust in that state.  Godric certainly does seem to be a fellow with a plan.  He comes off here as a sort of vampire Gandhi, which, frankly, is a fascinating idea.  Godric consistently seems to be trying to build bridges between vampires and humans.  He tells Lorena that she “is still a savage, and I fear for all of us — humans and vampires — if this behavior persists.”

It is at this point in time, of course, that another savage shows up, strapped with a silver-protected bomb, and blows up the whole house.  Well, who knows, maybe this week, they did kill Jason, and Sookie and Bill and Eric and Stan and Godric and whoever else was in the vicinity.  That’d be pretty wild; you’d never see it coming, that’s for sure.

Elsewhere in the episode, we see Sam and Tara suffering thanks to their elationships with Maryann.  She has dumped Daphne’s body in the freezer at Merlotte’s, and framed Sam for the murder; as for Tara, she’s cooked Daphne’s heart into a big old nasty meat pie and served it up to Tara and Eggs, who choke it right on down without a hitch and then promptly begin slapping the shit out of each other as foreplay.

There are also a nice couple of scenes between Jessica and Hoyt.  Hmm … how to put this …  Well, you see, as it turns out, thanks to vampire regeneration abilities, Jessica regrows her hymen after every time Hoyt pops it.  Now, I guess from Hoyt’s point of view, it’d be kinda cool for your girlfriend to remain forever a virgin, but Jessica doesn’t seem to be too pleased at all, and I can’t say I blame her.  This particular relationship continues to be one of the best things about the show.

Continuing to be one of the worst things about the show?  Bill.  Sorry, ladies who are fans of Bill, but this guy is a bit of a stick in the mud.  Which, I guess, makes me Team Eric.  So sue me.  The fact is, Stephen Moyer is just not all that great an actor; he seems to be especially bad at indignance, and Bill spends a LOT of time being indignant.  I don’t dread seeing him, or anything like that, but I don’t think he adds a great deal to the show.

I’m also not yet entirely sold on Allan Hyde, who plays Godric.  I definitely like the character, and he’s been quite effectively used so far, but I haven’t made up my mind yet as to whether that’s entirely due to quality writing/directing or not.  If so, then I fear Hyde may turn out to be another stick in the mud.  But really, I haven’t seen enough yet to make a call on that one way or another.

Other notable moments:

*     Gabe’s line to Godric immediately before having his neck snapped: “Godric, it’s me.”  Okay, now what does that mean?  Godric spends the rest of the episode going out of his way not to kill people, and it seems out of character for Gabe to appeal to Godric by playing up their relationship as (supposed) captor and captive … so what exactly is going on here?  I have a feeling there’s more to this business than meets the eye.

*     Here’s a great exchange between Sookie and Eric.  S: “[Godric's] your maker, isn’t he?”  E: “Don’t use words you don’t understand.”  S: “You have a lot of love for him.”  E: (pauses for a moment, then says “Don’t use words I don’t understand.”  There is more chemistry by far between Sookie and Eric than there is between Sookie and Bill.  Can I start some sort of petition for Skarsgård to be cast as Captain America?  Marvel missed the boat already on casting him as Thor, but they might yet be able to compensate for it.

*     Lorena starts to feed on Barry, but then stops and asks, “What are you?”  So, what is Barry?  I assume readers of the novels already know this, and I assume it’ll come back into play in the series, so for now, I’m not too concerned.

*     Mostly-nekkid Hoyt to Bill, who has discovered him doing some spelunking with Jessica: “I don’t know what you heard, but those were screams of pleasure,” he says, almost confidently.  Ah, Hoyt.

*     Lorena’s confrontation with Sookie is sorta like something you’d see on General Hospital, only with more interventions from vampires over 2000 years old.  A terrible scene, but in a delicious sort of way.

*     Lafayette was horribly underutilized in this scene.  Why do I suddenly get the feeling that his storyline from the earlier part of the season was some sort of setup for season three?

It has taken me a while to finally sit down and review these last few episodes of True Blood.  Partly because of the loop that I was thrown in after the fifth episode “Never Let Me Go”.  In this episode LaFayette returns to his job at Merlotte’ s, Sam found out that Daphne was a shape shifter, Mary-Ann attacks Tara (through Tara’s friends) after almost getting kicked out of Sookie’s house, and Barry the bell boy quits his job to avoid Sookie.  All in all it was a pretty standard episode, standard being remarkable of course.  However, in the very last moment of the show, who should show up?  Bill’s maker Lorena!  This was quite a shock, because up until this point, the liberties taken by the show had been fairly straight forward.  A change here, an omission there, a couple extras thrown in.  But the arrival of Lorena jumps us forward to the third book while firmly standing in the middle of the second book.  What the hell?!

Another change is to the character Godric.  Godric is a good character in the books.  The show has thrown Eric’s maker into the mix of traits.  This is fine with me, since Eric’s maker is only mentioned once in the 9th book, so it’s really not a huge change.

The sixth episode “Hard-Hearted Hannah” was the most over the top sex episode of the season so far.  This episode features sex in a murder scene (with one of the victim’s still bleeding out), a church balcony, and a maenad inspired orgy.  Not anything to bat an eye at in the True Blood world, but it would definitely get an R in the theaters.  Lots of nudity, lots of noises, and lots of positions (especially in the orgy).

In this episode one of the first things we find out is how Lorena got there.  It turns out she was invited by Eric.  Eric finally is starting to slowly reveal the feelings that linger below the surface.  Very exciting for the members of Team Eric.

Over the course of the sixth and seventh episode, we get more incite into the relationship of Bill and Lorena.  In the sixth episode they are a happily depraved couple, killing and screwing like young vamps in love.  But in the seventh episode Bill is suddenly sullen at the idea of all the endless violence.  So sullen he threatens to kill himself rather than stay with Lorena.  The flashbacks are pretty good at fleshing out Lorena’s character.  The one thing that didn’t make much sense, was the radical turn around that Bill makes in his attitude towards Lorena without an explanation of why.  A highlight to these flashbacks was some singing by Stephen Moyer of the song “Heard Hearted Hannah”.

Sunday nights episode “Timebomb” promises more Stackhouse antics in Dallas.  8:00 pm cst Sunday on HBO.

Also renewed: Hung (which has — possibly thanks to the lead-in from True Blood — also been pulling in large numbers of viewers) and Entourage.

No official word yet on whether a second season will be ordered for The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, but HBO has reportedly not ruled out the possibility.

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…

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.

“This is not a Wire redo with a New Orleans soundtrack,” Simon said.  “It’s more of a character study looking at people trying to reconstruct their lives after their city has been destroyed and at a city that [is] a living, breathing organism.”

An air date has not yet been announced.