Recap 5.5 True Blood “Let’s Boot and Rally”

Sookie: “Onward into the jaws of death!”

Gross out bodies in the asylum, burned bodies in the war zone, all those victims hanging in the morgue waiting for Russell to eat them, the unfortunate Luna and a decapitated Jesus? This might have been the darkest (or possibly the weirdest) episode they’ve ever done.

But there’s something sort of hilarious about a committee slash SWAT team composed of two vampires, a werewolf, and a mind-reading fairy. (And Doug.) I have to say I’m really enjoying Sookie these past few episodes. The opener with her vomiting on Alcide’s shoes (couldn’t she have waited until he took his pants off?) followed by both of her exes showing up at the bedroom door and her seeing all three of them barking like dogs was a hoot. I also liked Sookie using her mind-reading powers to track down Russell Edgington, with all three of her honeys trailing behind her.

(Do I think those iStakes will kick in? Somehow, I don’t think the producers of True Blood are ready to kill off both of their male leads simultaneously, so no.)

As I mentioned last week, I am now on board with the Tara reboot. It’s fun symmetry that she’s now tending bar at Fangtasia (I guess she has to work somewhere), and the way she connected with Jessica over their shared unwillingly-turned experience was cool. At least until Tara accepted Hoyt’s invitation. So much for that budding vampire friendship. I guess Jessica still cares about Hoyt.

The other big plot element was the masked guys who are apparently trying to wipe out the supe community, probably with supplies from the Stake House that we saw earlier this season. They actually FIRED ON A LITTLE GIRL just because she’s a little puppy werewolf, not to mention her unarmed mother and our very own Sam. They knew Luna, Sam and Emma were shifters. Suzanne and Emery, too. Damn, I rather liked Luna. What’s going to happen to Emma?

And how does it relate to Jason’s vision that his parents were killed by vampires? Or does it? Jason was seeing vampire fang wounds in Suzanne and Emery that weren’t there. Was this a bit of fairy magic? I was a bit surprised that Jason and Andy woke up naked (thankfully, not with each other) and unharmed after their fairy-zapping. How does that work? Did the fairies take them home, strip them, and pop them into bed?

I’m happy that Russell is finally in the picture. His “storage locker” was sort of funny, sort of upsetting. Doug remembered that Russell’s accomplice was a woman wearing the same necklace that the Authority counselors wear, so that makes the Authority traitor possibilities limited. I still think it has to be Salome, but now I’m starting to wonder. Eric said he never told Nora about what he and Bill did to Russell. But then Eric looked apprehensive. Nora certainly does act convincingly fanatical.

So there’s a vial of the original Lilith’s blood in the shrine. I’m betting it gets used somehow by the end of the season.

Bits and pieces:

— We got a brief and disturbing minute or two with Lafayette praying for deliverance and getting a not-so-fun response from his (or Jesus’s) voodoo altar. And then Jesus’s disembodied head showed up with his mouth sewn shut. (I hated seeing Jesus that way.) Lafayette’s crazy mother understood what Jesus was trying to say. More Alfre, please.

— As soon as Terry and his buddy left their old friend, the nut, tied up in the bunker, I knew the guy was toast. We do know now that it’s a fire monster called an “ifrit”.

— “Babcock Hospital” is a famous building in L.A. that has been used in numerous movies and television shows, including Buffy. More about it here.

— Speaking of Buffy, like Spike, Tara can now smoke as much as she wants. And as quickly as she wants.

— The shots of Russell being carried into the hospital were also gross. His skull was visible. Dan said he looked like Voldemort.

— Roman doesn’t believe the vial contains the actual blood of Lilith. Won’t he be surprised.

— Mike the coroner (John Billingsley from Star Trek: Enterprise) was back. Always nice to see him. I got to interview him in his trailer at Paramount once, and he’s a fun and very smart man in real life.

— Not that he looks bad or anything, but how many Andy nude scenes are we going to get this season? I much prefer Jason in superhero pajamas.

— In this week’s hair report, Jessica’s flirtation with weird braids appears to be over. Unfortunately, she’s moved on to headbands.

Quotes (and there are a lot of them this week):

Sookie: “It’s not gonna change. You say goodbye and the next thing, you guys are back in my house and a three thousand year old vampire wants to suck my blood. Must be Thursday!” Great delivery on that line, Anna Paquin.

Tara: “So basically I’m your slave.”
Pam: “Pretty much.”
Tara: “The more things change, the more they fuckin’ stay the same.”

Pam: “Listen, I saved your fucking life and lent you some truly exquisite clothes. But if you do anything to mess with Fangtasia, I will silver you and stick you in a coffin to rot until the next millennium. Do you understand me?”

Roman: “Chancellor Drew was a great man. I thought he was a great man. We drafted the vampire rights amendment together.”

Jason: “Andy, those guys and all those strippers? They’re fairies. Like Tinker Ball.”
Another great Jason-ism. Tinker Ball.

Andy: “Those ladies are fairies?”
Jason: “Yeah.”
Andy: “I fucked a fairy?”

Andy: “I don’t care if those ladies are fairies or leprechauns or freaking Ewoks.”

Jessica: “You okay?”
Tara: “Trade you makers.”

Jessica: “We’re gonna live forever. We’re gonna be young forever. The world, it’s like, wide open to us.”
You could almost see Tara thinking, well, I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe being a vampire isn’t so bad, after all.

Sookie: “Alcide, are we gonna talk about the fact that I puked on your shoes?”

Molly: “If you don’t make it, it’s been rad serving you. Peace out.”
Tina Majorino’s character finally has a name!

Sookie: “First of all, I’ve seen enough horror movies to know you don’t split up when you’re in a big, scary asylum and there’s a crazed killer on the loose. Second, I think it’s fair to say my microwave fingers and the sun are about the only things around here that seem to have any effect on Russell. So the way I see it, it’s *me* protecting *you* from *him*, instead of the other way around. Third, I got a headache, I gotta pee something fierce, so I’d just as soon get this over with.”

Jason: “You know what’s fucked up?”
Andy: “Pretty long list.”

Alcide: “You okay?”
Sookie: “Yeah. Remind me to avoid peach schnapps in the future.”

Doug: “If I die, I won’t never have made it to the Big Apple.”
Eric: “New York city smells like pee and the people are rude.”

Three out of four rats. Or tinker balls. Or maybe glasses of True Blood, two parts O-neg, one part B-pos,

Billie Doux

(Billie Doux and her contributing writers review science fiction, fantasy and cult television shows at BillieDoux.com.)