Recap 7.2 True Blood “I Found You”

“Damn. I knew it! And all this time I was blaming the NyQuil.”

This episode’s theme was “The brutal indifference of life.” Anyone in the cast can die. Got it. Even Eric, who is lounging about in France with a case of Hep V. And damn.

At least he’s back. The opening sex dream made me worried that it was all the Eric we would get this season, although it did confirm that the blood connection still existed. (I wonder if Jason has sex dreams about Eric all the time?) That dream sequence was very True Blood, and Kwanten and Skarsgard did a terrific job. But for some reason, it mostly made me cringe. I wonder why? I thought it was hilarious when it was Sam and Bill.

Meanwhile in Louisiana, the field trip to neighboring Saint Alice was very Walking Dead except without the mess, because someone cleaned up the entire town and put all the bodies in a mass grave. Who did that? The crazed Hep V vamps who are acting like desperate savages and leaving the bodies at Fangtasia all over the place? That made no sense. The apocalyptic graffiti was done neatly, too. Oh, well. At least we had that marvelous bit with Jason’s “pizza forensics”.

The Saint Alice scenes felt like set-up for Sookie reading the diary of a woman named Mary-Beth who fell for a vampire named Henry, so that we could have flashbacks to Sookie back in season one when she was madly in love with Bill. Sookie’s thoughts were so transparent that Alcide picked up on it, and I actually felt bad for him. I mean, Sookie has an incredibly hot werewolf lover who even showers when she asks him to, and she’s running off across the cemetery to Bill? Are they hinting that Sookie and Bill will be together again at the end of the series?

While Sookie, Alcide, the sheriff and the mayor were away, the townspeople of Bon Temps raided the Sheriff’s department and turned into stereotypes. Really? And Kenya has been a good cop forever and wasn’t actually internalizing until now that she’d been passed over for promotion? Maybe this was just their way of focusing on gun nut Vince as opposition for good mayor Sam, and making shifters into yet another focus of prejudice.

The best part of the episode (other than confirmation that Eric is alive and Jason with the pizza) was clever Arlene in the Fangtasia basement getting Betty Harris the former fourth grade teacher to see her and her fellow prisoners as people. It nearly worked, too. What happened to Betty? Did she just succumb to the Hep V while giving us some more fun gay imagery?

I was confused by what happened in the Tara plotline, too. In an absolutely cringeworthy I-have-to-look-away scene, Lettie Mae deliberately burned her hand in a skillet so that she could get healing blood from Willa. I totally believe Lettie Mae is sincere now, by the way, but was she hallucinating Tara on a cross encircled by a yellow boa constrictor, or is Tara in some sort of dead vampire dimension full of religious symbolism?

This episode did go a bit more quickly than the premiere, and the dialogue was more True Blood-like. But I am still feeling somewhat bummed by the direction they’re going this season. It’s sad when my favorite part of a True Blood episode is about pizza.

Bits:

— Alexander Skarsgard is back in the cast. Thank you. I hate that he’s in France, though, and sick. It makes me think we’ll never see Eric and Pam back with the rest of the cast again.

— Jason had his sex dream while napping in a pew.

— Adilyn did need Jessica, but unfortunately, it was day time. What was happening with the bite mark? Please don’t tell me something is wrong with Jessica, too?

— Mary-Beth’s diary was written in 2010 and 2011. I assume it’s still 2011 in True Blood Land?

Quotes:

Arlene: “I did not survive four lousy husbands, a serial killer boyfriend and the sordid suicide of my love Terry to die in the dingy basement of a fucking vampire bar.”

Jason: “Sometimes not being clever makes you a better detective.”
Andy: “This is a Starbucks card.”

Lettie: “It most definitely was Tara.”
Lafayette: “Well, it most definitely was Gandhi that I was playing Chinese Checkers with that time in the bathtub.”

Vince: “This town is full of vampers, has a dog for a mayor, and is being preached at by a telepath.”

Arlene: “I mean this in the nicest possible way, but aren’t you gonna die anyway?”

Two out of four convenient diaries,

Billie Doux
—
Billie Doux is the founder of Doux Reviews and has been reviewing her favorite shows for a ridiculously long time. More Billie Doux.