Monsters of Television

“You’re going to invite me in so I can protect you. Or have passionate, primal sex with you. How about both?”

The ties that bind us to the people in our lives are extremely important. Be it family, friendship or protecting you from a group of werewolves who have kidnapped your boyfriend (I hate it when that happens) the people in your life are there for a reason. As revelations lead to more questions, True Blood sets alliances as season 3 continues to waste no time getting down to business.

Give Nelsan Ellis an Emmy right now. He played his scenes with so much emotional subtext under an unusually calm exterior. After stopping Tara from swallowing a bunch of pills Lafayette lays into her, telling her he’s not ready to plan her funeral so she can’t leave him yet. Then he takes her to see his mother, Ruby, who’s been in a mental institution for 6 months. Lafayette walks into the room like a scolded puppy as Ruby announces her son is dead, “God killed him because he’s a fagot”, but he keeps on showing up. Tara thinks they’re there to have her committed as well but Lafayette wanted to show Tara to emphasize the darkness in their family. The two of them have to stick together to ensure they don’t end up like their mothers. Here we also learn this is why Lafayette engages in some of the…less than legal activities that he does. Keeping his mother there is very expensive but he pays for it because he doesn’t want to take care of her himself.

Lafayette and Tara aren’t the only ones diving into their family backgrounds. Sam finally comes face to face with his birth parents. His mother, a shifter, had to give Sam up when she was 16 and his father, a human, was in jail (for an unknown crime he claims to not have committed). Tommy (the boy from the auto place last episode) is in fact Sam’s brother and is not happy about having been lied to. After a little brotherly heart to heart, the two shift and go for a run. Bu it doesn’t end well as a truck narrowly misses the pair, Tommy shifting into a bird and flying off and Sam diving out of the way. I don’t really know where this storyline is going. Here we are in episode 2 and he’s met his family and they seem to accept him. Tommy is still kinda shifty (a little shapeshifter humor for you there) but I don’t really know what to make of it yet.

Never really liking the rules of her current family, it seems Jessica is out to look for someone new to adopt her. She’s tired of sleeping with that corpse, the constant reminder of how much of a monster she is and why she can’t be with Hoyt. So she goes straight to Pam for guidance.. She questions her about feeding, how to stop before you kill your prey. Pam seems surprised Bill never taught her this and Jessica says it’s because Bill doesn’t let her feed on humans. And there is Pam’s in. Jessica doesn’t like Bill’s ways, wants to branch out, and Pam seems more than willing to take on a protégé. “It’s in the heartbeat. You feel it in the blood.” And with that grim girl talk the seed has been planted. Look for Jessica to turn to Pam a lot more in this season. Pam’s final advice to Jessica: how to dispose of a body if you accidentally kill someone. So with a play out of the Dexter handbook, Jessica hits up the local hardware store to buy a chainsaw to hack her rotting corpse, stuff him in trash bags and toss him in the Bay Harbor. Or whatever the Bon Temps equivalent may be. But when she returns to the house, the corpse is gone. Queue more adorable, frantic cussing.

Jason’s guilt is continuing to get the best of him. After a talk with Sookie about her feelings of guilt in the whole Eggs situation, Jason gos to Andy to plead with him about making things right. Andy keeps telling Jason if the truth comes out he’ll go to jail, he’s trying to protect him. But there’s more to it than that. Andy’s a celebrity now. He’s giving interviews and holding press conferences and he is eating up the limelight. He doesn’t want to give it up. He’s keeping Jason close under the lie of protecting his friend but in reality he has to keep him quiet so he can stay a hero.

So while driving a drunk Jason home Andy gets a call and has to make a stop at a house. As one perp is trying to sneak out the back, Jason tackles him to the ground. The look of excitement, of accomplishment on his face only says one thing: this season Jason is going to want to be a cop. Ok. I love Jason, he is a hilarious character who fits the bumbling ne’er do-gooder to perfection, but please don’t stagnate his character. In season 2 he is lost, finds religion. In season 3 he is lost, finds the law? Boring. I hope this isn’t the route he’s headed down.

With Bill gone (I’ll get to that next) Eric has stepped up as Sookie’s protector. While at first he claims to know nothing about Operation Werewolf he comes clean, says he was trying to keep Sookie safe. Sookie is a bit like an idiot child, running headfirst into danger 24/7 and Eric didn’t want her doing that with this group of werewolves. Aww, he loves her. He stays with her at her house and a plethora of sexual advances ensue. Sookie’ll take it though, she needs Eric’s help. Especially when a werewolf assassin shows up and Eric’s gotta fang up to take him down. But maybe Sookie doesn’t need his protection. She holds up a gun Terry gave her earlier in the episode and fires. What happens next? I dunno, that was the cut to black ending.

So Bill. While the events concerning our brooding bloodsucker are very important to the season, the way they were presented fell sort of flat. It was just a lot of talking to reveal information that we needed to know. The werewolves who kidnapped and attacked Bill work for Russel Edgington, the Vampire King of Mississippi. How he has come to have werewolves on his payroll is still unknown. Russel wants to expand his kingdom and he plans on doing so by expanding his family. He wants Bill to convince Queen Sophie-Anne to marry him so that he may take over Louisiana as well. In return, Bill will be made Sheriff of a large new territory. Of course Bill declines and of course Russel threatens Sookie if he refuses to cooperate. Who didn’t see that one coming?

All in all, great episode. There were some amazing character moments (everything with Lafayette and a heartwarming scene between Sookie and Terry) and we’ve got an even better map now for where season 3 is going to take us.

Final Thoughts:

• I like the differences between the vampire and werewolf communities. One is out in the open and one remains hidden. One values sophistication and one is more (no pun intended) animalistic. Nice dichotomy.
• Flashbacks of Godric and Eric hunting down Nazi werewolves: informative and entertaining!
• “I’ve always liked you. And I’d miss you if you got killed. Just so you know.” Gotta love Terry.