I come before you today to lay Season Four to rest. Season Four was…special. It was filled with life and, like all of us, was sometimes too human, or too half-human-half-faerie for its own good. I look around and see everyone who made Season Four the season it was. I see Lafayette over there, looking a little spooked, sitting next to his cousin Tara, who is, of course, crying. I see Debbie lying on the floor—you ok there, hun? And I see Sookie trying to steal the attention from everyone. F**king Sookie. Hmm. I don’t see Katherine Helmond anywhere. Or any werepanthers for that matter. Is that Andy’s lawyer cousin over there? No? Oh. Anyway, let’s all stop trying to see through the unresolved plot threads hanging down like Lafayette’s braids and instead reflect for a moment on Season Four’s final moments.
Note: The episode takes place on Halloween, when the veil between the living and the dead is thin. Holly, suddenly the voice of reason, explains this to us about halfway through, and you can hear Bill shrieking in agony that he wasn’t the one to provide that last bit of exposition. So the veil’s thin. Not Bethenny Frankel thin, but thin nonetheless.
What the fork?!
As you know, we love us some brunch, which is where we find Lafayette and Jesus. Jesus is talking a mile a minute, while Lafayette sits there silently. Jesus thinks it’s weird, but we know it’s because he’s still possessed by Aunt Petunia and just can’t figure out which accent to use. Lafayette suddenly stabs Jesus’s hand with a fork. As if nailing the hand of someone named Jesus isn’t bad enough, he’s stabbed with a fork that just pierced the yolk of a runny egg! As a nurse, he knows the risks of ingesting uncooked eggs.
It’s a bad morning to be cutlery in Bon Temps, and Sookie drops a (seemingly) innocent spoon on the ground. She’s upset, not because of poor spoon’s trauma, but because she sees her dead Gran lying on the floor (this is more of that foreshadowing I’ve been talking about in prior recaps). Tara comes downstairs, and I guess we’re supposed to believe she’s forgiven Sookie (again) for siding with the vampires (again) from the time Tara ran screaming out of the house (again.)
Sookie and Sam have a heart-to-heart, and he gives her her job back (again). Later, at Tommy’s grave, Sam is looking sad-yet-hot in his tight jeans. Now, wait a minute here. I know there are only four cops working in Bon Temps (Jason, Andy, Sling Blade and Sassy Black Lady), but wouldn’t you think one of them—any of them—would have investigated how Tommy died on a pool table in the restaurant? Wouldn’t the Department of Health have said something about this? Note to the gangsters in True Blood’s HBO neighbor, Boardwalk Empire: If you’re going to drop a body, don’t waste your time throwing it off a pier in Atlantic City, just schlep it down to Bon Temps: the town where the Health Department looks the other way, the cops are either high or having sex, and nobody asks questions.
Maxine shows up at Tommy’s funeral to leave a basket of flowers and casts her “I need me a son” net once again, snaring Sam. Sam plays against Luna’s dish towel maternal cliche and Mary Kay’s deadbeat dad clichés with one of his own by mumbling, “Good Guy” style, that Luna and Emma are the best things that happened to him. At this rate, I expect a “hooker with a heart of gold” will show up any…oh, hello, Jessica!
Jason’s apology brought to you by Boy Butter™.
Hoyt beats the tar out of Jason for bringing sexy back to his ex and tells him he makes selfish choices. You got that right, Hoyt! He also says that there’s nothing more important to Jason than his dick. Hoyt, you must have misheard us: we said there’s nothing more important than seeing it. No problem, though, the spirit’s still there. Later, Jason finds comfort by slowly licking on a popsicle with his shirt open. We find it comforting, too.
#epicwin
While Jason and Jessica are engaging in “no-nudity clause” sex on his sofa, he equates their new relationship to that of a hooker and a client. Jessica says she doesn’t want to be Jason’s girlfriend, because she doesn’t want to hurt him. Jessica, I know you’re still new at this sex thing but if you keep changing sexual positions with him at that vampire-fast speed, you are going to hurt him. Bad. After Jessica leaves Jason sitting alone and naked save for a pillow covering his crotch on the couch, two things happen: 1.) We press pause on the DVR for one last look at Jason’s body; and 2.) once we hit play, he gets up, walks stark naked to the door and finds that preacher guy from a few seasons ago. Preacher eyes him up and down, gets a smirk on and then out come the fangs! Uh-oh!
Arlene and Terry are visited by Terry’s old army buddy, Scott Foley. We learn that Terry saved his life a few times, presumably when Scott and Felicity were at NYU together. Arlene’s forced to take out the garbage and complains loud enough to wake the dead that she’s pretty much the only person who works at Merlotte’s. I’ve been saying that for weeks. And what do you know: she did wake the dead! There’s her dead husband Renee, giving her spooky warnings about Terry. Uh-oh!
Sam and Luna are saying goodnight. She says that she cant spend the night because of Emma. He knows she’s doing the right thing and doesn’t even need a dishtowel for reference. Good for them. She drives off, and he’s surprised to see a wolf growling behind him. Is that a werewolf? Of course it is, it’s True Blood. Is it Mary Kay? Probably. They never explained what happened to his body. Maybe he wasn’t dead? Or maybe it’s another member of the pack? Or maybe it’s a cliffhanger! Uh-oh!
Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!
Alcide, who is now totally done with Debbie, finds Sookie ACTUALLY WORKING at Merlotte’s, but convinces her to STOP WORKING to talk to him. They forgive each other for overreacting, which is weird, but what’s even more noteworthy is that even though he tries to convince her to dump Eric and Bill for him, he never cops to being the one who gave her the Big Salad and saved her life. What a gent. She’s coy, we’re annoyed, and like a teenager at the movies, he interrupts the action to take a call. He’s asked to come to the parking garage that was just built on top of Russell. There’s a big hole where some concrete used to be. Alcide looks off in the distance, trying to remember which recap it was when I referenced Knot’s Landing. It was the first, Alcide. If you like, I’ll read it to you. Slowly. (Sorry, back to the hole.) There’s now a big hole! Uh-oh!
Faeriejuana.
Holly, dressed as a fairy (not a faerie), shows up in the parking lot. It spooks Sookie. Holly explains the whole veil between the living and dead thing and you can just hear Bill crying out in agony again for not being the one to provide useful exposition. Later, when Holly (strangely still in the parking lot) and Andy are talking about trying another date, she keeps calling him Sheriff Andy, and I keep expecting Don Knotts to come out dressed in Jason’s too-tight uniform. That would be really spooky.
Tara vs. the Door: The Final Chapter
Okay, so now it’s time to recap what was, for all intents and purposes, the A story for the season. Remember how Lafayette stabbed Jesus in the morning? Well, by afternoon, our favorite male nurse is duct taped to a big chair shaped like a blue hand. I only counted four fingers, though, which means…well, you know. Perhaps that explains why Jesus has that grimace on his face? So Aunt Petunia’s inside of Lafayette and tells Jesus that she wants his magic and, in her own version of putting the Christ back in Christmas, wants to put the magic back into Halloween. The irony of telling this to someone named Jesus with bleeding palms amuses me. Aunt Petunia needs Jesus’s blood (kind of like when Jesus needed that girl’s blood to get the magic to work in the last episode), but Jesus warns Aunt Petunia that what he has inside him is too big for her to handle. Now, it’s been well established that Lafayette is a medium, not an extra large, so it can’t be him, so my point about the big blue finger is proven true. Anyway, Aunt Petunia stabs Jesus, and Lafayette keeps saying, “Give it to me, give it all to me!” I told you they needed a safe word.
“Then Alan Rickman put his filthy hands all over my sister!”
Now that Aunt Petunia’s supercharged, she’s somehow gotten Eric and Bill’s shirts off and tied them to a pyre. I have no problem with this whatsoever. Gents, our safe word is “necromancer.” Tara, who has found Jesus (as opposed to her mother, who also recently found Jesus, but in a very different way) falls through a plot hole when she somehow figures out that Lafayette not only killed him but did so because he’s possessed. She and Sookie distract Aunt Petunia by talking to her as Holly salts the earth, setting up a force field. You’ve gotta be kidding me. She’s supermagicked enough to get Bill and Eric outside and silvered, and yet she doesn’t notice one of her wiccan circle walking around and chanting? Oy. Now LaPetunia’s pissed as all get out and s/he’s carrying on in that caftan makes him look like a completely batshit Mrs. Roper. “C’mon, Stanley, let me kill the vampires and then let’s go to the Regal Beagle!”
After a little more chanting, they realize, that for some reason they can’t defeat Mrs. Roper on their own, so they rush to watch Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on Netflix and summon the dead to help them. Antonia shows up again, as does Sookie’s Gran, who reaches into Lafayette’s mouth and pulls out Aunt Petunia. As much as I love seeing Lois Smith again, I can’t help but wonder why neither of Sookie’s parents nor grandfather show up. Or Jesus, who seriously has a bone to pick with Marnie. So all the dead people, led by Antonia, keep trying to reason with Marnie, because let’s face it, every time people have tried to reason with Marnie, it’s gone really really well. They all agree that yes, life does suck, but she’s kind of done with that now. Marnie acquiesces. I guess she trusts ghosts more than people and self-help seminars. All done!
Back at Bill’s, he and Eric are each sucking on one of Sookie’s wrists. I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s the same 90210 scene in which Kelly tells Brandon and Dylan that rather than picking either one of them, she picks herself. There, I just saved you 10 minutes of a scene whose only redeeming quality was the fact that Bill and Eric were wearing cute matching robes.
Pam’s at Fangtasia (remember that place?) all upset about Eric. She tells Ginger that she is totally over Sookie’s faerie vagina and incredibly stupid name. Pam, we’ve never been under them. We, the patrons of Fangtasia, raise our glasses to you, Pam, for not only having the absolute best lines of the season, not only for being the one character that was consistent throughout the entire season, but for teaching us that with the right heels and pout, we can all be fabulous lipstick lesbian vampire bitches. Cheers!
Back at Sookies, Lafayette’s upstairs, in bed, and very upset. Tara comes in to console him, but perhaps she should have closed the damn window instead. The town is replete with supernatural forces, and it’s Halloween, you idiot, have you learned nothing? Jesus shows up (the dead boyfriend, not the other one) and tells Lafayette that he knows he’s not guilty (he should probably tell the police that, but nobody cares if there’s a dead body, so why bother) and since he’s a ghost and Lafayette’s a medium, they’ll see each other all the time. The actor’s one season-only deal belies this, but it makes Lafayette feel better, so we’ll let it go for now.
“I don’t enjoy hurting anybody. I don’t like guns, or bombs or electric chairs.”
Downstairs, Sookie comes home and doesn’t lock the damn door, even though the town is replete with supernatural forces, and it’s Halloween, and finds Debbie with a shotgun. Big effing surprise. There’s a scuffle; Tara pushes Sookie away and gets half her head blown off. Sookie tackles Debbie, takes the gun, and paints the newly refinished cabinetry with werewolf brains. We end the scene, and the season, with Sookie holding Tara in her arms, yelling for help.
Oh, Eric and Bill kill Nan and her gay stormtrooper henchmen. Something about a vampire rebellion, blah blah blah. They’ve changed out of their robes, so who cares?
And there you have it, Truebies. The last rites (and wrongs) of a season spent navigating through too many story lines and not enough nudity. A season with too much were and not a lot of there there. A season spent…together.
I’m sure I’ll see you somewhere in the woods between Shreveport and Bon Temps.
Robb Pearlman is the author of the Spoiler Alert: Bruce Willis is Dead and 399 More Endings from Movies, TV, Books, and Life, coming this November, as well as The Q Guide to Sex and the City and upcoming adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh. He is an editor of pop culture and entertainment titles, including the upcoming The Joker and The Syfy Book of SciFi. Robb is known by name in comic book stores in such wide ranging locales as New York, Gotham City, Brigadoon and Alderaan. An only child in constant need of validation, he promises to accept your Facebook friend request.
Read all of Robb’s True Blood recaps here.
Pre-order Robb’s book Spoiler Alert at Amazon.com!
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I come before you today to lay Season Four to rest. Season Four was…special. It was filled with life and, like all of us, was sometimes too human, or too half-human-half-faerie for its own good. I look around and see everyone who made Season Four the season it was. I see Lafayette over there, looking a little spooked, sitting next to his cousin Tara, who is, of course, crying. I see Debbie lying on the floor—you ok there, hun? And I see Sookie trying to steal the attention from everyone. F**king Sookie. Hmm. I don’t see Katherine Helmond anywhere. Or any werepanthers for that matter. Is that Andy’s lawyer cousin over there? No? Oh. Anyway, let’s all stop trying to see through the unresolved plot threads hanging down like Lafayette’s braids and instead reflect for a moment on Season Four’s final moments.
Note: The episode takes place on Halloween, when the veil between the living and the dead is thin. Holly, suddenly the voice of reason, explains this to us about halfway through, and you can hear Bill shrieking in agony that he wasn’t the one to provide that last bit of exposition. So the veil’s thin. Not Bethenny Frankel thin, but thin nonetheless.
What the fork?!
As you know, we love us some brunch, which is where we find Lafayette and Jesus. Jesus is talking a mile a minute, while Lafayette sits there silently. Jesus thinks it’s weird, but we know it’s because he’s still possessed by Aunt Petunia and just can’t figure out which accent to use. Lafayette suddenly stabs Jesus’s hand with a fork. As if nailing the hand of someone named Jesus isn’t bad enough, he’s stabbed with a fork that just pierced the yolk of a runny egg! As a nurse, he knows the risks of ingesting uncooked eggs.
It’s a bad morning to be cutlery in Bon Temps, and Sookie drops a (seemingly) innocent spoon on the ground. She’s upset, not because of poor spoon’s trauma, but because she sees her dead Gran lying on the floor (this is more of that foreshadowing I’ve been talking about in prior recaps). Tara comes downstairs, and I guess we’re supposed to believe she’s forgiven Sookie (again) for siding with the vampires (again) from the time Tara ran screaming out of the house (again.)
Sookie and Sam have a heart-to-heart, and he gives her her job back (again). Later, at Tommy’s grave, Sam is looking sad-yet-hot in his tight jeans. Now, wait a minute here. I know there are only four cops working in Bon Temps (Jason, Andy, Sling Blade and Sassy Black Lady), but wouldn’t you think one of them—any of them—would have investigated how Tommy died on a pool table in the restaurant? Wouldn’t the Department of Health have said something about this? Note to the gangsters in True Blood’s HBO neighbor, Boardwalk Empire: If you’re going to drop a body, don’t waste your time throwing it off a pier in Atlantic City, just schlep it down to Bon Temps: the town where the Health Department looks the other way, the cops are either high or having sex, and nobody asks questions.
Maxine shows up at Tommy’s funeral to leave a basket of flowers and casts her “I need me a son” net once again, snaring Sam. Sam plays against Luna’s dish towel maternal cliche and Mary Kay’s deadbeat dad clichés with one of his own by mumbling, “Good Guy” style, that Luna and Emma are the best things that happened to him. At this rate, I expect a “hooker with a heart of gold” will show up any…oh, hello, Jessica!
Jason’s apology brought to you by Boy Butter™.
Hoyt beats the tar out of Jason for bringing sexy back to his ex and tells him he makes selfish choices. You got that right, Hoyt! He also says that there’s nothing more important to Jason than his dick. Hoyt, you must have misheard us: we said there’s nothing more important than seeing it. No problem, though, the spirit’s still there. Later, Jason finds comfort by slowly licking on a popsicle with his shirt open. We find it comforting, too.
#epicwin
While Jason and Jessica are engaging in “no-nudity clause” sex on his sofa, he equates their new relationship to that of a hooker and a client. Jessica says she doesn’t want to be Jason’s girlfriend, because she doesn’t want to hurt him. Jessica, I know you’re still new at this sex thing but if you keep changing sexual positions with him at that vampire-fast speed, you are going to hurt him. Bad. After Jessica leaves Jason sitting alone and naked save for a pillow covering his crotch on the couch, two things happen: 1.) We press pause on the DVR for one last look at Jason’s body; and 2.) once we hit play, he gets up, walks stark naked to the door and finds that preacher guy from a few seasons ago. Preacher eyes him up and down, gets a smirk on and then out come the fangs! Uh-oh!
Arlene and Terry are visited by Terry’s old army buddy, Scott Foley. We learn that Terry saved his life a few times, presumably when Scott and Felicity were at NYU together. Arlene’s forced to take out the garbage and complains loud enough to wake the dead that she’s pretty much the only person who works at Merlotte’s. I’ve been saying that for weeks. And what do you know: she did wake the dead! There’s her dead husband Renee, giving her spooky warnings about Terry. Uh-oh!
Sam and Luna are saying goodnight. She says that she cant spend the night because of Emma. He knows she’s doing the right thing and doesn’t even need a dishtowel for reference. Good for them. She drives off, and he’s surprised to see a wolf growling behind him. Is that a werewolf? Of course it is, it’s True Blood. Is it Mary Kay? Probably. They never explained what happened to his body. Maybe he wasn’t dead? Or maybe it’s another member of the pack? Or maybe it’s a cliffhanger! Uh-oh!
Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!
Alcide, who is now totally done with Debbie, finds Sookie ACTUALLY WORKING at Merlotte’s, but convinces her to STOP WORKING to talk to him. They forgive each other for overreacting, which is weird, but what’s even more noteworthy is that even though he tries to convince her to dump Eric and Bill for him, he never cops to being the one who gave her the Big Salad and saved her life. What a gent. She’s coy, we’re annoyed, and like a teenager at the movies, he interrupts the action to take a call. He’s asked to come to the parking garage that was just built on top of Russell. There’s a big hole where some concrete used to be. Alcide looks off in the distance, trying to remember which recap it was when I referenced Knot’s Landing. It was the first, Alcide. If you like, I’ll read it to you. Slowly. (Sorry, back to the hole.) There’s now a big hole! Uh-oh!
Faeriejuana.
Holly, dressed as a fairy (not a faerie), shows up in the parking lot. It spooks Sookie. Holly explains the whole veil between the living and dead thing and you can just hear Bill crying out in agony again for not being the one to provide useful exposition. Later, when Holly (strangely still in the parking lot) and Andy are talking about trying another date, she keeps calling him Sheriff Andy, and I keep expecting Don Knotts to come out dressed in Jason’s too-tight uniform. That would be really spooky.
Tara vs. the Door: The Final Chapter
Okay, so now it’s time to recap what was, for all intents and purposes, the A story for the season. Remember how Lafayette stabbed Jesus in the morning? Well, by afternoon, our favorite male nurse is duct taped to a big chair shaped like a blue hand. I only counted four fingers, though, which means…well, you know. Perhaps that explains why Jesus has that grimace on his face? So Aunt Petunia’s inside of Lafayette and tells Jesus that she wants his magic and, in her own version of putting the Christ back in Christmas, wants to put the magic back into Halloween. The irony of telling this to someone named Jesus with bleeding palms amuses me. Aunt Petunia needs Jesus’s blood (kind of like when Jesus needed that girl’s blood to get the magic to work in the last episode), but Jesus warns Aunt Petunia that what he has inside him is too big for her to handle. Now, it’s been well established that Lafayette is a medium, not an extra large, so it can’t be him, so my point about the big blue finger is proven true. Anyway, Aunt Petunia stabs Jesus, and Lafayette keeps saying, “Give it to me, give it all to me!” I told you they needed a safe word.
“Then Alan Rickman put his filthy hands all over my sister!”
Now that Aunt Petunia’s supercharged, she’s somehow gotten Eric and Bill’s shirts off and tied them to a pyre. I have no problem with this whatsoever. Gents, our safe word is “necromancer.” Tara, who has found Jesus (as opposed to her mother, who also recently found Jesus, but in a very different way) falls through a plot hole when she somehow figures out that Lafayette not only killed him but did so because he’s possessed. She and Sookie distract Aunt Petunia by talking to her as Holly salts the earth, setting up a force field. You’ve gotta be kidding me. She’s supermagicked enough to get Bill and Eric outside and silvered, and yet she doesn’t notice one of her wiccan circle walking around and chanting? Oy. Now LaPetunia’s pissed as all get out and s/he’s carrying on in that caftan makes him look like a completely batshit Mrs. Roper. “C’mon, Stanley, let me kill the vampires and then let’s go to the Regal Beagle!”
After a little more chanting, they realize, that for some reason they can’t defeat Mrs. Roper on their own, so they rush to watch Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on Netflix and summon the dead to help them. Antonia shows up again, as does Sookie’s Gran, who reaches into Lafayette’s mouth and pulls out Aunt Petunia. As much as I love seeing Lois Smith again, I can’t help but wonder why neither of Sookie’s parents nor grandfather show up. Or Jesus, who seriously has a bone to pick with Marnie. So all the dead people, led by Antonia, keep trying to reason with Marnie, because let’s face it, every time people have tried to reason with Marnie, it’s gone really really well. They all agree that yes, life does suck, but she’s kind of done with that now. Marnie acquiesces. I guess she trusts ghosts more than people and self-help seminars. All done!
Back at Bill’s, he and Eric are each sucking on one of Sookie’s wrists. I won’t bore you with the details, but it’s the same 90210 scene in which Kelly tells Brandon and Dylan that rather than picking either one of them, she picks herself. There, I just saved you 10 minutes of a scene whose only redeeming quality was the fact that Bill and Eric were wearing cute matching robes.
Pam’s at Fangtasia (remember that place?) all upset about Eric. She tells Ginger that she is totally over Sookie’s faerie vagina and incredibly stupid name. Pam, we’ve never been under them. We, the patrons of Fangtasia, raise our glasses to you, Pam, for not only having the absolute best lines of the season, not only for being the one character that was consistent throughout the entire season, but for teaching us that with the right heels and pout, we can all be fabulous lipstick lesbian vampire bitches. Cheers!
Back at Sookies, Lafayette’s upstairs, in bed, and very upset. Tara comes in to console him, but perhaps she should have closed the damn window instead. The town is replete with supernatural forces, and it’s Halloween, you idiot, have you learned nothing? Jesus shows up (the dead boyfriend, not the other one) and tells Lafayette that he knows he’s not guilty (he should probably tell the police that, but nobody cares if there’s a dead body, so why bother) and since he’s a ghost and Lafayette’s a medium, they’ll see each other all the time. The actor’s one season-only deal belies this, but it makes Lafayette feel better, so we’ll let it go for now.
“I don’t enjoy hurting anybody. I don’t like guns, or bombs or electric chairs.”
Downstairs, Sookie comes home and doesn’t lock the damn door, even though the town is replete with supernatural forces, and it’s Halloween, and finds Debbie with a shotgun. Big effing surprise. There’s a scuffle; Tara pushes Sookie away and gets half her head blown off. Sookie tackles Debbie, takes the gun, and paints the newly refinished cabinetry with werewolf brains. We end the scene, and the season, with Sookie holding Tara in her arms, yelling for help.
Oh, Eric and Bill kill Nan and her gay stormtrooper henchmen. Something about a vampire rebellion, blah blah blah. They’ve changed out of their robes, so who cares?
And there you have it, Truebies. The last rites (and wrongs) of a season spent navigating through too many story lines and not enough nudity. A season with too much were and not a lot of there there. A season spent…together.
I’m sure I’ll see you somewhere in the woods between Shreveport and Bon Temps.
Robb Pearlman is the author of the Spoiler Alert: Bruce Willis is Dead and 399 More Endings from Movies, TV, Books, and Life, coming this November, as well as The Q Guide to Sex and the City and upcoming adaptations of Alice in Wonderland and Winnie the Pooh. He is an editor of pop culture and entertainment titles, including the upcoming The Joker and The Syfy Book of SciFi. Robb is known by name in comic book stores in such wide ranging locales as New York, Gotham City, Brigadoon and Alderaan. An only child in constant need of validation, he promises to accept your Facebook friend request.
Read all of Robb’s True Blood recaps here.
Pre-order Robb’s book Spoiler Alert at Amazon.com!
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