s4ep2 recap – putting names to faces (and tits)

Because of the holiday today, normal screen caps sites are silent so I used one from last week. This bra came off this week!

Find out whose tits belong to who after the jump…

Ola, TB’ers! Welcome to ep 2 of season 4 of our favorite summertime sex and vamps HBO romp. Speaking of 4, Happy Independence Day to our ‘Murcan readers. Up in Canada eh it’s a work day eh, but I hope y’all are enjoying some crappy watery beers and large animals grilled on barbecues. Actually I tease at the crappy beer thing, I’d kill for a Sierra Nevada pale right about now. What were we talking about? Right, True Blood. I’m going to hit you with the biggest spoiler of all right up top – I think I actually liked this episode! I find that hard to believe myself, but it appears to be true. I guess after the crap of the season opener anything was bound to be an improvement. But this ep had some stuff I like – plot advancement and sex. Oh sure, some of the plot advancement was bad and there is still plenty of Sookie stupidity to deal with, but still. Let’s dive in and find out what I liked.

We open up with Jason tied up to a bed in Hotshot. We have a name for one of the Hotshot kids, and it’s Timbo. Timbo is licking Jason’s head wounds because it’s werepanther first aid. Oh look who’s back and pointing a shotgun at Jason. Felton! This won’t go well I’m sure.

Awesome sexy freaky credits.

Now we’re at Eric the Landlord’s House of Sookie, with Sookie complaining about stuff like she always does. Eric likes the smell of Sookie’s blood and tells her he wants to protect her from other vampires. He also blathers some stuff about there being two Sookies. If only one of them would not be annoying, we’d have something. Eric reminds her she’ll probably be dead without his protection, but that won’t convince our Sookie.

So King Bill is hanging out with his witch chick friend whose name is Katarina. Later, they fuck. While they’re fucking, guess who shows up to be annoying? If you guessed Sookie, you don’t win a prize because of how obvious that is. After getting by Bill’s hired goons (hired goons?) she just walks up into the bedroom and is annoying. She asks Bill for help to protect her from Eric, but even though Bill is the king, Eric has friends in high places or something so he can’t tell Eric what to do. Sookie asks Bill “how did you become king?” Bill answers “The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Bill, was to carry Excalibur.” Sookie answers “strange women in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.” Not really. Before Bill answers, Sookie decides she doesn’t want to know. Ah, but we do!

And do we ever. Shit is about to happen! So there’s a 1982 London flashback to a punk bar. Bill is a punk! Let’s just forget that by 1982, punk was pretty dead in London and replaced by new wave and just go for it, because we’re getting important backstory here. And for a second or two, we get to hear Stephen Moyer’s actual accent (well sort of, at least it was English). Bill glamors a bartender after feeding on him. And look who shows up – it’s Nan Flanigan, the American Vampire League chick. She’s discussing her mainstreaming plans, being made possible by the fact that Louis Pasteur (really?) is developing Tru Blood. Nan likes that Bill doesn’t kill his prey, and wants him to infiltrate the vampire monarchies, to plant a seed of discourse. She asks him to be a double secret superspy type or something. He doesn’t answer then, but we get our answer later when…

We return to a flashback of Bill and Sophie Ann’s fight at the end of last season. Turns out Bill had his hired goons show up and shoot the Queen with wooden bullets with a silver core. Ding dong, the Queen is dead! Sophie Anne explodes really nicely. Nan then shows up and seems to be in the Vampire Authority, as she names Bill king of Louisiana.

In other story lines, there’s a protest outside of Fangtasia by Steve Newlin’s old Light of Day disciples. Hoyt is none too pleased, and gets the shit kicked out of him for his troubles. Later, Hoyt and Jessica’s miserable home life continues. Jessica wants to do vampire first aid but Hoyt will have none of it. Jessica, pissed, drives off to Fangtasia. She ends up in a bathroom stall with the dude from last week who eyed her. Sookie, who had come to Fangtasia looking for Eric, catches Jess in the bathroom with the dude, because coitus interruptus is just what she does. Jess tells Sookie to basically fuck off and mind her own business. We need more of that on this show.

So even Sam’s little corner of the world is moderately interesting this week. First, he’s a little nicer to Sookie. Then, one of the horse-y shifter chicks from last week (the one in the banner pic) has a name, Luna, a really hot naked body, and a backstory. She’s a hot teacher with the hots for Sam and she has the Native American ability to turn into her dead mother who died giving birth to her. No, really. Sam even begins to reconcile with Tommy (whose leg injury was total bullshit btw) by the end of the ep, as they agree to start trying to trust each other. Brothers, aww!

In character story lines that are much more quickly wrapped up, Arlene still thinks her baby is evil when she believes he made her eye blood vessels explode, Andy is still hooked on V, and Tara comes back to Bon Temps and everyone complements her on how good she looks (and they’re right). Oh and when Sookie saw Tara, she briefly saw some faerie-goblin faces.

Back in Hotshot, oh look, now Crystal is back, on V, and wanting to be with Jason and have his baby. BTW, she needs Jason to breed because Felton is shooting blanks. But to guarantee a werepanther baby, they need to make Jason a werepanther first, so they start eating him. Some magic spell would probably be easier.

OK on to the storyline I was dreading, the fucking stupid circle of witches. Lafayette and Jesus discuss how there’s light and dark magic yada yada. Yawn. Then they’re off to the coven for some more bird raising from the dead or something. I was really dreading this, but then all of a sudden even this story line jumped forward by leaps and bounds and shit got semi-interesting. Bill and Eric are having a nice chat, and it’s about the wiccans. Bill says that they are necromancers, and thus if they can control the dead, they can control the vampires. Eric drops a neat little Inquisition reference. Bill orders Eric to go deal with the coven.

So we’re at the coven. The head witch’s name is Marnie (so many new names tonight!), and she wants to raise humans from the dead. Big step up from the birds. Most of the coven, including Lafayette, is not down with this plan. But then Eric shows up, and tells them to stop witching and is generally being a badass, but in his own charming way. Marnie doesn’t like this, and wants everyone to get into a circle and hold hands to call up dead spirits. Get out the Ouija board, kids. Anyway, the whole circle thing actually works when Marnie starts talking in dead people’s voices (in Latin for the most part), and even for a brief second changes into some other person. All this freaks Eric the fuck out, his eyes and teeth sort of turn black, and he runs off. Sookie is driving and finds him wandering the streets, but Eric is shirtless (hellooo) and seems fucked up and can’t remember who she is, though he comments how good she smells. Amnesia story line anyone? End credits.

True Blulz
“Let these gooood people practice their constitutional rights to be fucking idiots.” (Pam)
“Did I miss something? Are we girls now? Did we join a book club and read some queer chick lit memoir so now we’re bonded together by estrogen or sisterhood or some other feminist drivel?” (Pam, to Sookie)
“I am a Christian, goddammit” (Light of Day protestor)
“Maybe it’s just the stress of the situation, but I don’t follow.” (Jason)

Grade:  B, maybe even a B+. There’s probably a bias there because I always liked the vampire politics side of this show, and now it’s back after being forgotten about. The fact that the witches are actually entwined into the vampire business jumps that crappy story up a significant notch. Still wasn’t as funny as I would like (though there were some moments), but I’ll give up some humour for decent (we’re on a curve here) plot. Also, even though Sookie was all over the ep, no one really seemed to give a crap about her (especially Pam and Jess who are both a hundred times the female character Sookie is) which was nice. Drops some points for Andy’s hooked on V stupidity and Jason being stuck with the werepanthers; get those two back to being funny buddy cops already. But overall, a huge step up from the premiere and at least I’m looking forward to next week.