True Blood Review: Fluff and Circumstance

A party at the Stackhouse residence brings together humans, vampires, and all of their problems, under one roof.

Missed last week’s True Blood? Check out some highlights:

• Among some awesome flashbacks, the origin story of Fangtasia was revealed.
• The Hep-vamps of Bon Temps were annihilated outside of Fangtasia by our heroes.

This week, a party at Sookie’s has the remaining humans and vampires of Bon Temps mingling, whether better or worse. Meanwhile, Pam and Eric continue to hunt down Sarah Newlin.

Watch the final season of True Blood Sundays at 9 PM ET on HBO or catch up on the season any time on HBO GO.

Now on to episode five: Lost Cause.

Pam and Eric do Dallas.
Episode five picks up with the core group cleaning Fangtasia after the H-vamp slaughter. Inside the club, Willa is rightfully pissed at Eric, who intends to use his neglected progeny for information on Sarah Newlin’s whereabouts. After using her knowledge to be released from Eric as his progeny, Willa informs him that Sarah Newlin has a vampire for a sister. This is a shock considering the common story of Sarah’s sister is that she vanished into thin air after becoming involved with vampires. Pam and Eric gear up for a trip to Dallas and Ginger gives what are possibly her last screams of the entire series as they ship off.

The duo hunts down Sarah’s sister Amber, who is living a very normal life in Dallas albeit suffering from advanced Hep-V. She and her sister aren’t on the best of terms, so Amber is instantly on board with Eric and Pam’s mission to kill Sarah. She directs them to a Republican gala where Sarah plans to appeal to their parents for assistance since, you know, the Yakuza is after her head.

While Pam and Eric put on their finest in order to blend in at the gala, we see that Eric’s virus has now advanced to stage two. One of the best parts of this season has been Pam and Eric’s flashbacks, and their lavish costumes for the gala evoke a similar feeling despite happening in real-time. Pam, in a glittering sequin gown, and Eric, sporting a ten-gallon hat and a bolo tie, search the party for hints of Sarah, but they aren’t the only party crashers at this gala.

Soon, the Yakuza show up and lay waste to Dallas’ wealthy elite in their search for Sarah Newlin. Sarah’s attempt at escape leads her right into Eric’s hands with the Yakuza hot on her trail. In Eric’s final scene of the episode, he makes the choice to murder the assassins instead of Sarah.

Their deaths are bloody (one of them loses a jaw in the process), but it’s obvious Eric murdered them to avenge the death of his French lover Sylvie, who died at their hands back in the 80’s. The decision to end Eric’s screen time without really acknowledging what happened to Sarah gives the next episode something to focus on, which will hopefully revitalize this season. At the very least, I’m sure we’re in store for some retribution from Eric on behalf of the infected vampires, so ending Sarah Newlin midway through the season wouldn’t make much sense anyway.

Bon Temps Brings Down the House.
After last week’s episode, Sookie appears ready to mourn Alcide’s death in a more traditional sense, but she’s barely given that time. Instead Lafayette and James, along with Jackson Herveaux and his girlfriend Jenny, decide that the best way to celebrate Alcide’s life is to have a giant party at Sookie’s house. The party, like any party Lafayette hosts, has great music and top-shelf alcohol, and all of Bon Temps is present.

But not everyone is in the partying mood. Bill can’t seem to focus on the fun, but rather spends the entire night lost in his memories of the pre-Civil War era. During one of these flashbacks, he calls the Southern desire to secede from the union a “lost cause,” and this draws a pretty clear line between then and now, with Bon Temps’ human population full of all sorts of ballyhoo at having destroyed the H-vamps. It’s definitely an interesting parallel and leaves me curious as to whether anyone in Bon Temps will actually make it out alive at the end of this season, or if they are all, indeed, a lost cause.

Jessica is feeling better, but still on the track to recovery from her guilt at murdering Adilyn’s sister-faeries last season. Finally she gets shaken out of her own thoughts by Andy, who forgives her for her transgressions and tells her that life is too short to keep looking backwards. With that in mind, Andy rallies his friends for assistance and proposes to Holly, who immediately says yes. Through all of this, Sookie puts on a pretty good face, but the proposal is just too much for her in the wake of a recently dead boyfriend. She sneaks upstairs with Arlene for a few moments of peace, which is smart considering that Arlene has had the most dead boyfriends of anyone in Bon Temps.

Lettie Mae, originally forbidden by Reverend Daniels to attend the party due to the sheer amount of alcohol present, takes matters into her own hands. She drugs her husband with Benedryl and arrives at the party just in time to make moving speech about Tara’s death. It looks as though she’s finally on the right track, up until she stabs Willa in attempt to get more of her blood so she can commune with Tara from “the other side,” which was apparently her end-game all along.

Lettie Mae! Come on now! This woman is a fascinating, heart-breaking character and her scenes are some of the most unsettling in True Blood, but the emotional journey she’s taking me on is exhausting. I always find myself rooting for her, hoping that she really means it this time when she says she’s done with her vices, but inevitably she ends up right back in the gutter.

In all honesty, I think that Reverend Daniels was in the wrong here. Instead of trying to hide his wife away from every possible vice, perhaps he should have escorted her to the party instead. Then he could have been with her when she gave her speech about Tara and promptly brought her home after, maybe saving Willa the momentary discomfort of a kitchen knife in her shoulder and possibly giving Lettie Mae some semblance of closure. But there I go again, hoping that Lettie Mae might finally come around when in the end, she probably would have tried to stab Willa anyway.

Outside the party, Lafayette and James have a heart to heart about his relationship with Jessica. It’s not long until the two are making out on Sookie’s porch, and in even less time they’ve take their flirtation one step further by having sex in the back of a car in her driveway. Jessica catches them and sends James away from the party, but Lafayette doesn’t back down so easily. Instead, he calls Jessica out, confronting her about not knowing or really loving James, and finally finds the time to get a pretty important point across: he is more than a flamboyant, fabulous stereotype with the sole purpose entertaining everyone else. He informs Jessica that he deserves love too, and that if she doesn’t love James she needs to let him go.

Lafayette’s verbal smack-down manages to jolt Jessica out of denial, where she realizes that she’s not all that interested in James after all, and it doesn’t take long until she and Jason are hooking up in his childhood bedroom. Am I surprised? Not really. Jessica and Jason were sizzling on screen in seasons past, whereas Jessica and James seemed to fall flat in the wake of James’ interest in Lafayette.

What’s more interesting, though, is Lafayette taking a stand. This is a big step for Lafayette and incredibly important when considering depictions of race in popular media. There are numerous examples of historical media where minorities play second fiddle to the starring white leads, typically in a manner that does a disservice to both the actor and the race. As a character, Lafayette has a long history of putting people in their place.

He wouldn’t put up with that kind of small-mindedness in life, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t allow Jessica to run the show in this instance either. He’s one of the strongest people in this series and has been through some terrible, life-changing shit (remember when he was tortured by Eric or selling V, or that time he had to kill his boyfriend Jesus?), and it’s about time he exerted his place as principle character, not some sort of stereotypical comic relief.

Not Bill too!
In the classic cliffhanger ending, episode five comes to a close with Bill at home, discovering a darkened vein creeping its way up his chest.So it would seem that Bill has contracted Hep-V. It’s an interesting twist to see both vampire leads now afflicted with the virus and would certainly tie into the “lost cause” theme. I hope that it’ll spark some interest in the people of Bon Temps, as they’ve embraced Bill into their community and tend to see him as one of their own.

Maybe it’ll break the town into sides again, those blindingly against infected vampires and those who see the person they knew before the infection set in. Honestly, I hope Bill’s infection will just make this season something interesting to watch. So far, each episode has had one or two good moments, but has felt forced overall, which is just a huge let down for the final season of True Blood. I keep hoping that something interesting will come along and maybe now it has, with the combination of Bill’s ailment and the plot shifting back to Sarah Newlin.

Best Line
Nicole: “This shit doesn’t happen in other towns.”