After last week’s anemic season premiere, I have to admit that I was a bit worried about the direction of season 6 of True Blood. I watched that episode and I thought to myself, “I don’t want to have to spend an entire season with Bill acting weird, Eric not having sex with Sookie, and Jason chasing around Rutger Hauer.”
What a difference a week can make!
Tonight’s episode was a return to form for True Blood. Tonight’s episode reminded me of what made me fall in love with this show in the first place. In short, tonight’s episode was True Blood the way I wanted it to be.
It helps that this episode featured a lot of Eric acting like Eric. But I’ll get to that in a minute.
First off, tonight’s biggest revelation was that, despite what he said last week, Rutger Hauer is not Warlow. Instead, he’s Sookie and Jason’s faerie grandfather and he’s specifically come to help Sookie defeat Warlow.
And I have to say that this is brilliant casting. We, as viewers, have been so conditioned to automatically view Rutger Hauer as a villain that it’s actually surprisingly refreshing to see him playing a good guy and Hauer seems to be having a lot of fun with the role.
Anyway, Grandpa explains to Sookie and Jason that Warlow is obsessed with the Stackhouse family, specifically because the Stackhouses are actual royalty (making Sookie into a literal faerie princess). However, Grandpa explains, Sookie can defeat Warlow by harnessing all of her light and literally going supernova. The only side effect is that Sookie can only do this once and she’ll no longer be a faerie after doing so. Sookie, who spent most of last season trying to deplete all of her power, immediately starts practicing harnessing her light.
And that’s probably a good idea because Warlow is already in Bon Temps.
Speaking of Sookie, before she meets her grandfather, she meets another faerie. This one is named Ben (Rob Kazinsky) and when Sookie comes across him, he’s lying on the ground after being attacked by vampires. Sookie nurses him back to health and it becomes obvious that the two of them are attracted to each other. I have to admit that I groaned a little when Ben showed up. It’s not that Rob Kazinsky isn’t cute, because he is. And it’s not that he and Anna Paquin don’t have a lot of chemistry because they do. However, Ben is not Eric. For that matter, he’s not even Bill.
Speaking of Bill, he began tonight by going into a catatonic state and he remained that way for most of the episode, despite the best efforts of Jessica to wake him up. At one point, Jessica even brought in a hilariously trashy prostitute named Veronica so that Bill could feed. Even in his catatonic state, Bill still ended up graphically drawing out every drop of blood from her body.
While catatonic, Bill has a vision where he stands in the middle of sun-drenched field and talks to Lillith. Lillith explains that Bill’s purpose is to save all the vampires from destruction. The scenes between Bill and Lillith were perfectly filmed and acted, with an obvious emphasis being put on the fact that the bright sun was effecting Bill and Lillith not at all. When Bill finally does wake up, he tells Jessica that he can now see the future.
And what is that future?
Every vampire in Bon Temps being herded into a stark, white room where, once the roof opens up, they are all burned to death by the sun.
Meanwhile, Eric has also taken it upon himself to try to prevent the future that Bill has seen. Eric sneaks into the Governor’s mansion, confronts the governor, and attempts to hypnotize him. The Governor (and have I mentioned how much I love Arliss Howard’s villainous performance) responds by laughing. It turns out that the Governor is wearing special contact lenses that make it impossible for him to be hypnotized.
After managing to escape the Governor’s armed guards, Eric tracks down the Governor’s daughter, Wilma. In a nicely gothic touch, Wilma looks out her bedroom window and sees Eric floating outside her window. Eric asks for permission to enter and she gives it.
And seriously, who wouldn’t?
I got so caught up with the vampires tonight that I nearly forgot that some pretty important things happened to Sam as well. I always feel bad for Sam because he literally cannot catch a break and tonight was not any different. First off, he found himself being harassed by Nicole, a political activist from L.A. who wants Sam to come out publicly as a shape shifter. (I have to admit that I have a sinking feeling that, with Luna dead, Nicole is going to become Sam’s new love interest. I’m not looking forward to this development because Nicole is kind of self-righteous and annoying.) Then, Sam ended up getting beaten up by Alcide, who has taken it upon himself to make sure that Emma is raised among the werewolves.
Seriously — bad Alcide!
I loved tonight’s episode. If last week’s premiere felt like True Blood fan fiction, The Sun felt like true True Blood. Hopefully, the rest of Season 6 will follow its example.
Random Thoughts and Observations:
- Unofficial Scene Count: 53
- That precredits sequence with Warlow appearing on the bridge was pretty effective, I thought.
- Rutger Hauer deserves an Emmy for his delivery of the line “I am your fucking faerie grandfather.”
- Alexander Skargard is so hot and sexy! Oh. My. God.
- The sudden appearance of Patrick’s wife reminded me of how much I disliked last season’s Iraqi smoke monster subplot.
- I’m sure that the writers of True Blood meant for the Governor to come across as some sort of right-wing boogeyman but, to be honest, he reminds me more of our current President.
- I love the way Jason got so excited when he said, “That makes me a faerie prince!”
- It’s interesting to note that both True Blood and the Walking Dead feature a villain called “The Governor.”
- “They attacked the Chuck E. Cheese yesterday.”
- “You’re not going to read me my rights?” “You don’t have no rights, vampire.” “Well, that’s not nice.”
- The performers on True Blood never get enough credit. Tonight’s standout was Deborah Ann Woll. Jessica’s episode ending prayer is definitely the highlight of the season so far.