‘True Blood’ 5.10 Recap: “Vampire Crisis – Night 3”

The current season of ‘True Blood’ presents an interesting conundrum for me. One the one hand, I feel that the season is overall much more consistent and better than the last couple. It has a decent story arc, and most weeks feature individual standout moments that are very entertaining. On the other hand, I have a hard time building up too much excitement for any particular episode. Do other viewers feel this way as well, or have I simply burned out on the show prematurely?

Have you ever noticed that, in movies and TV, vampires have extremely frail chest and back areas that allow just about any flimsy wooden objects to pierce through to the vampires’ hearts? Buffy used to routinely stake vamps with pencils. In episode ‘Gone, Gone, Gone’, Sookie is paid a visit by Mike, the town coroner, who quickly reveals that he’s been vampirized and attacks her. (First off, given the complex procedure that’s required to turn a human into a vampire in this show’s mythology, I have to ask why anyone would want to turn Mike.) While fighting him off, Sookie manages to impale Mike through the back with a pair of chopsticks. Amusing, yes, but c’mon. Does a vampire not have a spine or any muscles or bones (or hell, even fat tissue) in his body that might block a chopstick from puncturing through? I dare say that if someone tried to stab me with a chopstick, the stick would almost certainly break without doing too much damage to me.

But I digress…

This episode has quite a lot of exploding vampire death action. The Chancellors sentence poor Molly to the true death for her insubordination, and finish her off with one of her own iStakes. So long to Tina Majorino on the show. Newlin’s giddy reaction to seeing his first vampire death is priceless.

Later, Tara sets a trap and decapitates Elijah, the new Sheriff of Louisiana. She doesn’t like that he’d ordered her and Pam to sire a quota of new vampires, among other things. “Nobody fucks with us in our own house,” she declares. That Tara is still an impulsive one.

Also, Bill forces Eric to drink more of Lilith’s blood. Surprisingly, Eric and Nora see a vision of Godric, who tells them that “Lilith is a godless god.” But then naked Lilith walks up behind Godric and rips his head off. Eric claims that this has finally shown him the truth of Lilith, and that he is now a believer, just like Bill. Eric even forgives Russell for slaughtering his family.

Bill seems to be fully gone into the cult of Lilith at this point. He summons Jessica and tries to indoctrinate her as well, but she senses that something is wrong.

Not content to rule just the night, Russell wants to capture fairies and synthesize their blood so that vampires can walk in daylight once more. Salome and the other believers consider this sacrilege. “Fairies are an abomination,” she insists. Russell doesn’t care about all this religious dogma crap and never has. He swears that he will have the sun, and then runs off.

Other Stuff That Happens
  • Hoyt announces that he’s moving to Alaska to work on the pipeline and be free of all the drama in his life. (Moving to a part of the world with extended periods without daylight doesn’t seem like such a great idea in the midst of a vampire crisis, if you ask me.) Before he leaves, he asks Jessica to glamour him into forgetting all about her and Jason. He wants no memories of the pain they caused him. Jessica reluctantly agrees. This leads to a very touching moment where she erases his memories and instills a sense of happiness within him, even while her own heart is breaking.
  • Newlin is officially Russell’s new boytoy. In a hilarious scene, Russell takes him out for Greek food – in other words, they slaughter a frat house while Katy Perry plays on the soundtrack. The show needs more humorous scenes like this.
  • In mouse form, Sam and Luna tail Newlin back to the Authority headquarters to find Emma.
  • Jason and Sookie find a secret compartment in the floor under their grandmother’s bed. Inside is a parchment scroll written in ancient fairy language. The only person who can translate it is the fairy Maurella, who is now very pregnant (presumably with Andy’s child). Maurella tells them that the document is a contract in which one of their Stackhouse ancestors promised the family’s first fairy girl child to the vampire Warlow. In all the years since, Sookie is that first female fairy.

5 comments

  1. Shayne Blakeley

    Personally I think this season is an all time high for the show. The only complaints I have are more residual damage from last season that they’re trying to clean up.

    Russell and Newlin are amazing.

    I hadn’t even thought of the 30 days of Night reference with Hoyt, I was just glad to see him leave. Arghh.

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      This season has had some real dud storylines, like Terry and the Ifrit demon, Lafayette’s trip to Mexico, Hoyt’s feud with Jason, or the nonsense with the Obamas. All of these are basically filler that didn’t lead to anything. Lafayette seemed to completely forget everything that happened to him in Mexico within minutes of returning.

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