‘True Blood’ 6.02 Recap: “It’s Time for Humans to Bite Back”

Oh, ‘True Blood’, why must you disappoint me so? One of the few things I said that I liked about last week’s season premiere, and you have to go and completely undo that right off the bat in this week’s new episode. It’s like the show is just jerking me around.

Sadly, Rutger Hauer is not playing the season’s Big Bad, the ancient vampire named Warlow, after all. He just made Jason believe that to test him, or some stupid nonsense. No, he’s actually Jason and Sookie’s “fairy grandfather” Niall, and he’s a perfectly nice guy. Yes, Niall, like the One Direction boy-band member. Seriously.

Rutger Hauer as a fairy? What’s the point of casting him in a role like this? What a waste of talent.

Anyway, Niall tells them that their family is original fairy royalty, which means that Sookie is a fairy princess. He teaches her that, if she concentrates really hard, she can conjure a special fairy supernova magic blast that will kill any vampires in its path. But she only gets one shot at this, after which all of her fairy powers will be spent and she’ll just be a regular human. Gee, I wonder if this will come back around ten episodes from now in the season finale?

Meanwhile, humans, led by the devious Governor Burrell (Arliss Howard), have developed new anti-vampire weapons, including bullets that emit UV light and burn vampires from the inside. That’s what Tara got shot with, and it apparently hurt like a sumbitch. Eric connives his way into meeting the governor disguised as a parks and wildlife official, but his attempts to glamour the man are thwarted by special contact lenses. Fortunately, when they try to arrest Eric, the Gov’s guards aren’t aware that some vampires can fly. Eric later shows up at the window of the Burrell’s daughter and is more successful at glamouring her. Obviously, he plans to use the girl to get to her father.

Bill tells Jessica that he can feel the pain of all vampires, then goes catatonic and has a vision of meeting Lilith (all cleaned up and sadly clothed) in a glowy garden that looks suspiciously like the fairy dimension. She tells him that she is not a god, but that, from the perspective of regular vampires, she seems like one, and now so does he. She says that, “Events have been set in motion” and Bill must save all vampires. When he awakes, he realizes that he can see the future. However, before he reaches that point, while still out of it, he instinctively uses dark powers to kill and drain dry a “Human Edible” hooker that Jessica had brought in as an attempt to feed him. Jessica is terrified by what she sees.

Other Stuff That Happens
  • Patrick’s pregnant wife (remember Patrick, Terry’s Marine buddy who got killed by the Iraqi ghost last season?) comes around to Merlotte’s looking for her husband. Arlene convinces her that Patrick ran off with another woman. Terry fells awful about this. I’m not sure what the point is of resurrecting this dull storyline that already wrapped up pretty conclusively.
  • Sookie meets another half-human/half-fairy like herself, a guy named Ben. He’s clearly being set up as a new love interest, but seems pretty boring at this point.
  • We’re introduced to another new character named Nicole (Jurnee Smollett-Bell from ‘Friday Night Lights’), a civil rights activist who wants Sam and other supernaturals to come out of the closet publicly. Sam isn’t much interested in being a symbol for their cause. She secretly records him having a fight with Alcide about…
  • Alcide and Martha show up at Sam’s trailer demanding that he turn over Emma so that they can protect her. When Sam refuses, a fight breaks out and Alcide knocks him and Lafayette unconscious. Why is Alcide such a dick all of a sudden?

The episode actually ends on a fairly strong emotional note as Jessica, unsure whether Bill is a god or what he is, offers up a prayer for the safety of all her friends. It’s a brief, touching moment where the show finally remembers that characters are more important than plot. Then Bill wakes up and tells her that he’s had a premonition of Eric and many other important vampire characters burning in some sort of vampire concentration camp.

2 comments

  1. T.J. Kats

    Agree that last scene as very well done.

    Hauer was originally cast as Macklyn Warlow and IMDB still list him as both. So either HBO is tricking people, he plays both, or they are the same person.

  2. Bryan

    I loved that last scene with Jessica praying for her friends/family. Very well done.

    What wasn’t well done was the effects shot of Bill draining the hooker. That had to be one of the most fake things I’ve ever seen on the show. I know it’s TV, but I figure True Blood has a somewhat decent budget for effects shots, and that looked like something I could have put together on my PC in a couple of minutes.

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