‘True Blood’ 5.05 Recap: “I’m Thinking Maybe This Was a Not-So-Great Idea”

It occurs to me that one of the reasons I’ve been underwhelmed by the current season of ‘True Blood’ is that the show has largely been missing the humorous elements that used to make it so much fun. I think the writers must have finally realized that, because this week’s episode is a little more playful than we’ve seen lately. I consider this a good thing.

‘Let’s Boot and Rally’ opens with Sookie and Alcide getting hot and heavy, until Sookie, who’d been drinking heavily, pukes on his shoes. Bill and Eric then poke their heads in to further kill the mood, and maybe snicker at her a little. They want Sookie to read the mind of Doug, Alcide’s employee who’d been glamoured when Russell Edgington escaped. At this point, the still mildly-drunk Sookie decides to take a “Sure, why the hell not?” attitude and accept that this is simply what her life is like now – constantly being interrupted by supernaturals needing her to do shit for them.

Doug is a big guy, but he also turns out to be a major scaredy-cat. He has a number of very funny scenes where he whimpers and cowers when Eric, Bill, Alcide and Sookie drag him along on the hunt for Russell. Even Sookie thinks he’s a pussy.

Sookie manages to extract memories from Doug’s mind that a female vampire with an Authority amulet glamoured him and dug up Russell, but she can’t see the face. Bill insists that it must have been Nora. Eric refuses to believe that. It seems perfectly clear to me that Salome is the real traitor. I don’t see any mystery in this at all.

The group tracks Russell to an abandoned, spooky insane asylum (is there any other kind?) where they find piles of corpses, some still-living humans strung up like meat, and a seemingly-weakened (though no longer shriveled-up) Russell waiting for them. He seems nonplussed that they’ve found him, probably because he’s not as weak as he looks. The episode ends on a cliffhanger when Alcide mysteriously falls to the floor, and Russell springs to attack.

Other Stuff That Happens
  • Lafayette sees a demon when he looks in a mirror, and has a lot of freaky hallucinations, including one about Jesus’ severed head (that’s his dead boyfriend Jesus, not the Biblical guy) with its mouth stitched shut. The episode later cuts to a weird scene where Tara’sLafayette’s mother has that head on her bedside table and talks to it. It’s not clear whether this was Lafayette having a dream, or really happened.
  • Jason has a hilarious dream about his childhood (love his ‘Masters of the Universe’ T-shirt!) where his mother offers him sex to clear his mind of all the bad stuff that’s been happening.
  • Terry and Patrick get captured by their crazy Marine Corps. buddy Eller, who believes that a fire demon is hunting him. Patrick thinks he’s just nuts, but Terry tells him that he’s seen it as well. The demon is a curse placed on them by one of the Afghani villagers they killed. Near the end of the episode, the demon proves itself real and kills Eller. Terry and Patrick manage to escape.
  • Pam makes Tara get dolled up and work as a bartender at Fangtasia. Jessica comes into the club and bonds with Tara about the ups and downs of being a new vampire. (“We’re gonna live forever. We’re gonna be young forever.”) They seem to be forging a friendship, until Jessica later catches Tara feeding from Hoyt and starts a vampire cat-fight (a bat-fight?).
  • Sam’s shifter friends were killed by rednecks wearing Halloween masks, who ambush and shoot him and Luna. I’m sure that Sam will live, but the episode makes Luna look like a goner. Her daughter Emma shifts into a puppy and runs off.

I still don’t see any point to the Terry and Patrick storyline, but I’m very glad to have Russell Edgington back on the show. The series could really use him to breathe some life into the proceedings right about now.

3 comments

  1. Bryan

    Small point – it was actually Lafayette’s mother that saw Jesus’ head on the bedside table. I think this is implying that his “magic” powers were passed down to him from his mother. (Remember she was in some kind of home – and that’s where Lafayette first met Jesus).

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