Tuesday, August 12, 2014

True Blood, Season 7, Episode 7: May Be the Last Time




Eric, Pam and Gus all question Amber, Sarah’s miraculously cured sister. Sadly, as well as being cured, Amber has fully bought into her sister being a good and wonderful saviour – especially since she IS the cure. Any further questions fail because Eric loses his every-so-fragile temper and kills Amber. Pam and Gus are not impressed.

Holly and Andy are still seeking their lost kids (Andy calling Adilyn’s phone on the assumption that no teenager can ignore a ringing cell phone. Hey he may not have been a dad for long but he picked it up quickly), and find Wade’s dad’s truck at the treehouse and Adilyn’s phone. Andy calls Jessica (interrupting her, Bill and Sookie all wallowing in Bill’s illness because wooooe. No I’m not sold on it because there’s no way Bill will die, especially not with Eric on the track of the cure). She confirms she has had Adliyn’s blood and would sense if she were in danger – and hasn’t sensed it. Holly suggests that the kids have gone to Wade’s father’s lakehouse –in Oklahoma.

They’ve actually gone with violet to her huge impressive mansion (why was she slumming it with Jason again when she owned this?) and her extensive vintage sex toy collection (really? This is ridiculously comic) and sympathetic support for their love and totally understanding because she used to sleep with her brother too. Uh-huh. Wade and Adilyn are all kind of annoyingly cute about how they don’t want to use any of Violet’s toys but think they have to play the other before mind reading solves the whole problem

Andy and Holly find that Wade and Adilyn aren’t at the lake and Andy breaks down – Holly is there with some excellent reassurance.

Interlude in the Sookie/Bill/Jessica angst for Arlene to have a sex dream about vampire Keith because she’s had his blood.

Back to Pam and Eric and Pam being very very impressed with Eric – and Eric being more interested in killing Sarah than using her for the cure. Gus has a plan – NuBlood, synthesised blood from Sarah with the cure which he wants to cut Eric and Pam in. And he’s sure he can find Sarah because the Japanese government is so eager to help businesses they will apparently put spy satellites at their control (and, by extension, control of a yakuza. Oh True Blood).  He needs Eric onside because he’s handsome (yes we have a damn “no homo” moment) and can restore trust in a company which has obviously lost a lot of public confidence with the whole plagued product thing.

Back to the angst fest. Sookie encourages Jessica to get in bed with her father figure and repeats her determined belief that there is a miracle out there for Bill.

Time for a pointless flashback! Bill being forced into marriage so they can have a stable family with lots of money to provide for his mother’s old age. But luckily Bill liked Caroline, his wife

Sookie calls in Dr. Ludwig who could have improved this whole show 8 bazillion times if she had been a regular character). She confirms that Bill’s super-accelerated Hep V is due to Sookie being part fae – and she heads for the hills when she hears that Niall is Sookie’s ancestor.


Sookie uses that inspiration to call Niall to come visit and help. He helps herself to her cooking and explains that dwarfs like Dr. Ludwig fear their royal majesty because of a whole lot of slaughtering caused in the past. He’s also been sitting around watching things go wrong and letting it because he quite liked Sookie and Bill to be separate. When she insists he uses fae magic to show her the past – the birth of Bill’s child in the past. He points out that’s a miracle and she was looking for a miracle. He points out the miracles of everything all around and what can and cannot be changed

Hoyt has arrived in town with his new girlfriend Bridget after his mother’s death; they go to Bellefleurs with a reunion with Arlene (they haven’t had any problem with vampires in Alaska because of the near constant summer daylight). Arlene is bemused that Hoyt doesn’t remember Jason – and calls him; Jason quickly says to keep it that way. Jason joins them in Bellefleurs  and, most unnecessarily, Jason can’t seem to take his eyes off Bridget. Even in the morgue while Hoyt is crying. He does tell Hoyt a huge lie about how Maxine died but it’s a nice, comforting lie

Sam has a big doubt moment to Arlene about Nicole leaving Bon Temps and asks her if she’s right – are they all out of their mind to keep on living in Bon Temps. Arlene responds with excellent wisdom, advice and insight. It leaves her depressed though and Keith senses it. He goes to her when she’s alone and they dance. She warns him she’s Hep V positive

Violet wakes up and joins Amber and Wade – and takes them both prisoner. Jessica senses it and rushes to the rescue

Sookie goes to Bill and promises to stay with him to the end – and they have sex on the couch

Sarah Newlin is on the run and goes back to the old camp of the Fellowship of the Sun. There she hallucinates a lot, seeing her old activity with the Fellowship and Jason who tells her repeatedly how she’s going to die. Her freaking out in the open field is seen by a Japanese satellite and passed on to Gus. She continues to freak out in a corner while tormented by hallucinations of Steve and Guru Sanbir Dutta and a weird Christian/Buddhist conflict before she declares herself the messiah.



Not a whole lot happened this episode, I think it was largely supposed to be an episode of development with a strong emphasis on magic not curing everything and focusing on harsh reality. Arlene and how she deals with the bad things in her life and living in Bon Temps. We have Andy and Holly calling on her intuition and Jessica’s blood bond and still not finding Wade and Adilyn

But most of all we have Sookie, faerie princess, realising how little that means and that there is no magic bullet, no super cure, no magic wand to wave and make all of her problems go away

And while everyone is facing the harsh realities of, well, reality, Sarah Newlin is completely losing track


All of this aside, it was slow and pretty unnecessary and felt, with Hoyt and Niall returning, more like a cameo of old-ish characters coming back as a last nostalgia of the last season more than anything else. And I have no idea why we’re being subjected to Bill’s flashbacks