The Morning After: Robo-Edition

True Blood! True Blood! I enjoyed the episode last night, although it didn't quite measure up to the awesome insanity of last week. Which really isn't fair to compare, because last week was my favorite True Blood episode of all time - but the bar for these last couple of episodes is set very high.

What I liked:

Maxine Fortenberry's Snickers-n-potato chip lasagna (with hot sauce!). That actress must be having a blast.

The insane creepiness of Sookie stuck lying on the floor with Mike the coroner in the same spot where Gran got murdered last season, while crazy guy played with intestines and Jane Bodehouse was slicing off her own appendages. That whole situation was FUBAR. Sookie soooo needs to burn that house down.

The scene of the triumphant zombies telling Maryanne about The Smiting of Sam Merlotte, only to be met with her serious rage!

Eric, Pam, Sam, Ginger, and Arlene's kids - together at Fangtasia.

Sookie throwing the pottery at Lettie Mae - that was just so extremely satisfying. THUNK!!!

Hadley! I thought that was really cool, that what sounded like a throwaway line from Season 1 came back around like that. I would LOVE to see a development next season where Sarah Newlin's absentee big sister returns to shake up her whole world - I imagine her sister as NOT having been killed by the vampires, as Sarah had assumed, but as being turned into a vampire who had to stay away from her family while she was going through her "transition" and learning to handle her impulses and whatnot. maybe its just me, but I would love to see that. I hope that the Newlins don't disappear just because the Dallas storyline apparantly concluded.

Eric can FLY?! He just keeps getting more awesome.

Jason + Andy = awesome. I loved their talk about whether or not Jason "had everything easy". Particularly that it wasn't easy to get women to throw themselves at him - he had to work out all the time, and watch lots of porn to learn stuff.

What I wasn't crazy about:

The vampire queen - much ado had been made about Evan Rachel Wood being cast as the queen, and I didn't think that she was awful, I just was kinda disappointed that the queen was such a weird combination of insane and silly. Although it was pretty hilarious that they were actually playing Yahtzee. The whole thing about Maenads existing because they want to, or because people believe in fairies, or some crap like that - in addition to making very little sense, it was delivered in a way that was irritatingly expository (is that the right word? I want the word that means the dialogue was an awkward way of conveying a chunk of information). It seemed like they are setting things up for Sookie to be the sacrifice of choice - if they're looking for a perfect vessel for The God Who Comes, she's probably a better bet than anyone else... which would make the whole trip to see the Queen basically moot - what if they actually find a vessel that works? Her whole live-and-let-God-not-show-up plan was basically just a waste of screentime that could have gone to Eric. Her house was crazy cool, though.

WTF, show, why did Sookie and Lafayette split up, just as they got to the house? That was some contrived crap, they never should have left each other's side. As soon as Sookie started trotting off by herself, and Lafeyette went toward the woods, I was just screaming at the TV. Why bother bringing a hot gay drag queen with a shotgun if you aren't even gonna stick close? Seriously. It was funny watching Arlene and Terry follow the pills like some twisted trail of breadcrumbs (leading back to the witch's house, no less!).

Not enough Jessica this week. Not enough Jessica + Hoyt. Their "breakup" happened too quickly IMO. Although Hoyt's followup conversation with his mama was appropriately disturbing...

My chief complaint I thought that the momentum from last week really dropped off. The accomplishments from last week (particularly The Tara Exorcism, The Redemption of Lettie Mae, Sookie's Narrow Escape from Casa Crazy), which were so awesome, were rendered meaningless by all the back-pedaling last night. It felt like a "get people into their places for the finale" episode - which, yeah, they gotta do that, but do they have to be so freaking obvious about it? Like, at the expense of all sense-making?

Still, complaints aside, I adore this show and it has been on fire this season, and I really did enjoy last night's episode. Just not as much as last week.

Side note - I was telling my mama about this show, and she was interested in the story while not interested at all in watching the show. When it came to the part where "some god with horns is coming to town to bring chaos" and whatnot, she asked how could anyone take on a god. I responded that "Oh, that's nothing, Buffy did it all the time".