True Blood 2.04
Phew! I don't think I could have lasted two weeks without this show--last week was very empty! After a bloodthirsty start to the season, this episode featured a couple of big 'fakeout' scenes--Jason finding the Light of Day camp massacred and Tara thinking there was an intruder at Sookie's house. I had the feeling that both might be foreshadowing action to come. If the Church is really taking on the vampires in a war there will be real blood soon enough, and Tara's departure from Maryanne's controlling tenderness may turn her into a hunted object. Her 'I'm sure you'd do the same from me' line was far from innocent, I suspect.
It seems too obvious that Maryanne is the Minotaur creature, but her claws at the end did look very like those of the beast that attacked Sookie, and we know she can shape shift. What part does the pig play? Hmm. Does she need the energy of the black-eyed revellers to transform? It's all very curious. I liked her Greek goddess look at the party, though, and I wonder what significance the wedding-birthday cake had.
That final sequence also took the obsession with consmption and food to an extreme. Here it's overtly sexual as well, and helped show the escalation of Maryanne's controlling powers. The excesses that people were driven too were shown in more and more extreme form, ending with the eating of dirt. Maryanne also seemed to be linked to or draw strength from the earth? Curious.
The new waitress chick is disturbing me. Weirdly more than Maryanne! Maryanne I'm just intrigued by! She's so damn charismatic, even if she's horribly evil I will love her.
Is Tara's bloke really called Eggs? As in the breakfast food? Really? That aside he's being oh-so-terribly likeable, and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Sookie is fitting the Southern stepmom role she's playing with Jessica frighteningly well. Sookie always seemed a little middle-aged in her prudishness (and what was that Stepford wife outfit she was wearing on the plane?!) and it fits her nicely. She's sympathetic to Jessica's girllishness (Jessica's 'I can't help it!' speech was very Sookie-like), and she still doesn't seem to take in the darkness of the rest of the world. It's kind of ridiculous but fascinating. I keep wanting to ask her 'don't you get it, yet?' but her insistence on treating everyone in a 'civilised' fashion (even when they're doing things like brainwashing others or drinking their blood) is a central character trait of hers and I see that it's a useful one for the narrative.
It was interesting to see vampire travel! Hee! I like the world details--hotels and planes that cater for vampires.
Alan Ball writes limited characters very well, and he seems to be having a field day with Jason and the Light of Day crew. There were some hilarious scenes this week, including that gloriously ill-educated discussion of evil in the Bible over lunch. Jason's arch-rival (whose bitterness I'm greatly enjoying), is barely better than Jason himself. 'That's why it's called EV-il': oh Lord! But my favourite line was 'Then explain Europe to me'. I'm loving the way that the religiosity of the camp comes with a heavy dose of sex and violence in the not-very-subtext. Sarah's pornstar BBQ antics and her husband's superficiously 'chaste' gun-toting have an air of sexual-repression-as-foreplay. The family dynamic they've set up is so creepy. Sarah acts as if she's untouchable as a sexual object yet she's constantly provoking Jason. That negligee and the 'we're just down the hall' were so ridiculously suggestive--but in the relgious context, of what? The cocktease seems to be working effectively to suck Jason in though.
(On a cultural note: I reacted really strongly to seeing two men sitting back being served from a BBQ. That is culturally unknown in Australia where the BBQ is the man's domain. That's not as true in America, I gather?)
I'm glad Lafayette actually is all fucked up from his experiences and doesn't just bounce back as buoyantly as Sookie--though I see the vamp blood does have a, er, bouncy effect on him. I liked the scene between him and Tara, because while Tara does care about him, it's true that she often does want some emotional connection in return, and he's not in a position to give it right now. And I looooved his scene with Eric--I was pleasantly surprised to see Eric follow up with Lafayette so soon. His line 'the healing elixir that is my thousand-year-old blood' was reminiscent for me of my favourite Smallville line ever ('the dark abyss they call my soul'). And I've warmed even further to Eric! Or, more accurately, Alexander Skarsgard, as I watched Generation Kill on the weekend and we was awesome in it. I feel kind of bad about this but it makes me see Eric as more human and less of a caricature (if a cool one) now so I feel slightly more attached to him. It probably shouldn't have taken watching another show to do that but c'est la vie.
Eric's exchanges with Bill were, as always, pleasing. :) I'm also finding Eric's Gordic-worship amusing--he's so defensive about him!
Little touches I loved:
- Poor Terry! Nice to see him dancing with Arlene at the party. They need to hook up by season end.
- Great use of TV footage (running with the bulls, the old horror movie skeleton footage on Lafayette's TV)
- There's a Queen? And there could be Kings? The Vampire terminology still cracks me up (sheriff? really?!) but I am intrigued.
- Jessica being a teenage brat ('I'm on the phone!')
And that final sequence, which so cutely introduced a fellow mind-reader! Awsome! (And oh, Jessica! *facepalm*) Great cliffhanger!
It seems too obvious that Maryanne is the Minotaur creature, but her claws at the end did look very like those of the beast that attacked Sookie, and we know she can shape shift. What part does the pig play? Hmm. Does she need the energy of the black-eyed revellers to transform? It's all very curious. I liked her Greek goddess look at the party, though, and I wonder what significance the wedding-birthday cake had.
That final sequence also took the obsession with consmption and food to an extreme. Here it's overtly sexual as well, and helped show the escalation of Maryanne's controlling powers. The excesses that people were driven too were shown in more and more extreme form, ending with the eating of dirt. Maryanne also seemed to be linked to or draw strength from the earth? Curious.
The new waitress chick is disturbing me. Weirdly more than Maryanne! Maryanne I'm just intrigued by! She's so damn charismatic, even if she's horribly evil I will love her.
Is Tara's bloke really called Eggs? As in the breakfast food? Really? That aside he's being oh-so-terribly likeable, and I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Sookie is fitting the Southern stepmom role she's playing with Jessica frighteningly well. Sookie always seemed a little middle-aged in her prudishness (and what was that Stepford wife outfit she was wearing on the plane?!) and it fits her nicely. She's sympathetic to Jessica's girllishness (Jessica's 'I can't help it!' speech was very Sookie-like), and she still doesn't seem to take in the darkness of the rest of the world. It's kind of ridiculous but fascinating. I keep wanting to ask her 'don't you get it, yet?' but her insistence on treating everyone in a 'civilised' fashion (even when they're doing things like brainwashing others or drinking their blood) is a central character trait of hers and I see that it's a useful one for the narrative.
It was interesting to see vampire travel! Hee! I like the world details--hotels and planes that cater for vampires.
Alan Ball writes limited characters very well, and he seems to be having a field day with Jason and the Light of Day crew. There were some hilarious scenes this week, including that gloriously ill-educated discussion of evil in the Bible over lunch. Jason's arch-rival (whose bitterness I'm greatly enjoying), is barely better than Jason himself. 'That's why it's called EV-il': oh Lord! But my favourite line was 'Then explain Europe to me'. I'm loving the way that the religiosity of the camp comes with a heavy dose of sex and violence in the not-very-subtext. Sarah's pornstar BBQ antics and her husband's superficiously 'chaste' gun-toting have an air of sexual-repression-as-foreplay. The family dynamic they've set up is so creepy. Sarah acts as if she's untouchable as a sexual object yet she's constantly provoking Jason. That negligee and the 'we're just down the hall' were so ridiculously suggestive--but in the relgious context, of what? The cocktease seems to be working effectively to suck Jason in though.
(On a cultural note: I reacted really strongly to seeing two men sitting back being served from a BBQ. That is culturally unknown in Australia where the BBQ is the man's domain. That's not as true in America, I gather?)
I'm glad Lafayette actually is all fucked up from his experiences and doesn't just bounce back as buoyantly as Sookie--though I see the vamp blood does have a, er, bouncy effect on him. I liked the scene between him and Tara, because while Tara does care about him, it's true that she often does want some emotional connection in return, and he's not in a position to give it right now. And I looooved his scene with Eric--I was pleasantly surprised to see Eric follow up with Lafayette so soon. His line 'the healing elixir that is my thousand-year-old blood' was reminiscent for me of my favourite Smallville line ever ('the dark abyss they call my soul'). And I've warmed even further to Eric! Or, more accurately, Alexander Skarsgard, as I watched Generation Kill on the weekend and we was awesome in it. I feel kind of bad about this but it makes me see Eric as more human and less of a caricature (if a cool one) now so I feel slightly more attached to him. It probably shouldn't have taken watching another show to do that but c'est la vie.
Eric's exchanges with Bill were, as always, pleasing. :) I'm also finding Eric's Gordic-worship amusing--he's so defensive about him!
Little touches I loved:
- Poor Terry! Nice to see him dancing with Arlene at the party. They need to hook up by season end.
- Great use of TV footage (running with the bulls, the old horror movie skeleton footage on Lafayette's TV)
- There's a Queen? And there could be Kings? The Vampire terminology still cracks me up (sheriff? really?!) but I am intrigued.
- Jessica being a teenage brat ('I'm on the phone!')
And that final sequence, which so cutely introduced a fellow mind-reader! Awsome! (And oh, Jessica! *facepalm*) Great cliffhanger!