Batshit in Bon Temps: “True Blood” recap of episode “Don’t You Feel Me?”

Color me surprised; things are progressing along nicely in this season of “True Blood”! After some disappointing first episodes, I would say the fourth, fifth, and sixth episodes have been pretty damn good. And during most of last night’s “Don’t You Feel Me?”, I was cackling like a madman. As Sarah Newlin, Anna Camp is a joy! Alexander Skarsgård is the best when he’s angry Eric. And I actually could tolerate Bill this episode! Forward progress, guys. Forward progress.

So what were the five best parts of last night’s “True Blood”? For my thoughts, click through! (And, of course, SPOILERS ahead.)

1. Let’s start off this week in Vamp Camp, following up on the cliffhanger of last week’s episode: Eric and Pam facing off against each other, Gladiator-style, with stakes, in a fight to the death. But, unsurprisingly, neither of them die; instead they team up to take out a camera and a guard, breaking a hole in the glass of the control room and peering into see who set them up. Eric realizes it’s Steve and Sarah Newlin who are helping mastermind this entire operation, but that information has to be put aside when he realizes what else the Guv and Co. are working on—a virus, Hepatitis V, that they want to spread vamp to vamp. And when they inject it into Nora (so he can “feel the same immeasurable loss” as the Guv did when he learned Eric turned Willa into a vampire), Eric goes berserk, summoning Willa and having her help free them. While trying to escape, Eric wanders into Vamp Camp’s Tru-Blood manufacturing room, with each bottle getting a spritz of Hepatitis V. Eric pretending to be human and muttering “Fantastico!” at the whole process is hilarious, but most of his dialogue with the Guv was great: “Are you mad that I turned your daughter into my daughter?” was a special highlight. Some other good stuff in Vamp Camp this week was Jason infiltrating the “Fuck Fanger Police Force” and getting himself sent (within, what, a day?) to the facility, where he nearly immediately ran into Sarah Newlin and tells her he’s not afraid to be “grabbing you by your pretty little Texas balls … What a whore for Christ you are.” But Sarah Newlin, as we know, is pretty much a crazy bitch, so her setting Jason up to see Jessica participate in a copulation study was a low blow, as was Jessica’s insistence that because of her murder of three of Andy’s daughters, she deserved this punishment. But her partner, James, “is a vampire, not a racist,” and when he refuses to have sex with her, Sarah shuts down the study. (However, it looks like in the trailer for the rest of the season that debuted at Comic-Con, Jessica and James still have sex somehow, so I wonder how Jason will feel about that. Poor, stupid, gallant Jason.

2. And who is just now realizing that Jessica is gone? Daddy Bill, who goes into a coma to communicate with Lilith again; she’s not so friendly this time around, though, telling him “Life is a riddle, death has no answers”; scolding him for taking “a tone with me”; and decreeing, “Do not come to me seeking answers again.” OK, huh? But when Bill wakes up, he realizes the answer must be in Harlow’s blood, so he drinks it, walks in the sun, and saunters over to the Guv’s mansion, where he’s reading the New American Bible.

But Bill is in a mood, and not to be fucked with, and Bill glamours all of the Guv’s guards into shooting each other, leaving him to behead Truman Burrell. “I’ll rip that head off too!” Bill yells when the Guv warns him that another leader will just pop up in his place, and I’m intrigued to see what he means. Is he just talking about Sarah Newlin? Or is there someone else lurking in the shadows, waiting to lead the vampire murder movement? (That’s what I’m calling it now, by the way.)

3. So, did you guys know that when Sookie and Warlow make love, it glows? Because yes, they do it, and yes, their respective areas are bathed in a beautiful golden light. My theory that Warlow is just True Blood’s answer to Edward Cullen continues! But let me backtrack: Bill senses that Sookie is in danger and Warlow, because he can walk in daylight, zooms over to where Lala is drowning her and saves her; he also uses his faerie powers to blast Sookie’s father’s ghost out of Lala’s body, when she tells him to get the fuck out of her light. Bill tries to summon Warlow back to him, but Sookie sends them off to a faerie realm, where Warlow asks Sookie to tie him up so he’s not tempted to eat her. “In my heart, I’m still a creature of light; when darkness falls … I can’t be trusted, Sookie,” he admits, so instead, “we can talk if you like!” So we get some more backstory: Warlow was 32 when he was turned into a vampire, the contract for Sookie was written in the 1700s, and he had hoped that he and Sookie would travel the earth together as a “closed circle, you and me,” because “we would need only one another’s blood to survive.” That’s so conscientious of Warlow, no? And it seems like his promise that “I would never have to hurt anybody else; there would never be anybody else, just you and me” works on Sookie, since she admits “I have these feelings for you that I don’t want to have,” lets him feed off of her, bites his neck and drinks his blood (what?!), and then gets naked and starts having sex with him. THIS IS SO RIDICULOUS, and yes, it’s kind of annoying that Sookie is always defining herself in relation to men, but at least she’s trying to own her “dangerwhore” reputation? So that’s something.

4. Rest in peace, Terry Bellefleur. I don’t know, did this seem particularly needless to anyone else, just a way for the show to pretend it was taking risks in killing off a “main character”? The sad truth of True Blood is that the human characters have been tangential for a while now, and whenever they get tied back into the supernatural action, it always feels quite forced; a prime example of that was Terry’s Ifrit storyline from last year. But his death feels like the writers giving up on the character and not knowing how to write a normal human being who is just a regular dude, taking care of his family and dealing with his post-traumatic stress disorder and living his life. So in that way, I’m bummed by this; it feels like True Blood turning its back on what should be a significant part of this world. Oh well. Anyway, Terry gets killed by his sniper friend after Holly and Arlene have the bright idea of getting a vampire to glamour him into forgetting everything about his military experience; he’s a great husband for about 12 hours, cuddling with Arlene and taking out the trash, but he’s also been forced to forget that his friend has been tasked with killing him. Sad, sad, sad, especially Arlene crying over his dead body. And what do we think will be in his safety deposit box, the key of which he gave Lala? And how will cousin Andy, who just had the joy of naming his remaining daughter (Adeline-Braylin-Charlene-Danica), deal with Terry’s death?

5. And, in the show’s still-most-boring plotline, Sam decides, after Nicole’s urging, to give Emma back to grandma Martha, but with the stipulation that she can never go back to the pack. (Yeah, OK, let’s see how long that lasts.) But last week, when Jackson spotted Sam and Nicole, he ended up calling Alcide, who comes to capture the pair but decides to let them go instead—banning them from Bon Temps, where Sam lives and works and does whatever else. So clearly Sam isn’t going to stay away, and while Jackson may be proud of Alcide now, I wonder how long that will last, too. (Aside: Is anyone else always confused by Jackson’s frustrating werewolf sayings? Like, “Sometimes what’s good for the pack ain’t what’s good for the wolf.” WHAT DO THESE EVEN MEAN?)

+ And finally and briefly, some of my favorite lines and moments:

+ “Oh my sweet, precious Sookie,” says Warlow. You know, I don’t want to be into this guy, because he’s still a vampire who is lusting after Sookie for reasons we don’t completely understand. But Rob Kazinsky has, like this season of True Blood, grown on me. I actually think he’s kind of hot, no? Maybe it’s his so-concerned-act and chest hair combination? Hotter than Bill, less hot than Eric or Jason, I’d say.

+ “You assured me this would be violent,” says Sarah Newlin, and man, does Anna Camp continue to bring the realness. I also loved her “You were always a pussy” to Steve Newlin when he’s shocked that Eric and Pam have killed a guard, and Steve’s own panicked “They made me!” when Eric peers through the hole he’s created in the wall and purrs, “I see you, Steve Newlin.” Do we think the Newlins will get their comeuppance this season, or will they stick around as villains for next season, too? Questions, questions.

+ “We’re werewolves, butch the fuck up,” says werewolf whore Jenny to Alcide when he comes to daddy Jackson’s room and wonders if she should put some clothes on. AND THEN SHE STARTS EATING A BUCKET OF KFC CHICKEN. This woman is magic.

+ “Well done, baby vampire,” Eric says to Willa when she effectively answers his summoning and comes help him save Nora. Jeez, I would do anything for that man’s praise. However, I wish they hadn’t saved Nora, since she’s so boring and terrible and UGH.

+ “Let me get this hetero straight,” says Lafeyette. Um, genius. Also, he’s later wearing a caftan and a turban and doing crafts with a glue gun! “Bitch, you gonna be fresh to death,” he says of whatever he’s making. Is it possible to hire Lala as my personal stylist? Just look at this guy!

+ “It’s not like you to be a pussy-whipped motherfucker, but you’re sure acting like one!” spits Willa to her father when he is skeptical about letting her into general population at Vamp Camp. I wonder how she’ll respond to learning of the Guv’s death?

+ “Booyah,” says Tara when she has explained to Willa that Eric is summoning her, that she can use her glamouring powers to get humans to do what she wants, that having vampire powers is actually kind of awesome. I love Tara as a kind of vampire coach; she is so much more interesting as Pam’s progeny than she ever was as a human.