True Blood ‘Burning Down the House’ Recap
Previously on True Blood:
Sookie, Eric and Bill engage in the most boring threesome of all time, Jessica & Jason hook up in his truck, Antonia takes hostages, Nan continues to be a bitch with a focus on PR & Bill plays the blame game. Tommy gets his ass kicked while Luna & Sam get it on. And Lafayette gets possessed by a ghost, Andy forgets Hoyt’s pants & Jesus saves the day.
“Burning Down the House”
Vampires
The Festival of Tolerance has turned into a bloodbath due to Antonia’s desire to further villianize vampires in the eyes of the world. While Eric and Bill are duking it out in an epic battle with Bill shooting silver bullets and getting hurled across the room (read: losing) out Sookie has enough and employs her crazy fairy powers on Eric, breaking Antonia’s hold on him and erasing his amnesia. Meanwhile Nan is running around smashing cameras and organizing a mass glamour to erase this slaughter from the mass consciousness.
Jessica & Jason deal with the guilt in the aftermath of their sexy back of the truck tryst. Jason is stupid but far from cruel; he wishes out loud that Jessica could glamour this all away for him so he won’t have to feel the pain of betraying his best friend. He also terribly fumbles his words and blames it on the blood, even though he swears he was very attracted to her beforehand. Jessica feeling equally guilt ridden is hurt and ashamed that Jason would ask that of her. She doesn’t want to have to hold the guilt on her own.
Things get worse for Jason when his best bud shows up too heartbroken to stay in his own home looking for a place to crash. They share a breakfast of beer before Jason dashes over to Sookie’s for real food and a place to stay. As usual she notices something is up but doesn’t bother to get to the heart of the matter because she’s got so much of her own crazy shit going on.
Back at Fort Compton Bill & Nan bicker over who is to blame, Bill blames Nan for not letting him to kill the necromancer at the first sign of trouble, and Nan eludes further to the factions of vampires she’s fighting. Nan also starts to clue into the fact that there is really something special about Sookie and describes her wonderfully as a dairy maid with lightening tricks.
Eric and Sookie deal with what they knew was coming, the return of the old Eric. He remembers everything and swears the Eric she loves is still in there, he’s just more now. [Insert Eric fan girl squee here] They do a gross mushy thing about how they both gave themselves over completely (remember sex Narnia) and then Sookie instead of making the reasonable decision for sort of ending things (that he is kind of a brutal Vampire Viking) but for some insane reason she thinks she loves Bill more. She even says it might just be the blood, SOOKIE, it’s just the blood!
Pam interrupts this goopy mushy gross break up thing absolutely elated to see her Maker, less pleased that it was that meddlesome Sookie that broke the spell, but still thrilled to have him back.
Team Vampire decides it’s time to break the ban. They’re going to blow up Moon Goddess Emporium humans trapped inside and all, casualties of war is all. Sookie runs off to save her bff trapped inside while the rest of the Vampire crew arm themselves with flamethrowers, explosives, get all done up in their best all black & head down to Moon Goddess in a black van ready to destroy shit. Jessica, Pam, Eric and Bill walking out of that van on the empty street is a freeze frame may just be one of the best end of episode moments in the series on cool factor alone.
The Witches
Antonia has a moment of clarity watching the vampires slaughter innocent humans on her command. As soon as her image begins to overlap and take over Marnie’s we should know something is up. Also new, witches can do a disappearing teleport type thing.
When Marnie!Antonia returns to Moon Goddess she is literally beside herself, managing to lock herself in a back room alone before Antonia escapes Marnie to bitch at her about how crazy and stupid her murderous plan is. Antonia explains she was a healer and only used necromancy to save her village from illness. Marnie tries to justify her actions as protecting humans, revenge for the damage they do, Antonia is 400 years old and actually gets shit. She realizes the world is different and much bigger, when you set out to hurt people now you’re hurting a lot more, and a lot more innocent blood is shed.
It turns out pathetic little Marnie we knew in the first few episodes has a lot of built up rage against basically everything and bullies Antonia into getting back into her body so they together can destroy all vampires or something.
The witch-hostages continue to be idiots as they run around grabbing burning door knobs, looking for cell reception and somehow claiming technology is more powerful than magic (how’s that working out for you). Meanwhile Holly’s got a better plan that has something to do with being angry women and not understanding Latin where they will override Antonia’s spell and escape.
This is about the time I would complain about how True Blood must hate women to portray all of them as either stupid, cold frigid bitches, or “angry women”, but then I look at the male characters and they’re all basically disasters as well, so I make my peace by realizing that all the folks in Bon Temps are totally messed up and this is a show about them.
Werewolves/Shifters
Alcide is basically the biggest sexiest man on this show (in the world?)running around playing super hero rescuing everyone, Eric has fierce competition in the sexiest man on True Blood category. He goes about trying to save Tommy, delivering him to Sam and going up against the pack, because Alcide is a lone wolf.
Wouldn’t we know it, all this lone wolfing (and Sookie rescuing) has driven V’d up Debbie straight into the arms of Marcus who has been similarly scorned by Alcide the great.
Before Sam decides to run to Marcus’ garage and pick on several men twice his size there is a way too drawn out death scene for Tommy where he is redeemed and forgiven. It’s pretty terrible but may have been more watchable if his entire story arc wasn’t such a huge waste of time.
Bellefleurs
Terry & Arlene find Andy’s stash of V. Arlene is shrill and awful and Terry just wants to help. They drive off to Fort Bellefleur, their old tree house, shoot stuff and argue over childhood jealousies like how Andy’s family had money, and Terry was good looking. Terry got knitted booties and Andy wanted knitted socks, Terry had to join the marines to go to college and now he’s too fucked up to go. It’s actually kind of a great scene between two characters I adore but haven’t really had anything good to work with later. It’s brotherly bonding and Andy promises to try, then Terry forces him to go home.
The A-Team
I don’t even know what category these folks fall into because they’re not quite human. Sookie enlists the help of Jason, Lafayette and Jesus to infiltrate Moon Goddess and save the trapped humans inside before the vamps blow the place to bits.
Jesus makes it in after passing the painful test of crossing through the “protection” spell around the shop & after a little catch up session Antonia lets up and gives Marnie the floor. Jesus is horrified to find out that Marnie is not possessed, but is having what she calls a union with Antonia, and it’s really Marnie calling the shots.
Tara & Holly’s wacky spell breaking spell was in fact successful, as the witches try to escape Sookie mindreads Jesus saying get away. As usual for Sookie that means go towards the danger. She and Lafayette run towards Tara & co and all get zapped up by the magical witch ray once Marnie gets wind of the situation leaving Jason to deal alone.
To summarize, Antonia!Marnie is having an internal battle while taking all sorts of hostages in her war against vampire; Sookie, Tara, Lafayette & Jesus among them. Eric is back and now Sookie loves Bill again. The Vampires are set to blow up Moon Goddess to destroy Antonia and the necromancer with all said hostages inside. And Alcide is gorgeous.
I was so glad to have a good an exciting episode of True Blood this week following the flop we got the week before. It seems as though next week everything will be coming to a head down at Moon Goddess in the penultimate episode “Soul of Fire”. With two hours left a lot can go down, I’m excited to see what kind of crazy happens before the season’s end. On my wish list, return of the fairies & the disappearance of Alcide’s shirt!
Until next week:
