True Blood 309: Now time for the weather… Tiffany?

Episode of the series! I know I’ve probably given this accolade to other episodes already, but this really was a corker.

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The very best scene of all, ever – and I mean in the history of television, not just True Blood – starred the crazed love-sick Russell bursting into a tv studio to interrupt a vampire rights discussion with a little light spine removal. Nan Flanagan, stopped in her tracks mid-bite (ooh, the hypocrite pretending she subsists on Tru Blood), could only watch in horrified agogness as Russell gleefully undid the vampire PR work of decades. To stunned silence, he finished off his murderous tour de force with the grandstanding: ‘We will EAT YOU, after we EAT YOUR CHILDREN. Now time for the weather… Tiffany?’

You gotta love Russell, even if he is carrying round his dead lover’s entrails in a see-through urn and declaring war on humanity. I don’t remember that being one of the stages of bereavement from Psych 101 but hey, whatever gets you through. As an aside, I just want to note how many of the True Blood baddies are also eco-warriors. Russell, banging on about SUVs and unnecessary flights, reminded me of Amy, Jason’s late girlfriend. She also thought that recycling cardboard cancelled out her murdering and drug-abusing. It only makes me love the TB writers more that they have noticed how often a professed love of the environment goes hand-in-hand with appalling behaviour.

True Blood 306: Kill Bill gories up a notch

Let me straighten your necklace, Your Maj.

Hot on the heels of the most amusing episode, this was the most tense – possibly ever, but certainly in this series. My stomach was in knots from the start, and my dreams were filled with blood and torture. Terrific stuff, chaps – keep up the good work! As well as being stressful, this episode raised as many questions than it answered. Which was no mean feat, as it answered a lot of questions an’ all. Here are my top ten questions yet to be addressed:

1. As Russell is almost 3000 years old, why is he called Russell? It’s apparently an old French name: but surely it’s not biblically old? Perhaps he changed his name because Talbot thought Methuselah didn’t go with the decor. Ok, I guess I’ve answered that one.

2. Bill seems a smart guy. So why, if he wanted to be of any use at all to the captured Sookie, did he stake a vampire guard? He knew it wouldn’t go down well. Neither did his attempt to spike Russell. Talbot was once again appalled by the mess on his carpet. Poor chap, I do feel for him. Blood is so hard to get out of soft furnishings – just ask Sookie. I wish they’d distract Talbot by having Eric flirt shamelessly with him. Oh yes, so they have.

3. Hasn’t Tara been watching True Blood? I can’t believe she thought that smashing Franklin’s head in with a silver mace would finish him off. He’s going to turn up all healed next episode, you mark my words, and he’s going to be rather miffed. A stake, cupcake, that’s what you need: a stake. Say after me: ‘I need a stake.’

True Blood 305: Watch how fast I can type motherf***er

Thanks for the flowers, Franklin. And, uh, the rope.

Episode of the Series is hereby awarded to this week’s roller-coaster of delights. The last few episodes were slightly in danger of losing their sense of humour, so embroiled were they in action, plot and blood. But this week there were so many light – darkly light – moments to savour. Most involved my new favourite couple, Franklin and Tara. From him jealously strangling her when she received a text from Lafayette, and Tara choking out ‘He’s – my – cousin – and – he’s – gay!’, to Franklin texting him back: ‘Watch how fast I can type motherfucker,’ I love every crazy minute these two spend together. Admittedly, in Tara’s case those minutes are spent somewhat unwillingly and indeed, tied up. Franklin’s nuts about Tara, as well as being just nuts. He told Russell, ‘She’s such a fucking disaster, we could be twins’ and bust into great racking, psychotically over the top blood-stained sobs after Tara tried to escape. Their brief romance stepped up a pace when Franklin offered to take her out for a ‘last dinner,’ because he was planning to turn her into his vampire bride. Her Hammer House of Horror expression on receiving this proposal was a thing of beauty.

True Blood 304: Itching for another Inquisition

Honey, isn't this an easier way to not see my face?

In rather shocking fashion – not that I should be shocked by True Blood anymore – Bill broke up with Sookie over the phone. An’ ah thought he wuz a gen’leman! He told her the gory details about his shag with Lorena, though omitted the goriest detail: that he turned Lorena’s head 180 degrees in mid-congress. I guess some things must remain between lovers. While Sookie was comforted by hunky werewolf-minder Alcide, Lorena clicked her jaw back into place and purred, ‘That was the best sex I’ve had in decades.’ Bill’s response was to hurl her across the room. Romantic, I thought.

Being dumped typically made Sookie more determined than ever to find Bill. He sure does attract the persistent type. Like all scorned women – though we don’t all go quite so goth – Sookie changed her hairdo. I couldn’t understand why she thought temporary tattoos and a leather skirt made her look kick-ass. She looked wimpy as ever, except with dark hair.

She instantly got into a contretemps at the werewolf bar with Debbie, Alcide’s trashy girlfriend, who was being initiated into the pack. There was some stuff with Russell and blood and branding, but I was more entertained by Sookie’s attempts to be a tough girl by swearing primly and downing three shots. The booze had no discernable impact on her faculties, maybe because her faculties are usually rather dull. This scene ended somewhat predictably, with everyone turning into wolves. Alcide (struggling against the urge to wolfify): Run, Sookie!’ Sookie hesitating because now she was wearing a wig she was a dumb brunette instead of a dumb blonde. ‘RUN I SAID!’ And finally she legged it, like Daphne in Scooby Doo.

True Blood 303: Another rug ruined

Ok, you might be taller than me, and VERY cute, but... my damn rug!

Even before the credits, Eric violently savaged a werewolf in Sookie’s house. What IS it with that house? Makes Amityville look like a retirement home for gentlefolk. Sookie ought to just redecorate in red, it’d save so much on Mr Muscle. Eric was unrepentant that he’d added to the mess. ‘I got your rug all wet,’ he growled, through a faceful of werewolf blood.

The credits provided brief respite before we were plunged into the King of Louisiana’s palace, silver-lined doors and burning ex-girlfriends a speciality. Talbot was most displeased that a valuable tapestry was used to put Lorena out, but the King dismissed him with a camply-arched eyebrow, and settled down to give Bill a little homily on love and humans, leaving the usually opinionated Bill quite speechless.

We got quite a bit more Bill back-story: how he tried to return to his wife after becoming a vampire (doh! Bad idea, Bill), and how Lorena came after him with her infuriating belief that there’s no such thing as too much make-up. It shows how evil Lorena is that I was amazed she merely glamoured Bill’s wife, rather than biting a hole in her neck and ruining yet another perfectly good rug. Poor old Bill just cannot shake off Lorena; she is the thick-skinned sort who considers mere stalking a tame way to court love. Her cunning plan was that Bill would turn down the King and thus get Sookie killed, but Bill thwartingly renounced his allegiance to Louisiana. Then he started shagging Lorena violently – and when I say violently, I mean he twisted her head all the way round to the opposite side of her neck so he wouldn’t have to look at her – with all of us yelling, ‘No, Bill! NO!’ It was the most disturbing sex scene in TB by far, and that includes all those other ones that you can think of.

True Blood 302: Thicker than Blood Bisque

To say the plot is thickening scarcely hints at the extent of it. Nazis! Werewolves! Nazi Werewolves! Camp drawling kings with takeover plans! Mothers in loony bins! Whole new families of shape-shifters!

The plot was thicker than porridge, thicker than mud, go on then, even thicker than blood. It became officially too complicated to follow. But it didn’t matter really, because it was so enjoyable. I’ll try and relay what I saw, but rather like a dream in which everyone changes identity and you can’t cross the road because your legs are made of custard, it mightn’t make any sense.

We began with Bill chewing up a bunch of werewolves in a scene so gory that I pushed aside my chicken dinner with a little moan. Then in galloped an anachronistic figure, a riding-jacketed toff on a horse. Turned out he was Vampire King of Mississippi – but of course – and he it was who had got the werewolves to kidnap Bill, in a cockamamie plan to win the hand in marriage of Queen Sophie-Ann. Don’t worry if you’re not following; that makes two of us.