True Blood Temptations: Season 6, Episodes 61 and 62

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Craving vamps, shape-shifters, and fairies? Hungry for wolf packs and witches? Indulge your appetite for all things over the top with True Blood Season Six recaps!

The sixth season of True Blood is under way: time to spike a glass of sweet tea and settle in for the campiest, bloodiest romp on television. What’s in store for the show this year? For one thing, show runner and creator Alan Ball is gone, and there are only 10 episodes instead of the usual 12. Does this mean we’re in for a tighter, leaner True Blood? (OMG you guys, stop thinking about Alcide’s abs).

Episode 61, Who Are You, Really

Picking up right where the scary Bill transformation stuff left off, Sookie and Eric flee the Vampire Authority complex, meet up with Nora, Jason, Jessica, and Pam, and drive the hell out of there. As they leave, they see the ominous form of not-Bill, who shoots upward in the air like a blood-fueled rocket. Precisely what he is now remains to be seen, but Sookie’s sure of one thing: the true Bill Compton is gone. Another sure thing is that Pam and Nora LOATHE each other.

Other changes are afoot as well; the Governor of Louisiana broadcasts some new anti-vampire laws, including a curfew for vamps and the immediate cessation of all vamp-owned businesses. He also enthusiastically recommends that all human buy lots of guns to defend themselves with.

The ever protective Sookie accompanies Jess back to the house, where they are greeted by Bill. Well, except for the part where Nora and Eric swoop down and Bill knocks Nora clean across the porch, followed by death-gripping Eric’s throat. That part was kind of rude. To save Eric, Sookie STAKES Bill, but Bill just pulls it out and heals right up – no big deal, y’all. He says he doesn’t want to harm anyone and explains that he’s still Bill, but also more than Bill now. Jess elects to stay and chases everyone else off. Later, Bill is drawn into another room by ghostly voices calling his name. He finds three very naked and very bloody female figures, which literally fly into his body. It’s getting pretty crowded inside Bill at this point.

Meanwhile, Eric and Sookie have a bittersweet convo: Eric tells her she’ll always be the girl in the white dress that he first met at Fangtasia. Aw, look at Eric with all the feelings. He even gives her the deed to her house back (written in his own blood, naturally), but then Sookie, attempting yet again to set boundaries, rescinds her invitation to him, and he goes gliding out the front door.

Back at Fangtasia, armed soldiers waving warrants from the state of Louisiana bust down the door. They are shutting Fangtasia down and they are NOT playing – when Tara tries to come to Pam’s defense, they shoot Tara with some laser thing and she collapses on the floor.

As for everyone else? Sam, Luna and Emma manage to escape the compound as well, but poor Luna dies on the grounds. With her last breath, she makes Sam promise to take care of Emma. Jason hitches a ride that goes sour very quickly. And Alcide is the new pack leader, busy snacking on the detached arm of the old pack master and getting some…er, special attention from Rikki and some other random wolf-woman. (Seriously, what was that? Rikki needs some Feminism 101 up in her life — subjugating your sister-wolf like that is just shady).

Episode 62, The Sun:

The vampires:

Turns out, the shot Tara received earlier is not only a silver bullet, but a silver bullet emitting UV light – that mess BURNS. Eric fishes it out with some broken glass (vampires don’t worry about germs and hygiene so much) and he, Pam, and Nora realize the humans are getting deadly serious. When he leaves, Nora pores over the vampire bible and thinks she finds a mistake in the previous translation – apparently humans led Lilith to the sun, whatever that means. She also attempts to soothe Pam, telling her that Eric loves her and she is his proudest creation. Pam still tries to act tough, but it kinda falls short because she’s wearing a head to toe pink velour sweat suit.

Meanwhile, Eric tries to make good on his vow: “If the humans want a war, we’ll give them a war.” First attack? In a delightful turn, (seriously, if you’ve given up on this show, this scene might just draw you back in ) Eric poses as a schlumpy, glasses-wearing Department of Wildlife and Fisheries employee and scams his way into Governor Burrell’s office for a meeting. He attempts to glamour the Gov into submission, but surprise! Humans now have special glamour-thwarting contacts, along with their fancy UV bullets. Burrell tells his guards to take Eric to the “camp”, but Eric pulls the old-supersonic-fly-straight-up-trick and escapes. Later, though, he waits until Burrell’s daughter takes out her special contacts and glamours her into inviting him into her bedroom, which should be interesting.

Meanwhile, back at the Compton ranch, Jess finds Bill freaking out: he’s having horrible visions of a vampire boy being chained up and dragged behind a truck full of screaming dudes. The vision gets so intense that he lapses into a seriously freaky fugue state, unresponsive to frantic Jess. Unbeknownst to her, though, the inner Bill is actually in a sunlit field with Lilith, where she’s giving him cryptic advice. Lilith is not bloody AND she’s wearing clothes, so that’s new and exciting. Lilith tells Bill that “events have been set in motion” and explains that he’s not actually a god now, although he might be worshipped as one. There is still the one and only capital-G God as well, so…yeah, I’m confused too.

A desperate Jess orders up a snack from Human Edibles, hoping that fresh blood will rouse Bill. Human Edibles has their marketing strategy on point: their tagline is “We’re tasty.” Unfortunately, what Bill does to her is pretty unappetizing. Still in his frozen physical state, he forces a gushing fount of her blood directly into his open mouth and drains the poor woman dry like magic – scary, gross, bloody magic. After Jess comes back in from burying the corpse, she falls to her knees and begins to pray, asking God to forgive all her sins, bless all her loved ones, and bring Bill back to her. For those brief moments, Jess seems like the young human girl she once was. I’m not quite sure how she went from super-sassy to super-sweet so quickly, but she’s wearing her new role nicely.

After one last esoteric message from Lilith – something about how he will know what to do – Bill awakens and sees a breaking report on TV: just like in his vision, a vamp boy has been attacked, down to every last detail. Jess is stunned: “You can see the future,” she gasps. In fact, Bill gets one last future-flash that’s pretty alarming: he sees vampires (including Eric and Tara and Pam and Nora) locked up in a cell, light starting to pour through the ceiling. “You’re all going to burn” are his last words of the episode, in fact, which was super reassuring.

Shapeshifters and werewolves:

Sam is accosted by an equal rights activist, Nicole, at the bar. Nicole tells him he should “come out” and help protect all the supernatural beings in hiding. Now, True Blood’s treatment of supes can be read as a parallel or proxy to the struggle for gay equality, which adds a welcome complexity and depth to the oft-ridic storylines. Here, this message has been broadened to encompass a wider swath of the oppressed, and I’m really curious to see where this storyline goes. At any rate, Sam is not interested.

When he goes home to Emma, we get an all-too brief scene with Lafayette, who is babysitting. Emma is sound asleep—that is, until the wolf-pack rolls up. Alcide, Martha, and the aforementioned wolf-girl from the first episode have come to claim their kin. Sam refuses and things get heated, sparked by Alcide acting like a complete ass. I don’t know if it’s the remnants of V or the heady new power of being the pack master, but knock it off already, Alcide. Nobody even cares about your abs, the way you’re acting right now. Fisticuffs ensue and the wolves take off with a crying Emma, leaving Sam and Lala beaten down, literally. To make matters worse, Nicole and her activist friends were hiding in the bushes, snapping photos of the whole altercation.

The “normals”
(and I use that term loosely):

Terry is spooked when Patrick’s pregnant wife shows up to the bar; he knows she’s got to be looking for her missing husband. She thinks Patrick has run off with another woman, and a canny Arlene steps in to solidify that notion. Damn, she’s good. I mean, how else could she explain that whole wretched Ifrit-fire-demon storyline that dragged on and on? Sweet, sweet lies were the only option.

Fairies:

Andy Bellefleur takes his ever-fast-growing children to the fairy camp, where he wanders around the field
beseeching baby-mama Miranda to help him: “I don’t know s*** about baby fairies!”

Sookie helps a halfling fairy dude, Ben, who was attacked by vampires. They flirt a little, they spark glowing light when they bump hands, the usual. Ben wants to take Sookie out on a date but she rebukes him, sending him on his way to the fairy camp where he’ll be safe.

And it turns out that the scary driver Jason hitched a ride with is..his FAIRY GRANDFATHER (played by Rutgur Hauer, no less). Grandfather Niall has been testing Jason, and he’s not happy with what he sees. He’s come to aid Jason and Sookie in the fight against Warlow. Niall is also a royal and Jason is all excited for a hot second, until it turns out that the special fairy/royal gene skipped him. Sad face, Jason.

Sookie takes this all in stride, even the part where Niall explains that Warlow has been after their family for thousands of years. Grandpa gives Sookie a crackling ball of fairy-juice that comes with a stern warning: she is only to use this in the gravest situation, and once she does, she will no longer be fey. Sookie then practices conjuring her energy and letting it reabsorb back into her body, which sounds New Age-y and also kind of gross.

we heartsters: Are you on board with the new storylines so far? How funny was nerdy Eric? And what about the whole civil rights thread—is it drawing too obvious of a parallel?

all photos and videos via HBO