True Blood:' season 3, episode 6
At the season's halfway point, "True Blood's" maintaining its frenetic pace, but some of the suspense is being diluted by a few, uninteresting side stories
- John P. Johnson/HBO
- Silly humans!
Last night's episode marked the halfway point of season three: More loyalties were called into question, fresh wounds were opened, and marriage continued to sound less and less like a good idea no matter how it was presented.
After being hauled back to Edgington's Mississippi manor, Bill makes one last attempt to thwart the vampire king's plans by staking one of the vampire guards through the heart. Talbot's pristine foyer now a mess of intestinal goo, Edgington orders Lorena to take Bill to the slave quarters and kill him. Devastated but left without a choice, Lorena follows orders ... kind of. Rather than shove a stake through his heart and get it over with as soon as possible, Lorena restrains Bill and slowly tortures him with a smorgasbord of plantation tools and medieval-looking medical equipment. Because she loves him. And then the wolf-people come and she allows them to feed, leaving Bill more or less catatonic.
Eric, intent on avenging the wrongful death of his parents, cozies up to Edgington and tries to earn his trust while destroying any that once existed between he and Sookie. On the eve of her vampire nuptials, in a white nightie circa 1890, Tara coaxes the batshit crazy Franklin into submission by ripping his neck apart with her teeth and drinking his blood.
There was a moment last night during Sookie's conversation with Edgington when it seemed as though we were about to learn something infinitely more compelling about her than the fact that she's a waitress. He begins prodding her about her powers and her circumstances, questioning her origins, "How do you know they were your parents?" Alas, she remains "just" a waitress, albeit a mind-reading, light-wielding one.
As the intricacies of the different supernatural hierarchies are slowly revealed episode by episode (and season by season for that matter — remember when Sam turning into a dog was the craziest thing we'd seen yet?), the show's able to maintain its shocking and frenetic pace. But the tourniquet might need to be tightened a little on season three; it's beginning to gush some tangential story lines that are starting to annoy.