True Blood’ season 4 premiere

• John P. Johnson
• He’s gonna do bad things to you

Just when you’re about to lose all hope in television, “True Blood” returns. Oh sweet, sweet “True Blood,” so full of man candy, tight cop uniforms and fresh hairstyles that we couldn’t care less about poorly rendered CGI goblins and time-warp vortexes. Ahh, Sookeh!

“True Blood” fizzled to a close in season three, Sookie disappearing with Claudine into a flash of light. We picked up last night not on the island, but on the other side of the light pulse in a magical fairyland full of psychic bellhops, missing grandaddies and renaissance fair regulars. The crowd is feasting on lumieres - low-hanging glowing light fruits. Sookie’s offered a fruit, but before she eats it notices her grandaddy Earl, long since disappeared. Earl doesn’t recognize her because, well, it’s been 20 years since they last saw each other. Only this is news to him - Earl thinks he’s been gone just a few hours, not two decades. But they catch up quickly - Gran’s dead, so are mama and daddy. Really? Dang! - and Sookie observes her faerie brethren feverishly chowing down on the light fruit.

Suddenly things are starting to feel much more cultlish than magical: Sookie sees the fruit’s infested with maggots; the rooms glowing facade melts away to reveal a desolate desert wasteland. Sookie realizes she’s entered some kind of Willow-meets-Mad Max alternate reality and tries to mind-tell Earl, except here everyone mind-talks. Sookie and Earl flee the Queen Mab’s light bombs and human harvesting by jumping into a gaping black hole in the ground - the tried and true method of escape for all those ever stuck in a parallel universe.