Finally, True Blood has returned, and everyone’s favorite sexual romp and supernatural variety show has some ‘splainin to do. At the close of Season 4, we were left stunned and hungry as the giant pain in everyone’s rears, Marnie, was vanquished and a whole new can of worms was opened in the episode’s final minutes. And we open this season on some answers, a few particularly nasty messes, and some real turning and burning.
First, and most handsomely, we’ve got our newly-formed dynamic duo: Eric and Bill. After killing Nan Flannigan before she could administer her final order from the Authority (the true death), the vampire buddies killed her and her guards in a fury of flying guts. (Remind me to look into the series’ corn syrup budget. It’s sure to be mind-blowingly enormous.) Realizing they’re royally screwed (you know, on account of Bill’s being a king), they zip around and clean up the gooey mess before heading out of town. There’s just one, tiny, flaxen-haired problem: Sookie is, at that same moment, fighting off Debbie. They both sense her fear, and Eric delivers the hope-crushing line in his post-rejection anger: “F**k Sookie.” Bill, however, rushes outside to her aid only to be captured by Authority henchmen. They’ve been burned. (Literally. Those silver nets look painful.)
Of course, these aren’t vamps who often allow themselves to trapped for too long. In what is apparently the clown car of trunk spaces, Eric and Bill manage to remove the nets and puncture a hole in the gas tank, blowing the car to smithereens and allowing them to escape with only minor injuries (but they looked so cozy in there together!). When Bill is injured, Eric refuses to leave him behind. Apparently the sting of Sookie’s double rejection has made them some sort of band of Eskimo brothers.
Their bromantic moment doesn’t last long, because out of the rubble comes Nora, Eric’s “sister” and lover… and a chancellor of the Authority (which sounds important, so it must be). She rips out her Authority cohort’s heart and promptly makes out with her “brother” while we all pause our televisions (thank you, almighty DVR) and collectively look up the definition of “sister” in the dictionary. Clearly, we are the ones who’ve been applying that term incorrectly since the dawn of time, because Eric Northman cannot be wrong. Either that or this show just crossed the incest barrier.
Luckily, Nora is Eric’s sister in the same way Pam is his daughter. They were both turned by Godric, and in these vampiric families the expression of familial love is also sexual. What else are they supposed to do? Not have sex with eachother? They’re all so sexy. Well, Eric and Nora do have the “appropriate” reaction (they “f**k like champions”) and we, like Bill, are all a little uncomfortable with the situation, no matter how flattering the light was on both pantsless vampires.
Just before the Authority magically swoops in to re-kidnap the fugitives, Eric answers his untraceable phone (because he always has all the answers) and Alcide delivers some unknown message, but we know what it is thanks to his Season 4 finale discovery. He’s informing Eric of Russell Edgington’s return, and the quick shot of some henchman feeding an undisclosed “creature” a lifeless human like the T-Rex eating a goat in Jurassic Park is our confirmation. Alcide undoubtedly thinks letting the vamps in on the news will bring them back to protect Sookie, but the Authority has other plans. While one of Nora’s friends hands them their new identities, the henchmen descend with a phantom voice pulled from an episode of Inspector Gadget who demands, “Do not f**king move” right after killing the woman who was about to be their way out. It’s just too bad. It would have been hilarious to make Eric go by his new name, Ike Applebaum, a few more times.
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