Smallscreen Features

True Blood, Night On the Sun, washed brains and killed Cooters, Way!

By April MacIntyre Aug 9, 2010, 5:23 GMT

"Alcide" - Joe Manganiello - you are welcome © Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

HBO's "True Blood" is such a rollicking pot-boiler of gore, sex and pithy puns woven into the dialogue I get the vapors sometimes taking it all in, but tonight's was extra dense, and featured lots of make-up and revenge sex to keep the steam smoldering off the Bon Temps swamp.

True Blood Episode 8, titled Night On The Sun, sees our recovering Sookie (Anna Paquin) resigned to love Bill (Stephen Moyer) from afar, as he feels the same way too. Tara (Rutina Wesley) is truly suffering from post-traumatic Franklin (James Frain) stress as he comes to her in her dreams, and all the foot rubs from Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) cannot calm our Missy down. 

Gosh I miss James Frain's off-kilter character!  Later Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammelll) picks up on this distress, and she finally collapses in someone's arms to have a therapeutic cry.  There's love there, me thinks.

Alcide (Joe Manganiello) and Sookie are heating up a bit in each other's presence, he even gave her the sniff test and lingered; it was a very sexy scene without showing any thrusting or skin. Chemistry and powerful moments like that can bring it too.

Cousin Hadley (Linsey Haun), Queen Sophie-Anne's (Evan Rachel-Wood) girl-toy, is dispatched by seething, plotting Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) to deliver Sookie a message that Russell (Denis O'Hare)  is coming for her, and to not trust Bill. 

Prior to this we had the dirty, inconsolable Debbie Pelt mourning the killing of her Cooter, and plotting a "Godfather 2" styled revenge play against everyone involved in the Sookie breakout / killing of the Cooter. Russell all but pats her on the head and scratches behind her ears after correcting Debbie's c**t slur about Sookie, to which he amends,"she's "a special c**t."

Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten) brings Det. Andy (Chris Bauer) to Sookie's home to press charges against Bill, but she refuses and reads his mind, which sends him packing.  Jason has a little tucked away souvenir from the Christian cult he was drafted into and has plans for Bill himself, thwarted a bit when a rode hard and put up wet Crystal shows up, "scentless."  Jason shares that the cult washed his brain.

Between the Mickens clan and Crystal and her ilk, I have had a cud full of the trash scum on this show, I can't take the tin-roofed, mean thin-lipped scraggly haired, sores-on-the-face folk eating their bloody fresh kill on the dirty floor with their tires all up in the yard, in a place called "Hot Shot"!!   This was after Sam's shape shifter mama showed up at Merlotte's door nekkid after she shifted from dog to human. Ewwww.  Thank you for sparing me the vision of Joe Lee in his grey, stretched out tighty whities this week.
Calgon, take me back to Russell's manse immediately.

Jason is in way over his head y'all, but that tends to be a running theme with Ball & Co. in the writer's room.

Now, Russell's lover Talbot (Theo Alexander)  is apoplectic that there s a girl (Queen Sophie) in the house who is officially The King's wife. Oh hell no, and for the revenge play, our astute Eric sets up Russell to believe he is a loyal and loving subject, and then mollifies Talbot and keeps him company whilst Russell is on the hunt for our Sookie, whose powers apparently are the Nirvana elixir for Vamps to defy the Sunlight. 

Of course, Eric hates Russell, cares not for Talbot, and after a foreshadowing of what carnage is to come in a game of chess, our Talbot falls to a checkmate in flagrante delicto by Eric, a stake through the heart.

Earlier Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) pleads her case to a hard-hearted Bill, and after a "no way"... "way" exchange about the whole last week nightmare, the two lament their lost loves Sookie and Hoyt (Jim Parrack) and finally bond in their sadness.  Bill teaches her how to move and survive the wolf pack. Their practice runs in fast motion are amazing, kudos to the camera department and editing on that scene.

During the final act of tonight's episode, after Jessica escapes the clutches of Russell, in his long coat and on the hunt for Sookie,  ready to dispatch Bill, she manages to kill a werewolf right by the road where Hoyt drives through, but I don't think he saw Jess.

Two character drive-bys, first from Lafayette's mother (Alfre Woodard) who pays her son a visit after she gives the new nurse the slip. Hello, Jesus (Kevin Alejandro) who tells Lafayette he is powerful, and selling drugs for him is dangerous because he can go "the dark place" easily. They have makeup sex while Momma watches the Real Housewives of New Jersey (she doesn't watch that).

Second one was delivered by FX "Terriers" star Michael Raymond-James as Rene Lenier, who killed several female fang-bangers in season one. He appears to Arlene (Carrie Preston) in a dream, saying he is the real father of her unborn baby.

Merlotte's little brother Tommy (Marshall Allman) is working at the restaurant, and is an agitator. He's going to be one headache after the other for patient Sam.

New blood tonight was Holly Cleary (Lauren Bowles) and of course, she has a mysterious power too.

Now the episode wraps up with Russell feeling the death of his Talbot, as Eric's strikes the heart of Talbot which pierces Russell's too, and he levitates back to his home.  Sookie reunites with Bill in steamy "we do this in real life sex" as a post-wolf attack release.

The battle Royal will be the show down between Eric on the rampage, and Russell who is the stronger, older vampire.

Time for a mint julep and bed, see y'all next week.

April MacIntyre is Monsters and Critics' smallscreen and people/celebrity editor who loves True Blood (but not as much as Spartacus or Sons of Anarchy). You can follow her on Twitter.