What I’m Watching: True Blood

True Blood: Season 4, Episode 2 “You Smell Like Dinner” (B+)

This show continues to rebound from a so-so third season with a strong second installment for season four. The invocation of the term “a post Russell Edgington-world” creates a proper backdrop for all of this craziness, reframing it in a sensible and understandable manner. The flashbacks to 1980s London was quite enlightening, explaining that Bill was the AVL’s choice all along to represent a more progressive and peaceful group of vampires. The choice to be nonviolent towards humans doesn’t apply to vampires, of course, as it’s revealed that Bill didn’t play fair when battling the queen and instead assisted the AVL in assassinating her. I’ll also applaud this show for allowing Stephen Moyer to use his real-life British accent and making it work, mostly because he shifted so starkly out of it when he was feeding on then glamoring the bartender. It’s cool how all the shifters, playing their own form of campfire games, can smell Tommy, and I’m hopeful that Sam’s brother will prove entirely less problematic this year than he did last. I liked Sookie’s retort to Pam’s sarcastic mockery of her, “I don’t do book clubs,” and it’s interesting to watch Jessica rebuff her, telling her that she doesn’t like Sookie playing stepmom. Jason being turned into a panther is an intense and frightful thing, though he seems more confused than anything else. It would help his situation greatly if Andy hadn’t been so visibly jonesing for a hit of V. The real intense part of this episode is the witches’ circle, which Eric rather not so nicely tries to break up. Marnie’s innocent question of “What’s in it for me?” prompts an expected response from Eric, but the subsequent convening of the circle produced some truly unexpected results, terrifying Eric into an amnesiac stupor. It doesn’t exactly solve Sookie’s problems with the vampire that owns her house, and I’m intrigued to see how all this is going to pan out since the notion of witches controlling vampires is even trippier than most of the stuff this show has done so far.