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'True Blood' recap: Full moon fever

August 1, 2011 |  7:02 am


When there's a full moon in the Bon Temps sky, seems that just about anything can happen.

And Sunday night it did.

Yes, Team Eric, our Viking vampire god and his part-fairy protector have taken their relationship to the next level, and to think, Bill is to thank for it all. It's the king who walks in on Eric and Sookie on the couch at the start of the episode, after a rotting Pam has let it slip that Eric's lost his memory and has taken cover at Sookie's. The vampires tussle before Eric realizes Bill is his king. Bill restrains him and places him in the basement detention center he's built in the same cell with a veiled, mournful Pam. Sookie objects, but Bill informs her that for once, it would be wise for her to stay out of vampire affairs. 

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However strenuously Sookie objected to Bill's treatment of Eric, she certainly would have gone to greater lengths to rescue Eric had she known that Bill planned to phone Nan Flanagan and ask that he be allowed to impose the true death on his supposedly uncontrollable subject. Although the authority grants that request, before Bill can carry out the sentence, he has a change of heart. He's struck by Eric's calm acceptance of his fate and his sincere pleas to tell Sookie what she meant to him -- that he was born the night she found him on the side of the road.

In the end, Bill decides to free not just Eric but also Pam, honoring another of her maker's wishes. Eric finds Sookie in the woods, and the two make love. Pam, on the other hand, finds Tara and her girlfriend Naomi -- who's driven in from New Orleans to learn the truth about "Toni" -- and, well, the encounter doesn't appear headed for a happy ending.

Naturally, the transformative power of that full moon reached far and wide across Bon Temps. Marnie has now become fully possessed by the spirit of the wronged sorceress Antonia. The episode's flashbacks spell out the witch's very long list of reasons to hate vampires, and she takes immediate advantage of her new physical form to subdue the ancient rival who confronts her inside Bill's lair. Things don't look so good for the undead.

Lafayette, too, becomes host to a spirit, but a benevolent one, which arrives just in time to save Jesus' life. Jesus is bitten by the snake he had brought to his grandfather to satisfy the shaman's demands for an animal sacrifice, but Lafayette is able to heal him mystically, even if he's not certain of the mechanics of the thing. It's obvious, though, that Lafayette does possess great power.

Tommy, meanwhile, manages to shift into Sam, if only for long enough to fire Sookie from Merlotte's (he does sort of have a point that she misses a lot of shifts and always brings drama into the bar) and to sabotage his brother's budding romance. That is, he sleeps with Luna without actually mentioning that he isn't really Sam, then rudely throws her out before he morphs back into his own body and slumps to the floor. By the time Sam finds Tommy, it's not quite clear if the boy's likely to make it.

Sam, though, already had had a bad enough day with his investment properties burning to the ground, thanks to those matches catching fire at Terry and Arlene's place. The couple wakes up with the bedroom fully engulfed in flame and escapes outside to find all three children -- and one creepy doll -- safely outside. Arlene is convinced that it's Rene's spirit tormenting them, but it's hard not to think that the woman spied only by her smiling infant son might just be part of the problem.

But the more things change, the more they stay the same, in one case anyway. Jason Stackhouse is still human. Turns out, the Hotshot clan had it wrong, according to Alcide and Debbie Pelt anyway, you can't actually turn someone into a were-anything. It's hereditary. So, despite Sookie's brother fretting away that he was going to lose his humanity -- but maybe secretly longing for a little supernatural mojo too -- seems there was nothing to worry about.

Except maybe that new love triangle that seems to be brewing between him and Hoyt and Jessica, who manages to reassure the former football star and resident ladies man that he is quite special just as he is. 

Guess love is just in the air... 


Last week on 'True Blood'...

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-- Gina McIntyre

Photo: Alcide lurking in the woods in Sunday's episode of "True Blood" Credit: HBO