True Blood Season 1, Episode 6

We return to the scene of poor sweet Gran, lying dead in a sticky pool of blood on her kitchen floor. Sookie, completely shocked is grabbed by Bill, and turned from the scene. Sam enters and Bill is immediately defensive, due to the bloody scene in front of him; thinking that Sam might be the killer, Bill rushes with inhuman speed, fangs extended, and grabs Sam by the throat, pinning him to the wall. After a brief discussion, we find out that Sam had only followed Sookie home to make sure she got there safely, when Sookie wanders in and calls Bill off. Sam, seeing her legs covered in blood, asks what’s going on.

Then cue the theme song; no offense Jace, but we’re all way too excited to see what the hell is going on to pay too much attention to your awesome introduction. Let’s get back to the madness unfolding in Sookie’s kitchen! We return to the show, with Sookie sitting out in the living room, listening to the police discuss the murder in the kitchen. Sam wraps a blanket around Sookie, and he tries to get her to rest but she ignores him. Instead, her mind opens up and she hears the thoughts of the police and coroners in the kitchen; they aren’t pleasant, but neither are they condemning. Sookie instead goes outside for some fresh air, and Sam follows, concerned. He tries to comfort her, but Sookie isn’t really in the mood for him, especially after she hears his thoughts. Sookie asks for Bill, and Sam goes to get him; when Sam confronts Bill, it looks like the two are headed for a moment of testosterone fuelled manly posturing.

SamBillSam tries to tell Bill to leave Sookie alone, but Bill isn’t having it; he tells Sam that Sookie doesn’t need anyone telling her what to do, and that this isn’t the best time for Sam to “mark his territory”; a moment of sarcasm you won’t get until later. But if you already do get it, then: Haha! Bill just made fun of Sam because he pees on the floor! Sam threatens Bill, and stalks off, feeling better about himself, despite not being house-broken. Back in the kitchen, one coroner remarks that Gran fought the attacker; good for her! Bud Dearborn gives a quick example of a murder he’d seen in the past, where a woman had shot her husband in the head because he was watching TV, and apparently, she’d wanted to watch something else. Possibly understandable, if her husband was one of those guys who liked to watch I Love Lucy marathons for hours at a time.

Sheriff Bud Dearborn thinks that Vampire Bill did it, while Detective Andy Bellefleur is still sure that Jason is responsible. When Bill arrives downstairs, the two cops question him, clearly suspicious, especially Bud Dearborn. Bill explains why he was there, and that he thinks whoever is killing these women are targeting them because of their association with vampires. He also thinks Sookie was the one the killer was looking for that night, but he only found Gran. Out on the porch, Sookie realizes her brother still doesn’t know, and Sam offers to call Jason for her. Jason, passed out with the slutty divorcee, throws the phone through an apparently flimsy wooden door. Wow, I hope it was made by Motorola; otherwise known as the DeathProof cell phone.

BillSookiePorch2At Gran’s, Sookie stands on the porch as they move her dead grandmother to the van; Andy tells Sookie she should stay with a friend, but she refuses to leave home. She overhears the young coroner’s thoughts; he’s hoping Sookie didn’t recognize him when she was at Fangtasia, while Bud Dearborn is mentally chastizing her for messing around with a vampire, and thinking she might be next. Sookie brushes them off, saying that she wants to clean up, while Bud tells her to call if she discovers anything suspicious. Bill and Sam tell Sookie she shouldn’t stay at home; but Sookie refuses to leave again, mentioning that she has both Sam and Bill to keep her safe. Bill has to leave, and is both irritated obviously about leaving her alone with Sam, and… leaving her alone with Sam. Sookie sends Sam to fetch a mop after Bill leaves. Sookie on her knees in the kitchen, cleans up the pool of blood, clearly going through the motions in shocked silence.

The scene opens on the next day; we’re following a casserole that, despite what Sam says at the door, does not look great. It looks kind of raunchy actually, but as the audience, we still have to watch as it maneuvers its way to Sookie in the kitchen, probably giving everyone it passes by radiation poisoning. They deserve it anyway; most of them are standing around, gossiping and whispering about Sookie and Bill. It turns out that none other than Maxine Fortenberry has constructed this masterpiece of horror, and as she stands giving shallow consolation to Sookie, Lafayette and Tara stare at the unappetizing culinary punishment, and remark stoically about gross food and its bearers. Lafayette asks about Jason, and Tara answers him as only Tara can; Lafayette calls her a bitch before the camera falls back on Maxine telling Sookie how sorry she is, etc.

MaxineSookie hears the bloodthirsty thoughts of Maxine, before excusing herself, and being wrapped in an unexpected hug from Arlene, who tearfully exclaims that she “just can’t believe it”. After Arlene unwittingly and almost innocently insults poor Sookie, she whirls around to find Gran’s pie in the hands of Maxine Fortenberry. She shouts at Maxine, and the entire household, that, “this is Gran’s pie”; clearly very upset. The harsh and inconsiderate thoughts of everyone in the house fill Sookie’s head, and Tara quickly moves in, whisking Sookie away to her room, with Lafayette in tow. Up in Tara’s room, we’re treated with the first close-up of Gran’s pecan pie, ruining the solemn mood; clearly, the people at HBO have no idea what the hell pecan pie looks like, because this is definitely nothing like any pecan pie I have ever seen. Wait a while, they show more of it. Eek.

Lafayette and Tara try to cheer up Sookie a little bit, all sitting on her bed upstairs, while Sookie tries to come to terms with Gran being gone. Lafayette, the walking pharmaceutical company, takes out a sandwich bag of multicolored fun, and plucks out a Valium for Sookie; she hesitantly accepts it and leaves it on her nightstand as he suggests. Sookie almost tearfully relinquishes the pie, and Lafayette promises to take good care of it, on the way to returning it to the kitchen. The scene changes over to Jason, who’s just showing up at work, clearly still experiencing some of the effects of V, with no clue what’s happened; Rene and Hoyt fill him in on what’s going on. Upstairs in Sookie’s room, she and Tara discuss the lack of relatives to call, and Tara’s worry for Sookie. As Sookie speaks about Bill’s effect on her, tires squeal, and a truck door slams.

JasonSlapsSookieJason bursts into Gran’s house, startling everyone in the home, runs upstairs, bursts into Sookie’s room and slaps Sookie hard, knocking her back onto the bed, while hollering at her that it’s her fault Gran’s dead. Tara meanwhile, immediately jumps up and pulls him away from her as he’s screaming at Sookie, before eventually shouting at him that Bill was there for Sookie when he wasn’t, and pushes him out of the room. Tara comforts Sookie, who immediately reaches for and takes the Valium that Lafayette gave her earlier. Jason, outside, finds Andy Bellefleur waiting by his truck to question him. A crowd gathers on the porch, while Andy suspiciously questions him and eventually implies that Jason killed his own grandmother. Jason, immediately livid, is outraged and pushes the solidly built Andy back hard against his truck.

As Jason leaves, Andy recovers slowly sitting up on the ground; Lafayette on the porch remarks that Jason is a stupid bitch; poor Andy, poor Gran, poor everybody! So far, everyone is being pretty hateful this episode. Arlene and Maxine talk about Jason tossing big Andy against the truck, and Lafayette states that he works out, before Tara strolls down the stairs, in her signature state of permanent PMS and tosses everyone out, including Sam. In the kitchen, Tara and Lafayette try to figure out what to do with the collection of pies, and casseroles; Lafayette explains to Tara that it’s all full of nasty nosey neighbor vibes and they should just throw it out. Meanwhile, Sookie sleeps upstairs, and suddenly hands are around her throat strangling her. She struggles to cry for Bill, who immediately snaps wide awake under the floorboards of his house. Unable to move, he waits for it to grow dark; as soon as it’s night, as Tara and Lafayette clean downstairs, Bill bursts through the door, and is a blur up the stairs to Sookie’s room.

BillSookieBedAlarmed, Tara and Lafayette follow at a run; Bill shakes Sookie awake, as they catch up in her doorway. Apparently, Bill had a nightmare. Bill reassures Sookie that everything is okay, and tells her to go back to sleep; while she’s resting, he sits vigilant at her side. Back downstairs, Tara and Lafayette look out the window at Bill as he stands out in the yard like a statue, watching the house protectively, and Tara asks Lafayette if “they’re capable of loving a person”. Lafayette answers, “who knows what they’re capable of?” as a collie dog trots up to Bill and stands by his side, also watching the house. The next day, we’re at the funeral, where everyone has gathered around to mourn the loss of Gran; we can’t help but feel included as an audience, because we all felt like we knew the kind woman who was always trying her best to be cheerful and understanding.

As a woman sings a funeral hymn softly, Sookie sits stock still beside a fidgeting and uncomfortable Jason; everyone displays various forms of emotion, and Terry Bellefleur cries bitterly. Once again, I have to say, I love Terry. I just want to snuggle the poor man. The priest/pastor/whatever depending on the religion, takes the place of the singing woman once she finishes, to deliver the funeral sermon. An old man is wheeled up to the funeral seating area; Sookie automatically looks shocked and grips Tara’s hand tightly. Sookie looks at him and asks the man we now know as Uncle Bartlett, what he’s doing there. He replies that Gran was his sister, and Sookie icily tells him that he hasn’t been part of the family for a long time. Jason leans over and tells Sookie to give the guy a break, while Sookie stares, clearly affected, and experiencing something Jason doesn’t know about. The man with an unknown religious title interrupts her thoughts, and asks her to come up to the podium to speak.

SookieFuneralAs Sookie tries to speak, she is confronted with all the accusatory thoughts of many people attending, but she tunes them out, and continues, until once again their thoughts invade her mind, and she screams at them all to shut the fuck up. That just makes things worse, so she runs off, and Jason follows her. The man with the unknown religious title, asks if anyone else would like to speak, and Tara’s mom stands up; Lafayette and Tara, both are shocked, and Tara tries to keep her mother from going up. Tara’s mother, obviously somewhere between sober, drunk, and hung over, manages to say a few kind words about Gran, who took care of Tara when she couldn’t. Jason finds Sookie in the cemetery, and tries to apologize, and hug her, but Sookie backs away and refuses to let him touch her. She’s also upset that he invited the Uncle Bartlett character, who it seems has had some unspoken negative impact on Sookie’s life.

Jason tries to tell Sookie that they are all each other has, and Sookie tells him that they have nothing. Jason, clearly emotionally devastated, staggers backward, as Sookie stalks away, leaving him hurt and confused. The funeral breaks up and as the mourners leave, Maxine tries to talk to Tara’s mother; she invites her to a DGD meeting (DGD = Descendants of the Glorious Dead), but she misunderstands and asks if it’s anything like an AA meeting, which she describes as being a cult. Tara jerks her mother up by her arm, and drags her off angrily, and tells her that she had no right to speak about Gran, who Tara says, was more a mother to her than she ever was. Tara accuses her mother of hating Gran, but her mother argues that it wasn’t her that said nasty things about Gran. Her mother tries to tell her that it’s a demon inside her making her do terrible things; Tara laughs bitterly in her face, but her mother continues trying to explain. When her mother asks for help paying for an exorcism of some sort, Tara angrily walks away, as her mother cries and tells her that she needs her.

BillHeadstoneSookie walks alone through the cemetery and happens across Bill’s headstone, reading “Beloved Husband, and Brave Soldier”. Meanwhile, Jason waits as the guests depart, each offering him their consolations for his loss, beginning to experience withdrawal from V. In his truck, he almost puts the last drop on his tongue before throwing it out the window, only to get out and begin searching for it. He can’t find the scrap of gauze and begins half-crying; Jason is obviously turning into a junkie. Then we’re back to Sookie, as she stands watching Gran’s coffin lowered into the ground, Sam approaches from behind. Sam tells her he enjoyed the part of her speech where she told the whole town to shut the fuck up; along with the rest of us, and anyway, the bastards had it coming. Sam offers to walk her home, and she takes his arm. Once at home, Sam offers to spend the afternoon with her, but Sookie declines, and says instead that she would rather be alone.

On the driveway, Sam meets Tara coming up as he’s going down; he tells her that Sookie wants to be alone, and they both express to each other that they don’t want to be alone. Sookie, in the kitchen, sits at the table while soft music plays and eats her Gran’s pie while crying. Now, I know this is absolutely terrible and I will admit that I cried too; but half the time, I was staring at the pie and how utterly bizarre it was compared to every single souther pecan pie I have ever seen and eaten in my life. The crust is a weird color, and the stuff inside it is… like greyish brown; so once again, the solemn, bittersweet scene where we should all be crying, is ruined by this god awful pie. HBO should slap whoever made that pie. After a really unpleasant close up of that horrible, scene mangling pie, the camera thank god, follows Tara’s car as she and Sam drive to her tiny apartment.

TaraSamAs they approach the door, the sounds of southern romance drift through the paperthin walls: glass breaking and a screaming woman promising a man that she’ll fuckin’ kill him! Tara reassures the rattled Sam that it’s okay, she says that all the time. Sam looks around the teeny apartment, aghast at the holes, and the paint job no doubt administered by a blind pre-teen, as he sips his warm beer, he has to ask a couple times to make sure this is really where Tara lives. She explains that she moved out of Lafayette’s house because he has a webcam in the bathroom; kinky, but obviously not her thing. Sam tries to offer her a place to stay, but her attitude throws him off, and he decides to follow his balls, which Tara has just thrown out the door. She manages to convince him to stay though, and they kiss and make-up; which mostly likely leads to other forms of making up.

After finishing someone’s idea of a pecan pie, Sookie goes upstairs to her room, somberly changes out of her funeral clothes and into a white night gown before she leaves the house, and runs down the road and through the cemetery towards Bill’s place. Bill, with his sixth sense of her emotions, rushes out to find her, and the two smash together, all lips, tongue and groping hands, before Bill picks her up and carries her inside to do the dastardly deed. Meanwhile, Tara plops back down, after a fairly loud er… Rebel Yell, and Sam suggests that they do “it” again. Despite the allure of sixth grade sexual terminology, Tara becomes sidetracked with something she hears in the next room: the woman telling her man that she needs him, and that he’s all she’s got. Remembering her mother, Tara jumps up and leaves Sam, properly flabbergasted and confused. Jason and the slutty divorcee are at it again as well; staring at his feet I guess, she tells him that she loves him repeatedly, while Jason cries behind her.

TaraMotherBill and Sookie sit by the fireplace, and surrounded by candles and all things romantic, they undress. Thank god they’re not using the already violated furniture. We’re treated to some tasteful shots of Sookie’s breasts, and barely a peek of nipple, before Sookie gets Bill all worked up enough for his fangs to extend. But Sookie kisses him anyway, as if to say, “That’s okay, I don’t mind the idea of getting my tongue pierced in such an unsanitary way”. The scene changes to Tara, who enters her mother’s house, and finds her on the couch half-drunk and expecting her. Tara goes to her mother, and they lie down together on the couch, comforting each other simultaneously, for different reasons. Meanwhile, Bill and Sookie are having sex, and we’re treated to even more of Sookie’s boobs, before she invites Bill to bite her. His teeth go in and he starts slurping, before the episode ends. Phew.

By annimi

Ashley writes for Vampires.com, Werewolves.com, and other sites in the Darksites Network. She's involved in several seedy and disreputable activities, smokes too much, and spends her late nights procrastinating for work on her first novel.

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