True Blood Recapped: Vampire in a Dress

Episode 11: Frenzy

There's an old expression from the South that goes, "Never interrupt a Vampire Queen while she's same-sex feasting on a young virgin's crotch." Luckily, Sophie-Ann the Vampire Queen of Louisiana seems to have a loosey-goosey attitude about such crusty old proprieties, and so she welcomes Bill with open fangs when he stumbles upon Her Royal Highness snacking sloppily upon a handmaiden. Less hospitable was Hoyt towards Jessica just moments after she leaped upon his entranced, Wii-addicted mom; it was a moment of ugly female territorialism that illustrated all too well how nothing -- not even the promise of his very first V-job ("Watch the teeth!") -- gets between a good ol' boy and his momma.

After questioning the size of Bill's fanghood for passing on her offer of a quart of 100% organic Latvian poolboy plasma, Bill launches right into the pressing matter at hand: exterminating Maryann. Sadly, it's not as easy as mounting a striped circus tent above Bon Temps and fumigating for Maenad infestation, as Sophie-Ann explains that Maryann is one of an unkillable species of cannibalistic extreme party-planners, extremely persuasive over the human race, as though they'd studied The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Mythological She-Demons for centuries. She insists Bill stays the night.

A de-black-eyed Tara frantically pleads with Sookie, Lafayette, and her mother to rescue Eggs, whom she describes as a "strong, beautiful man who loves me." Lafayette reminds her that it was Eggs who abused her, not Maryann, then aims a shotgun at her face and tells her to "sit down and shut the fuck up" before handcuffing her to a chair. He'll sooner blow her head clear off before allowing another man to abuse his cousin. Atta drag queen, Laffy!

Jason, Detective Andy and Sam are holed up in what's left of Merlotte's, where Jason delights in his discovery that Sam is a shape-shifter -- something that will probably come in handy down the line, should he need a Chocolate Lab to pick horny housewives up with at the Bon Temps dog run. After some discussion, the three men fail to arrive at any realistic plan to rid their town of the Black-Eyed Horny Plague. Having just spent several weeks in supernatural special-ops training, Jason feels the best offense is a good offense. He references a lesser-known military strategy text called The Oral History of the Zombie War -- a sort of The Art of War for the coming Zombie Reckoning that's used as a reference source in several MBA programs -- then wisely observes, "Sometimes you need to destroy something to save it." Hearing a rustling outside, they find two frightened children: Arlene's kids, who've been left to fend for themselves since their mom chose to devote most of her free time to bouncing on Short-Order Cook Terry on the Merlotte's grill. The kids ask if maybe a vampire could help with their problems, giving Sam an idea. (Subtext: Sometimes the simple wisdom of a child can cut through the fog of adulthood. Also: Vampires can do anything!)

Sookie and Lafayette bond over their shared sucking of Eric('s blood), and she asks if he has highly pleasurable sexual dreams about him the way that she does -- and indeed he does. This bothers him, because, as he tells her, "I hates that motherfuckah more than you do now." Tara's mom comes out and asks one of them to sit watch over Tara, and after getting hold of the gun, she turns it on them and insists Tara be unlocked. Then Lafayette hallucinates, seeing Eric in Tara's mother's dress, adding another impressive credit to Alexander Skarsgård's cross-dressing resume. (He looks nothing like Rachel Griffiths this time, however.) Liberated Tara sets out in search of her imperiled boyfriend.

Andy and Jason raid the TP'd police station, and Jason isn't above taking advantage of a quickie hummer from black-eyed receptionist while his unlikely partner raids the weapons room. This is setting itself up nicely to turn into a premium cable version of The House of the Dead. (Which reminds me -- when is the True Blood video game coming out?) Then Andy finds himself roped into doing a do-see-do with Larry from Newhart, who has no pants on. It's a tender moment. Sookie, meanwhile, turns the table on Tara's mom, and escapes with Lafayette, just as Sam sneaks up on disco-haired Fangtasia waitress, and tells her he needs to talk to Eric.

Tara finds Eggs, who's black-eyed and smiling dopily, in Sookie's kitchen. Maryann, the big bad scary monster of Season Two (she's really not that scary), emerges, and reveals it was Tara herself who summoned her to Bon Temps after her bogus exorcism with the ill-fated Miss Jeanette towards the end of Season One. She tries her little vibrating trick to turn Tara back, but that doesn't work, so she clocks her in the jaw, which apparently is a foolproof Maenad fallback plan. The townsfolk arrive, thrilled that they smote Sam and received Jason the Gas-Masked God -- which understandably earns her ire, causing her to shout, "You FUCKING morons!" then conjure painful dolphin sounds.

Back at the police station, Jason gets his wits about him and refuses to take advantage of the receptionist, which crosses a line he long ago drew somewhere around "hooking up with a passed-out drunk girl." A shooting leaves you momentarily thinking Andy is killed, but he had the good sense to put on a Kevlar vest -- though he has no vest for Jason. (Or is he just saying that? More on his resentment issues later.)

Back at Hoyt's mom's house, she busily puts together a special white-trash delicacy for Maryann called Egg-Noodle Dump Casserole. When the curiously black-eye immune Hoyt objects to letting her return to the (ew) town orgy, she turns meaner than ever on him, revealing that his father was a "closet homosexual" (there was just a little too much pizazz in his two-step, it turns out) who had in fact killed himself, and was not shot by an intruder as Hoyt had always believed. It was a charade she'd kept up for years to cash in on his life insurance policy. This destroys sweet Hoyt.

Terry and Arlene ambush Lafayette and Sookie while they discuss their plans to shoot Maryann. Lafayette calls Terry off by offering him some high-grade Ecstasy. Eric, meanwhile, is his typical cocky and uncooperative self when Sam asks him for help. Eric wants Sookie in exchange for any favors. He then suggests he might know someone who could help before making suggestive advances at Arlene's kids, then shooting into the air like a rocket. (Vampires can fly? Like not just hop from tree to tree, but fly? Without turning into bats? Hunh.)

Back at Sophie-Ann's solarium and pool room, hunky Bill suns himself in board shorts, trying to humor Her Royal Majesty into helping him defeat Maryann. She plucks a creamy-skinned Euro boy from a line of modelly-types in-waiting, and suddenly the show takes on a very The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency feel to it as she insists Bill feed from him. He obliges.

Alan Ball Gay-O-Meter: High, for Bill in a bathing suit feeding on a pretty boy's neck.

In the single best moment of the episode, Lafayette turns his shotgun on Maryann, who holds her palm out, ricocheting the bullet into Carl the Towel-Obsessed Houseboy's head, and instantly killing him. Maryann seems utterly unfazed, but we'll see how flippant she is a few weeks, when she dabs herself in non-absorbent, polybend linens and longs for the days of his exacting terry cloth standards.

Over a round of Yahtzee, Sophie-Ann reveals that Maryann won't leave until she's convinced her boss Dionysus has arrived and has literally devoured her. A lengthy expository speech reveals something about a perfect vessel rendering her fallible -- anything that travels "two worlds" and has a "beating heart." (I think Paula Abdul is available.) With the information in hand, Bill finally can leave, and he confronts Eric, who warns him never to come near his girlfriend again, or he'll tell Sophie-Ann all about his little V-juice side-business.

As Andy and Jason carb-up for battle, Jason wonders out loud whether Sam could conceivably eat his own chicken eggs. It's actually a good question, and similar to a dream I had last week in which Sam sold Merlotte's and lived out the remainder of his years on a self-sufficient dairy farm, cow-population: 1. (Mmm...Me Cheese.) Where were we? Right. Andy lashes out at Jason for having everything "so easy," and Jason lays out a compelling case for why being a pretty boy football star who can bag any chick he wants isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Speaking of cracked-up things: Sookie is tackled by coroner Mike Spencer outside her home, who pledges to de-Sookie her. She overtakes him with a frying pan, then enters her home, which has all but converted into a House of Cross-Dressing Maenad Horrors. In her bedroom, she discovers Tara and Eggs smashing up Grams's collectibles, then feathering a nest for a giant egg that sits in her bed. Either Maryann just gave birth to a baby chicken-footed she-beast, or Hoyt's mom's been cooking up ostrich omelettes again! Sookie then feels a hand on her shoulder, and turns around to discover a black-eyed Lafayette -- eliciting a blood-curdling Sookie Scream!

End! Of! Episode!