True Blood – Recap & Review – Beyond Here Lies Nothin’

photo: hbo

True Blood
Beyond Here Lies Nothin’

Original Air Date: 13 Sept 2009

Andi – Associate Staff Writer
andi@thetwocents.com

The season finale has come. Some of us are sad and some of us are relieved and some of us are a little of both. That’s okay because this week Maryann gives a whole new meaning to the term “animal husbandry,” learns that beyond here lies nothing and dies a bloody, painful death. Finally. Sookie spends most of the episode yelling and trying not to get killed, while occasionally doing something awesome. Eric is suspiciously sparse, Sam is a hero, Bill is a master strategist, and Lafayette is still alive. I repeat, Lafayette is still alive.

Oh, hail the conquering heroes! Bring me back her head! The wicked witch is dead! For queen and country! Pick your phrase, I don’t care, just everyone grab a kazoo and a noisemaker and ring in the Maryann free era. Woohoo!

I am getting quite ahead of myself, aren’t I? Yes. Yes, I am. But before I get into the meat of this recap, I would like to say that I may be a little hard on Alan Ball and I may be a little rigid in my interpretations of some of these characters, but it’s because I have high respect for both Alan and the cast of characters. I expect too much, I think. I’m not sorry, because if you’re not expecting great things from your favorite shows, you’re doing something wrong. Anyway, on with the show…

Picking up where we left off, naturally, Sookie screams her little head off and Lafayette sends Tara and Eggs and the egg off to convene with Maryann. Then he and Sookie have a little beauty party and he gives her a pretty beaded white dress.

Downstairs, Sookie is thrust into every single woman’s nightmare – an episode of Bridezillas! “You’re gonna be my maid of honor,” Maryann tells her, clad in Gran’s wedding dress and wearing a garden on her head. Understandably confused, Sookie is making a complete WTF face in the foreground and Nelsen Ellis is doing this awesome fingertip clap behind her that just makes the entire scene. Ha!

Back from the credits. The other attendants (Tara, Arlene and Jane Bodehouse) are fluttering around Maryann, fixing her hair and whatnot, while Lafayette stands around in the background in his own matching bridesmaid dress, fiddling with his veil. HA! Sookie, however, does not see the same humor in all of this that I do. Maryann gets all vaclempt and twitterpated and explains to Sookie that she’s not 100% grade A human or else she’d be putty in Maryann’s hands.

Hoyt, Meanwhile, is napping while his mama dances and sings around the living room. She makes a break for it, but he, awesomely, has set up a booby-trap, so she doesn’t get anywhere.

Back over at the bridal suite from hell, Maryann prods Sookie about her heritage and asks if she ever felt like there was someone watching over her – and, no, the Christian God doesn’t count. During this scene they jump cut us back to season one when that chain was wrapping itself around Mack Rattray’s throat, which is awesome. Maryann goes on to blabber that Sookie doesn’t have the same energy that humans do, though that’s hardly unique to Bon Temps. Out of nowhere, Sookie suddenly realizes that she’s smart and telepathic and goes, “You’re marrying Sam?!” Not exactly, you see. Sam is just the vessel for her godly husband and Sookie is just the bait for Sam Merlotte.

Over at the Queen’s, Eric is sucking hard at Yahtzee and Sophie-Anne is calling Yahtzee the great equalizer and being ridiculous. Eric is not a fan of Yahtzee, by the way. Speaking of not being a fan – Sophie-Anne is not a fan of Bill knowing about Eric selling V because, little does he realize, Eric is actually doing it on behalf of little Miss Royalty herself. She climbs all over all nineteen feet of Eric, molests him, gets molested in return, and then threatens him a bit until Eric says that he “will take care of Bill Compton. Personally.” They talk of Sookie’s un-humanness and she advises Eric not to drink from Sookie, lest he fall in love with her too.

Outside Sookie’s den of weddings and orgies, Jason and Andy are preparing to put an end to all this crap. Jason, because he’s fabulous, is getting pumped up for battle by misquoting his favorite movies – “Say hello, my little friend,” and, “I love the smell of nail polish in the morning!” Oh Jason. They storm the yard and are very quickly made minions of the maenad just like everyone else, which makes very little sense unless he’s not Sookie’s full brother.

Bill and Sam are over at the bar, plotting a way to save us from another season of this damn plotline, which I am incredibly grateful for.

Cut back to Sookie’s. She’s tied up now, which is what people have to do to me to get me to play those stupid games at bridal showers, too. The bridesmaids are passing around the egg and a chalice of blood, taking turns drinking and then licking the egg. I think I’ll stick with the toilet paper wedding dress game, thanks. Sookie, hysterical and scarred for life, asks the million-dollar question, “Okay, what is with the egg? Did you lay it?” Hee!
Nope! Turns out that it’s an ostrich egg and it’s really only there for symbolism, like all things relating to religion. Jason and Andy rush in to tell them that the vessel has come and everyone squeals like fangirls and runs around in circles, all absurd.

Outside, Bill hands Sam over to the mob in exchange for Sookie, which only pisses her off. Sam gets tied to a big makeshift Hannibal Lecter stretcher. Bill hangs on to Sookie so she doesn’t run into the fray. Maryann speechifies about the God Who Comes Except For When He Totally Doesn’t. And then they stab Sam Merlotte right in the center of his ribcage! I panicked for a second, I admit. Sookie freaks and runs to him. He tells her to destroy everything, so she does. She smashes the egg and uses her super duper newfound powers to knock over the Domo Meat Statue Matchstick Man. I know it may come as a shock, but this seriously pisses Maryann off. She goes all bucknutty and chases Sookie through the woods until suddenly a huge brahma bull stomps up. Then follows the most hilarious scene on TV since that time Supernatural featured a slow dancing alien and a disco ball. Maryann steps into frame from the left and the bull matches her movement from the right. They’re in profile as they slowly step towards each other, all big cow eyes. (Yes, I went there!) She talks of love and godliness and then the bull rears back and skewers her on one of its huge-ass horns. She’s all, “OIC! I can sakrafice and be yourz forevah!” But then the bull turns back into Sam and she suddenly realizes that her God did not come. AND THEN SHE DIES! AWESOME! It’s about damn time!

Everyone snaps out of their collective trances and Sam explains that Bill gave him a bunch of blood to heal him right up, which was the plan all along. Yay, team!

Over at Hoyt’s, Maxine admits that all of the horrible things she said about Hoyt’s daddy were true, which sends him into a giant temper about how she totally ruined his entire life by lying to him and he is officially over it. He wishes he’d let Jessica finish her off, which is haaarsh!

The next day, everyone is dealing with their memory loss as best they can – Jane Bodehouse is making shit up, Andy is yelling the truth, Eggs is freaking out about the blood on his hands and blah, blah, blah because the next twenty minutes play like the last four hours of the final Lord of the Rings movie – excruciatingly slowly.

So, in the interest of my sanity, I’ll give you the facts on the ground: Sam takes a few days off to go find his adoptive parents and ask them who his birth parents are; Andy cannot believe the shit people are saying; Arlene feeds her kids ice cream as an apology for spending the last three or four days wacked out of her mind and doing nasty orgy stuff with Uncle Terry; Eggs gets some of his memories back and then looses his cool and goes twelve kinds of crazy with a buck knife in Andy’s face; Sookie gets a dress in a box from Bill; Jason is all kinds of zen until he finds Eggs with a knife in Andy’s face and shoots Eggs right in his fool skull; Andy tells Jason to scram and pretends he did it in self-defense. Sigh. It sounds much more interesting than it was, which sucks because that stuff with Sam was really great.

That night, Jessica and Bill share a really cute little moment as they both head out for the eveing. Bill is sweet and tells her she looks nice and that Hoyt would be an idiot not to forgive her. Bill is off to dinner with Sookie and Jessica is off to Hoyt’s. What? Oh, right, no she isn’t. Jessica finds her way to a truck stop and proceeds to bite the hell out of some random truck driver. Huh. That’s too bad, I was really hoping those crazy kids would work it out.

Bill takes Sookie to a French restaurant (He rented out the entire place for the night!) and they dance adorably for a while. After she finishes her meal, he proposes (the ring is gorgeous, btw) and she cries and can’t quite bring herself to say yes. It’s a little miserable and if I weren’t headdesking all over the coffee table, I’d have been sad for them. Anyway, she takes a moment to hit the ladies room and splash a little water on her face and get her shit together. She decides to say yes because the ring looks so nice on her finger or something, but out in the dining room, Bill is being vampnapped, so when she finally emerges from the restroom, he’s nowhere to be found. Dunn! Kinda.

My biggest gripe this season has always been the over saturation of the maenad plot. That being said, I’ve had others – mostly character issues or Paquin issues – but I would like to recognize that this show is loaded with talent, both on the screen and behind it. I think the best episodes are the ones when the show mocks itself and I do get all pissy when they do something to a character I happen to like, but I wouldn’t do that if I didn’t want such greatness from this show.

See you all next summer and drop me a few sense. (Haha, get it? Because of the… oh, nevermind.)