Tuesday, August 3, 2010

True Blood – “Hitting the Ground”

Review by Paul Steven Brown

‘True Blood’
Season 3 – Episode 7
“Hitting the Ground”

Wow. That ending certainly took the title of the episode literally. While vampire politics took a backseat to the perils of Sookie Stackhouse this week, their implications are certain to have a dramatic impact on this series moving forward. Edgington’s extremely bold power play at the end could result in a civil war amongst the vampire establishment. Given his age and power, plus an army of daywalking werewolves at his disposal, this could get nice and messy.

The other big highlight of the week was the further exploration of Sookie’s true nature. Other than the telepathy and the light blasting from her hands at moments of panic, she has no natural blood type. Jason has one of the AB varieties, which may point to the siblings possibly not being of blood relation. Things get really interesting while Sookie is in a coma.

In her dream, Sookie finds herself in a secluded wooded area where people in white frolic by a spring. Her guide is a woman named Claudine who also appears to be telepathic. Sookie drinks the glowing water from the fountain and remarks at its taste and refreshing quality (I’m sure it’s better than RC Cola). This imagery does continue to lend credence to the faerie folk theory as the origin of Ms. Stackhouse.

When the glen is overcome by a shadow, Claudine asks Sookie to come with the rest of them into the pond and to stay. Of course Sookie wants to get back to Bill, but is warned by Claudine not let him take her light. Her reaction to seeing her fiancé runs counter to this though.

Has Bill’s interest in Sookie truly been sincere? Was he lying about the all the research notes that Franklin found in this house. We’ve learned an awful lot about her blood in this episode. When Bill freaked out and almost drained Sookie dry, he developed some temporary resistance to the sun. However, even he was shocked by that.

Also, what’s Sookie’s connection to Queen Sophie-Anne? One of the queen’s pet humans is her cousin, Hadley, who gives up the dirt to Eric (though not to us) when he begins to drain her. Whatever it is, it’s interesting enough to get a surprised reaction from the Viking. By the way, Edgington had Sophie-Anne placed in a large golden birdcage. Too obvious of a metaphor, don’t you think?

Sam finally catches up with the Mickens at the dog fight just in time to save Tommy from a bout that was going very poorly for his younger brother. Tommy finally decides to leave Joe Lee and Melinda and I really hope this is the last time that we have to see the boy make this decision. It could really old if he went back and forth and continued to feel obliged to his parents despite their poor treatment of him. I’m actually surprised that we haven’t seen Melinda shift yet in defense of her actions. Maybe her own dog fighting injuries make it hard for her to do so.

I still could care less about Jason and his infatuation with Crystal. However, his conversation with Hoyt was rather funny. Speaking of Hoyt, his potentially new girlfriend, Summer, is quite funny. She’s would really get on my nerves if it were not for the fact that she’s played by Melissa Rauch who is so damn cute and has always made me laugh on VH1’s ‘Best Week Ever’.

Overall, this was one of the best episodes of ‘True Blood’ in an already strong season. We got some big moves played by the King of Mississippi and more insight into Sookie’s origin. Also, couple of vampires were splattered, which points to a Franklin, who wasn’t reduced to goo, coming back to haunt Tara. And any episode that sees the demise of Lorena is a win in my book.

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