Talk us through itDawn, another waitress at Sam's bar with a thing for vamps, has been strangled and Jason Stackhouse is once again the prime candidate for the murder. Jason just can't pull a trick, while in the back of a police cruiser he remembers the test tube of "v juice" he brought off Lafayette and with limited options downs the whole thing. Remembering the instruction here was to only take one or two drops, Jason could face a stiff penalty for his rash decision here. Meanwhile Sookie's Gran has urged her to listen in on people's thoughts in order to find some information to clear Jason of the murders of local hotties. All roads point to a Shreveport vampire bar called Fangtasia, so Sookie get's Vampire Bill to take her there for a fact finding mission. Sookie maybe learns a bit more than she bargained for about vampires and is introduced to vampire Elder Eric. The trials and tribulations of Jason continue with Tara getting him out of custody, which is just as well as the "v juice" is kicking in big time. Jason has wood, and it's not going down, regardless of getting a helping hand. One of the more shocking hospital scenes ensues as Tara forces Jason to seek medical help.
Review"When my grandpa was alive, he had gout. And he said just the weight of a sheet on his big toe was too much to bear. So help me God, that's exactly what this feels like." - Jason StackhouseIn "Escape from Dragon House" writer Brian Buckner expands on the vampire myth giving us more of an idea of their world, hits the comedy elements through Jason's condition, and touches bases with the underlying theme that has been missing from the past couple of episodes. We also learn there's more to Jason than we first thought, and maybe get an insight into why Tara has a soft spot for him. Interestingly, from a plot arc point of view and taking into account episode three, Tara's mother has been a long term alcoholic which may or may not come home to roost later in the season. Also intriguingly we are left wonder exactly what Sam Merlotte is, a touch of the lycan perhaps? Finally we get to Fangtasia, the vampire bar that has been mentioned in previous episodes. Sookie initially thinks it looks like a Disneyland theme ride but Bill assures her that it gets a lot more authentic as the night wears on. To be honest I was neither here nor there with the bar thing, actually you are going to be hard pressed to top the vampire rave in Blade featuring the awesome blood shower. Fangtasia struck me as pretty ill conceived with the resident vamps appearing more as poseurs than top of the food chain predators. Overlooking the whole shenanigans is Eric "the oldest thing in the place", a vampire elder that Bill has to defer to. We're talking Euro Vamp circa David Bowie The Hunger, am kind of hoping we get to see more of Eric as events unfold. Sookie finds nothing of importance about Dawn and Maudette at the bar but learns that vampires still feed off humans, many of the victims willing accomplices, and that Bill has some powers of his own. We almost get a first kiss, though considering the horizontal action going down around Sookie and Bill, it's not a convincingly deep moment. Guess that moment is for the ladies, enjoy. Jason provides the comic relief for the episode via ingesting a test tube fill of "v juice". On the bright side of the syringe he's not going to be missing a date Friday night, on the dull side, well, the syringe is waiting to help take down the swelling. The whole concept is likely to weed out True Blood regulars from part timers as Director Michael Lehmann is making no bones about Jason getting the mother of all stiffies, polishing it off a few times in front of porn, and finally having to seek medical help at the urging of Tara. Yes folks we are fairly explicit here, though we don't get to actually see the offending member, described as looking like an egg plant. Actually True Blood is keeping well away from full frontal nudity, but pretty much anything else goes. While there's no major plot advances, the episode helps flesh out the Vampire world and puts some depth into the Sam Merlotte character. Slight sidetrack here before we continue kids, sorry inquiring minds need to know. For those asking yes there's a slight hint of homoerotic going down, but we are not talking full on homo on the range over here. Guess Alan Ball is trying to cater for all life style choices, while not overly dwelling on things. Through the course of the first episode the whole vampire rights thing was painted with a broad 1960s U.S civil rights movement brush, in fact it had the PC contingent making lemonade in their pants over things. The theme has sort of disappeared through episodes two and three, but raises it's hand in class again in Escape from Dragon House. Tara points out to the local law that while the whole vampire thing is redneck flavor of the month in Bon Temps, mixed relationships are still going to get some hard looks and are not condoned. This is further reinforced later in the epsiode when Sookie overhears the thoughts of a local bogan in Sam's bar that explicitly link black rights to vampire rights, and not in a good "the whole world should hold hands" way. I'm actually quite pleased that True Blood is keeping the themes relevant to the various plots going down. 
Sam Merlotte gets a well need boast in the episode, previously the character had simply been a shoulder to cry on for his self obsessed female staff members, who by the way are being whittled down at an alarming rate. Arlene, yet another waitress in Bon Temps most staffed business establishment, asks Sam to walk her to her car, Sam of course obliges put surreptitiously slips a bar of latex gloves into his pocket. I was thinking wtf, Sam is our resident Dexter and Arlene is just about to find out the hard way! Luckily for the endangered Arlene, Sam needs the gloves to break into the house where Dawn was murdered. In quite possibly the most bizarre scene to date in the entire series thus far Sam need proceeds to sniff Dawn's bed sheets and then rolls around in them. Sam's weirdness factor just ramped up to maximum and I was surprised he wasn't checking the washing basket for used knickers. Actually my wife managed to walk in right when this scene was unfolding and wanted to know exactly what I was watching and why the dude on the screen was dry humping an empty bed. Sorry no answers, there's something freaky weird about Sam, I'm picking werewolf, which I guess will be explained somewhere down the track. There were a couple of sequences in Escape from Dragon House that had me wondering if Director Michael Lehmann wasn't trying a tad too much for his own good. During Sam's bedsheet love in Lynyrd Skynrd's "That Smell" is blasting away in a moment that would have brought a tear to Rob "Love Hurts" Zombie's eye. And during the initial police investigation of Dawn's murder a character remakes that she wants to be a fly on the wall in the house, cut to a fly landing on the body's lips. Lehmann that stuff is groan inducing rather than artistic, if you want to stay in our good books then cut it out in the future. Sam Trammell (Sam Merlotte) has had limited exposure in previous episodes with a pretty much one dimensional character to play. He has a thing for Sookie and runs a roadhouse. With this episode the character is starting to be fleshed out and Trammell is up to the task in an increasingly complex role.
Summary ExecutionI had a lot of fun with Escape from Dragon House but was left with the impression that it was pretty much a bridging episode between major plot developments. There's a few characters being fleshed out, some plot arcs have been realized, and the mystery of who is killing off the local bar waitresses, run Sookie run, is getting deeper. The episode is pretty much a regular TV spot with some highlights to raise it above the swamp of indifference that is current television fare.I decided to have a hunt around the web to see if any enterprising soul had a website up and running for the show. Besides the normal Television listing sites, that are quite frankly a waste of space for anyone wanting an in-depth look at a series, there wasn't much besides the places wanting you to purchase the DVDs. There's an opportunity there for anyone interested to secure fame and fortune via running a fan site. Guess I wouldn't recommend Escape from Dragon House as a standalone viewing option to anyone, you need to know what's gone down previously to get some of the plot pointers, for regular viewers it's another super episode in a franchise that's pulling itself out of the paranormal romance ghetto. Interestingly the Sookie Stackhouse books were written well before Stephenie Meyer's ill conceived money machine Twilight, yet there's a whole bunch of similarities. Wonder if Meyer had not only seen Buffy but had also being doing a spot of reading prior to writing her epic? Pure conjecture folks, dive on into True Blood where vampires are predators and there's a lot more happening than paranormal romance.
ScaryMinds Rates this episode as ... Things are heating up in more ways than one.
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