Review

Sookie has been captured by Russell Edgington which drives Bill wild. He kills one of Russell's henchman and attacks Russell himself, of course this doesn't go as well as Bill hoped for. Russell, now having Sookie in his power, decides Bill should be destroyed by Lorena, Bill's maker. Eric is of course loitering around the edges, showing support for Russell, while no doubt planning his revenge on the vampire due to Russell having had Eric's human family killed. In a surprise move Russell makes an offer to Sophie-Anne that she can't refused.

Back in Bon Temps love is in the air, with Lafayette and Jesus making doe eyes at each other. Unfortunately Jesus isn't impressed with Lafayette's career as a drug dealer. Jason is entranced by Crystal, but there's something strange going on there. Oh and Sam finally deduces just what Joe Lee wants with Tommy, dog fighting!

Guess when you decide you need to bring your big guns into play you get series creator Alan Ball back from the ball pen to write an episode. While last week's episode seemed to be a bridging episode this week's instalment rocked along, and started hinting at various sub plot directions that might just turned our assumptions on their heads. Bill is not what he appears, neither is Sookie, and one wonders just how far reaching Russell Edgington's plans might be. There's also a hint that Lorena's creator might be a major antagonist in a future season. Ball nails things and drops the episode into favourite thus far of the season category.

I guess Ball was slightly disappointed in the drop off of gore during the season thus far and went hell for leather on that side of the equation. Tara, of all people, going zombie and ripping into someone's throat, Bill staking a vampire larky, and Lorena pulling the torture tools out and cutting Bill up with emo abandon. Gorehounds should be at least sniffing around this episode and primed for some major blood letting during the second half of the season.

Alan Ball gets things back on track and slips it nicely into top gear.

Russell Edgington, who up to this stage has been a sort of vampire pantomime villain, gives a glimpse of his end game. And I have to say it joins the list of ten best megalomaniac schemes ever devised. We're talking the unification of all supernatural characters in order to take the world from the humans, of course that nearly always works out in horror. Which also explains Russell's interest in the white lightening throwing, mind reading, Sookie, who has him intrigued. No one seems to know what Sookie is, but the general agreement is that she is not human. Russell also lets the cat out of the bag in terms of Bill keeping a file on Sookie and her family, with particular interest being reserved for Sookie and a grandfather who also shared the mind reading ability. Which pretty much meant that Russell's proposal to Sophie-Annie wasn't as shocking as Alan Ball might have expected, strangely it wasn't a plot shattering development, we already had a few shocks previously in the episode.

Director Michael Lehmann keeps it tight and totally on focus throughout the episode, while ensuring the atmosphere and tension remains strong. Particularly noteworthy was Lehmann's work with the scenes involving Jason and Crystal. There was a surreal quality there and a solid demonstration of how to frame everything in typical romance fashion. Excellent work, and something so totally different to the normal True Blood filming techniques that you are left wondering what other surprises might be in store for us through the second half of the season.

Of course the comedy elements aren't left out of the episode, it wouldn't be True Blood without them, but surprisingly it isn't Jason at the forefront. Jessica, chilling in her new role as Merlotte's Waitress gets her own back on Arlene by glamouring the customers into not leaving tips for Arlene. Naturally Jessica has a change of heart when one old biddy stays on well after closing time, both Jessica and Arlene are quite happy with the results.

While I'm not about to give away any spoilers to the episode, there's a lot going down that moves various story lines along. Eric is clearly insinuating himself into Russell's world with an aim of extracting revenge, Tara surprises with an attempted escape for both herself and Sookie, and Russell is of course expanding his diabolical plans. There's a lot to cover this season and at the half way mark, just like in previous seasons, the intricate nature of the interlocking stories are going need some movement at the station. On the bright side the long expected showdown between Sam and Joe Lee looks to be about an episode, or two at the most, away.

Excellent episode that had me glued to the screen, and that's without the need of T&A, there's at least a couple of plot elements that are coming to the boil. I guess the question remains, and whether or not this gets resolved this season is still up in the air, exactly what is Sookie? If you haven't checked out True Blood yet then this may not be the episode to do so as it takes it for granted you have been following events in the current and possibly previous seasons. If you are a fan of the show, then bite on in, Alan Ball delivers some breakneck plotting.