Review

Joe Lee may have thought he subdued Tommy but he's in for one hell of a surprise as the young dude goes psycho on Joe Lee's arse. Unfortunately Melinda is killed alongside Joe Lee in the ensuing fight. Tommy rushes to Sam for help as he is pretty much gonzo in the coping stakes. Jason is recovering from his injuries thanks to Jess' blood, but further strains are showing in her relationship to Hoyt. Pam is suffering from a decaying facial flash issue and seeks help from Bill to take down Marnie. Bill has his hands tied by the Authority but does grab Marnie in a planned raid on the Moon Goddess emporium. Speaking of Marnie, she is experiencing further visions of her protecting spirit's trials in 18th Century Europe, with Catholic clergy exposed as vampires.

In the fall out from the moonlight spell casting Jesus and Lafayette are heading south of the border to seek help from Jesus' grandfather, a powerful magician, and Tara is planning to up camp and move back to New Orleans, though there might be a spanner in the works there. Is Sookie falling for the new docile Eric? - she visits the Moon Goddess to see what intel she can glean but is warned by her Grandmother's spirit to get away from the apparently uber dangerous Marnie! And to round out Arlene and Terry seek religious help to battle the spirit of Rene, who they believe is targeting their baby. Unfortunately the local exorcists turn out to be Reverend Daniels and Lettie May, for sure the devil done run out there, with that duo about as much use as Ed and Lorraine Warren. Confused, hell we aren't at the half season mark yet.

General warning in this episode in terms of gore and ideas. Face decaying and people, albeit dead, being feed to gators in the swamp. Some people are not going to like the idea of incest laws being repelled in the majority of the States of the U.S, decadence and the fall of the Roman empire come to mind, but I guess the same people are going to applauding the broadside given to the Catholic religon in this episode. If they really wanted to show some balls in True Bloood they should also take aim at the Jewish and Islamic faiths, like South Park are wont to do.

While there's a lot to talk about with this episode I want to focus primarily here at the start of the review with Eric's almost epiphany of his place in the world. A dream, who would have thought vampers could walk the dream world - something for the Producers to keep up their sleeves for a latter episode, shows Eric doing a sparkling vampire thing and looking in on a sleeping Sookie. Surprisingly Godric makes an appearance and demands Eric feeds on Sookie so they can both go chase butterflies or something in the daylight. Eric resists but as Godric is his maker he is overpowered and they fall on Sookie like ravenous wolves. Eric wakes from his nightmare and in the real world looks in on Sookie, wonderful use of fangs by the way to show heightened arousement with Eric quickly covering them up as if he was caught with his pants down. Sookie wakes is naturally distressed to find Eric hovering around like some sort of demented supernatural sociopath, but relents when Eric explains he had a bad dream. The subsequent scene of Eric seeking almost a mother's comfort from Sookie is telling, the vamp wonders if dream Godric was right and he is simply evil with no hope of redemption. It's a stunning moment of television for fans of the franchise, and surprisingly not a hint of emo fracking pretty boy involved. This is how you do drama and emotion, both Anna Paquin (Sookie) and Alexander Skarsgård (Eric) nail the scene, in one single moment True Blood shows how it's head and shoulders above the falseality of five Twilight movies. Eric is still very much a predator but he has an innocence that outweighs his previous acts of carnage. Clearly Sookie is smitten with the new tender Eric; we wonder what the hell is going to happen with Eric gets his fang back on, though Bill might just have something to say about the whole situation.

There's simply too much nuance in this episode to cover successfully, damn having word limits!

While the episode focuses on Sookier and Eric other sub plots and arcs are of course moving along at their own speed, no such thing as a stationary plot idea in this franchise. I'm just in awe of how ideas can be thrown onto heat up and then become fully fledged plot devices as a season of True Blood moves along, pretty much no single idea is thrown onto the table and then is left to be swept onto the floor and forgotten.

I'm particularly looking forward to Arlene and Terry fighting supernatural forces, the matchbook catching fire while they are sleeping was a cool development that I can't wait to see worked through next week. Equally the whole Hoyt, Jess, and Jason thing is developing as a possible conflict, Jess feeding Jason her blood is going to have a cost, wondering who is going to be paying that one. And of course Jesus and Lafayette down south, and if you didn't catch the inference of Tommy killing his mother then you didn't pay attention when Luna was explaining the whole skin walker thing. Surprisingly this doesn't even go near Marnie being now imprisoned in Bill's dungeon and having visions. There's simply so much going down that it's hard to catch your breath with this show.

What was outstanding about this episode was the ability of Director Daniel Minahan to entwine all the differing plot elements without convoluting the plot and getting bogged down in detail. Things flow with all balls still very much in the air and an eye to keeping the various plot arcs moving toward their separate conclusions. Remembering some of the subsidiary plot movements may be building toward next season, it's still keeping me surprised and rocking on. Actually thinking about it shouldn't Russell Edgington be making an appearance by about now? Hope they aren't going to leave Rusty hanging with anger management issues.

Actually through this episode review I've completely missed coming up to speed with Alcide, clearly there's some conflict coming his way with the Shreveport pack master. Once again True Blood demonstrating its ability to throw in a new plot spanner without losing anyone in the process. Luna has issues with her ex, who is a werewolf, looks like Alcide isn't going to escape being dragged into Sam's troubles as well. The scene involving Alcide and Marcus Bozeman, the pack master, definitely points in that direction for mine.

We're working to tighten up the length of reviews around here, so even though I've got a whole bunch more to say about Me and the Devil let's wrap it up and hold some thoughts to the next review.

Okay looking at the original broadcast figures, the episode managed a rise to 5.26 million viewers in North America, the best result since the season opener. A couple of people have written in, yeah they are forcing us to address reader missives again, asking why we think the results in the differing North American franchises we cover are great given the overall viewing audience numbers in North America. Well the salient point is the franchises we cover tend to be pay TV not free to air, ergo the figures are great for smaller than you might expect markets. It would be like chucking Doctor Who onto Foxtel here in Oz and then wondering why the viewing audience is less than a 100k. Actually considering Who doesn't rate all that well in the ABC parathion, there's probably not that much bigger an audience anyway. Sorry digression, point being True Blood isn't free to air.

I actually watched Me and the Devil three times in order to come up with this rambling episode article, and have to say with each viewing the episode grew on me. Telling you, worth getting the DVDs and spending some quality time down Bon Temps way as each episode has so much going on its hard to sum up in anything under a few thousand words. I've spent this review pretty much just talking plot developments without getting into the superb production values, underlying themes, and overall look and feel. You got to love quality television, fully recommended episode to True Blood fans, others will need to start at the beginning of the season to get what the hell is going down here. I'll leave REM to sing directly to Eric and talk to y'all next episode, can't hardly wait.