Review

With the spell driving vampires into a frenzy of greeting the sun Jason rushes to the rescue of Jess and almost pays the price for doing so. Antonio is less than impressed with the number of vamps the Coven's spell claims, exactly one, but agrees to meet Vampire Bill with an aim to finding some common ground for a truce. Meanwhile Jess breaks up with Hoyt, Tommy impersonates Mrs Furtonberry to get the mining lease money, and Sam has to face up to pack leader Marcus over the whole Luna thing. Sookie and Eric join the fight against the coven while the wolves decide to steer clear of the war.

Vampire Bill and the forces of the night clash with the Witches and their supporters in an all out fire fight through the midnight darkness of the Bon Temps' cemetery. In the wash up Sookie is cut down by friendly fire with Alcide rushing to get her off the mist shrouded battlefield, and Eric comes further under the spell of Antonio once again. Lafayette, who isn't exactly rocking to his new found power, becomes possessed by the spirit of a black women pining for her murdered baby. Can this show get any better! Possessed Lafayette makes off with Arlene and Terry's baby, so taking that plot arc to the next step yo! Okay think we rocked out the episode let's discuss.

Finally True Blood goes for an epic battle scene, in a sort of down home fashion. There's a whole bunch of characters thrown at the screen, all sorts of combat stances going down, and with Antonio casting a mist spell a fair amount of chaos. Director Daniel Minahan cuts in amongst the dimness to highlight different characters battling but doesn't linger, showing a sure hand on the action scene. I was digging the battle, though felt the Witches were completely out gunned by the Vampires and their human Para-military force.

The season's love angle, and hence major chick interest point, has been the Jason Jessica Hoyt triangle that brings all sorts of goodness with it. Jason as we all know can't help himself, dude is addicted to sex, but is doing his very best not to go behind best mate Hoyt's back. It's becoming increasingly difficult for Jason as the season progresses and Jessica shows more interest in him. When the whip goes down its Jason that rushes to Jess's aid and puts himself in the line of fire to save her, while Hoyt is hanging at home in his undies. What is it with Southerners and watching television in their Reg Grundies? Anyways Jessica and Hoyt have now broken up and Jason is doing push ups, which I gather is his method of dealing with lustful thoughts.

Further possession, is this a recurrent theme of season four? Lafayette the unwitting host this time.

I guess the other major sub plot that is starting to raise itself out of the morass of ideas the season is casting about is Arlene and Terry's baby and his supernatural care giver. All season they have been building up Lafayette's ability as a ghost whisperer and it comes to a head in this episode with a possession that is going to really put the cat amongst the pigeons as far as I can tell. In an almost throw away moment possessed Lafayette also picked up Andy's hand gun, do the maths there folks, a possessed flamboyant Lafayette with firepower and a kidnapped baby, can that end well?

Actually before I forget there are a few other people who are going to face some hard times on the love front in coming episodes. Alcide is going to have to deal with Debbie's jealously over his friendship with Sookie. The script writers didn't just decide Alcide would find the gravely wounded Sookie on the battlefield, and more importantly they didn't just happen to have Debbie watching on. That's going to be one hell of a showdown when the gals get down to it. On the other side of the township Sam and Luna are getting closer, much to the anger of wolf pack master Marcus who has discovered the relationship. Clearly there's another showdown building for the final third of the season, and coincidentally it keeps a few of the show's recurrent characters out of the main Coven war with the vampires.

Speaking of Covens, there might be a few problems coming up for Antonio in terms of keeping her forces coherent and ready for a knockdown fight with the Vampires. Tara is definitely having second thoughts following Bill halting Pam from going gruesome on Tara's arse, and a number of the other members were about ready to bail as the brown stuff hit the fan. Antonio clearly has an agenda and a plan for Eric, but not everyone in her group would appear to be in full agreement with the all out war the Coven has declared against the Vamps.

And in case we have forgotten the sex it up high nature of the show Anna Paquin and Alexander Skarsgård let it all hang out during the episode. I know the ladies in particular may just be hitting the old rewind button a few times if watching the show on disc. I'm just wondering if the show can take this aspect much further, they are already past the frontier of soft core porn!

Spellbound arrested the recent slide in viewer numbers with a 5.3 million viewer tune in during the initial broadcast. There's clearly a stable audience for the show but there's also a whole bunch of people who don't view regular timeslots as a requirement, how does that work? Producers need to target the second group to expand the support base, but hey what do I know. Interestingly a lot of people who write in mention they simply grab the DVDs each year and dispense with the advertising infested broadcast. Would love to get some breakdown there, but of course television isn't going to throw those figures at you anytime soon. Hell, Downunder they still believe Rugby League out rates AFL in viewer numbers based off 2,000 set top boxes, talk about your naive assumptions!

With two thirds of the season now behind us at least three major plot arcs are coming to fruition and promising some fireworks during the course of the final four episodes. As stated previously season five has been released and I'm just itching to get my teeth into that one, but first a walk through the final clutch of episodes from season four. Love me some True Blood and Spellbound is no exception, full recommendation to regular viewers, I've washed my hands of the rest of y'all, take it away Banshees.