When the season premiere of “True Blood” left off, Vampire Tara was about to very rudely eat her BFF Sookie; Alcide saved Sam

from his redneck wolf pack by confessing to Marcus’ murder; Bill, Eric, and Eric’s Vampire Authority contact/sister/slam piece Nora got captured by the Authority; and Reverend Steve came out as a gay Vampire-American who only has fangs for Jason Stackhouse.

As “Authority Always Wins” commences, it becomes apparent that Vampire Tara is still throwing a temper tantrum.  She bites Sookie, breaks a lot of cheap-looking windows and hides inside the house.  While Sookie and Lafayette are understandably freaking out, Pam is extremely amused.  She heals the bite, tells Tara not to bite the humans, and heads home to take off that awful Walmart sweatsuit.  

Luckily, Tara calms down a little and stops assaulting people.  After destroying a lot of furniture (let’s be real – Gran’s house needed refurbishing anyway), she refuses to feed because she’s so cranky about being a vampire.  At one point, Lafayette even considers staking her to put her out of her misery, but Sookie convinces him out of it.  By the end of the show, though, Tara’s still not feeling vampiricism.  She says that she’ll never forgive Sookie and Lafayette and dashes out of the house.

Someone should tell that ungrateful bloodsucker that being a vampire is awesome.  After all, Eric usually loves it – except when he’s being tortured by members of the Vampire Authority.  He and Bill have to endure burning UV lights and liquid silver, but they still don’t tattle on each other or Nora.  After all, bros and hoes before vampires.  It probably helps that their inquisitors aren’t exactly intimidating.  Eric is questioned by Salome, a more promiscuous Audrey Hepburn wannabe, and Bill gets some ugly manorexic guy who looks like my dentist.

When it becomes clear that these boys are loyal to the True Death, they are taken to a council meeting of Vampire Authority Chancellors who will decide their fate.  There, they come face-to-face with Roman (the leader of the Authority, not Nicki Minaj’s weird British alter ego).  Roman (Christopher Meloni) is actually kind of scary and it’s obvious that he would be only too happy to send Bon Temps’ sexiest vampires to their early demises.  While he’s annoyed that they killed Authority member Nan Flannigan, he’s more pissed that they disturbed the “mainstreaming” – getting humans and vampires to – peacefully coexist – agenda and he “WON’T F***ING HAVE IT!”

Just as he’s about to sentence them, however, Bill proposes a trade – their lives in exchange for Russell Edgington, who they did not kill when they should have.  At first, the fact that Russell is still alive sends Roman into a hissy fit and he gets even madder, but he realizes that murdering Russell is higher up on his to-do list than slaying a couple wayward vampires.  Thus, Bill and Eric’s lives are temporarily spared.  This will thrill Pam, who spent her post-vampire-creating isolation in reminiscing about how Eric saved her human self from a prostitute slayer back in 1905.

Speaking of Russell, though, we get a quick glimpse of him at the end of the episode.  It’s not pretty.  Like, he looks worse than Drake after a night out with Chris Brown.  Although blood is rushing out of his every pore, he’s getting stronger nevertheless.

Before we get to see that glorious image, though, there are about a billion other things going on.  Unlike Alan from The Hangover, Alcide is not loving the idea of a wolf pack.  He refuses to obey tradition and eat Marcus’ dead body – um, ew – despite urging from Marcus’ mother, Martha.  Since Alcide is way bigger and stronger than Twilight’s werewolves, however, the wolves let him, along with Sam and Luna, go free.

Speaking of Sam and Luna, about a second after they get home from the cannibalistic wolves’ meeting, they get into a huge fight about Luna’s daughter Emma and they break up.  Even though Emma’s father Marcus was a wolf, Luna still says that there is NO WAY Emma will be one.  Unfortunately, once she’s literally told Sam to GTFO for daring to suggest a principle of heredity, she walks into Emma’s room and discovers that Emma has transformed into an adorable little wolf.  Oops.

The vampires’ love lives aren’t faring much better.  Jason may have slept with most of the women in Bon Temps, but he has no desire to test out the men.  Thus, Reverend Steve is out of luck.  He crashes one of Jessica’s college kickbacks and offers her $10,000 for Jason’s rock-hard butt.  She strings him along for awhile but then tells him that friends don’t sell their friends to lusty gay vampires.  After all, money can’t buy love – or Jason’s penis.  

Meanwhile, Jason decides to be a better person after a teenager punches him for ruining his parents’ marriage.  He offers Hoyt, who is living with his mother, a place to stay, but Hoyt isn’t having it and lets out a string of like, ten F-bombs.  Whatever, at least Hoyt’s mom likes Jason.

Finally, in the show’s least interesting storyline, Terry and Arlene Bellefleur have gotten sick of Terry’s weird hallucinations.  Terry talks to Patrick and they agree that the nightmares are being caused by an Iraq War veteran who isn’t really dead – because PTSD is for lesser men, of course.

Of course, “True Blood” wouldn’t be complete without some ridiculous one-liners (although Pam and Lafayette were pretty unfunny this episode):

-Sam (on Martha): “She just lost her son…”

-Luna: “She just ATE her son!”

-Reverend Steve: “Jesus loves vampires!”

 

Reach reporter Lindsay Dale here.