I know recaps are supposed to be unbiased, but I feel I’d be leaving out crucial commentary if I didn’t say that this season pretty much sucks, and not just

Drunk off Lilith blood, Russell Edgington macks on some poor innocent nightclub singer. Photo courtesy of HBO.

literally.

 This latest installment of “True Blood” not only features redneck killers with Obama masks, malfunctioning Apple vampire iStakes, and an evil smoke monster, but also introduces a blood monster that quickly takes the form of Lilith the Vampire God.  Oh, and Pam apparently travelled back a few centuries and found a hair crimper. 

This episode picks up pretty much immediately after Roman’s death.  We see some Paranormal Activity-esque camera work as the Vampire Authority (minus Roman – RIP) recaptures Russell and prevents Bill and Eric from escaping.  Once they’ve returned to the cells they’ve called home for almost the entire season, Bill and Eric deduce that Sanguinista/human slayer Nora must have had an accomplice on the Authority who disabled Roman’s iStake.  

No one should be surprised to find out that this accomplice was Salome (not Salmone, as I’ve been writing for, like, five recaps.  Sorry guys.)  This secret Sanguinista followed Bill and Eric the night they were ordered to show Russell the True Death and dug him up.  Luckily, Russell doesn’t seem hell-bent on getting revenge on Bill and Eric because Nora, his “new maker,” told him to spare their lives – and apparently helped them escape at the beginning of the season because she didn’t actually trust Russell not to slaughter them, but whatever.  She trusts him now, and for the moment, Russell really doesn’t seem to want to kill Bill and Eric.

 However, Russell, along with Salome and Nora, does want to turn the Vampire Authority into Sanguinistas.  They propose doing this by drinking the blood of Lilith, and when one respectable-looking member of the Authority refuses, Russell beheads him.  That demonstration of power is enough to persuade Bill, Eric, and the rest of the Authority (along with Barb from Cougar Town – how did she make it longer than the guy from Law & Order?) to take some shots of Lilith blood.

Apparently, drinking Lilith blood is akin to drinking Prestige and taking a ton of drugs because it gets all the vampires extremely wasted.  They terrorize a cab driver and vamp-hijack a nightclub, sucking the humans dry until a blood monster shows up (because apparently the smoke monster wasn’t enough).  Fortunately, before my patience with monsters runs out, the figure materializes into Lilith.  Aside from needing a Brazilian wax, Lilith looks like a good representation of Vampire Eve, and it’s clear that she wants her gang of vampires to go on drinking human blood.

Thankfully, Eric sees a vision of Godric, who takes him back to kindergarten and reminds him that killing people is wrong.  Godric also says that Nora, Eric’s sister, apparently missed that lesson and thus Eric needs to save her from herself. 

Sookie tries to use up her fairy powers. Tinkerbell would be horrified. Photo courtesy of HBO.

Elsewhere in Bon Temps, things are less…bloody.  After Sookie got zapped at the fairy club, Claude, who looks like he could be the sixth magical member of One Direction, wakes her up and tells her that her abilities are depleting.  He says that if she uses her magic too much, she’ll run out and become human.  However, since Sookie just found out that her parents were murdered by vampires who were attracted to her magical scent, she views his words not as a warning but as a potential blessing.

Even after Jason brings her breakfast in bed and tells her that their parents’ death wasn’t her fault, Sookie still feels like people might be safer if she were human.  Later, she goes to the hospital to visit Sam and Luna, the latter who is still resting after being shot by the hate group with the Obama masks.  She asks Sam if he would give up his special shifter talent in order to be human, and he – without knowing that Sookie could actually be human, of course – responds that their world would be much more peaceful if he could be normal.  As Sookie leaves the hospital, it’s clear that she’s thinking about his words.

Sure enough, later that night Sookie recalls all the times in the past where she felt ashamed of being a fairy.  She sends beams of light up into the sky, trying to use up all her magic so she’ll be human again.  This seems like a good idea now, but she’s going to regret it when she wants to find out whether Bill/Eric/Alcide really think her new jeans make her look skinny.

Also, it’s a shame that Sam regrets his shifter-ness so much, because his acute sense of smell helps him sniff out one of the Obama-masked killers, who works in the hospital where Luna is staying.  Guess they forgot to run a background check on that one.

Speaking of the hate group, they have a new member: Hoyt.  After they save him from being sucked dry by a vampire, Hoyt bonds with them and tells them how much he hates Jessica, foreshadowing the group’s next target.  Chances are, they’ll try to strike soon, because they sound pretty pissed about Junior (could they find a more redneck name?) getting shot by Sam.

The Obama killers aren’t the only people mad at Jessica.  Jason finds her in Bill’s mansion and tells her his very emotional story about discovering that vampires killed his parents.  In an attempt to be kind, she kisses him, but the gesture majorly backfires when he tastes blood on her lips and realizes she’s been feeding on a human.  They get into a lovers’ spat in which Jessica bites him and Jason shoots her in the head.  Jessica kicks him out and I’m guessing that relationship is temporarily over.

Meanwhile, Alcide, who got fed up with JD’s V addiction last episode and vowed to be the new pack master, is training with Rikki to overtake JD.  Unfortunately, the fact that he has apparently forgotten about Sookie and now wants to hook up with Rikki is distracting him from this duty.  As they’re making out, Martha comes in and tells Alcide that he should not be pack master because JD has paid his dues and deserves the position.  She doesn’t listen when Rikki and Alcide try to tell her that JD is, um, kind of a crackhead.

Martha changes her tune dramatically, though, when she sees JD ranting about a coming human-vampire war and trying to give V to the entire wolf pack, including four-year-old Emma.  Yikes.

In other news, Lafayette is having a worse week than usual.  After his mother told him that Jesus’ severed head and stitched-up mouth were with Don Bartolo, Lafayette went to Don’s cabin to find Jesus and discover more about his newfound witchiness.  Don Bartolo intercepted him, though, and made it clear that he was very angry with Lafayette for stealing the family magic.  He’s about to get that magic back by casually slicing Lafayette’s head open and bestowing the magic on his soon-to-be-born child when his pregnant wife stabs him to death. 

Lafayette’s not off the hook yet, though – Mrs. Bartolo grabs her dead husband’s knife and slices Lafayette’s mouth up so it looks like he has Jesus’ stitched-up lips.  Okay, I really don’t understand this storyline at all.

In a more comprehensible turn of events, Tara’s mother, who is now married to a priest, finds her vampire daughter working the stripper pole at Fangtasia and disowns her.  This leads to a weirdly sentimental scene between Tara and Pam in where Pam, whose hair is unforgivably crimped, tells Tara that she’ll forget about wanting her mother’s approval eventually, and Tara gives Pam a super awkward hug.

Oh, and Terry considers killing himself to get away from the smoke monster – I mean, that thing is pretty annoying – but Patrick convinces him not to do it.

In conclusion, I leave you with this quote, in which Eric politely declines joining the Sanguinistas and drinking Lilith’s blood before he’s threatened into doing so:

Eric (to Nora): “Never, you Bible banging c**t.”  Classy!

Reach reporter Lindsay Dale here.