True Blood – “Pack of Wolves” – review

Welcome to Season 3!  This is my first season reviewing/recapping True Blood along with being my first season to watch live.  I just caught up on Season 2 with last week’s reprise of the finale, so it was actually a little weird to me how truly excited I was for the first new episode to air.  I mean, all of the Season 2 re-runs were new, so I don’t know why this one should feel different.  But there was excitement in the air or something, tonight.  Anyway, I’m not here to talk about me, and you’re not here to read about me.  You want to know what happened, and what this fan thought.  So let’s get down to what we’re here for. 

I’m thinking a show with this many plot threads might work best broken into sections about each, at least for now. So let’s start with Sookie and Bill.  Bill had been kidnapped, and Sookie was frantic to find him.  She ran into prejudice against vampires (and also, apparently, against women who need a minute to think about a proposal after 2 months of seeing someone that gets sprung on them out of the blue).  I thought Anna Paquin did an excellent job giving the Sheriff what-for when she explained why she shouldn’t have to understand why he wasn’t going to look for Bill.  Very good mix of strength, hurt, and good old Southern Woman strength and/or “I will shame you by acting like a lady until you just feel like an asshat” attitude. Bill showed either that he’s actually kind of a bad-ass himself, or just how much vampires in general are, because he managed to derail a car full of kidnapping thugs.  Granted, they were all tripping on his V-juice, and one of them was playing ship’s mast on top of the car so he wasn’t too hard to dispatch, but.  Still.  One drained and besilvered vampire vs. 5 thugs.  Also, how great was the strained sexual tension between all those Macho Men?  “Spit V-juice in his mouth.” “That’s queer.”  “And playing with your nipples in a car full of dudes isn’t?”  Ha!  So Bill demonstrates his whoop-ass powers and escapes, only to wake from the ground the next night to find out that he’s in Mississippi…and that’s werewolf country. 

Speaking of homoerotic overtones, was the Sam/Bill sexy dream not the hottest thing ever?*  That. Was. Hilarious.  Also, I’m very glad that they included it.  It is a reminder that everyone who drinks a lot of blood from one vampire has erotic dreams about them–we saw it in Season 2 with Sookie and Eric, and Season 1 with Sookie and Bill (which we only retrospectively realized had to do as much with her drinking his blood as with her crush on him).  The dreams seem to be shown when the characters are uncomfortable about them, which is no doubt why we’ve never seen what Lafayette dreams about Eric.  Probably no different from what he daydreams about him, or would if it weren’t for the whole kidnapping/keeping-him-prisoner-for-three-weeks-in-a-dank-hole-bit. So.  Sam.  Right.  Got distracted by hot shirtless manliness, sorry.  Sam is on a mission in Arkansas (and I don’t even want to think about what the various supernatural strongholds in different states are trying to imply about those states) to find his real parents.  He tracks them down using the information his foster dad scribbled out for him, and meets someone who may be their son or may be telling the truth about not being their son.  Sam follows him home from work and finds in the mailbox a bill addressed to the Mickens–his parents’ real name.  Looks like they didn’t run far enough for Sam not to find them.

*Except possibly for Vampire Eric’s bare ass.  Holy sweet baby Lord Jesus that man (or that stunt-bum owner) is BUILT.  That was a nice treat.  Even Sookie thought so, although she tried to pretend she didn’t.  Eric assures Sookie that as Bill’s Sheriff he will find him, if he has been kidnapped, but the appearance of Queen Sophie-Anne (Evan Rachel Wood) and the Magistrate prevent him from acting immediately.  The Magistrate is investigating the spike in vampire blood supplies for sale; we know Eric is selling it for the Queen, and that Bill is the only vampire who knows of Eric’s involvement.  Which means Queen Sophie-Anne wants him to stay lost…because she’s got bills to pay, and she needs cash.  Now.

Tara is unbalanced after Eggs’ death, and flips out on Sookie when she admits to having helped him remember what Marianne put him up to.  Lafayette relies on her mother to look after her; she brings in the preacher (on whom Lettie-Mae obviously has a crush), but when he is taking his leave Tara goes to “take a shower,” looking quite suicidal.  Her last scene is shoveling pills down her throat while Lafayette, all too aware of his cousin’s frame of mind, tries to break down the door.  Lafayette had a visit from Pam, who was really outstanding this week–she is a character who has grown on me more and more with every interaction–telling him to sell the V-juice by the next night.  How did she put it?  “I don’t know what it is about me that makes people think I want to hear their problems.  Maybe I smile too much.  Maybe I wear too much pink.”  Ha!  She plays the sangfroid very well, but lets anxiety or greed come through enough to remind us that her blase attitude is an act at least some of the time.

Poor Jessica can’t catch a break.  The trucker she picked up to feed on dies from his wounds, and she tries to turn him by pouring some of her blood down his throat and taking him to ground with her, but all she ends up doing is trapping a decomposing body under Bill’s floor.  The next night when she is about to remove it, Sookie barges in and demands Jessica help her find Bill…so much for clean-up duty that night.  Or for making up with Hoyt just yet.

Hoyt was so sweet, wanting to make up with her and tell her about his new haircut.  He’s staying with Jason (and wasn’t that first scene of Jason’s utter obliviousness to Hoyt’s hinting at that great), who has been charged by Andy with acting like the same horn-dog he’s always been so no one thinks he had anything to do with shooting Eggs.  Jason is really struggling right now…poor guy is trying to find his direction in life, and now trying to reconcile himself to having killed while having to act like a man he no longer is.  As proven by his inability to perform with the girls they pick up.  I will say this–those girls, Ivy League graduates looking for a thrill slumming it in the Dirty South, seemed a bit too much like Amy for him not to have been associating that.  She’s only been dead like 6 weeks in real time.  Should I not be counting that?  Probably not, but I can’t help it.  My brain is linear and logical, and it wasn’t all that damn long ago that the woman he “loved” who was in many ways like those girls got killed.  And he didn’t think about her at all, just Eggs and the bullet hole? 

One side note on the “postmortem”:  I am so glad they chose to use real wolves instead of CG creations.  Animatronics work in the right conditions, but I’m not sure this show creates those conditions, so I am kind of with the writers–let’s just take werewolves as literally being people who turn into actual wolves, not some jacked up hybrid, and use the real thing.  Excellent choice.  I tip my hat to you, sirs.

In all I thought this was a good season opener.  It set up several different fronts for conflict easily and seamlessly, and it was exciting and hinted at new and different supernaturals that we are going to get to see this season.  I’m excited to be seeing more of the Queen, and I’m looking forward to some of the werewolves, based on name recognition from casting announcements.  Game.  On.

Check out a promo for the next episode, ‘Beautifully Broken’!