True Blood Season 4 Episode 9

Stars shining bright above Bon Temps, creole ghost whispers a baby "I love you", chanting witches are dobble-crossed by Antonia as Sookie dreams a little dream of three.

Nan Flannigan steals the episode with the sheer force of dark humor this show is famous for, a complete contrast to the most humane reaction of Terry to the latest of Lafayette's shennanigans in the supernatural territory which turns "tolerance" into a theme, not just a word, during the course of the episode.

As easily as humans can forgive ghosts, werewolves can aid a fairy or mediums can steal baby, werepanthers-to-be can betray a friend as Jason finally surrenders to his own urges with the progeny of the King of Lousiana.

Alas, Bill must deal with one crisis at the time, the latest of which seems to be the necromancer who controls Sookie's Sheriff, a Sheriff the fairy is willing to use her own powers - and Debbie Pelt - to get back.

**SPOILERS**

In case you are unaware, OP means over-powered and it is a very real concern for writers. It's a term used every day by gamers, but one you don't get to hear to often when discussing film. Antonia is proving more and more in every episode that she is incredibly powerful - Maybe too powerful.

Are the writers in over their heads?

Every Episode the Necromancer, Antonia, displays more and more magical prowess. It is to the point now where she essentially has effortless telekinetic control over her environment. This includes relatively permanent spells like wizard-lock (magical locks for doors, windows, and other portals). Wizard locking is incredibly common in fantasy novels, but never has True Blood been so overt with their "magic."

I cannot help but ask myself, "Did Antonia grow more powerful in the sleepless slumber of death?" It would certainly seem like she has. She clearly did not have the effortless complete control over the dead back then like she does now.

How are the writers going to deal with the fact that Antonia is clearly much, much more powerful than the Vampires? Well, it seems pretty obvious the Lafayette arc is probably the answer.

Sookie ... My goodness ...

Am I the only one that feels like the majority of her arc is just bad this season? I can barely believe the Eric romance, and now we have to endure several very long scenes that lead to the extremely obvious and unnecessary three-way that wasn't even that sexy?

She's hot, and dumb, and essentially the cornerstone for much of the overall plot, but I feel like they are watering her character down way too much with these romances.

The infiltration of the wicth's den was more in line with the spontaneous acts of stupidity we're used to seeing from Sookie. More of this, and less of her banging Eric (and now Bill again) please.

Oh Jesus, did he get glamoured?, Sam, Sam, Sam ...

Is the whole Lafayette / Jesus becoming powerful practitioners a sub-plot required to lead to the eventual defeat of Antonia? Jesus displayed the very clear ability to exorcise a possession. I really enjoy those two characters, but that scene with them digging up the Ghost's body and then "laying on hands" to free the spirit was ... bad.

So, Stackhouse is banging Jessica? She's smokin' hot. Nobody is denying that, but last week's episode was SO STRONG with how Hoyt and Jason handled Jessica's post-pubescent Vampire urges, and now they have backpedaled quite a bit. I sincerely hope Jessica glamoured Jason, otherwise this is just a little too unbelievable for me.

I'm enjoying the Sam storyline more and more. So far it the most grounded, and True Blood-esque arc of this season. Tommy's character is so rich, and robust, that the entire audience can tell you exactly what their emotional response to him is, and it is usually going to be disdain. Beautiful story-telling! Now his bi-polar family confusion is leading him into the Wolves' den, literally, while Sam is oblivious to the skin-walker's antics while playing bunny for some tail in the woods. Love it.

That's the True Blood we remember.

Where do we go from here?

The season started with Fairies turning to trolls and shooting blue fireballs from their hands while Sookie leaped into a portal. Then the season slowed down, a lot, and let the Antonia character gradually reveal her magical abilities. Three core characters, Eric, Bill, and Tara, were completely transformed for this season, and the Eric arc feels overly gimmicky .

A few short episodes later and Antonia feels like an Archmage with incredible power. Are we literally an episode or two away from her casting chain-lightning from her fingertips? Antonia is overpowered. How are they going to deal with that? Will Jesus and Lafayette save the day? Probably.

I feel like this episode embodies a very real possibility for True Blood to take a nasty turn for the worse from a writing AND character perspective.

I'm a big fan of the show, and I'm still coming back - we all have our bumps in the road - but this episode is not very good by True Blood standards.

Step it up guys, see you next week.

Before I get bombarded with low ratings from diehard True Blood fans, let me just say I have religiously watched every single episode and have been pulling for it since I watched the pilot. I was fond of the first season--at times, I thought it went a couple steps too far, but I soon came to accept that (as all TB fans have been forced to) and I absolutely loved season 2 (it was the perfect amount of crazy and awesome... I miss Maryanne). Season 3 disappointed me. Season 4, however, I believe has been able to jump back on track... but has begun to stumble with the last two episodes. One of my complaints regarding this season is that the Sookie/Eric romance felt a bit forced. I wanted them to get together as many do, but it just seemed to happen a bit too fast for me. I don't know... Maybe that's just me. Another complaint I have is that the Jason/Jessica romance (which I also am a fan of) did the same thing... it came from nowhere! I like it and all, but it came out of the blue so fast I think I got whiplash. But I can deal with both of those stories without being bothered because, seeing as TB is on HBO, it only gets 12 episodes per season. So the writers are a little rushed to depict an entire story. Understandable!

But that does NOT excuse terrible story writing... which was found in this episode. Okay, you guys... I was really feeling the baby storyline. I wanted it to be evil. I wanted to be possessed by Renée. I wanted something super evil and super scary to be going on...

But no.

Instead, the baby was being pursued by a dead, French singer lady who possessed Lafayette.

I feel so ridiculous writing that...

I don't even know what to say about that story. Well, that's not true. There are two things I'd like to say:

1. I'm glad it's over.

And

2. This show just jumped the shark. This story was the EXACT DEFINITION of a good show jumping the shark because I know that, from this moment forward, True Blood will never be the same. And not in a good way. And that sucks, seeing as it was once this super awesome, crazy, HBO show I couldn't wait to watch every Sunday night. Now, it's kind of turned into the show I watch because I feel obligated, seeing as I've watched every previous episode.

In short...

The writers need to get their acts together. I believe they can bring TB back to what it once was. Here's hoping they do.

There was nothing that spectacular about tonight's episode of True Blood, but I think it accomplished the job. I wish that I could say that I am getting tired of the program ending every week with some crazy action-packed cliffhanger, but frankly I am not just yet. As long as it does not happen again next week, then I am fine, because this got us talking about the show. We are hooked as we are winding down another season. That's their goal.

But a lot of the side storylines are a little stale, and even the love triangles are not getting it done. Sookie's fantasy was pretty boring to be honest, and the lack of explanation as to how Jessica and Jason got to that position in the truck frustrated me.

Solid, but not spectacular/

Run was a great episode of True Blood, though I was slightly disappointed. The whole Fairy thing has been building up and the beginning of this season started off with a Fairy bang, and then nothing. I feel like we are not getting enough of the true Sookie. I thought her dream scene was cool at first but the rest of it could have been a little more risque. I do like where things are going for the most part, with Debbie helping Sookie, Alcide trying to move up, and Tommy being crazy. Sam and Luna had some great scenes. It was nice to wrap up the Lafayette and ghost story up, though this opens the doors for future possibilities. Andy is going crazy on V and Jason hooks up with Jessica which was to be expected. The last scenes were good, but I wish we would have gotten to see what happened in this episode and not the next. I look forward to finding out how every thing will play out. I hope we get to see more of the Fairies and that story line.

This week settled last week's cliffhanger by inexplicably freeing Bill from the silver that had him last week and he revives Sookie with his blood once again with only the main title separating his and Alcide's doubts that she would be able to revive. It's not like we ever thought that she would be in any danger. But anyway Sam gets a plan to sneak Emily and Luna into the woods and go camping to get away from Marcus and his anger to which Luna agrees. In his stead Tommy is said to tell Sam to turn up at Marcus's shop to talk and Marcus ropes Alcide into joining. Tommy shows up and gets his butt kicked but Alcide pretty much saves his life and Sam does Luna for real this time. I like he interconnected part of having minor characters somewhat collide in Alcide and Sam who we know don't know each other, even if it was just Tommy. Tommy is all over the place, first he's desperate, then he needs money, betrays Sam, sleeps with Luna, steals money, writes a letter, is at work for some reason and then shows up to take a beating for Sam even though it was coming to him for sleeping with her in the first place so there's that. The other part of the episode dealt with Lafayette's abduction of baby Mikey and how Jason, a V'd up Andy and Arlene and Terry deal with it. When Arlene calls Jesus he manages to talk to the spirit of the woman in control of him and to relive the last few moments of her life and to find her baby to hold him one last time. It didn't really serve much other than Lafayette is powerful and so is Jesus. Bill has to attend the Tolerance Conference of whatever and Antonia plans to crash the party but she has to kidnap her "followers" and keep them in the Moon Goddess Emporium. Debbie goes back to V in lieu of confronting Alcide about what she saw which doesn't prove infidelity of any sort just that Alcide cares about this crap magnet of a telepath. Tara disagrees with Antonia, which I kind of liked them siding with each other in their mutual hatred of vampires, they could start a club or something. Debbie and Sookie invade the Emporium to find Eric but Sookie and her escape barely and Antonia now knows Sookie may be useful to her in some way. Jason is in the middle as Hoyt packs up all of Jessica's things and tells him to give them to her and he does but they also end up doing it like there's no tomorrow. It's good to see the hot new couple moving on, too bad Hoyt isn't likable anymore it would make this betrayal much more conflicting but just on principle I agree after Jason's kicking Jessica out last week. Antonia crashes the Tolerance thing and the vamps look bad and she releases all of her strength on Bill and Nan, so next week's episode will be interesting at least in the beginning. There must be a war, not the best episode and could've had a little more from more unspoken stories. I look forward to seeing the conclusion of Sam's storyline and Tommy's involvement, the three way dream I hope is foreshadowing of some kind, and Bill versus vamps and Antonia seems really unfair.