True Blood: Escape from Dragon House & Sparks Fly Out

by Teresa Jusino

It seems I missed a week in my True Blood reviewing.  Sorry about that.  It’s just as well, though, since there wasn’t anything particularly exciting about Episode 4 of True Blood, “Escape From Dragon House.”  (And I will give a nice, firm pat on the back to anyone who can explain this title to me)

The episode begins with Jason being suspected of the murder of a beautiful woman in Bon Temps.  Again.  Sookie has found Dawn dead in her bed, and Dawn’s neighbor calls the police, letting them know about the fight between Dawn and Jason she heard the day before, as well as the gunshot.  As if Jason’s legal troubles weren’t enough, when he’s put into a police car, he remembers that he still has the vial of V he purchased from Lafayette in his pocket.  Afraid that the police would find the vial on him, he opens it and chugs the whole thing even after having been told that anything more than one or two drops would get really “intense.  And not in a good way.”  After being retrieved from the police station by Tara, who provides a fake alibi by saying he was with her the night before, he spends the rest of the episode with his penis looking “like an eggplant,” and ends up being taken to the hospital to have his condition treated in a not-so-pleasant fashion.

Meanwhile, Sookie takes Gram’s advice and uses her power to listen in on the customers at Merlotte’s to try and hear anything that would point her in the direction of Dawn’s real killer.  Hearing nothing, she decides that since both women had been bitten by vampires, that she would ask Bill to take her to Fangtasia, the vampire bar in Shreveport.  She makes sure that he’s aware that it is “NOT a date.”  Sookie rightly observes that the place looks like a “vampire bar, as it would look in Disney Land.”  All the clichés are there – decadent vampires dressed in all black?  Check.  Loud heavy metal music?  Check.  Sexually charged atmosphere?  Check.  She doesn’t get any real information about Dawn or Maudette, but she does meet Eric, a Nordic-looking, regal vampire who seems to command, well, everything.  He “summons” Bill and Sookie to his throne, and seems intrigued by Sookie.  Bill makes sure that Eric is aware that Sookie is his, and this time, Sookie isn’t offended, but grateful.  Eric seems like the kind of vampire that’s used to getting what he wants…and can be dangerous if he doesn’t get it.  Fangasia is raided, Sookie and Bill escape out the back door with Eric (was this the escape from Dragon House??  What the hell?), and Sookie and Bill have an encounter with a roadside cop that makes Sookie uncomfortable and makes the cop piss himself.

This episode, while not bad, was also not particularly good.  I suppose one can’t expect every single episode to hit it out of the park, but this episode seemed to be trying too hard.  The first three episodes were effortlessly funny, dramatic, and sexy.  This episode seemed to be reaching for those things, and it felt forced.  Tara was extra sassy, Jason was extra douchey and childish, and we were introduced to the hang out of the kind of vampires we’re used to seeing everywhere else.   Fangtasia was exactly the kind of place I was hoping to avoid on this show.  One of the things I find so fascinating about Bill is that he is such a holdover from an earlier time.  He says things like “may I call on you”, is extremely polite, and has a mutton-chopped haircut that will live forever as an homage to 19th Century fashion.  He’s not the hedonistic, sex-starved vampire that has become the norm in pop culture.  And while the show needs the antithesis of that – his nested “friends”, Diane, Malcolm, and Liam, for example – in order to keep up dramatic conflict between those vampires that want to mainstream, and those that prefer the old way of life, this view of Fangtasia worried me.  I don’t want the show to spend too much time on the vampire clichés.  I don’t want “vampire bar as it would look in Disney Land.”  That’s boring, and this show is better than that.  I have the strong feeling that Eric is going to get on my nerves…

Also, I got annoyed very quickly with Sookie’s sudden discomfort with Bill and his vampire-ness.  What I’ve always loved about her is that she seemed so giddy to meet a vampire, and was curious and inquisitive when others would lash out in fear.  Her sudden trepidation and moralizing in this episode doesn’t seem to fit with the Sookie we’ve already gotten to know, and while a certain level of uncertainty is to be expected – she IS dealing with an undead being after all – for it to appear after she’s already shown so much tolerance and curiosity doesn’t make any sense to me.  I’m not a fan of character “backsies.”

“Sparks Fly Out” sees True Blood back to form!  Episode 5 begins with Bill leaving Sookie at her door after their long night and promising not to call on her again.  The next morning, Gram encourages Sookie to seek out someone new, even as she fields angry phone calls about Bill speaking to the Descendants of the Glorious Dead.  Meanwhile, Tara confronts Lafayette about his selling V, and over at Merlotte’s, Sam finally summons the courage to ask Sookie out, inviting her to accompany him to Bill’s talk at the DGD.  Later, Jason goes to Lafayette angry about how the V affected him (and his penis), and Lafayette teaches him how to take V “the right way.”

The rest of the episode involves Bill’s talk at the DGD, which is unexpectedly warm and heartbreaking, Sam and Sookie having a very awkward, and eventually hostile, first date, and Jason being high out of his mind and teasing Tara with professions of love even as he has sex with another woman in an alley behind Merlotte’s.

This episode was brilliant! Bill is an intriguing character, and the story of how he served in the Civil War and the later flashback about how he was turned vampire were beautiful and sad.  Stephen Moyer’s carefully-etched performance as Bill gives us glimpses of the old-fashioned aspects of his personality as well as the part of him that has adapted to each generation since the Civil War.  Watching him interact with the DGD was great, and I loved how downright hokey he was!  He’s not like anyone else, and I’m sure that Sookie will come to her senses soon enough.  Jason’s experience of a V high was comedic gold (and the source of the “sparks flying out” of the title), and we got to see a different, and not-so-nice side of Sam, which proved very interesting.

But Gram! NOOOOOOO!  It seems that it’s not only the women that sleep with Jason that have a difficult time staying alive…

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TERESA JUSINO was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so.  As a writer, her work has appeared in Elmont Life newspaper, and on the sadly defunct website, CentralBooking.com. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. As a geek, Teresa loves Star Trek, Lost, comics, and anything Joss Whedon ever touched. She has a fangirl *squee-ing* crush on Brian K. Vaughan, which beat up her Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man crush in a fight proving once again that writing skill trumps gadget skill even when that gadget skill is attached to bulging biceps.  Teresa is also an aspiring fangbanger.

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