Review: ‘True Blood’ Season 7 Episode 8, ‘Almost Home,’ Hits The Romantic Reset Button
Well, James didn’t get killed, since he seems to be around to give Lafayette a partner. Y’know, if they wanted to just keep everyone the way they were back in Season 2, they could have just ended the show then and saved us all a lot of time.
I thought maybe the writers would push Jessica and Jason back together, since that’s a good pairing and it wouldn’t seem like a complete reset, but nope, it looks like they’re eager to reunite Hoyt and Jessica. Hoyt and Brigette get into a big fight over wanting kids, which leads to Brigette tagging along with Jason after he receives cell photos of Adilyn and Jessica bound in Violet’s sex dungeon. (Brigette insisting that she get to come with Jason is a classic “True Blood” Dumb Character Decision.) Jason leaves Brigette in the car and gets immediately subdued by Violet and tied to an x-frame.
Violet goes into nauseating detail on how she’s going to torture everyone to death. I won’t recount it all here, but let’s just say a red-hot iron dildo is involved. Yeesh. Fortunately, Hoyt pops in and turns out to be the world’s greatest shot, offing Violet with one pull of the trigger. I guess he just followed Jason’s car? And then figured he should immediately help investigate this creepy old house? I mean, Jason was only gone like three minutes. Anyway, Violet explodes, so there’s another late-season love interest the show no longer has to deal with! At least Violet always seemed a little off, so this heel turn isn’t completely out of the blue.
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Afterwards, Hoyt admits to Jason that he can’t get Jessica out of his head, and goes to visit her and give her some fresh blood for Bill. Look, I liked Hoyt and Jessica together. They were adorable, and Deborah Ann Woll and Jim Parrack have real chemistry. I just can’t stand retrograde plotting like this. It’s okay for characters to move on and love more than one person! That’s generally how life works! I’d feel bad for Brigette, but I have a feeling she’ll be more than happy to engage in some rebound action with Jason, since JasonSex is something most of the women on “True Blood” are into (and something most women in general are interested in, I imagine).
Speaking of romantic resets, as established last week, Sookie and Bill have gotten reacquainted (by which I mean sex), and their pillow talk this week is about how Bill was assigned by Sophie-Anne to spy on Sookie way back when. Apparently Sophie-Anne had a plan to track down fae and breed them since she knew Queen Mab was closing all the faerie portals, and Sookie was meant to be a part of that.
Man, they never really did anything with Queen Mab, huh? The conflict in the fae realm really seemed like it was going to boil over into Bon Temps, but nothing ever happened. Budget issues, maybe? Seems like Queen Mab is the only character they won’t be bringing back this season.
The major point of Sookie and Bill’s conversation is that Bill didn’t bring Sookie to Sophie-Anne because Sookie made him feel human again, but now Bill’s thinking there’s no escaping his past. Bill’s brooding culminates with a dream sequence where he sees Sookie holding a baby whose face is a bottomless darkness.
So basically Bill thinks he’s so inherently evil that his sperm are little black holes. That is not a good self-image, and it culminates with Bill unwilling to drink Sarah’s curative blood when he has the chance. He’s a suicidal vampire haunted by his past! So basically the next episode will be similar to one of the widely-regarded worst episodes of “Buffy”? Cool beans.
The Ghost Tara plot comes to a head this episode, as Lettie Mae convinces the Reverend to do Vee with her and Lafayette so he can also see Tara. Guys, I know it’s magic and thus a pretty poor metaphor, but the show is asking us to root for an addict to get her partner to start using with her.
And he does! We get a flashback to Tara’s abusive dad ruining her birthday party, and Tara almost shoots him but can’t bring herself to do it. Tara’s dad ditches Lettie Mae, and that’s apparently where everything went wrong for her. Ghost Tara apologizes for not pulling the trigger, but the guy left five minutes later, so I’m not sure what she’s feeling guilty about. I think it would have been a little more stressful on Lettie Mae to help her daughter beat a murder rap, but then I’ve never been a single parent. Lettie Mae and Tara forgive each other, and Tara ghosts off to Ghost Land.
Man oh man, this Tara plot. Why did everyone have to take drugs to see her? Why couldn’t she speak before now? Honestly, the most frustrating thing is that Tara and Lettie Mae seemed to have worked out their problems at the end of last season. Lettie Mae had gotten her act together, and she was willing to be Tara’s human in the “vampire for every human” plan. So basically Lettie Mae’s spent this season back-sliding, acting crazy, and driving everyone away just so that her dead daughter could say “Hey, we’re still cool.” AUGH.
At least this plotline appears to be over. And hey, can you imagine being Rutina Wesley and showing up for the first table read to learn that your role this season would be “mostly-mute ghost?” That probably stung a little.
But hey, Eric got cured!
At least one good thing happened tonight.
GRADE: D+
