Better late, than never…I always say! What I mean by this, is the fact that our two favorite bloggers have posted their recaps for True Blood Episode 8, “Spellbound”…finally! Is it wrong for us – to look forward to their recaps as much as we do?
When I see they’ve posted…I practically pee my pants, I’m so excited! GIDDY UP.
If you guessed TB Rants and Raves and MASpencer of the Sookieverseblog! You are correct!
In this weeks’ recaps; TB Rants and Raves, but mostly rants! While MASpencer jizzes in her pants over this episode!
Credit: HBO
Here are a couple of our favorite quotes from each review! Can you guess which one belongs to which? You won’t know (unless you’ve read them) because we’re not going to say, ‘who said what’! Hehe…
I enjoyed this episode—not quite as much as last week, but even so, there was still a lot to like, with memorable moments ranging from the all-too-real to the delightfully campy and bizarre.
But while so much of this week’s installment felt like a dream within a dream, it wasn’t without its deeper messages. And in this episode, it seems that the focus was on war and peace—whether interpersonal or global—and how, among our many earthly attachments, the rigid beliefs to which we cling make a life of true unity all but impossible.
When Sookie insists that she and Eric are obligated to fight beside Bill, Eric—who before now was always ready for a fight—echoes the lessons that Godric taught him centuries ago by replying that there is no right or wrong, and that these concepts are human inventions. But while conventional wisdom might dismiss this statement as a carte blanche permission slip for chaos, experience shows that nothing could be further from the truth.
As Eric himself later says, war isn’t about whether you think you can win—it’s about being willing to die for something you think is worth dying for. And few will put their life on the line for anything less than what they think is “right”—even if that “right” involves slaughtering an entire race of people. The enduring split concepts of right, wrong, good, and evil are the very ideas upon which war is built—both for better and for worse—and it’s the feverish enthusiasm with which we cling to these concepts that makes the prospect of lasting peace so elusive.
And yet, in a place where you can feel the heat of the sun on your skin while it snows—where the human mind is able to both embrace and transcend the paradoxes with which it constantly struggles, and where we can accept that maybe what we thought we knew about the “real world” isn’t really reality at all—all is possible.
In that one blissful moment, Eric and Sookie existed alone in just this kind of perfect world, where time doesn’t exist and peace between vampires and witches is as possible as love between two people who were the picture of antithesis before now. In this world, arbitrary notions like good, bad, black, white, right, wrong—and more importantly, these concepts’ continual struggle for dominance over human consciousness—cease to mean anything anymore. And it leaves one to wonder if maybe “reality” is the dream… and this world is the truth.
And the next favorite quote…
I don’t think we really needed Martonia to capture Eric at the end of this episode to tell that the TrueBlood Amnesia Eric storyline, as we know it, is drawing to a close. Everything from Eric and Sookie’s blood exchange to their chat by the fire was like a neon sign that this storyline will soon end. So how am I feeling about TrueBlood’s take on this most revered book storyline? Overall, I am happy with it.
As a bookie and an Eric fan, I had many concerns about this storyline. I knew it would not play out like the books, and I was okay with that, but what I feared was that it would not be the book storyline in spirit. For this storyline to work, and for Alan Ball to keep up his “true to the spirit” yammering with a straight face, Sookie and Eric had to feel something real. They had to be fundamentally changed by this experience; setting up the angst as they attempt to reconcile their time together. If all this storyline had produced was alot of banter and ten minutes of shower sex, I would have been pissed and likely done with this show and my HBO subscription.
I know that many people have not been happy with Amnesia Eric grappling with his “evil” deeds. While I agree the elevation of pre-Amnesia Eric to the second coming of Genghis Khan is over-the-top, Eric’s attack of conscience hasn’t bothered me like it has others. This is in large part due to the fact that we already saw Eric suffer from an attack of conscience through his “Ghandi Godric” visions at the end of Season 3.
I also think that this internal struggle presents a very interesting setup for Eric’s storyline post amnesia.
To read both reviews…click on the links below!
MASpencer’s The Ties That Bind
TB Rants & Raves Over Spellbound
What do you think? Do you agree with them? One of them? Neither?
Share your thoughts below!