Contributor: John Keegan
Written by Alexander Woo
Directed by Scott Winant
This season has been all over the map, so it’s nice to see this episode focus on more of the plot elements that have worked (namely, the takeover of the Authority by the Sanguinistas). There’s still a lot of the side stories that have been meandering since the start of the season, but it wasn’t quite as irritating as it has been.
While I still feel like Sookie needs to find a more compelling storyline, since the whole mystery of her parents’ death has felt like a way to mark time while Bill and Eric deal with the Authority, I enjoy how it added to Jason’s character moments in this episode. This is easily one of Jason’s best episodes. He’s so often prevented from showing a shred of growth that it’s easy to forget that he can be a capable individual.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Hoyt was shown the narrative door, which had better stick, because the character has long since run out of things to do. Hopefully this will also give Jessica a means of moving on, assuming she gets to survive the situation in the Authority. I still believe that Jessica and Jason belong together, even if it hasn’t really been a thing since the end of the fourth season.
Since the Authority was the main focus, I might as well turn my attention to that. It would appear that Bill’s conversion was genuine. Either that, or he’s doing a rather convincing job of pretending. Eric’s conversion in this episode, however, was less assured. It seemed to me that he was still just playing along to survive until better options made themselves available, but given that his earlier resistance was based on the vision of Godric, it’s hard to tell. Never mind that Nora remains a rather fetching reason to join a cult!
Russell’s decision to toss aside the trappings of the Authority to blaze his own trail is hardly shocking, but I have to wonder if it will ultimately tie into the Faerie subplot. I still think it makes sense for Russell to be related in some way to Warlow, since he wants to walk in the light so damn bad and he clearly has a long string of aliases, and the existence of the “faerie safehouse” is an obvious place for Russell to make his move. Something has to bring some of these plot threads together.
Tara and Pam’s subplot is still not quite working for me, since there’s little sense of where it’s all supposed to be going, but I like the notion that Tara has gone from wanting to end her own afterlife to preparing a lethal defense of it. Could this actually be a successful process of turning Tara into a fun character? All things being equal, I can’t think of anyone more capable of teaching Tara to be a strong woman than Pam (when they don’t weaken her for the purposes of the plot).
I even found the subplot with Sam and Luna to be a lot of fun, and not just because Luna was getting highly naked in the process. Sam and Luna make a good couple, and having them take on Steve and Russell to save Emma takes their subplot and pulls it into the larger context of the vampiric civil war. I have no idea what they are going to do with Sam once this plot point is resolved, but maybe it will fold into whatever they plan to do with Alcide and the werewolves (a plot thread conspicuously absent from this episode).
This season has been, on the whole, rather disappointing, and I’ve mentioned several reasons for this in the reviews for the individual episodes. This installment is a bit better than recent efforts, because it’s a bit more focused, but the main problem continues to be the sheer amount of plot threads that seem to be completely meaningless.
Writing: 2/2
Acting: 2/2
Direction: 2/2
Style: 1/4
Final Score: 7/10
