The season four premiere of True Blood brought us twelve and a half months into the future, where Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) and Jesus (Kevin Alejandro) raise exotic birds from the dead, Bill (Stephen Moyer) is a smarmy vampire king, Jason (Ryan Kwanten) has a moustache and via the show’s classic cliffhangers, gets locked into an icebox by some werepanthers.
Most importantly, Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) owns Sookie’s house, and therefore, owns Sookie (Anna Paquin). According to Eric at least.
Episode two, titled You Smell Like Dinner, opens up in classic True Blood fashion, almost immediately resolving last episode’s ending. Jason awakens to two of the werepanther young’uns, one of which is licking the blood off of his face, because as the werepanther says, “we don’t got no band-aids.”
Jason soon learns that his ex-flame Crystal wants to have some werepups and she wants them to be Stackhouse’s. Andy Bellefleur (Chris Bauer), policeman/drug addict extraordinaire, is right outside trying to buy some more V while Jason struggles.
After the cold open, we’re back with Eric and Sookie where the former is trying to convince the latter to be his. Sookie’s blood tastes like sunshine and plus, she needs protection anyways.
A flirty Eric reminds Sookie that she needs to embrace her non-human self. He buys her a new microwave and leaves her a bottle of his own blood in the fridge. He also takes away all of her human food and builds himself a little vampire cubby to sleep in. He’s really a sweet guy at heart; I’m sure of it.
Back to the gross and weirdly bold King Bill. We are introduced to his new political position as we see him hooking up with some girl who isn’t Sookie. Clearly, a win for Team Eric. Sookie visits Bill in his kingly mansion, where she’s met with resistance and disappointment. Bill has been caught.
“How did you become King, anyway?” Sookie asks. “Nevermind – if there’s one thing I learned form us being together, it’s that every time I found out something knew about you, I wound up wishing I didn’t know it.”
We’re then transported into 1980’s London, where punk-rock Bill is feeding on a spikey haired bartender. This is where he first met lobbyist Nan Flanagan (Jessica Tuck), who’s fascinated by Bill’s ability to let humans live. And thus, Bill enters the political world.
The rock show was bizarre, but some background info into Bill’s involvement in vampire politics, where we learned that he was a vampire spy who inadvertently helped create synthetic blood, was a neatly packaged bonus for Team Bill.
We then come to Sam (Sam Trammell) – who’s naked. There’s also a naked lady and it turns out that they’re both shapeshifters. Sam seems to have gotten used to a lifestyle outside of the norm, and now he’s got himself a shapeshifting girlfriend. Sam has a history of getting into trouble, and the new girl doesn’t seem too trustworthy. She reluctantly admits to him that she has the ability to shapeshift into humans.
Lastly, we have Lafayette and Jesus. Lafayette is reluctant to participate in potential “black magic;” he’s messed around with enough of the supernatural world before.
King Bill instructs Sheriff Eric to attend the next necromancer coven meeting. It is there that the witches announce they will be resurrecting a human next. Enter Eric, who mockingly offers his own dead body before he realizes that he’s clearly not in his element. Things then go horribly wrong for the sheriff; he loses control and his entire memory to the witches.
In other barely related storylines, crazy Arlene (Carrie Preston) thinks her baby is going to be a serial killer, Hoyt (JimParrack) gets in a fight with vampire protestors. Elsewhere, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) manages her stress by feeding on someone new, Tara (Rutina Wesley) comes home from her second life to see Sookie, who’s having visions of fairy demons, and Tommy (Marshall Allman) is mad at Sam for hanging out with other shifters without him.
The episode again ends with Jason in trouble. They’re turning him into a werepanther in order to successfully carry on their lineage. We next see Sookie stumble upon a scared and confused Eric. He doesn’t know anything about his past, and he doesn’t know about the magic of Sookie’s blood.
Will Sookie find the new Eric to be prime dating material? Will Jason be a baby-daddy? Will Arlene’s baby kill the entire cast? We’ll be back with next episode’s recap to find out.
