Hey there, everybody! First of all, I am so, so sorry on the HUGE delay on this recap. Second, it seems that I’ll be covering True Blood permanently so everyone should be prepared for photo recaps every week. Hopefully. These things take forever. Seriously, my respect for Michael has increased 1000x since last week’s experience. I do promise that I will never take this long again.

Anyways, this week’s episode, “Let’s Boot Up and Rally”, starts where Sookie and Alcide left off last week.

And the situation quickly escalates into even higher realms of awkward.

Elsewhere, Lafayette is still freaking out from Sookie’s near death by his vicious alter ego demon, who seems to have now taken up permanent residence in his reflection.

He prays in an attempt to exorcise himself.

But instead, the religious figurines start mocking him and he smashes them under his shoes. I actually felt terrible for Lafayette in this scene when he starts crying. In my opinion, besides Tara, Lafayette is usually the one to end up in the WORST situations on the show. I’m right there with him when he shouts “Cut me a break!” at the universe. In desperation, he begs for a sign from his dead boyfriend.

Back at Sookie’s, the dynamic duo want Sookie to un-glamour the construction worker and find out who dug up Russell, but Alcide has reservations.

 

Meanwhile, at Fangtasia, this extra is totally working that pole.

Sorry, I just believe in giving credit where credit is due.

Anyways, Tara seems to have gotten some of her groove back after finally chomping down on some organic, all-natural human blood straight from the source rather than the manufactured TruBlood.

Pam orders Tara to bartend as they are understaffed. Tara’s not behind the counter even two seconds before shit goes down.

Meanwhile, Sookie manages to peer into the construction worker’s erased memories and finds that a woman belonging to the authoritah was the one to dig up Russell.

Back at Base Authoritah, the lady in charge has already gotten tired of waiting for Eric and Bill to find Russell.

Elsewhere, Terry and the sergeant are still stuck in their psycho army buddy’s basement.

Surprise, surprise, turns out last week we didn’t get the full story of what happened in Iraq.

Of the fallen civilians, one had remained alive. Terry wanted to save her but was told to shoot her dead instead. The woman used her last breath to “curse” the entire squadron with the spirit of the “Ifrit”, a fire monster, which is apparently what’s behind the deaths of the rest of Terry’s war buddies.

Elsewhere, Jason has been called to the crime scene of Sam’s shifter friends, who were found with bullets in their heads last episode. I always find it cute when Jason’s doing actual police work.

We switch back to Fangtasia again, where Jessica decides to offer Tara some support.

Luckily, Jessica manages to save the moment and it seems like all will be well between the two. Yet, when Jessica tells Tara “We are gonna be live forever…The world is open to us,” I had to wonder to myself why would any vampire stick around in small town Bon Temps, then? If I suddenly had the power to make people do whatever I wanted, you can bet that I would have glamoured someone at my local airport into getting me on the first plane to Paris within the day.

Anyways, the scavenger hunt continues as our fantastic foursome drive to where Russell has been hidden.

 

Back at the crime scene, they discover that the bullets used to kill the shifters were wooden.

 

It turns out Russell was moved to a creepy abandoned asylum. As they explore, Eric takes the time to give a shout out to New York.

I think one of the writers just really hates NY.

AND THEN OMG SO MANY CREEPY IMAGES THAT I WILL NOT SHOW HERE.

 

 

 

 

Sorry, sorry!

Anyways, Tara goes outside to take a smoke break when Hoyt turns up looking like this:

This is actually the most disgusting shot in the entire episode.

Ugh, I didn’t even recognize him at first. I miss my sweet Hoyt in his plaids.

He even tries to hit on Tara, which is equal parts weird and sad.

Back in the basement, Terry suddenly remembers that he saw the Ifrit too when they burned the bodies.

He does let them go, only to get punched out and tied to a chair by the sergeant. While Terry and the sergeant fight about this outside, the Ifrit creeps into the basement and kills him.

Lafayette wakes up to this:

Sam goes to see Luna to tell her about the death of their shifter friends.

As Sam leaves Luna’s house, the shooters strike again.

As Captain Moob gives an inspiring voiceover speech to the rest of the Authoritah, we get this surprise:

As the episode ends, Sookie and the others finally find Russell just as one of their party gets attacked.

Overall, from the creepy, abandoned asylum to the countdown with the stakes attached to Eric and Bill to Jason’s dream, I thought this episode made use of a lot of movie tropes that gave it an interesting horror film feel. I’m also curious to see if they are going to draw out a longer Jessica-Tara baby vampire storyline. It would strongly complement the overarching Sanguanista-Mainstreaming storyline but the setup for such a situation felt kind of weak in this episode. Tara and Jessica’s initial conversation veered away from the ethics of wanting to eat humans more towards the-world-is-your-oyster-carpe-diem and the ending scene in the bathroom with Hoyt showed that Tara’s apparently already come to terms with drinking an unwilling person’s blood. Though technically from the way Hoyt was dressed, I guess he was asking for it?

THINGS TO DISCUSS:

  1. Do you think Luna is dead? How will this affect her daughter and Sam?
  2. Who are these shifter shooters and where are they getting info on who the shifters in town are?
  3. Does Jessica still care about Hoyt?
  4. What role will Jesus’s head play in upcoming events?

Thank you for reading, everyone! Please leave a comment if you feel so inclined.