Mr. Doggett Wraps Up TRUE BLOOD

 

 

Season 4 episode 12, “And When I Die”

[Photos: John P. Johnson/HBO]

So another season has come and gone. We all will spend the next several months rehashing what we liked and disliked about the season hoping that the ‘liked’ list will be longer than the other.

Coming into the season finale, we were still dealing with the aftermath of Marnie’s war on the vampires. Last week she lost the battle but she wasn’t about to let a little thing like death stop her from continuing the war. She just needed to regroup. So she possessed Lafayette and started work on a new plan.

Unfortunately for Jesus, Marnie’s new planned involved him and he was about to have the worst day ever. Over a lovely breakfast with Lafayette he realizes that his man is not all there, or at least not alone. Looking deep into Lafayette’s eyes he sees Marnie looking back at him. Not one to be leered at she quickly grabs a fork and stabs his hand to the table. It’s all down hill from there for him.

It’s Halloween in Bon Temps (which I guess means it’s Halloween everywhere, duh) and everyone is celebrating the holiday with glee. Except for Marnie. She seems to think Halloween is exploiting her religion or her beliefs or something like that. Since she has a captive audience in Jesus, who is now tied to a chair, she goes on and on about the holiday. I think she was trying to bore him to death. Instead she finally makes her demands known. She wants what he has. His powers that were handed down from his grandfather. At first Jesus balks at such an idea that they could just swap powers claiming it couldn’t be done. But as soon as she takes the knife and threatens to cut poor Lafayette up Jesus quickly remembers how easy it is to just hand the demon inside him over to someone else. Turns out it was real easy. Too bad for him though because as soon as the demon shows himself through Jesus Marnie stabs him in the chest to taste his blood and complete the transfer of power. Jesus meet the end of the road.

Sookie is home cleaning her kitchen and gets a little blast from the past. While picking something off the floor she sees her grandmother laying there as she was when she was killed. Tonight is going to be a night of ghosts. Just a word of warning. There’s more where Grandma Stackhouse came from.

Sam is out privately burying Tommy when Maxine shows up. It was kind of funny watching them try to say nice things about Tommy even though both of them knew how evil he was. The highlight here is when Maxine tells Sam to call her Mom for now on. The look on his face was priceless.

Jason finally convinces himself that he needs to come clean with Hoyt about what’s been going on with Jessica. First thing is never tell someone like this when he’s holding a chainsaw. I’m not sure how Jason thought this was going to go, but Hoyt didn’t take it so well. In fact, he beats the crap out of Jason who at least had the smarts to not fight back and let Hoyt get his frustration out.

Tara shows up to see Lafayette and finds poor Jesus still sitting in that chair dead as a door nail. She hightails it out of there and goes straight to Sookie for help.

Marnie has managed to capture both Eric and Bill and chain them up to a stake with kindling piled high around them. Sound familiar, Antonia? Tara, Sookie and Holly show up to confront Marnie. Bill and Eric try to keep Marnie distracted with banter while Holly starts pouring salt in a big circle around the boys. Marnie’s too quick though and she lights the boys up. Trying to react as quickly as possible the girls take hands and start chanting calling on all spirits to come to their assistance. It seems no matter where you’re at in Bon Temps there is always a cemetary very close by.

Suddenly there are a lot of ghosts popping up and making their way to Marnie. Amongst these ghosts are Antonia and Grandma Stackhouse. After blowing out the fire Antonia tries talking sense to Marnie but it’s not working so Sookie hits her with the faerie bolts knocking her on her arse long enough for granny to come over and yank Marnie out of Lafayette by ghost hand. Defeated she now has no choice but to go with the rest of the dead folks and see what’s out there.

Jessica shows up at Jason’s dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. He opens the door flashing around his bloody nose and black eye he got from Hoyt. She asked to be invited in and he obliges so that the can have sex again. This time though in the middle of the action she lets Jason know that she isn’t ready to be his girlfriend. He is caught off guard by the statement but by the time they’re done and they talk through it some more he is okay with how things are going. She gets dressed and zooms out to go drink some strangers blood. Suddenly there is a knock on the door and Jason thinks she changed her mind and decided to come back for some more loving. Wrong. He answers the door buck naked only to find Rev. Newlin standing on his porch. And guess what? He’s a vampire now!

Later Eric and Bill are sitting on the couch in matching robes sucking on Sookie’s blood. Here we go again with these three. They both plead their case for a relationship but Sookie is done. She’s leaving without either one of them. Finally. I’m sure it will only last until the next season starts though.

Terry has an old army buddy pay him a visit at Merlotte’s and both of them seem like they’re hiding something about their past together. Arlene notices it as well. As she is taking trash out she is confronted by the ghost of Rene which scares the crap out of here. He’s not there to actually harm her though. In fact, he is there to warn her about Terry’s past coming back and that she needs to run far away. So that’s got me curious now.

Lafayette is resting at home in bed distraught about having killed Jesus. Tara tries to convince him that it was Marnie who did it but it was his hand so it’s his guilt. Later as he sleeps the ghost of Jesus comes to pay him one last visit telling him that he will always be with him. Lafayette is a medium after all.

Alcide is called away to investigate a problem at a parking garage he must be in charge of. The construction guy leads him to a big hole that is busted up in the cement and tells Alcide he can’t remember much. Being the sharp werewolf detective he is, Alcide takes that information along with the chain he found in the hole to realize there is a big problem. Yep. Russell is back.

Nan shows up at Bill’s office in all kinds of a bad mood. She brings along three armed guards with her and they close the office door. She wastes no time in telling Bill that she could care less about their witch problem because there are bigger problems. Like the fact that she quit the AVL and the Authority. When Eric ponders the fact that he didn’t think it possible to quit these group she responds “Quit, Fired, whatever”. She wants to start a rebellion and she wants Eric and Bill to join her. She threatens them with Sookie which turns out to be a huge miscalculation on her part. Eric quickly removes the heads of all three body guards and then Bill stakes poor, dumb Nan clean in the chest bringing her to a blood bursting true death. Awesome. She was getting on my nerves.

Finally things have calmed down enough that Sookie can go back home and relax for awhile. Or so she thought. Her kitchen is just bad luck. Walking into her dark kitchen she runs into crazy Debbie sporting a shotgun again. She starts to plead with her but Tara comes in and jumps in front of Sookie just as Debbie pulls the trigger hitting Tara right in the back of the head.

Freaked out Sookie goes after her knocking her to the ground and taking the shotgun from her. With the barrel up under her own chin now Debbie begs Sookie not to kill her. Beg all you want crazy woman. Sookie blows her head off and then returns to cradle her dead friend. That kitchen floor should just be painted red.

 

So this season ends with the actual death of Jesus, Marnie and Nan and the apparent death of Tara. With Lafayette being a medium will he spend next season possessed by Jesus and Tara? Rev. Newlin is back and vamped out so we will surely find out his deal early on while we watch Russell just make everyone’s life a living hell with relish. I’m actually looking forward to next season more than this past one. How about you?

 

[Official Show Site at HBO]