True Blood 4.06: "I Wish I Was the Moon"

“I’ll be here to help you, any way I can. Except shooting you in the head.”
-Sookie

Overall, I thought “I Wish I was the Moon” was a good quality episode of “True Blood.” There was good movement on many of the plots, including Sookie’s relationship with Eric and the complication Bill poses to that relationship. I was very happy that Sookie and Eric finally got their act together in spite of Bill, and even though it didn’t play out like it did in the book, I thought the way it played out in the show worked just fine. Except for the fact that their sex scene was intercut with Bill gazing out from the porch of his house looking pained and emo. But that’s a rant for later in this post. I also like the turn Marnie took in this episode, but more about that later as well. Most helpful to the episode was that the Hotshot plot seems to have wrapped up for the time being, and we also don’t have to deal with the annoying Mickens parents anymore. These two plots were the most problematic of the season thus far, so the lack of any Hotshoters or elder Mickenses was most welcome.

The episode opens with Sookie and Eric making out in Sookie’s living room, but because we saw Bill rush to Sookie’s house at the end of last week’s episode, we know this happiness can’t last for long. Bill arrives soon enough, and he is extremely pissed to see Eric kissing Sookie. Eric isn’t especially happy to see Bill, either. They start to fight each other, and Eric throws Bill clear across the room. Sookie eventually stops the foolishness by telling Eric that Bill is his king. Eric backs off immediately and apologizes. Bill has Eric arrested on suspicion of being under the control of a necromancer (Marnie). Sookie tries to plead Eric’s case to Bill, telling Bill how he has amnesia and is really harmless, but Bill won’t listen. Eric is hauled off to one of the prison cells at Bill’s house. Pam is in the prison cell, too, and she tries to convince Eric not to be loyal to Bill. Eric doesn’t take Pam’s advice though. He says that he doesn’t want his old life back, and he doesn’t want to remember the horrible things he’s been told that he has done. Upstairs, Bill is videoconferencing with Nan. He tells Nan that Eric is dangerous, and he recommends that Eric meet the true death. Just when I thought Bill couldn’t be more of an asshole.

Across town, Arlene and Terry find themselves in the unfortunate situation of waking up in the middle of the night to find that their house is on fire. Arlene is terrified because she can’t find Mikey. She doesn’t want to leave the burning house without her son, but Terry drags her outside. It turns out that Mikey was already outside, playing with his creepy doll on the front lawn. I’m thinking that doll must be behind all the freakiness happening to Arlene and Terry. The next morning, Andy Bellefleur accuse Sam (who owns Arlene and Terry’s house) of being a slumlord. Sam manages to temporarily talk Andy down, and Holly cheers Andy up by asking him for a date. Sam calls Tommy and asks him to open the bar while he deals with the fire. There’s just one problem. Because Tommy killed his parents, he’s now a skinwalker. And he’s shifted into Sam’s likeness. When he sees himself in the mirror, he lets out quite a scream.

Tommy essentially spends his day as Sam screwing up Sam’s life royally. First, he fires Sookie from Merlotte’s. Then he hears Mrs. Fortenberry badmouthing him for leaving her. The worst is when Sam’s new girlfriend, Luna, shows up at Sam’s trailer, and it’s Tommy-as-Sam who greets her. Even though he doesn’t know Luna, Tommy’s not one to turn away a beautiful woman. Tommy has sex with Luna, then kicks her out of the trailer. Luna is not happy about being kicked out, obviously, so I imagine Sam won’t be hearing from her for a while. With Luna gone, Tommy shifts back to himself and starts vomiting profusely into the kitchen sink. I guess the shifting was too much for him. When Sam gets home from dealing with the fire, he finds Tommy passed out in his own vomit.

Since she doesn’t have to work her shift at Merlotte’s, Sookie goes to check up on Jason, because he hasn’t been answering his phone. Sookie finds Jason handcuffed to his bed, and after a little prodding, he finally tells Sookie that he thinks he has been turned into a werepanther. It’s a full moon, and Jason is worried that he’s going to shift into a panther and hurt someone. The werepanthers aren’t the only ones getting ready to shift. Alcide arrives home to see the Shreveport packmaster talking to Debbie. Alcide is not happy about this because he turned the packmaster away just a few days ago. It turns out that Debbie has joined the pack, and she wants Alcide to shift with her and the rest of the pack that night.

Before getting back to the were happenings, there’s a brief sequence with Lafayette and Jesus at Jesus’ grandfather’s house. They’re out in a field looking for an animal to sacrifice. Lafayette thinks this is ridiculous, especially because they’re supposed to wait for an animal to come to them. Just as Lafayette is about to completely give up, Jesus catches a rattlesnake. Jesus’ grandfather says that Lafayette and Jesus need protection from the spirits, not the vampires. Using the same magic Marnie used, he becomes possessed by a spirit and makes the rattlesnake bite Jesus. Then he leaves the house. Lafayette becomes possessed by a spirit himself, and he says some sort of spell that magically saves Jesus.

From her prison cell, Marnie is back to mutilating herself to try and bring back the spirit of the witch who has let her be so powerful as to steal Eric’s memory and turn Pam into a rotting corpse. After cutting herself several times, she finally sees another flashback of the witch who has been possessing her. She sees the witch being bitten and raped by a vampire. As he violates her, she spits out some sort of curse. We then see her burning at the stake, and she lets out yet another curse. When we next seem Marnie, she now seems fully possessed. Later in the episode, we see the vampire who raped the witch watching Marnie on CCTV. He turns off the monitor and goes down to her cell. He knows that Marnie is now Antonia, the witch he raped, and he tries to attack her again. Marnie manages to fend him off with some powerful spells. While possessed by Antonia, it appears she’s a full-blown necromancer.

Tara’s hanging around Lafayette house when her girlfriend shows up, presumably looking for the “other woman” named Tara with whom “Toni” might be cheating. She is very surprised to see that Toni is actually Tara. It looks like Tara’s girlfriend is going to attack her out of anger (they are both MMA fighters, remember), but because it’s “True Blood,” it turns into sex. Later, Tara takes her girlfriend of Merlottes to give her more of the story of her life in Bon Temps. Jessica is their server, partly because neither Arlene nor Holly are there, and partly probably because Tommy, acting as Sam, thinks he’ll be able to get in her pants. While Tara isn’t thrilled with the idea of interacting with a vampire, she starts to try to give her order, but Jessica has run off.

Sookie sits with Jason out in the woods, waiting for him to turn into a werepanther, because she wants to take care of him when he shifts. She gives him a nice peptalk about how she’s learned over the years that no one is truly “normal,” and that has helped her deal with her own peculiarities. Sookie goes back in the house to get Jason another drink, but when she returns back outside, Jason is gone. Sookie decides to take matters into her own hands, and she goes after Jason with a shotgun. Jessica finds Jason first, though. She had run out of Merlotte’s because she could feel Jason was in trouble thanks to their blood bond. She does a good job calming her down (using tactics she used to use with her mother), and she offers to stick with Jason through his shift. Sookie, meanwhile, runs into Alcide and Debbie in the woods. Alcide says there’s no way to turn a human into a were-anything. Even a bite won’t do it. So I’m guessing this will be a significant departure from the books. Jason realizes on his own eventually that he’s not going to shift, and in a way, he’s a little disappointed about it because he thinks it means he’s not special. He and Jessica have a nice heart to heart about how he is special anyway, which leads to some awkwardness, considering Jessica is Hoyt’s girlfriend and Jason is Hoyt’s best friend and all.

Bill is standing outside his house, and guards bring Eric to him. Bill says that Eric is to meet the true death, and Eric accepts his sentence. He pretty much loathes the person he’s been told he used to be, and he thinks the punishment is fitting. He just has a couple requests. The first is that Bill releases Pam from prison. The second is that Bill makes Sookie happy. Eric says Sookie taught him what it means to feel love, which made me smile. Bill is clearly affected by Eric’s words, but he raises the stake to kill him anyway. Later, presumably in the aftermath of this interaction between Bill and Eric, Pam, now released from prison, finds Tara and her girlfriend. And she attacks, even though Tara didn’t actually do anything to her. Sookie, meanwhile, is still out in the woods looking for Jason. But she finds Eric instead. I guess Bill had an attack of conscience and set him free. They embrace, but of course the mood has to be ruined by cutting to a shot of Bill looking super moody. Alan Ball’s Bill love just does not jive with me. I’ve never liked Bill, and I’ve always been an Eric fan. Maybe that means I should just stick to the books- I’m not sure. When we next see Eric and Sookie, they’re having sex in the woods under the moonlight, and all is as it should be.