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The Serial Killer arc and Gran's death in season 1
- When Gran dies in season 1 and Bill is interrogated by the police about it, he tells them that he was at home when it happened because he was waiting for Sookie to return home from her date with Sam, and he heard a car (Rene's car) in the driveway at Sookie's house. He even tells Bud and Andy that he could hear the car from across the cemetery because vampires have heightened senses. However, in the season 1 finale when Sookie finds out Rene was the killer, she sees a flashback in his mind when he attacked Gran, and Gran ends up screaming when Rene surprises her and Rene shouts that she wasn't suppose to be there. So if Bill was able to hear Rene's car from across the cemetery, then how come he wasn't able to hear the confrontation between Rene and Gran if he has super-sensitive hearing?
- For that matter, there's Sam. The show has gone to great lengths to show that Sam is very good at picking up scents since his preferred shift is a dog. We even get a scene of him going over to Dawn's house and rolling all over her bed to pick up the scent of who killed her. And yet, for some reason, despite having been around Rene MULTIPLE TIMES (including at Gran's funeral, Bill's Civil War demonstration, and the dozen instances when he served Rene at his restaurant), he never once recognized Rene's scent and matched it to the crime scenes where both Dawn and Gran were killed? It's only at the end of season 1 when Rene leaves behind his work-shirt out of plot convenience that he suddenly realizes it was him. Shouldn't he have also picked up Rene's scent at Gran's house, especially since Rene botched that?
- Likewise, it's been established that vampires have a good sense of smell. Bill was around Rene in several scenes, and should have been able to pick up his scent at Gran's house after she was murdered. So how come this doesn't happen?
- There's also a plot hole with Rene going to Gran's house in the first place: He knew that Sookie was on a date with Sam. He saw them leave together from the Church after Bill's Civil War speech, and it stands to reason that he would expect Sam to drive her home once the date was finished. He also had no idea when Sookie and Sam were going to get back from their date. He also had no reason to be surprised about Sookie's Gran being there since she lives there. That doesn't jive with Rene going over later and just assuming that Sookie was home instead of carefully scouting out for when she'd return home from her date. For someone as methodical as Rene, that was pretty sloppy on his part.
- Then there's his attack on Amy at Jason's house: Even if Jason was high on V at the time, how did he know that Jason wasn't going to wake up when he did when he went to strangle Amy?
- Then there's Rene keeping the videotape of Maudette and the bald-vampire, and Arlene's kids finding it and watching it. I get that serial killers like to keep trophies, but why wouldn't he have found a better place to hide that? Why leave it out in the open for Arlene's kids to find when that's evidence in a murder investigation?
- And then of course there's Sookie's mind-reading abilities. This honestly is a plot-hole in and of itself because it's constantly inconsistent. One episode, she has a hard time blocking out other people's unpleasant thoughts, and the next she suddenly has no idea what they're thinking. She was around Rene many times during their interactions, and yet she never once picked up on his thoughts and realized he was a serial killer until the end of the season? That really stretches suspension of disbelief.
The Yakutza in season 7
- One of the big plot-points in season 7 is that the Yakutza want Sarah Newlin because they blame her for the True Blood product being tainted with the Hep-V or whatnot, and they're angry that they lost money and their business got ruined. Fine. Whatever. What doesn't make sense though is if this organization is so pissed-off at people who cross them (to the point they are willing to go out of their way to kill anyone who either has wronged them or gets in their way), why haven't they gone after Bill? Bill is the one who probably caused them the most damage next to Sarah Newlin. When he was Chancellor in the Authority in season 5, he ordered the bombings of all the True Blood factories, which not only destroyed their line of production, but most likely costed the Yakonomo Corporation billions of dollars in revenue and property damage. One would think the Yakutza would be furious about this to the point they'd go out of their way to hunt down Bill and punish him for what he did. And it's pretty much an open secret at this point that Bill and the Authority were responsible for the bombings, which is something Yakonomo Corporation and the Yakutza should know. So unless Bill intentionally downplayed or omitted his role in the bombings (which makes him look extremely unsympathetic), there is no reason the Yakutza shouldn't be coming after him.
- Also, how come we never knew about this organization before season 7? Say what you will about the Authority, but at least that was built up over the course of several seasons. We got a pretty good understanding that they were a shadow government who ruled over the vampires through organizations like the AVL and the monarchies. The Yakutza meanwhile come out of nowhere, and the logistics of how their organization is suppose to work is left unexplored.
Bill at the end of season 6
- So how exactly did Billith revert back to being Bill? At the end of season 5, Bill drinks all of Lilith's blood, which destroys him and then he's reincarnated as Billith with Lilith's blood now running through his veins and giving him her powers (visions, not needing an invitation, telepathy, etc). Fast forward in season 6 and Bill gives the vampires in the white room his blood so they can walk in the sun. This apparently puts him on the brink of death, to the point that he sees Lilith's sirens show up, and then Jessica and James come back and James gives Bill his blood and that somehow makes him Bill again? And Lilith and her sirens just disappear? There's so many holes with this: For one thing, if Bill gave the vampires in the white room (including James) his blood (which is technically Lilith's blood), then shouldn't the blood that James gives Bill also be Lilith-induced blood since James drank from him? Wouldn't cycling that blood back to him be pointless because he would still have Lilith's blood inside of him since Bill/Billith's the reincarnation of her? Shouldn't Bill still be having visions/hallucinations/whatever of Lilith and her sirens if he still has her blood in him? Especially since this show emphasized that one drop of Lilith's blood was powerful enough to affect vampires? There's no way that all of Lilith's blood could have been drained out of Bill when the vampires fed on him, or he wouldn't have seen Lilith's sirens and he would have died then and there. For another, shouldn't the other vampires who drank from Bill be having Lilith-induced hallucinations? Shouldn't Lilith be appearing to them while they're in a frenzy? Also, why would James think his blood was going to help save Bill in the first place? It's specifically mentioned by Eric that vampire blood doesn't affect other vampires, so James's blood on its own shouldn't have helped Bill in any way, especially since Lilith's blood was shown to be more powerful. There are so many Plot Holes with how they wrapped up this story that it makes my head hurt.
Why didn't Bill go to prison after season 6?
- I get that this is a supernatural show where most of these characters have done illegal and morally questionable things, but in Bill's case, it's a lot more egregious because not only did his actions up to this point impact a wide range of people, but enough people know about the scope of his crimes that he should have been arrested a long time ago and put on trial. To give everyone a reminder of what Bill has done up to this point: He became a Chancellor in the Authority (courtesy of Salome) and ordered the bombings of the True Blood factories, which killed several innocent workers and caused a crisis between vampires and humans. He sanctioned a human trafficking ring in the Authority where humans were kept naked in cells until they were brought out, fed upon, raped, and then killed off. He worked with the other Authority members in attempting to start a war between vampires and humans by ordering vampire sheriffs and other vampires to increase their ranks by turning as many humans into vampires (likely against their will) as they possibly could. He was also with other members of the Authority when they slaughtered everyone at the bar and Lilith first appeared to them. He also killed the Governor of Louisiana, and while he was an Asshole Victim, it doesn't change the fact he was a high-ranking government official and that there should have been legal repercussions for what Bill did. ALL of this should have resulted in the FBI showing up to Bill's home with a pair of silver handcuffs. And yet, FOR SOME REASON, he gets off scot-free for his crimes despite having a body count that goes well into the thousands and for being responsible for destroying the peace between vampires and humans.
- For that matter how was Bill able to write a book about his time being Billith? Assuming that the publishers didn't think he was insane, wouldn't someone look at his book and his accounts of what happened and see this as a written confession for his crimes and go directly to the FBI? There's a lot with what Bill did (rape, murder, human trafficking, etc) that should have gotten him convicted.
The authority's dissolution unnoticed
- How on Earth has no one noticed or at least suspected that the Authority has gone mad? I mean, first they were able to keep it under wraps perhaps, but they've recently been issuing orders such as mandatory turning of innocent people to buff up the ranks of vampires in the world! Somebody had to have thought something was wrong!
- What exactly are they going to do about it? The authority as we've seen wields a considerable amount of power, if they say attack your state senators you do it. That's just looking at them from a purely organizational point. While it's never states the ages of the counsel members I think it's safe to say that they could curb stomp a vampire population if they so chose. It doesn't seem to take a huge difference in age to make a battle between two vampires completely one sided. The Authority could probably do anything shy of order vampires to greet the sun and they'd do it since the consequences of not doing so would be worse.
- It should be noted that one of the big conflicts in the show (way before the Authority/Lilith arc ever happened) centered around vampires being unhappy about mainstreaming and having to treat humans as equals. This is Lampshaded by Malcom in season 1 when he tells Bill that not everyone wants to toe the party line, and by Nan Flanagan in season 4 when she tells him there are political factions out there who were never on board with the Authority's mainstreaming agenda. Even in season 5, it's mentioned that the Sanguinistas were spreading their influence around the world. Considering how many vampires out there (Sanguinista or otherwise) despised mainstreaming and hated how authoritarian Roman's regime was when it came to punishing vampires who were caught feeding on humans (or committing crimes against them), it's pretty fair to say that once the Authority was taken over by the Sanguinistas and started ordering vampires to turn on humans, many non-mainstreaming vampires were eager to do so, and didn't care about what the Authority was doing.
Coming out of the coffin
- Why did the vampires "come out of the coffin" anyway? Ooh, I want property. That's no good reason to give up anonymity and free food. Not to mention they had all the rights they're now lobbying for before, when everyone thought they were just pale-skinned humans.
- Because, in the modern world, hiding the fact that you don't age, live entirely off of human blood and can only go out at night would be nearly impossible, at least not without constantly moving and changing your name and making sure that no one ever took a picture of you and eliminating any paper trail that any of your legal or financial transactions might leave and not forming any connections to any of the people around you (so they wouldn't look for you after you disappeared) and finding a way to make money that wouldn't require you to actually hold down a job or have interactions with other people on too regular a basis and making sure that you don't have any noticeable effect on the world around you. Really, living as a vampire while concealing that fact would only be easy for someone who was incredibly wealthy before crossing over and was somehow able to maintain that wealth for the rest of eternity, otherwise your only option would be to live as a friendless, unemployed nomad and never be anything more than a passive observer of the world around you. The VampiresAreRich trope exists for a reason.
- Yeah. All they had to do was change their social security number every 60 yrs, and they could be part of society just fine. What hiding are we talking about. Besides, if they want to be accepted they can't act like lawless savages. Maybe that kind of action works with the kind of cops they have in Bon Temps, but I'll tell you what, if they were in Boston every vampire in that series would be in jail. Bill for killing Sookie's Uncle and that couple that tried to drain him, Eric for killing those people who attacked the coven which attacked the bar. If people that had to do with vampires disappeared most cops around here would know it was probably them. They would find evidence or plant it. Either way. And if a person got a job in a vampire owned bar and suddenly started being forgetful and acting odd, their friends would alert the police, who would get a doctor to do a CAT scan and Fangtasia would have so many lawsuits they couldn't handle it. And if people that sued them ended up disappeared or just affected mentally then I think the Feds would be brought in. In any case, their activities would certainly be looked at as much as any business like that. Not less. No normal cop would be like "They're just doing their own thing. Lets not jump to conclusions... lalala". When bad things occur it is a cop's job to jump to conclusions. What would the guys from CSI say?
- I like to think that Vampires had a Cursed with Awesome complex that led them to reveal themselves. Every other supernatural we see is mortal(if very long-lived such as Faeries), nowhere as strong as vampires but able to live as regular humans and not feed off them. Vampires, for all their power, have to stay out of the sun and hide that they have been around for centuries and prey on humans, which gets harder and harder in the modern world. It would not be Out of Character for vampires to go "Woe to me. All this power and immortality, and yet I can not taste the fruits of a simple life in the open. Oh the Angst. Well screw that! I'll have what the others are having, yet retain all my power and awesome cool abilities and immortality!"
- Season 5 seems to suggest that it was purely because of Roman and Dieter's ideology. It certainly wasn't a collective decision on the part of the vampires. It's likely that either Roman and Dieter were strongly in favour of equality with humanity on an emotional or intellectual level or they were in favour of it on a practical level; if the human public were to learn that there were super strong, bloodsucking monsters who could move faster then the eye can follow and hypnotise you, they'd probably be in favour of wiping them out. But if the vampires announce their existence and intention to live peacefully, it's a different story.
Law enforcement is very lazy
- Why does no law enforcement agency seem to be interested in what vampires do? No one talks about the fact that they totally have their own government and follow their own laws, not ours! When the Mafia did that, they were exposed and sent to jail. Instead of screaming about "They are sinners and spawn of Satan" You'd think a more moderate group would have come up objecting to the fact that they kill humans if they break vampire laws, like drinking V. Which human law probably punishes with a hundred dollar fine.
- Also, why do the vampires scream and holler about humans treating them badly, while the vampire hierarchy is such that older vampires can pretty much do whatever they want to the younger ones. And if the sheriff of your territory wants you to bark like a dog and give him your house for a week you do it, no questions. If vampires are such whiny PC modernists, you would think they would take care of the unfairness among themselves first.
- It's not really that confusing, if you are a member of a particular institution you don't have a problem taking orders from those who rank above you in that institution because you believe that their authority over you is legitimate and necessary to preserve the structure of the institution and ensure its proper functioning, but you wouldn't want someone from a separate institution to come over and start bossing you around, because their authority is not the authority that you recognize. It's a lot like how the people of India did not like being subjugated by the British, but most of them had no problem with the restrictions imposed by the Hindu Caste System. People tend to be less bothered by opression that comes from within (that is familiar) and is based on a set of principles and morals in which they genuinely believe, than they are by opression that comes from an external source (is foreign) and is based on the morals and beliefs of a society to which they do not belong.
- It's also implied that there is an older social structure (that is based solely one age, which gives older vampires authority over younger ones) existed before the "Authority" (which is only a few hundred years old) and is more accepted (especially by older vampires) than the Feudal structure created by the "Authority," that's why Russell Edgington has a problem with the aforementioned social structure, because it doesn't make sense to him and is not the one that vampires had traditionally adhered to.
- Fridge Brilliance: It's much easier to envoke humans' sympathies, not only because vampires in general seem pretty lacking in compassion, but also because there are more humans and easier to reach a large audience through human-controlled media. Go to the vampire higher-ups and complain that they're treating you unfairly — at best they won't care, at worst they get insulted and punish you for insolence. But go on TV and complain about how humans treat you unfairly, and the humans might actually listen.
- And the show needs to decide whether the vampires are indeed decent people, who you do not have to fear more then an average human, in which case it makes sense to treat them like fellow citizens; or whether they are indeed dangerous and willing to mess around with people's minds and memories and even kill people themselves rather then turning them in to the legally elected law like a good human would do. But the show shows the vampires to be dangerous monsters, who kill humans for breaking vampire laws, and keep people as pets, and even kill humans if it is very convenient, not to mention messing with human minds if a vampire secret is revealed, yet still expects us to think that only a lunatic would treat the idea of equal citizenship for vampires as a bad idea. Sorry, but either they are dangerous, and need to be kept away from society, or they are no more dangerous then a human and should be included. How does 'they are more dangerous but should be included' work? Not well.
- In the show the point is repeatedly stressed that there is just as much variation among vampires as there is among humans, so they range from harmless to extremely dangerous (just like humans}. We're shown more of the dangerous ones because the show deals heavily with vampire politics, which is shown to be just as murky and corrupt as human politics and, really, the show would be very boring if it only ever showed harmless vampires leading uneventful lives and not bothering anyone (though it is adequately indicated that vampires are perfectly capable of doing so and many of them do, those ones just aren't shown much because they're not as entertaining.) Plus, since the show is meant to be in a (semi) realistic setting and makes liberal use of social allegory and symbolism, having an entire group of people who are all evil by their very nature would have serious
UnfortunateImplications (i.e. seeming to condone racism.) - Maybe it's a mix of both? just like real life.
- Except that there are pretty much no "nice" vampires, at least from a human perspective. By the end of Season 4 every single vampire on the show has bitten, glamored or raped somebody at some point and just generally proven themselves to be corrupt. One could make the argument that they can't really control themselves which doesn't change the fact that people are very justified in their fear, yet the show makes them look like a parody of right-wing heteronormative crusaders.
- True, but by the time you get to this point in the series, there are really no "nice" humans or supernaturals of any kind. Every character, of every species, seems to have staked or otherwise killed at least one vampire and other species as well. It's not just the vampires who are terrifying evil dicks on this show.
- In the show the point is repeatedly stressed that there is just as much variation among vampires as there is among humans, so they range from harmless to extremely dangerous (just like humans}. We're shown more of the dangerous ones because the show deals heavily with vampire politics, which is shown to be just as murky and corrupt as human politics and, really, the show would be very boring if it only ever showed harmless vampires leading uneventful lives and not bothering anyone (though it is adequately indicated that vampires are perfectly capable of doing so and many of them do, those ones just aren't shown much because they're not as entertaining.) Plus, since the show is meant to be in a (semi) realistic setting and makes liberal use of social allegory and symbolism, having an entire group of people who are all evil by their very nature would have serious
- In the books, they came out because the were just sick of hiding, and True Blood gave them the perfect excuse. (Bloodsuckers exist, but now we don't have to eat you because of the artificial stuff). That humanity was stupid enough to buy the "It's a virus" excuse was a bonus.
- It would also sound likely that the modern technology and organized society would make it increasingly difficult for the vampires to hide, and they didn't want to end up as blood-drinking hobos or actively searched fugitives.
- Again it is still bad writing, because if there are other reasons that vampires needed to come out, like the government was going to start taking peoples temperature before giving them passports or something, we, the audience, the only ones who will ever hear this story are not made aware of them. All we are told is that they were sick of hiding. That's true in the books as well. They are sick of having to operate in the dark, whatever that means is the only reason they came out according to this story.
- I don't think it's bad writing as much as it's not important. The whole premise of the show (and presumably book) is "let's say vampires exist and are out of the coffin. How would that turn out ?". Ultimately, the reason they came out in the first place is irrelevant. They did. Now what ? That's the interesting part.
- Profit would have been a good motivator, and a believable one. Whoever invented True Blood would make a fortune selling it. No competition, plus the added pressure that people KNOW you are a vampire now, so killing humans * should* be more difficult... thus making your need for the blood substitute greater. Anyway it makes more sense to this troper than "they were just tired of the masquerade."
- It turns out it's all part of a plan by The Authority. note .
- Also, why do the vampires scream and holler about humans treating them badly, while the vampire hierarchy is such that older vampires can pretty much do whatever they want to the younger ones. And if the sheriff of your territory wants you to bark like a dog and give him your house for a week you do it, no questions. If vampires are such whiny PC modernists, you would think they would take care of the unfairness among themselves first.
Sookie's flip-flopping love interests
- I want to know how Sookie goes from being so prim that she is a virgin who won't let her co workers swear to grinding her hips into Bill one show, and kissing Sam on the next show, to being attracted to Eric possibly within a year's time? No one goes from a shy virgin to having more than one lover a year. No way.
- I did. Sometimes it just takes one to get you jump started.
- Read the Anita Blake series... it's waaaay worse there.
- (1) she's not a virgin by choice, she just can't close the deal with human men because she can hear all their thoughts, which takes her out of the mood; (2) the show is pretty subtle about when the characters are high on vamp and/or fae blood, but it's pretty consistent.
- To this troper, it wasn't so much the sex/attraction jumpstart that she underwent (though that is a good question and I hadn't pondered it) as much as it was in her general attitude. Re-watching Season 1 for the first time in ages, Sookie is so buttoned down that she seems to take time to point out every single time someone takes the Lord's name in vain, curses, or even shows a hint of impropriety. Then we have her curse out Russell Edgngton and dropping F-Bombs just as much as everyone else. (Shrugs)
- She does go through a lot in that year... presumably after you are forced to decapitate a former friend with a shovel, swearing doesn't seem so bad anymore.
Bill siring Jessica
- "You have killed another vampire, which is a horrible crime among us. Hmmm.... You know what would be worse than being locked in a coffin with silver while you slowly go insane? Being forced to suck on a pretty teenaged redhead in order to turn her into a vampire, which she herself will greatly prefer to her human life. Yep, that'll be a horrible punishment, all right."
- Because at that point in the story, Bill was still doing the whole "being a vampire is a terrible curse that I wouldn't wish on anyone" tortured-vampire thing. He seems to have gotten over that in season 4.
- They had no way of knowing that Jessica would ultimately enjoy being a vampire better than her human life. She was crying and begging that they let her go. Bill pretty much loves humans taking away the life of an innocent human child, and forcing them into a vampire life, which is a Fate Worse than Death in Bill's eyes, was a pretty horrible punishment for him.
- They were not trying to punish her. And they do think being a vampire is a gift. They all say so. So in their eyes they were asking Bill to give Jessica a gift. I agree. Thats nonsense. Even if Bill did do a silly "Oh no, anything but biting the pretty girl" routine. That just made it more silly.
- I always took it as failed gambit of sorts. Eric seemed intrigued by Sookie's ability, and while not wanting to jeopardize that situation still needs to punish Bill. It seems that the Vampire society makes the sire of a new vampire responsible for their progeny. And they were probably thinking Sookie would react poorly when she found out about it, further punishing Bill.
- Very doubtful. First of all, having some girl slightly mad at you is NOT in any way worse then being driven painfully insane in isolation. Not even close. Second, the only person that was aware of the personal dilemma was Eric and he had no say in the punishment, and the Magister didn't know much about the personalities of any of those involved. All he was told by Eric was that Bill protected this human. He had no idea why. Only that Longshadow was stealing from Eric and that was bad. He couldn't know if Sookie would even be mad if Bill had other girls. Its pretty obvious that in vampire society the kept humans don't get much of a vote. He had no clue that Sookie is psychic, so he would figure Bill could whammy her into liking anything. Now Eric was happy with the punishment, but he had no influence over what it was.
- I think Bill explained it, it's not much of a punishment, but they knew it would fuck with his mind cause he wants to mainstream, and this was an innocent girl. But yeah, Bill said that since he killed one, he had to create a new vampire.
- Yeah, Bill explained that it wasn't much of a punishment, exactly, that turning Jessica was just something that would bother him and needed to be done anyway. What Bill did not explain is why after saying he commited a terrible vampire crime he was being given this lenient punishment. Especially when the Magister says "I could put you in a silver wrapped coffin... but I want to do something even worse!..." and then gives him the non punishment.
- If they needed a new vampire and wanted to punish Bill, they could have put Bill into a coffin for fifteen years, which is amore fitting punishment (come on, some dude bit a human that belonged to another and they tore out his fangs. They said killing a vampire was like an awful crime, and humans were not even important enough to be mentioned!!), and some other vampire would be very happy to bite the cute redhead.
- Bill committed one of the worst crimes of vampire kind, even with, to a vampire, slightly mitigating circumstances like saving a human. They first consider putting him in silver and letting him rot. Then change it to force him into siring a beautiful woman, which would bother his conscience. Surely inexplicably kinder! If there are reasons that can be invented for why they did it, it is still bad writing, because we, the audience and the only ones who will know this story were not made aware of any.
- They didn't say the punishment was worse. The Magister's actual words were: "I'm feeling a bit... creative." Given that Eric, Bill's sheriff, had effectively put in a plea for mitigation (to the tune of: he's obedient when it counts... and yeah, Longshadow kind of deserved it) — they made a decision that given all the circumstances, turning Jessica seemed like a more proportionate sentence.
- Right. The normal punishment for an unprovoked murder is a silver coffin. The Magister agreed there were mitigating circumstances (Longshadow was stealing from Eric, and Bill acted in defense of his "property") so he agreed to be lenient and force Bill to do a kind of "community service" by replenishing their numbers and saddling him with the responsibility of a newborn.
- To sum up: In Vampire society, stealing from another vampire is frowned upon. Stealing from your Sheriff is punishable by death. Longshadow did both. It’s implied that Bill wasn't really punished for killing Longshadow because Eric could have killed Longshadow for "attacking his wealth" anyway. Bill was, however, responsible for creating Jessica in Eric's territory to replace the one that was lost.
Maryann
- If Maryann is such a huge threat, why doesn't Sam tell Tara the truth about her? We know he doesn't want her to out him as a shapeshifter, but if Maryann is really this evil monster they're making her out to be, you'd think he'd be more concerned about letting Tara know what she really is than about keeping his little secret.
- Does Sam even know what Maryann is? As far as i know, he's just being skittish. He got a bad feeling about the woman when he was 17 (and rightly so), he still has a bad feeling about the woman (and rightly so), but he DID steal $100k+ from her, and only knows her from the (hour, two hours?) he spent in her house stealing things and sexing her up. What exactly is he supposed to say to Tara?
- He may not have known exactly what she was (at least, not until recently when Daphne told him about her true nature) but he still knows she has secret motives and dangerous supernatural powers. He could tell her that, instead of just vaguely telling Tara that she's shady. It also could've helped if he told Tara about the ritual Maryann held at Sookie's house, since Tara's memory was obviously wiped of the event.
- Does Sam even know what Maryann is? As far as i know, he's just being skittish. He got a bad feeling about the woman when he was 17 (and rightly so), he still has a bad feeling about the woman (and rightly so), but he DID steal $100k+ from her, and only knows her from the (hour, two hours?) he spent in her house stealing things and sexing her up. What exactly is he supposed to say to Tara?
Missing Jessica
- What on earth possessed Bill to tell a random store clerk that he has a "daughter" named Jessica, and that by the way, he's a vampire, right when TV is filled with transmissions about a missing girl named Jessica? He's spent over a hundred years keeping himself out of trouble, for crying out loud! This troper hasn't watched far enough to know if there's any consequences to this, but if there isn't, then there damn well should be.
- The store clerk was probably smart enough to know that there was millions of people named "Jessica" in the world. She'd just assume it was a coincidence.
- It's still pretty big coincidence, and people have been questioned by the police for less.
- No, they haven't, I don't recall a single incident in which a child was kidnapped and everyone who mentioned the name of the kidnapped child in a public place was then rounded up by the police. They don't suspect people just for having children with the same names as kidnapped children, that would be a HUGE waste of time and resources, and since this woman doesn't know Bill (and so wouldn't know that he doesn't actually have a daughter) she would have no reason to think it's suspicious that he has a child named Jessica... that's not even an unusual name.
- I'm going to have to agree with the above troper and say that this complaint is pretty ridiculous. "Jessica" is NOT an uncommon name. Not even remotely close. You also have to keep in mind that the scene where Bill was shopping for Jessica, it was a decent amount of time after she had gone missing, meaning that the big case of Jessica Hamby would not be at the forefront of anyone's mind. No one in their right mind would assume that just because some man has a daughter with the same first name as a girl that had gone missing a year ago it was the same girl.
- It'd be easy enough to glamour her into forgetting. And she obviously doesn't think much of it.
- The store clerk was probably smart enough to know that there was millions of people named "Jessica" in the world. She'd just assume it was a coincidence.
Maryann's orgies
- Why did they have to go and make Maryann an Anvilicious example of paganism Gone Horribly Wrong? I mean, sure, she's unlikeably evil, but they could have at least downplayed her religion having anything to do with that since, you know, this is 2009 and most people realize now that sex is not evil.
- It's not the sex that's the evil part of her religion, it's the fact that she embraces complete madness and believes in acting on instinct instead of rational thought, e.g. cutting people's hearts out, controlling their minds and emotions and ripping wild animals apart with her bare hands.
- You know, exactly like the mythological Maenads...
- Yeah, just like them except about a million differences. Maeneds were human handmaidens of Pan. They did go nuts and tear people up, but they didn't have claws, nor god like powers themselves.
- The point the other troper was trying to make is that mythological maenads performed the same "evil" practices as Maryann (killing and rending people and animals, devouring human flesh, etc.), not that Maryann herself was an accurate depiction of mythological maenads. Besides, maybe in this series, the maenads made up similar falsehoods about themselves as the vampires did and weren't really human after all. When Daphne explained what maenads were according to the Greeks, she added "but they're really a lot more than that."
- Yeah, just like them. More than one person was torn apart and devoured by the maenads in some of the darker, pre-Hellenic myths.
Why not sacrifice Sam?
- More nitpicking; why didn't Maryann just sacrifice Sam earlier? Perhaps when she first came to the bar? She could have controlled everyone's minds right then and he would've been an easy target. Why did she wait until now to give Bacchus his offering? Also, why doesn't Sam make more use of his powers? He could have easily escaped the mob without Jason or Andy's help if he'd just stayed in the form of a fly.
- We don't know what Maryann wants with Sam or with Tara. I think we need to see where that goes. perhaps her plans changed regarding sam, she could have killed him when she knew him before so presumably she wanted to let him live. He needs a model to turn. So he would need to find a fly. Besides, I don't think he can turn into a fly. A bird, sure, but he probably needs to stay within some bounds like warm blooded things.
- He turned into a fly last episode and this week's episode. And I think he only needs a model when he changes into a particular animal for the first time, because he's transformed into a dog several times when the real dog wasn't even around.
- He was probably holding out on transforming because he didn't want to out himself. He finally did it though once it was either outing himself or dying. As for Maryann, she probably didn't have that much power yet. Notice how her orgies got progressively larger and more out of control. First it was just making everybody in the bar dance, then the people at the party were getting kind of wild, but were still somewhat lucid. And now she can instantly take control of them at a simple whim. She didn't mind control the whole bar back then simply because she couldn't.
- We don't know what Maryann wants with Sam or with Tara. I think we need to see where that goes. perhaps her plans changed regarding sam, she could have killed him when she knew him before so presumably she wanted to let him live. He needs a model to turn. So he would need to find a fly. Besides, I don't think he can turn into a fly. A bird, sure, but he probably needs to stay within some bounds like warm blooded things.
Arbitrary skepticism about Maryann
- How is it everyone in Bon Temps could dismiss the effects of Maryann's influence when the entire freaking town was in a state of disrepair? I mean it's one thing if they had only acted weird, but it would be pretty hard to just ignore "FUCK AUTHORITY" scrawled across an entire wall of the police station.
- The way Tara acted in "Frenzy" really bothers me. I know she loves Eggs, but realistically speaking, would she actually resort to emotional manipulation to get her mother to hold her closest childhood friend and her own cousin at gunpoint just to save someone she knew for a few weeks at most? That seemed to cross the line five times over.
- Being stuck in the mind control mode was a horrible experience, and she did what she had to do to save the person she loves. If anything, it was Lettie Mae who was acting unrealistically. She may not be a pleasant person, but she doesn't seem the kind to hold a gun to Sookie and Lafayette, the latter would be her nephew (I think).
- It depends on what flavor of cousin Tara and Lafayette are, but if they are first cousins, then Lettie Mae is indeed his aunt.
- Lafayette explicitly called her "auntie" when she was trying to get the shotgun from him.
- The why she did it made sense to me, but it's the hows of it that made me want to grab all these characters and shake them until their teeth rattled. Having already established that Maryann is way out of her league, Tara runs right back into the lion's den without so much as two seconds of actual planning going into it.
- Being stuck in the mind control mode was a horrible experience, and she did what she had to do to save the person she loves. If anything, it was Lettie Mae who was acting unrealistically. She may not be a pleasant person, but she doesn't seem the kind to hold a gun to Sookie and Lafayette, the latter would be her nephew (I think).
Fellowship of the Sun
- Just how is the Fellowship of the Sun not on the national list of terrorist organizations after arranging a suicide bombing, and then gloating about it on TV?! Yeah, it was aimed against vampires - who still are legally citizens, and many humans were harmed in any case, not to mention that such vigilantism even against dangerous criminals is highly frowned upon and heavily punished against by the government.
- Probably because it would undermine the Strawman Political if reality intruded here. In real life, these people would either be in jail or on every FBI watchlist ever invented. In the show, they have to still be a threat. This bugs me, too.
- The KKK still exists, and have the legal right in the United States to hold rallies and spread their message because of the first amendment, despite the fact that throughout their existence they have killed more than a few minorities. The church never admitted to planning the bombing, just that they are pleased with the end result, which is no more than what their real life counterparts (the Westboro Baptist Church) said about even more horrific events such as 9/11 and the shooting at Virgina Tech.
- Ever notice how HOURS of time just seem to pass, with no good reason and nothing really happening, until night (or day, whichever is required) comes? Sookie will go over to her Gran's house, lie on the floor with the creepie zombified coroner during the daytime, and stay just like that for hours until night falls and Vampire Bill can come. Seems to happen A LOT this season.
- There are a lot of weird pacing things with this show, the build-up is always ridiculously bigger than the climax—problems that have been building up the entire season are resolved in minutes.
- Weird pacing does not begin to describe some of the episodes. The prime example is probably the season 4 finale which anticlimactically resolves the main plot of the season about a third of the way through and then spends that rest of the episode dropping bombshells on the viewer left and right.
- There are a lot of weird pacing things with this show, the build-up is always ridiculously bigger than the climax—problems that have been building up the entire season are resolved in minutes.
Amy
- Okay, so was Amy really a psycho? Or was she just unnaturally cruel?
- All of her behavior points to her being a narcissistic sociopath (which entails being "unnaturally cruel"), I think the show indicated that strongly enough. Going as far as to have a psychiatrist randomly show up and diagnose her would have been over-kill and an Ass Pull.
- I guess we'll never know. This troper is very disappointed, and wanted to know more about Amy.
Consensual transformation
- Has the show addressed the issue of turning new Vampires without clear consent of the individual? Most of the vampires in the show seem to have been turned way before the Revelation, making it moot, but what about Jessica? If they weren't glamoured, I bet her parents would have gone crazy trying to search for their daughter; and when they did find her, try and punish the individuals involved. Do human authorities pretty much not care about these kind of turnings?
- Very good question that hasn't really been answered in the show or the books. Granted, turning people (with or without consent) into vampires isn't a common plot point. The only two examples I can think of are Jessica, as you mentioned, and Hadley, who is turned by the queen, quite willingly. Don't Bill and Jessica go back to her family? They had been looking for her, and IIRC, they were too scared to want anything to do with her. "Okay, you're a vampire. Now geddahellouttaourhouse." Plus it's hinted that her dad was abusive. Really, you've got the chance to live forever, and you choose to go back to that?
- Hadley spends the entire series after Sophie-Anne is killed being terrified that vampires are going to kill her son. I'm pretty sure that means she was never turned. Sophie-Anne just kept her around probably because her Fae blood made her taste slightly better than normal humans.
- Later in the books the issue is discussed in a vague sort of way in the case of an Undead Child whose parents allowed him to be turned by another vampire to save his life from some sort of disease (again very vague, though it is hinted to be leukemia of some sort). The problem being that the kid didn't want to have anything to do with his human parents afterwards and his maker wasn't being very nice about it...very Tearjerker-ish.
- That's why it was on the down-low; because it is illegal in that world to turn someone against their will. If Jessica's parents could produce their daughter as a vampire, show proof of her age and the date she was turned and proof of who turned her, and they could have Bill jailed/executed. Bill didn't want to turn her because it was illegal and akin to murder and what was done to him. She was his punishment to Bill, and also a way for the vampire leaders to have something on him. It's like a mobster telling a guy to shoot someone, then keeping proof as insurance they won't ever testify or betray them. The books go over the concept, but Jessica isn't a character so the practical ramifications are not addressed; they are in the show so you have to watch both to get it.
- Very good question that hasn't really been answered in the show or the books. Granted, turning people (with or without consent) into vampires isn't a common plot point. The only two examples I can think of are Jessica, as you mentioned, and Hadley, who is turned by the queen, quite willingly. Don't Bill and Jessica go back to her family? They had been looking for her, and IIRC, they were too scared to want anything to do with her. "Okay, you're a vampire. Now geddahellouttaourhouse." Plus it's hinted that her dad was abusive. Really, you've got the chance to live forever, and you choose to go back to that?
Jason under mind control
- Okay I'm not sure if this has been discussed yet but the fact that Jason comes under the influence of mind control in the season 2 finale. I mean, they just earlier stated that Sookie is immune to this, because she's not completely human (presumably fairy like in the books) so you'd think her brother would also not be completely human and be immune as well. Either Jason and Sookie are half siblings or the writers forgot the fact they should both be immune.
- Continuity issue is probably the best answer. Or maybe they'll make Sookie's powers into something completely different.
- Its perfectly logical for Sookie to have supernatural genes that she inherited but Jason didn't: its just like one sibling needing spectacles and the other having perfect eyesight. Both her parents were entirely mundane, though her grandfather apparently had some mind-reading ability.
- It may only be in the books, but Jason does have a bit of the fairy genes. It is speculated in the books that this is why he constantly has women (and gay men) in a puddle at his feet. Sookie gets the mind-reading ability and the ability to attract supes, but "normal" people don't seem to like her much. Jason gets away with murder among the humans (almost literally). He is supposed to have inherited this from their father. Sookie always resented the fact that her mother loved him so much that he was always her priority, and she gains a measure of peace when she realizes this was due to his fairy blood.
- Semi-confirmed by Word of God if not in the show; the writers/director have implied that Jason's luck with the fairer sex, his Improbable Aiming Skills, and his ability to (sometimes) remember absurdly specific details come from his fairy blood. As stated above it's really no different than one child being born with blonde hair and dad's family's athletic traits, the other being born with brown hair and having mom's family's height, that's sort of the entire point of genetic diversification.
The turning process
- What is up with this overly complicated turning process? Maybe I'm ill-informed, I haven't watched every episode, but appparently, one has to be bitten and almost sucked dry, then taste the blood of the vampire who's is turning them, and THEN they have to be buried together?! I mean, what's up with the burying? It's obvious why it has to be like that, because otherwise, neither the "fang bangers" nor the "vampire blood as a drug" storylines would work, and Sookie would have been turned into a vampire a dozen times. Still, it's weird.
- It's not all that complicated, they just added one more step to the commonly used Blood Exchange Method. I just assumed the whole being buried together thing was a tradition that vampires observed, not a vital part of the process.
- The "turnee" needs to have their blood completely replaced by the vampires, then buried. I don't think that being buried with the maker is compulsory, but I think it's preferred to have the parent vampire present at the first awakening, then to have a young, confused, and out of control vampire wake up for the first time.
STDS
- If vampires are supposed to be allegories for homosexuals and HIV and all that, what are werewolves supposed to be? Or for that matter, everything else on the show. It bugs me because usually on a show that has a group of magical people be an allegory for something, the other groups of magical people are also allegories for something else as well, because what would be the point of only making one of those groups an allegory for something and just having the rest of them around because they're cool and stretch their CG budget?
- The parallels drawn between vampires and homosexual are not the whole point of the series, nor are the vampires meant to be perfect allegories of homosexuals.
- Werewolves would be what they always are: allegories for unrestrained, animalistic sexual desire; maeneads are an allegory for hedonism and over-excess; shapeshifers (not weres) represent survile, passive-aggressiveness and a desperation to belong; faeries represent the tendency to keep one's head down and hide, thereby embodying the quote of "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." The FOS members represent the dying morality as it desperately and forcefully fights to hold on to outdated values.
- The fact that vampires are such an obvious allegory for homosexuality ("God hates fangs," etc) troubles me. While it lends a contemporary vibe to the conflict and gives us a sense of the vampires' place in society, it also undermines gay rights and equality. Characters like Sookie claim vampires are just like everyone else, but they are explicitly shown as being violent, able and willing to glamour people and placing little value on human life. While Bill tries harder than other vampires to live "normally," it seems like an effort to be something other than his natural state. Equating gays—whom people fear because of a perceived threat to "morals" and Christian ideology—with vampires—who pose an actual physical threat—causes problems. If characters' fear of vampires was shown to be completely unfounded, it would be another story. I don't think the creators are intentionally including the message "gays are dangerous" (Eddie is an especially nice subversion of this), but it does stray slightly into Unfortunate Implications territory.
- Actually, that's exactly why the allegory works. Because there are decent vampires, and there are bad ones, and even the good ones are not perfect. Just like humans. Vampires are no different than humans, in that regards. The same goes for gay people and straight ones. There are good and bad among both. No one is so different.
- Except that the show shows us way, way more of the dark underbelly of vampire society. We've seen maybe one other main-streaming, minding-his-own-business vampire (the poor guy Jason and Amy kidnapped and drained) but over 36 episodes of the secret, drug-dealing, quasi-feudal Vampire Mafia being not very nice people. Who have now been revealed to have a secret ruling council with a sinister hidden agenda. The "Fangs=Fags" (excuse me) Aesop hasn't just been broken, it's been shredded into little pieces and stomped all over.
- Yeah, it kind of bothers me when fans say that the vampires in this show are just as capable of good and evil as humans. The show makes it explicitly clear that the majority of vampires are sociopaths, and the ones who aren't are portrayed as unusual. Even the "good" vampires like Jessica and Bill are murderers, with Eddie being the only truly pacifistic vampire we've seen in the show's run. And even he may have killed someone offscreen for all we know.
- The show only focuses on the 'evil' or manevolent vampires, and mostly good yet still capable of evil acts, because they're more interesting than perfectly normal and good vampires just trying to live their lives. Completely good vampires exist, they're just not the show's primary focus.
- Honestly, I think people read way too deeply into the "homosexuality allegory" thing. The vampires in this show are meant to represent vampires, not gays. Gay people (mostly) don't drink blood. They (probably) are not immortal. The oldest ones (with the possible exception of Sir Ian Mc Kellen) cannot fly. This show merely attempts to realistically portray what would happen if vampires did exist and did reveal themselves... people would hate them, as they have hated gays, women, blacks, Jews, Catholics, etc... That's about as far as the allegory goes. As far as vampires all being sociopaths, that's not entirely fair either... it's more Blue-and-Orange Morality since humans are technically their food. They've spent thousands of years believing that these already extremely short-lived creatures are there for their sustenance only; killing a human would not mean the same thing to a vampire as it does to another human.
- Not true. Vampires are presented as an allegory for gays. For example, in addition to the "God Hates Fangs" thing, vampires are agitating for equal rights, including the right get married. It is shown in one episode that Vermont (the first state to have gay civil unions) is also the first state to allow vampire marriage. They are shown to be opposed by religious conservatives. Basically the narrative does take direct steps to equate them with gays. But, as noted above, they are also shown to be instinctively prone to murder (Jessica didn't mean to kill that guy, it was just her nature), have a very violent sub-culture with its own rules, "convert" people to become like them, manipulate people to do what they want and are trying to subvert normal society.
- Yes, the writers drew a number of parallels between the vampires and the gay rights movement, and threw in a couple of jokes about it... But parallels are all they are, there to give a more realistic flavor to the show. It is not an allegory, any more than Lord of the Rings is one about racism just because there are multiple races in it. It's not intended to be a supernatural retelling of the gay rights movement, it's meant to be a vampire soap opera. That's it. Thinking it's anything more is reading far to deeply into a show like this one.
Ineffective werewolves
- If the werewolves are supposed to be the big evil powerful villains, why have they consistently failed to present even a nominal threat to anybody, especially Sookie? In every scene where some werewolves try to hurt anyone, they're almost immediately killed in the most anticlimactic way possible. Yes, they're hopped up on blood and headed by the Vampire King of Mississippi (Try keeping a straight face after saying something like that), but you'd think that something so vulnerable to being shot or punched in the face would have something to not make every fight an immediate Curb-Stomp Battle.
- The werewolves are never depicted as "big evil powerful villains", the worst ones we see are just pawns to more powerful vampires and the rest are no worse than normal people. In the books (and the show to a lesser extent) they're depicted as more of a disenfranchised minority group (similar to Native Americans) than a dark, sinister threat to humanity.
- They're presented as a threat by Eric, who even at a 1000 years old seems to be overpowered by them at some points. Conversely, we see Bill manhandling 4 of them and coming out on top with only 1 escaping. Upon rewatching it again, I thought it counted as a moment of Fridge Brilliance on the writer's part. Everyone is curbstomping werewolves (even 2 month old Jessica seems to have an easier time with them than Eric) and calling them utter idiots except Eric, the same person who saw his family murdered by them. While he would never admit it, it could be that he has a mental block that prevents him from using his full potential against them because he probably feels self-loathing and weakness that he wasn't able to stop them before. Everyone else seems to rightfully look at them as lowly Mooks.
Eric's will
- Wait, so Eric can write a will openly mentioning "The Final Death" and his "Progeny" Pam and still be legally binding? So what are the American Vampire League exactly fighting for when it seems that the law already considers them citizens?
- There's no guarantee that the will Eric was making out would be legally binding. That said, it's clear that vampires do have to have some legal standing given that they do own property, run businesses, and do get by in modern society.
- The show went over this last season. Vampires can inherit property—and so Bill now legally owns that house. It's sort of like a cross between women and gays at this point—they don't have all their rights, and there's no ERA, but most of the basic stuff is intact. Life, liberty, property.
Talbot's painting
- If that was one of Talbot's favorite paintings, why was it hanging in a museum rather than in Russel's dining room? During all the years they spent together, Russel never felt the need to pull a Nothing Hill (only with a lot more dead security guards) on him?
- He wanted more people to see the painting. The other stuff he got was trophy or magpie, but he genuinely enjoyed the painting.
The Healing Powers of V
- How is it that Jesus didn't know about V's healing powers when he saw it working on Calvin? He is a nurse who works with mentally disturbed people and comes from a mystical bloodline. And it's not like it's insider knowledge anyway. By all appearances, V is a major narcotic and would get approximately a fuckton of media attention. You even hear the DEA douchebag mentioning advanced healing as one of the things that V would be used for. Yeah, not buying that Jesus wouldn't know it.
- Going off of memory, so I could be wrong, but it could be that Jesus was more so shocked at how effectively and quickly the vampire blood had worked, not of its healing properties. Like the difference between someone who hears how PCP can make you numb to pain, and someone who sees the pictures of someone on PCP tearing out their internal organs. And in this universe, most of the information people seem to know about vampires does come from secondhand accounts, so it's not so crazy to think that Jesus hadn't known it was able to bring someone moments away from dying back to full life.
Fangs
- For some reason, fangs are on the lateral incisors rather than the canines and they just feel way too close together - especially on people with big mouths. I thought I would get accustomed to it as the series progressed, but every time Bill or someone else bares their fangs I end up picturing a walrus. It just looks so ridiculous
◊.- Standard vampire bite marks are too close together for it to be canines. Seriously, if you press your teeth into two things, and mark one with where your canines fell and the other with where those teeth fell, the latter looks closer to a vampire bite. So you have one of three options: 1)Change the teeth, 2)Change the bite marks, or 3)have them not match up.note They chose to make the bite marks look "right" rather than the traditional teeth.
- Word of God (on the DVD commentary) states that the vampire teeth were inspired by the fangs of a particular snake (which breed I cannot recall), which is why they extend and retract the way they do.
- Standard vampire bite marks are too close together for it to be canines. Seriously, if you press your teeth into two things, and mark one with where your canines fell and the other with where those teeth fell, the latter looks closer to a vampire bite. So you have one of three options: 1)Change the teeth, 2)Change the bite marks, or 3)have them not match up.note They chose to make the bite marks look "right" rather than the traditional teeth.
Godric
- Minor on the surface, but as effin' cool as Godric is, his presence seems to create some sort of nitpicky continuity black hole in the series even if True Blood is considered to be totally independent of the SVM novels (which it isn't, yet). First and foremost, when Lorena (I think) mentions that Bill probably won't want to see her since it's been such a long time, Eric immediately implies his undying loyalty to Godric despite not having seen him in "over seventy years". In season three, the two were clearly kicking asses and taking names during World War II, which means that Eric is either bad at math or, being as old as he is, has lost all concept of time anyway. It may or may not also throw a wrench in Pam's timeline since (to my recollection) she has yet to be released, and despite being made in the early 1900's, appears to know little to nothing about Russell's pack of werewolves.
- You mean he's a LITTLE off in his numbers? There is no reason not to believe that True Blood is taking place right now in 2010. World War 2 was fought between 1939 and -45, so if the flash back was at the beginning of the war, it very well could have been over seventy years (by a few months). Granted, it's more likely that it was sixty years ago give or take, but when you've been alive for centuries, I can easily forgive that sixty years or seventy years is like you getting on my case for saying I've been waiting here for an hour and it turns out it was only forty-five minutes.
- It's also possible that Eric intends to not only refer to the immediate past (the time since seeing Godric during WWII), but is making a more general point based on other periods of separation (in 1000 years, there's been plenty of time to go their separate ways for a while before meeting up again). So it's possible that a more accurate statement would be, "I've gone much longer than 70 years without seeing my Maker, and it's been almost that long since I last saw him, but I've always stayed loyal to him." Eric may simply have stated his point using a simpler (but technically inaccurate) statement, because Lorena doesn't need the more detailed version.
- There is no way it could have been early in the war. The flashback is shown to be in Germany, and the American soldier places the US Army in Germany, which puts the timeline firmly in 1945. The US was not involved until the end of 1941, and there was no actual fighting in Germany until the Allies crossed the Rhine in January 1945.
- You mean he's a LITTLE off in his numbers? There is no reason not to believe that True Blood is taking place right now in 2010. World War 2 was fought between 1939 and -45, so if the flash back was at the beginning of the war, it very well could have been over seventy years (by a few months). Granted, it's more likely that it was sixty years ago give or take, but when you've been alive for centuries, I can easily forgive that sixty years or seventy years is like you getting on my case for saying I've been waiting here for an hour and it turns out it was only forty-five minutes.
Sam's smell sense
- Why does Sam have a dog-like hightened sense of smell? I get that he usually shifts into dogginess, but he can shift into anything at all, so why does he only have dog-like attributes? Is the heightened sense of smell the reason why he prefers shifting in being a dog, or is it a consequence of it?
- Probably the latter.
- Because he's a shifter, which means he's not technically human, and shifters have stronger senses than humans.
- Most things have a better sense of smell than humans. As in "nearly everything." It didn't strike me as weird, even without the "he's just superhuman" explanation.
- Probably the latter.
Merlotte's ability to stay open
- How does Merlotte's even stay in business? Waitresses die left and right, and Sam is constantly having some sort of drama and/or treating his customers/employees like crap, many of whom only show up for work when they feel like it. Yet that place is always hopping with customers. What the hell?
- It's the only bar/grill for miles. And the reason people keep dying there is because it is Bon Temps. People die horribly everywhere in that down.
- "treating his customers/empoyees like crap" - only very partly true. Prior to season three, I'd say Sam Merlotte is the kindest man walking around in Bontemps, protective of his employes, patient, understanding, good manners. And attacking one out of three vampires who strolled in to harrass the customers in Season 1. He honestly tried to help his younger brother who was being the pure, platonic case of asshat in return. Sam turned jerk only after days if not weeks of taking sh*t from his younger brother. Everybody else would probably have snapped a lot earlier.
Other supes
- Why haven't other supernaturals come into public eye? OK, vampires were hesitant to, but that's because they survive by biting people, often killing them. But they came into the public eye once the invention of True Blood meant they no longer have to feed on humans (even though they don't drink it and just kill people anyway, but that's beside the point for now). Werewolves and shapeshifters have no such dependence on human suffering, so what's their motive for remaining a secret?
- In the books, Alcide explains to Sookie that shifters are reluctant to "come out" because they are (as a whole) not as wealthy as vampires (which would put them at a disadvantage) and because people would be so freaked out by the whole human to animal transformation thing that they would view them as being more animal than human and use that as an excuse to deny them human rights.
V Withdrawals
- After Amy dies in season 1, Jason no longer suffers from V withdrawals. But a few episodes ago he was wigging out and hallucinating. Did he suddenly grow an immunity or did it just not kick in until after he got out of jail and the series skipped ahead a few weeks?
- Withdrawals don't last forever. Maybe he got through them and was fine by the time the timeskip was over.
Arlene's miscarriage
- Arlene gets Holly to attempt a magic miscarriage during Season 3 because she doesn't believe in abortion. But what's the difference between a doctor with a machine and a witch casting a spell? Or between that potion and a fifth of vodka? Plot-wise, I understand that an actual abortion would have ended things rather definitively, whereas Holly's spell had a chance of failure, but it could have used some better in-story justification.
- It's a MAGICAL abortion, and that's a key difference from a scientific one, which Arlene no doubt believes to be evil. Thing is, Arlene can't marry that belief along with the one that makes her think the baby is evil and needs to die, and the difference is enough of a loophole in her morals to allow herself to go through with it.
- It's meant to be an illustration of her ignorance and hypocrisy, it's not a REAL abortion, so it doesn't count.
- Another explanation, she doesn't think she can go to the clinic. There are only a few places to get an abortion in Louisiana, and there is a 24-hour waiting period, which means two trips to the doctor, and facing the protesters outside of the clinic. Something she could do at home, alone, may seem much less intimidating.
- Holly says "if the baby is meant to be born, it will be." Basically, the "magical abortion" would only work if the child inside her was in fact Rene/Evil. On the other hand, a regular abortion could kill an "innocent child."
Sookie's unhappiness towards men
- Am I the only one who finds Ms.Stackhouse to be rather unhappy towards men for no reason whatsoever? I know this series is extremely progressive than most others, but everything I've been exposed to this series comes down to either a DoubleStandard complaint against men and how 'stupid' they are or that men can't actually control their impulses, which is also stupid and contrived. Can anyone shed a light on how this is okay for a series which seems to actually be a really good progressive and character-heavy series...when its okay to depreciate and insult men not only on base impluses, but that men are stupid? Yeah, that's the way to draw in a Periphery Demographic.
- What are you talking about? There has been no shortage of female villains or sympathetic men in the series. As for the men she does distrust—namely Bill and Eric—I'd say she's pretty damn justified in how she feels.
- Really? Okay...why don't we break it down. Bill has made his intentions very clear onto the fact of how much he loves Sookie, and has proven himself to be The Chess Master in terms of doing that and quite fairly so. Due to the situation Sookie is in as the only fairy, she cannot afford to be stupid and turn against every possible form of help. I'm not saying she has to be a liability and weak-willed, but I am saying that she's not taking her situation with any sense of realism; bloodsuckers see her as the greatest meal ever. Bill-from where I've been watching-is a good man who used deception and coercion to bad ends, yes, but to serve a goal. I don't see that as wrong. I find Sookie's anger and distrust of men to be unfounded.
- That's just it, the deception and coercion. Their entire relationship was based on a lie. Sookie's life has been a whirlwind of chaos ever since Bill walked into it, only for her to find out it was all because her blood is Vampire Sunscreen. It's not unlike someone feigning love because their partner has money. She has every right to feel used and wonder if it was all a lie. She doesn't hate men, it's vampires she's sick of. And by the way, where do Sam and Alcide fit into Sookie's "anger and distrust of men"? They're both proven themselves to be decent guys (Sam's drunken tantrum in the third season notwithstanding) whom she has shown interest in dating. And of course there's her brother and grandfather.
- Ah, then there's the problem. Since Eric and Bill are so prominent as the main male characters, they really get in the way. My head is less scratchy, but the overall image that men have in this series doesn't bode very well. There is some premise of the men being dumb and stupid when we're talking about normal humans, not to mention that the girls either are better than them, or smarter than them. I realize this is the south and that the hick mentality is pretty high, but that's even more hurtful than what appeared to be a hatred against men.
- You clearly have an agenda here and it’s clouding your judgement.
- What. The. Hell. Are. You. Talking. About. WHEN are men portrayed as more stupid than women on this show? Especially when THE MAIN HEROINE is often considered the stupidest one in the gang, and that's including her comically-braindead brother. Tara, Jessica, and Arlene don't strike me as Mensa material either. There's plenty of ditziness among both genders, but you have it in your head that True Blood is on some kind of Straw Feminist [[Misandry Does Not Like Men]] kick that I just plain don't see.
- I haven't observed her to be irrationally hostile towards men, she's hostile towards them after she's been given a reason to be. I don't see how disstrusting someone after they've wronged you is a DoubleStandard. She treats Jason like an idiot because he' is an idiot, she no longer trusts Bill because she found out he was lying to her the entire time she's known him, she doesn't trust Eric becuase no one with a brain in their head would, and she gets angry with Sam after finding out that he had been keeping a HUGE secret from her throughout their entire friendship (but eventually gets over it). She has no problem with Hoyt, Terry, Lafeyette, or Alcide, and is generally friendly towards men she doesn't know unless they are impolite. Plus, Arlene and Hoyt's mom are women and they're both depicted in a far less than flattering light and there is a healthy proliferation of evil and/or untrustworthy women in the show as well as women who are generally ignorant, shallow and self-centered.
- Fair enough. Clearly since watching this with my grandmother and her making general positive remarks to Sookie's attacks against the men, I came to the wrong conclusion. Thanks for that.
- Stop playing the victim. Sookie has been around men who have thought nasty thoughts about her and used and abused her. She dislikes those men. She has no issue with men like Lafayette, Hoyt, Alcide, Sam, etc. She also loves and trusts her brother, who is actually an idiot, but he’s still a good guy.
- What are you talking about? There has been no shortage of female villains or sympathetic men in the series. As for the men she does distrust—namely Bill and Eric—I'd say she's pretty damn justified in how she feels.
Sam should've invited Tommy
- Why didn't Sam invite Tommy to his little shapeshifter meetup? Hanging out with others like him—besides his sorry excuse for a mother—could help Tommy just as much as it's helped Sam.
- Because he doesn't trust him. Tommy has shown a willingness to steal from Sam, and consequently Sam has shown a willingness to shoot his own brother, something that he regrets. Not the kind of person you'd want to introduce to your new friends.
Russell's accent
- So if Russell Edgington, the vampire King of Mississippi, is three thousand years old, why does he have a British-y name and a Southern accent?
- Vampires are in the habit of changing their names and adopting the local accent of wherever they settle, to avoid unwanted attention. Pam and Eric are European too, but have adapted American accents to fit in. Eric probably just anglicized his name when he moved to the US.
- Also, considering that many of America's earliest colonizers were British-born, it would be common to stem from British stock and have their names. Furthermore, Pam was made in San Francisco. She was not European-born.
- In Season 5, we see that Russell slips into a Slavic / Druid accent when he's angry or upset, so it's pretty clear the Southern accent is an act, and his name certainly is.
Missing Tara
- Tara disappears for a year, doesn't contact anyone from Bon Temps at all, and Lafayette can reach her with one text message? If she didn't want to be found you'd think that she'd change her phone number at least.
- It's entirely possible she stayed in touch with Lafayette and told him to keep this to himself. If there's anyone in Bon Temps she'd still talk to, it'd be him.
- I got the sense that Lafayette has always been able to contact Tara at will, but kept his distance on her request.
- It's entirely possible she stayed in touch with Lafayette and told him to keep this to himself. If there's anyone in Bon Temps she'd still talk to, it'd be him.
- I would love to see Sookie spend some time experimenting with her powers. Her light thing showed itself entirely accidentally at first, but then she actually focused it and used it to break the handcuffs binding Erik and Russel. Since then, however, she hasn't seemed to give her powers a second thought.
- She probably hasn't. I imagine she wants to forget all about her powers and try to live a normal life as best as she can. Of course it'd be smarter to cultivate her abilities in order to defend herself, but this is Sookie we're talking about.
- She's also been kinda distracted with big event after big event happening the minute she gets back from the fairy world. Not to mention that she was only gone for a few minutes but a while year passed by without her, so naturally she hasn't grown and changed as much as everyone else around her.
Were vs. shifter
- Is there any benefit to being a werecreature over a shifter in this universe? Both races' animal forms are about equal in physical prowess to a normal specimen. If anything, weres seem weaker since they're more emotionally-charged and are limited to a single animal.
- When Joe-Lee collared Tommy from behind, was there some kind of voodoo in that collar that kept him from just turning into a fly and getting out of there?
- Tommy probably couldn't concentrate because he was choking and Joe-Lee kept stomping on him.
- This has merit. Consider that when Sam falls asleep, he reverts to human form. This implies a degree of focus needed to maintain the change. Focus you wouldn't necessarily have when you're scared and being choked out.
- Tommy probably couldn't concentrate because he was choking and Joe-Lee kept stomping on him.
Antonia's spells
- If Antonia was powerful enough to make all vampires in the area walk into the sunlight, why didn't she act against them sooner?
- It seems the spell is so powerful it requires multiple casters to chant in a circle. She needed to gather a group, first.
- On a related note, the circumstances of her original death make less and less sense as the 4th season goes on. In one episode she mind controls three vampires just by waving her hand, with no help from anyone. If she is that powerful, and can control the dead that easily, the flashback scene where she is gang raped by vampires makes absolutely no sense.
- And before someone else says it, yes, she was tied up in the flashback. This just raises further questions:
- (1) Who tied her up if vampires can't get within 20 feet of her without potentially falling under her spell?
- (2) She is shown to be able to cast spells just by thinking the incantations with no physical movements, so why would tying her up make her powerless?
- If you're talking about the scene where Sookie read her mind, I think she was just planning out the incantation for the fog spell in her head. She still had to vocally say it for it to work. The original point still stands, of how she got captured in the first place if she's so powerful.
- After thinking about this, I am working under the assumption that they used glamoured / helpful humans to tie her up (which is the only thing that makes any sense). This implys they knew, quite well, what kind of a threat she was. Yet, they still kept her in a prison with other witches, and still chose to rub their victory in via gang rape. Sounds to me like they got exactly what they deserved.
- So, to summarize, Antonia forgot she had powers until it was too late and the vampires forgot she was a threat once they had her captured.
- It's even worse than you think: SHE CAN APPARENTLY TELEPORT HERSELF. AND OTHERS.
- Citation needed. The only scene I can think of like this was the face-off in the graveyard, and I was reasonably certain that was an invisibility spell, not teleportation.
- I thought all of the above abilities she has now are simply because she's a spirit, part of the energy but straddling the veil of life and death, and POSSESSING another connected human. Marnie's not powerful, but the boost has to help Antonia a lot. The two of them work as one, but it's still Marnie's body, leaving Antonia even more free to focus her energy. Most supernatural mythology consistently has spirits gaining strength from their hatred, and she's had hundreds of years to hone, focus, and channel her pain until she was summoned and given invitation to possess. She might NOT have had the power to control vampires, teleport, or the rest like she can now, it's only because of a 24/7 partnership with Marnie and her need for revenge that's giving her the boost.
- I'm generally assuming that magical powers are slightly fluctuating depending on the situation the witch/half-fairy/whatever is in, comparable to physical strength in humans. In this show, Sookie can sometimes shoot light out of her hand when she's really pissed of or in a corner, but she can't do it at will whenever she feels like it. (Would make stuff too easy anyway.) According to her fairy godmother, Sookie already used magical powers right in the first episode when going at one of Bill's attackers with a chain.
- Also, Antonia apparently never aimed at being a powerful witch, just a healer. So, less training, less predictable abilites as a mortal. As a vengeful spirit in a somewhat power hungry witch supported by varying wiccas is a different story.
Antonia's villain ball
- While we're on the subject of Antonia, why did she announce her presence to the vampires after possessing Marnie, then get pissy when her Resurrection spell didn't work? Did she think they wouldn't take steps to protect themselves?
- Antonia is in firm possession of the Villain Ball. She seems to know she is the bad guy, and behaves accordingly. If she didn't get pissy and antagonize almost everyone that was, originally, on her side then we might forget she is supposed to be the bad guy. And we can't have that, can we?
- Or if she was too smart—had she simply killed Louis and Glasses Girl and made her escape, then gathered the witches for her spell, vampires would have actually met the sun.
"Cold Grey Light of Dawn"
- Early in "Cold Grey Light of Dawn," we see Eric and Sookie rutting in the woods, just as we left off last episode. When it cuts back to them, they're still going at it as they burst through the door of her house. Um...were they having sex during the entire walk back?
- Well, considering Eric's super-speed it's possible that he just picked her up and raced all the way back.
Where was Jessica?
- Where were Jesus and Jessica during the big Vampires vs Wiccans throwdown? Jesus made a big deal about going to Mexico to gain power to protect himself and Lafayette, and surely Jessica would realize that the continued survival of herself and her species would be more important than brooding over getting dumped by two men she thought would be fawning over her.
- Jesus and Lafayette were a little misguided after Eric and Pam tried to attack Marnie. They were worried about Eric's retaliation, not even knowing that he lost his memory and was not a threat to them. At this point, them going to Mexico just seems like an excuse to set up Lafayette as some sort of medium and have him get possessed by that Creole woman. As for Jessica, Bill was probably concerned after she almost just died and commanded her to stay home. Remember, Bill didn't even want Sookie and Eric to come along, but as Jessica's maker he has more control over her.
Merlotte's staffing
- Does Merlotte's have more employees than we see? Sometimes I wonder how the place manages to stay open. In "Let's Get Out of Here," the following people are all absent from work: Sookie, Holly, Jessica, Arlene, Terry, Lafayette and indeed Sam himself (who has a lot of time on his hands, considering that he operates a business and at this point just had one of his properties burn to the ground). Nonetheless, when Marcus goes into Merlotte's the place is running, though the only person present is Tommy, who is there not to work but to leave Sam a note.
- Yeah, just the fact that the only two cooks in the place (Terry and Lafayette) weren't there is cause for eyebrow raising. Maybe the townspeople just have nothing better to do than hang out there all day? Even if nobody is waiting on them.
- There are other people working there (I vaguely remember a burly black cook once and a busboy or two). How they put up with everyone else leaving every other night is beyond me.
- The black cook's name is John, I believe. Lafayette mentions him in the first episode if memory serves.
- We've seen other employees in the background several times, they're definitely there.
Where was Crystal?
- So where is Crystal in all this? The last we see of her is her telling Jason she'll see him at the full moon, but with that bit of redneck folklore out of the way, she's still no where to be found. They've sort of just dropped her story arc.
- This is on the YMMV page under Alternative Character Interpretation, but it's entirely possible that once Crystal realized Jason was never coming back, she panicked because she was afraid that Jason would tell the police (or the Feds) about his gang-rape and about Hotshot continuing to have V in its community. This probably prompted her to round up her people and get the hell out of Hotshot before the Feds came after them. It would at least explain why Crystal never shows up at Jason's house again despite knowing where he lives, and why the other werepanther women don't show up claiming they're pregnant with Jason's kids (assuming they got pregnant at all, which is unlikely considering they were all sterile).
Godric's age
- An old one, but still puzzling. Eric describes Godric as "He is twice as old as I am and very powerful. There are none above him in the new world." But Russell Edgington, at 3,000, is 50% older and only one state away, so he is hardly an unknown entity.
- Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think Eric knew Russell had settled in Mississippi before the third season, let alone became King. If he did know Russell, he didn't know that was the same man who killed his human family, since he didn't get a good look at his face at the time.
- Is there possibly some wriggle room to suggest that "above him" may not strictly refer to age? Especially when we consider that Eric sees Godric through rose-tinted glasses.
- I assumed he was just biased, kind of how most little kids like to think that theyr father is the biggest, strongest, smartest man in the world. I thought it was kind of cute.
Marnie's age
- Is Marnie the only one in her coven over the age of 40?
- Holly doesn't look that young. Given that she has children, it's a strong possibility she could be in her forties.
- Her boys are in their teens, so yeah, she's almost definitely in her 40s or so.
- Holly doesn't look that young. Given that she has children, it's a strong possibility she could be in her forties.
Glamoring ethics with Moongoddess
- After the end of the showdown at Moongoddess, Bill and Eric are both guilty of murder and witness tampering (glamouring almost everybody to forget the murders). Even if you look at these events purely through the lens of what's legal and what's not (rather than whether it was all justified or not), Jason knows everything that happened, and he's a cop. Doesn't he have a duty to report this?
- Eh, Jason seems pretty inclined to protect people breaking the law. Remember he warned Crystal about the raid on Hotshot? And was he ever given authorization to basically run the place after she left? All of those children probably should have been taken in by the state. And he never reported Andy for being a V addict. He's a pretty terrible cop, once you think about it.
- He wouldn't be the first cop torn between duty and loyalty.
- Jason also agreed not to tell anyone about Jessica killing one of Bill's guards. In Jessica's defense, she was under Antonia's spell at the time so Jason couldn't really fault her for it. Still, the casual manner in which he and Bill discuss sweeping the issue under the rug seems a little... discomforting.
- Jason just knows how things work. Honestly, Bill could and probably SHOULD have just glamored Jason just to be safe but he chose not to because Jason is part of the Team. Yes Jason is a horrible cop but really the answer here is that no good would come of it. As for Bill he hasn't shown a great deal of caring for humans save for one argument with his maker.
Samhain
- This show constantly has an annoying habit of not doing the research. The way "Samhain" was pronounced in the season finale indicated that no one even googled the word (it's pronounced "SOW-when"). It's just like season two where everyone was mispronouncing the word "maenad" and Maryann's incantation used "lo, lo" rather than "io, io".
- I explained away "maenad" by everyone saying it, more or less, having a thick southern accent. But the others I can't explain and "sam-a-hayn" seriously pisses me off too.
What if Marnie killed Bill and Eric?
- Let's say Marnie—in Lafayette's body—succeeds in killing Bill and Eric. And Then What? Her coven thinks her a bigger threat than the vampires, and the vampires think she's the biggest threat in Louisiana. It wouldn't be long before the two sides joined together to bring her down. Bringing her back as a ghost really accomplished nothing more than Deus Angst Machina for Lala by way of killing Jesus.
- What could Bill and Eric have done? Marnie's already dead, it's not like they could kill her again. It's never specifically stated that killing Lafayette would get rid of Marnie, either. Marnie cut up Lafayette and there's no reason to believe she couldn't still control his body if he was shot or something. By killing Bill and Eric, she gets revenge on the vampires who killed her in the first place.
- Marnie even said so herself when Bill pointed out that killing them wouldn't change anything. "I'm already dead, vampire, thanks to you. I have nothing left to lose." She was just angry and wanted them dead out of spite, not to further some larger goal.
Nan's bodyguards
- I always assumed that the mooks in the riot gear that guarded Nan Flanagan were also vampires, and able to protect Nan from other vampires. But as we saw in the finale, they weren't. They were just humans that Eric was able to decapitate the lot of in the blink of an eye. (The clincher: they didn't turn into puddles of goo when they died.) So if they aren't any match for vampires, then why does the Authority bother hiring them?
- It's possible in that particular situation, Nan might have wanted human guards she could control (either through glamouring or by paying them off) since Nan knew she was marked for death by the Authority after she killed Eric and Bill, and she may not have trusted vampire guards to accompany her or not betray her (especially if they were loyal to the Authority first and foremost). It would explain why she had human "stormtroopers" with her when she was literally telling Eric and Bill that she was prepared to commit treason against the Authority. As for how Eric was able to take them out easily, he's a 1000 years old vampire, and if he made a snap-decision like that, no amount of training would prepare them for how fast, strong, and lethal he was (and we see this in season 5 when Eric kills vampire soldiers in the Authority when he had to). Plus, I don't think Nan or her guards expected Bill and Eric to kill them, especially since she was offering an alliance and a way for both of them to avoid the True Death, so they might have been taken by surprise.
- As for why the Authority hires humans, they probably use them for daytime jobs and to help vampire mooks compensate for any weaknesses (silver, UV lights, etc) they might encounter on the job. They also might just hire humans for good PR and to pretend that their fostering positive vampire/human relationships by having inter-departmental cooperation between vampires and humans.
- There are plenty of reasons why it makes sense for elite vampires to have humans defending them... they lack the vampires' many weaknesses. However, as we see, they are vulnerable in other ways. What exactly allows Eric to kill them all before they lift a finger when Sophie-Anne, faced with a parallel scenario, did not even bother trying?
- Sophie-Anne seemed to be about 400. Eric is somewhere around 1000. He's probably more physically powerful.
- Sophie could have done any number of things. It seems that she simply gave up when it became clear that Bill had The Authority on his side.
- I think that was the idea with Sophie-Anne: She probably figured that even if she escaped, the Authority would come after her and subject her to a sadistic punishment if she got caught. She may have realized she was a dead woman walking, which is why she accepted her quick death rather than make a run for it and risk getting caught and subjected to A Fate Worse Than Death. It's also possible she was still in shock over the revelation that Bill was a double-agent for the Authority and had betrayed her, and she was still processing that before she got shot.
Drew's ghost
- Why did Drew's ghost continue to affect the Cajun accent when he spoke to Arlene from beyond the grave? And, if he really did care for Arlene, why didn't he bother to offer at least some kind of apology for committing violence against her neighbors/friends/co-workers?
- Can't answer the first question but, as to the second one, I think he was more concerned with warning her about the impending danger than with redeeming himself in her eyes, since that probably would have been a futile effort any way and he didn't know how much time he had, he decided to tell her what he felt was the most important at the moment.
- I suppose the simple answer to the accent query is that she only knew him as Rene, and with that accent, so he's providing a bit of postmortem continuity. Remember that the point was made that he was very good at separating out his different selves, hence Sookie's inability to catch on to his secret identity; this may actually speak to your second question too. Rene really did love Arlene, but still thinks that killing those women was the right thing to do.
- I wasn't sure he was affecting it, really. It seemed thinner on "cajun" and heavier on "southern" which is basically what a cajun accent sounds like anyway. And I didn't hear any of the verbal tics I remember from s1 (like adding the subject again at the end of the sentence — "You need a shave, you." (I don't think he ever said that actual sentence but I can't think of one he did say, I just remember the tic)).
- He was indeed affecting it; this was a plot point. He was learning it from a tape.
Capturing Eric and Bill
- How did Marnie get Eric and Bill tied up? There's two of them and they're a lot stronger than she is and she no longer has the ability to control vampires, since that ability was never her's to begin with (she just had it because Antonia had it and they were sharing a body), I can't think of any way that she could have captured them.
- We never really learned what exactly was the extent of Jesus's "demon power," so it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility that she could move herself and other objects magically. Perhaps she blitzed them with silver or performed some other spell.
- If Jesus' demon power was so awesome, how could he not save himself from getting tied up?
- Marnie was possessing Lafayette's body at the time, so Jesus was probably hoping that if he did what she told him, then she would set Lafayette free.
- I didn't get the sense that he had very good control over it, we've only really seen it emerge under extreme duress. Probably because he was scared of it.
Marnie aesops
- Marnie has been my favorite character all season. I feel that she was the first truly sympathetic antagonist the show has had, and I really felt for her when it was revealed that she was doing what she did because she'd been oppressed and mistreated all her life. So I found her characterization to be an interesting commentary on the consequences of bullying. However, it also bothers me that they chose to make Marnie the one who was willingly committing all those murders and atrocities because it came off as a convenient way to have her killed off without making the vampires look like the bad guys. I think it would have been more interesting if Marnie's homicidal rage was toned down just a tad so that the moral ambiguity of the vampires' treatment of her and her coven could be called into question rather than just acknowledged every once in a while. Thoughts?
- Agreed. It wouldn't be surprising if the vampires suffer Aesop Amnesia in the fifth season, continuing to bully humans even though Marnie and her coven came close to killing them all.
- I doubt the vampires ever learned anything in the first place. Most of them were totally in favor of killing Marnie (even before she became an active threat) and they probably think her power just proves that they were right about her. Which is stupid in my opinion because they are the ones who provoked her. Before Eric came along trying to force her to disband her coven, she had no desire to harm anyone.
- Marnie was most definitely a commentary on how not to respond to life mistreating you. All her life she was stepped on and hurt; when she finally got the chance for payback, she didn't care who it was against and basically picked the vampires because she felt they most recently deserved it and because it matched up with Antonia, and in taking her vengeance she also didn't care who got stepped on or hurt in the process. You KNOW that you've gone way too far when the ghost-witch with a near-500 year old blood feud thinks you're going too far.
- Agreed. It wouldn't be surprising if the vampires suffer Aesop Amnesia in the fifth season, continuing to bully humans even though Marnie and her coven came close to killing them all.
Marnie's necromancy
- What was Marnie planning by studying necromancy and using her dead bird as a guinea pig? She was overjoyed to find out it worked and wanted to move on to a human body before Eric got involved. However, she admitted under Glamour that she had no intention of using it against vampires. So what was she originally planning?
- Marnie suffers from a massive inferiority complex, and she feels that her powers have caused her nothing but misery all her life. They made her into a neurotic "freak" and didn't do anything to benefit her at all. So being able to do something as huge as revive the dead made her feel like her gift finally meant something. It made her feel powerful. Plus, Jesus points out that Marnie talked to the dead because they were her only friends. Maybe bringing the dead back to life was her way of trying to surround herself with companions.
- A massive inferiority complex indeed, since she had a coven full of people who loved and respected her.
- Being loved and respected and feeling loved and respected are two very different things. It's very realistic for someone with deep psychological scars to be constantly trying to fill a hole they can never quite manage.
- Where's Kitch Maynard? I understand with whole time skip it would be near impossible to fit him in, but to just drop that little Friday Night Lights esque story line bugs me.
- The recruited liked what he saw, and Kitch got out of town and went to college on a scholarship.
Keeping secrets from Sookie
- How does anyone keep anything from Sookie? Her power has been shown to pretty all-encompassing yet somehow the extremely obvious mystery of the first season and Sam's secret eluded her. It doesn't really make any sense.
- Sookie trained herself to block out most of the noise. She could've found out Sam's secret if she had dug, but she had no real reason to. Sam was her employer and he had the hots for her, so I have a feeling she spent a long time blocking out his thoughts in particular.
- It's especially blatant in the first series, where Sookie knows perfectly well there is a serial killer operating in her sleepy little town. Wouldn't you feel a responsibility to listen in on absolutely everyone you know? Chances are, she would eventually overhear the serial killer (even if he was trying to conspicuously think of others stuff, he would sooner or later think about rage killing or about the people he's murdered).
- Yes. Which is probably why halfway through the season "listen in on everyone you know" is exactly what Sookie starts doing. And that's more or less how she catches him, by listening in on his thoughts and finding discrepancies and seeing those rage thoughts.
- In the books she specifically can't read Sam or other weres/shifters. She gets moods from him, but not actual thoughts.
- Sookie does say in one episode that she has read Sam's thoughts before and they're usually in the form of images, not words. This is obviously contradicted in a number of later episodes but, in general, it's a decent reason for why she would be less able to understand Sam's thoughts than anyone else's.
- There's also the question of how come Sookie didn't immediately pick up on Amy's thoughts and realize something was wrong with her? Unlike Sam, Amy was human and had spent a good chunk of time with Sookie during season 1, which means she would have had to read Amy's thoughts intentionally or unintentionally just like she's done with everyone else. Even if she wasn't a fan of Jason at the time, one would think Sookie would be curious about why Amy was interested in Jason (and was willing to defend him from other people, including Sookie, criticizing him), or at the very least catch the occasional thought from Amy and pick up that she was a psychopath and wasn't as honest as she presented herself as.
- Sookie trained herself to block out most of the noise. She could've found out Sam's secret if she had dug, but she had no real reason to. Sam was her employer and he had the hots for her, so I have a feeling she spent a long time blocking out his thoughts in particular.
The effects of vampire blood
- The effect of vampire blood on humans seems pretty inconsistent and extremely plot-driven. A single drop has very powerful (and very addictive) hallucinogenic effects, but is otherwise not dangerous. An entire vial of it apparently does not have hallucinogenic effects to speak of, but can have serious overdose effects (including things like pathological priapism). Ok, so far so good. However, seemingly copious amounts of it, like amounts equivalent to tens of vials, have no ill-effect at all, but on the contrary can quickly heal a mortally wounded person, with no dangerous side-effects (other than forming a supernatural bond with the vampire), such as priapism or addiction. In fact, in some cases even smaller amounts of blood seem to be innocuous and have healing properties if it's used to heal somebody. In fact, it almost looks like the blood "knows" what it's being used for and acts accordingly: If it's used for recreational hallucinogenic use, it acts as such (and causes addiction), but if it's used to cure someone, then it just cures the person and has no hallucinogenic nor addictive properties.
- Also, if one single drop is enough for a daily fix, one could assume that an entire vial would last for months. (This plot device would make a lot more sense if the amount needed for hallucinogenic effects would be an entire vial, or more.)
- I get the heavy impression that the context counts a lot. I don't remember if a vial's ever been used to heal someone (if it has this kindof weakens my theory) but I think of it as, coming from the source has a different effect than a vial that's been out of the vampire for days, weeks, or even months. Also, one vial apparently can last months, because Amy mentioned having had her vial for awhile — thus the need to cut it with aspirin to prevent clotting. Also, when dealing with a supernatural substance, it's not out of the realm of possibility that it does know what it's being used for, like the way it behaved when added to aspirin, sinking in and turning the whole tablet red very quickly. Just that shot implied pretty strongly to me that the blood has an actual pattern of behavior that varies by situation, unlike standard chemicals that are much more predictable and do the same thing every time.
- I believe a vial has been used to heal someone. Crystal's father was severely wounded and Lafayette, if I am remembering correctly, used an old vial to heal him because there wasn't time to get to a hospital. I think it's probably true about the blood "knowing" what it's being used for, though.
- From what I got out of it, when you drink the blood it goes through a process. "Is the body damaged? Yes? Okay heal it. If the body's not damaged, make it even BETTER! Oh, there's not enough vamp blood to give a speed/strength/sex boost? Well, shit, let's just go to the brain and have a party." This is actually somewhat supported by the way a human is turned; nearly all their blood has to be drained, and then they have to drink (or be fed) a somewhat substantial amount of their now-maker's blood. The two times we see someone turned, Jessica and Tara, it looks like there's more vamp blood being used than a single vial would hold.
- This is lampshaded at one point, when Hoyt refuses to let Jessica heal him with her blood because he knows what "that shit" does to people. But he may be being an illogical-world logician about the whole thing.
Appointing the Magister
- How did the magister become well the magister? It seems like he is a fundamentalist, the vampires who we find out in season 5 believe that humans are food and nothing more and are enemies of the authority, how is the magister, with his views which he expresses in season one so powerful?
- It's possible he could have changed his views after being turned, since, naturally, they no longer applied to him.
- The OP is a little garbled, but if I'm reading correctly, it's asking how the Magister, who seems to follow a philosophy much like the Sanguinistas, has risen to power in the Authority, which is pushing mainstreaming. One possible answer is that Roman’s particular administration is relatively new. While mainstreaming’s been going on for a while, it may have either been a necessity, a ploy or both that the Authority the Magister mentions (distinct from the one we see in Season 5) was just propping up for the media to save face. Then somewhere along the line, Roman, a true believer in mainstreaming, came to power. Unfortunately, he surrounded himself with Sanguinistas…
Godric's nest
- When Godric's nest got suicide-bombed, we learned a bit about what happens to a vampire that gets hit by silver shrapnel—the vampire's body will apparently push the silver out; however, it's a sufficiently slow process that Eric had time to pull his whole "I'll die unless you suck the silver out" pity play on Sookie. Now in Season 5, Bill and Eric get silver injected into their bloodstreams (which is obviously incredibly painful), but the effects seem to disappear as soon as their torturers stop actively injecting the silver. Were their bodies able to eject the silver that fast? Why such a difference in speed between that and the silver shrapnel? And if the silver was ejected from their bodies, where did it go? Is there now silver residue all over that room, like dust bunnies from hell waiting for whatever poor vampire is in charge of cleaning it up?
- They probably sweat it out and sweat it out incredibly quickly. We're talking about a liquid solution here not a solid slug. If the body can actively reject solid slugs and rather quickly (sure it took minutes but we're talking about a decent chunk with chain shrapnel) it's probably just much quicker with liquid. Why they could move with silver dust coating them is a decent question though.
Godric, Eric, and Nora
- Speaking of Godric, how did he feel about the nature of Eric and Nora's relationship? "Oh look, the kids are boning..."
- "'Father, brother, son'—no matter which way I look at it, something has gone terribly wrong..." I'm curious whether vampires as a culture have simply borrowed familial terms to describe relationships among vampires without viewing the relationships as true parallels to the human relationships (so it's not considered incest), or if one of these things (either referring to each other as siblings at all or the sibling incest) is just something peculiar to Eric's little family—that whole little clan (Godric, Eric, Pam, and now Nora) seems to have some unusually strong bonds compared to other vampires "families" we see, even if the particulars of the relationships can get a bit...odd. Actually, have any other vampires in the series been known to have multiple progeny at all? Maybe vampire "siblings" aren't common enough for there to be a "normal" relationship type between the multiple progeny of one maker.
- I always got the feeling that vampire incest was just a thing that happened, and it was the vampires who decided just how the relationship turned out. Godric is Eric's "father," but using that logic Lorena was Bill's "mother" and they had a lover's relationship as opposed to a parent/child one like Bill has with Jessica. Perhaps this is just a particular troper stretching, but it also seemed like Eric's love for Godric was more than just a father/son thing. Eric has a love and loyalty to Godric that he has for no one else. Perhaps vampire love is different than human love, and Godric wouldn't have cared that his children were screwing each other.
- For what it's worth, Pam turned someone before Tara, (mentioned in both "Turn! Turn! Turn!" and a DVD extra), but didn't go into detail as to what happened to him.
Debbie's death
- Debbie broke into Sookie's house with a shotgun. Sookie killed her out of self-defense. What was so complicated about it that they had to hide the body and keep secrets from the police?
- Yeah, it seems to me that it would have been more plausible for Sookie to hide Debbie's body in order to protect herself from her pack than because she feels nebulously guilty for doing the same thing to Debbie that she did to Lorena.
Supernatural traits
- Maybe someone who has read the books can help me out. Is there any indication of how supernatural traits are passed down? Luna was waiting to find out whether Emma would be a shifter or just a werewolf; was it really fifty-fifty? Was Emma inheriting no shape-changing traits at all ever a possibility? Fae inheritance seems even harder to map out. The season five episode "Gone Gone Gone" reveals that, until Sookie, there hadn't been a single female faerie from her family for nearly 300 years. I guess with mostly males and generation skips this is possible, but it seems unlikely.
- Well, the series has left much of the book's continuity behind a LONG time ago, but from the way it seems, everyone who has a "little" fae blood in them has SOMETHING special about them; there's implications that Jason's otherwise inexplicable good luck with the ladies and stupefying aiming skills are at least partially caused by his ancestry. Sookie just got lucky and got the whole kit and caboodle, sort of like a blonde child being born after 8 generations of brunettes.
- It would be tough for a supernatural, like Luna, to figure out what was going to happen at all. After all, her kind doesn't officially exist, and it's not like she was handed a manual on werewolf-shifter relations. As these are supernatural beings, who rarely if ever come in contact with each other, whose abilities seem to be magical, she kind of had to figure it out as she went along. Maybe their genetics are similar to human genetics, and maybe not... The kid being a wolf or shifter just seemed the most likely possibilities to her, but for all she really knew it could have been totally human... or been a toad, or anything else.
Farie contract
- How comes neither Eric nor Bill nor any other vampire who has ever been at Sookie's didn't smell the contract hiding under her bedroom floor. It was written with the blood of a goddamn faerie elder after all.
- True, but it was a very old contract. Maybe the scent isn't detectable after a few hundred years, even to a powerful vampire.
- The whole house probably smells like faerie blood, what with the whole actual faerie Stackhouses having lived there for decades, and it probably has residue from every knee scrape and papercut etc.
- True, but it was a very old contract. Maybe the scent isn't detectable after a few hundred years, even to a powerful vampire.
Daphne the pig
- Why was Daphne a pig in the first place? Freaking out Tara with Maryann is one thing, but staying in a pen and eating slop while a big party is going on? That's just weird.
- Not if you're a shifter who is just as comfortable being a pig as being a human... to her, eating slop in a pen was just as normal in a party atmosphere as getting drunk and eating a lot of nachos.
Antonia's curse
- If Antonia was the one who cursed vampires from the sun, how were there rumours of walking in the sun when Russell, nearly 3000 years old, was turned?
- She didn't. Vampires were always vulnerable to the sun. Antonia just performed a spell that forced the vampires to walk out into the sun instead of sleeping in their cozy coffins. It would be like if someone forced you to drink poison. They don't MAKE the liquid poisonous to you, they just force you to welcome your own death.
- Her flashback shows vampires in the sunlight when she's being burned at the stake.
- No, it doesn't. The people that burn Antonia are humans; they're on orders from the vampires that run the church, but those vampires are not present during the burning.
- She didn't. Vampires were always vulnerable to the sun. Antonia just performed a spell that forced the vampires to walk out into the sun instead of sleeping in their cozy coffins. It would be like if someone forced you to drink poison. They don't MAKE the liquid poisonous to you, they just force you to welcome your own death.
Vampires in the Catholic Church
- How did vampires succeed in masquerading as high-ranking priests in the Catholic Church? Wouldn't their inability to go out during the day have impeded their progress? Even more so with their ability to infiltrate Fox News and Google; I'd think burning up and melting would be hard on your golf game.
- I think this is where the ability to "glamour" people would come in real handy; you really don't need to actually show up to any of the daytime events as long as you can hypnotize everyone into thinking you did. That mixed with a little cleverness and a carefully cultivated aura of mysteriousness would ensure you continued to hold your position of power without a hiccup.
- Glamouring definitely had to have been a big part of how they got away with this. They either glamoured the human priests into looking the other way, or else just glamoured them into forgetting they were there (as well as glamouring them to make sure their coffins were safe and no one would accidentally stumble on them).
Why do all vampires settle in Louisiana?
- There are billions of humans in the world, and they are scattered all over the place, in all climates, everywhere. Now, by contrast the show states there are only several million vampires in the world... Why do they populate the American South/Southwest so densely? It seems like all the most powerful ones, as well as the seat of their Authority itself, end up there. Why? Out-of-universe, it's obviously because that's where the show is set, but In-Universe, what do they love about the South so much? It's far from being the most populated part of even that particular country; the weather isn't particularly friendly to vampires (the ones in 30 Days of Night had the right idea) and it's certainly not where they originate or have lots of history. So why do so many end up in Texas/Louisiana/Mississippi?
- It does seem like there are a disproportionate number of vampires in the American South. The reason, I believe, is riddled with Fridge Brilliance and probably more than one Stealth Insult against the South. First: it is a largely rural, swampy area. Plenty of places to hide (more important when The Masquerade was still going on). Next: There is a stereotype about what type of people live there (Good Ol' Boy rednecks, Kissing Cousins, etc...) and if any of them reported vampires, they would not be taken seriously. Also: in very recent (to an immortal) memory, the Southern US was the place you could go to an auction and just buy a person to eat. If that person disappeared, no one would ever ask any questions. Plus: Louisiana has a lot of above ground cemeteries; so if you weren't a particularly wealthy vampire who could afford a plantation house like Bill's, and you had to sleep in a cemetery, you could just push your way out of a sepulchre rather than digging your way out of the ground every evening.
- My personal take on it is that the American South is probably a fairly good place to be especially as a fairly powerful vampire. It's got a decent population, not so big that people would have to stumble over you and not so small that you couldn't find a bite to drink. By contrast New York or LA despite what the media would have you believe would uncover hidden vamps on a weekly basis making the Masquerade problematic at best. Alaska is just so far from anything that you'd starve. The South has the best of both worlds. Lets also remember that vampires are fast. We don't have a solid estimate other than we know they are well above average car speed. If you give them a "reasonable" speed of one hundred miles an hour they are within running distance of several major population centers and finally they are drama queens and there is no place (in the US) quite like the South if part of your ego is tied up in having an opulent mansion that nobody looks too closely at.
- Because the southerners' blood tastes like sweet sweet BBQ sauce.
- The area around the equator would be the most popular with vampires. Imagine a vampire living in Alaska, he would have to remain in his coffin for the majority of the day during the summer. So they'd group around the population centers in the places where the amount of sunshine doesn't vary too much throughout the year.
Vampire driver's license
- How do vampires own cars or have driver's licenses? Is the DMV open 24 hours a day or close really late?
- As the world has had to adjust to the existence of vampires since The Masquerade was dropped, most likely, yes; DM Vs do stay open into the nighttime hours. Prior to revealing themselves to the world, the vampires probably had to rely on glamouring to either a) get licenses or b) get out of tickets. That is when they bother with cars at all (since most of them can run or even fly faster than any automobile).
- Or they just don't care about having a license. They just drive and handle the cops when stopped.
Skinwalking versus Shifting
- Why is Skinwalking so much more dangerous/painful than regular shifting?
- One would think that changing into basically the same thing as yourself would be far easier and less dangerous than changing into a fly.
- Since it requires the murder of a family member, presumably this makes it a form of Blood Magic. Maybe the hefty toll for its use has something to do with its innate darkness?
- Alternatively, the similarity might make it more difficult to differentiate the other human's form from the skinwalker's own, and thus more difficult and dangerous to change back. Imagine, for example, if the skinwalker mostly transforms back, but fails to transform an organ or two, which the body then rejects.
- One would think that changing into basically the same thing as yourself would be far easier and less dangerous than changing into a fly.
Roman's age
- From Season 5: According to the True Blood wiki, as well as Word of God from Christopher Meloni, Authority leader Roman is "only" 500 years old. How can this be right? If true, why did the 2000 year old Salome need to dig up the 3000 year old (and horribly dangerous, unstable and batshit crazy) Russell Edgington to take him out?
- Age highly correlates with power, but it is not the only thing that matters. Note the flashback meeting of Eric and Bill where Eric noted that Bill was strong for someone so young.
- Salome made a big deal out of Lilith's supposed commandment not to murder the Guardian. My guess is that she didn't want to do it herself so that Lilith would still want Salome to drink her blood, so she needed some else powerful enough to do it in the heart of the Authority.
Fae aging
- If Andy's daughters grow up in a matter of days because of their Fae blood, how is it that Sookie (who has Fae genes and powerful ones at that) grew up at a normal pace based on her and Tara's flashbacks and old photos?
- Probably because Andy's daughters are 50% fae and Sookie is much less than that.
Warlow's age
- Minor question: How does Warlow know his exact age, down to the year, if he was apparently born before or at least on the very fringes of recorded history?
- It is likely an approximate. The same issue comes up with Russell, who claimed to be "over 3,000 years old", but is stated in other places to be closer to 2,800. In reality, the fact that different cultures used different systems of tracking date, including just counting seasons, lunar calendars and solar calendars, makes these numbers somewhat arbitrary even if the vampire in question is keeping count. Even things like the length of days and night are variable based on latitude. So if a vampire told you exactly how many days/nights they have lived, and you tallied that up you would get different numbers of years based on different calendars. Maybe Warlow, in some extended bout of boredom, did the head math to estimate his age according to the Gregorian Calendar (which did not exist yet when he was born)?
- Considering Warlow is staggeringly ancient, terribly lonely, active both day and night, is not a big fan of most normal vampire hobbies, and existed before TVTropes, it would actually be very surprising if he hadn't done all the necessary math, in every possible calendar, at some point over the last five thousand years. He's probably done countless similar mind-numbing exercises just to pass the time.
- It is likely an approximate. The same issue comes up with Russell, who claimed to be "over 3,000 years old", but is stated in other places to be closer to 2,800. In reality, the fact that different cultures used different systems of tracking date, including just counting seasons, lunar calendars and solar calendars, makes these numbers somewhat arbitrary even if the vampire in question is keeping count. Even things like the length of days and night are variable based on latitude. So if a vampire told you exactly how many days/nights they have lived, and you tallied that up you would get different numbers of years based on different calendars. Maybe Warlow, in some extended bout of boredom, did the head math to estimate his age according to the Gregorian Calendar (which did not exist yet when he was born)?
Jessica Hamby, eternal virgin
- How is Jessica an "eternal virgin?" The hymen does not cover the entire vagina, and if done carefully, sex can involve just stretching it rather than tearing it. I'm assuming body tissue retains its elasticity when one becomes a vampire; therefore, the hymen opening could still stretch beyond its pre-changing limits, just like that of a human.
- Presumably none of her partners did it carefully, and perhaps she hadn't heard of that possibility. So they did keep breaking it and it did keep growing back. And in any case, her point is that her hymen is still present, which makes it still "feel" like she's a virgin in the cultural tradition that tends to equate hymen breaking with first-time sex. And as for the stretching, perhaps even if it was done carefully, vampire healing may restore the pre-sex tension levels.
- The writers don't know how hymens work, probably. It couldn't "grow back" because... that's just not how it works, yeesh. Yoour hymen literally does not break. I'm just going to leave this here.
- This might explain why the whole "eternal virgin" thing was quietly dropped after the second season, and Jessica has been shown having and enjoying sex without a problem.
Bellefleur fairy kids
- Where did the Bellefleur fairy kids get the toddler-sized clothes when they had their first "growth spurt"?
- Andy saw how fast they were developing and planned ahead?
- Arlene has a daughter, she might have kept their clothes.
Steve in the white room
- Why wasn't Steve able to leave the White Room when Bill entered it? Did Bill lock it behind him?
- Because by the time he figured out he wasn't gonna get any of Bill's blood, Eric was in the way.
Bill, the savior
- Why did Bill just lie there in the sun room for the vampires to drink his blood instead of letting them out and into the main part of the compound and figure out how to get them Warlow blood without endangering himself later?
- He wasn't thinking straight.
- If you watch it seems that particular room is separate from the compound.
- That's true, but there does seem to be an area to the side for observation that is a bit separate. He probably still would have ended up having to use his blood, but it would have bought him time to do it carefully.
- Presumably the door to the observation room is too strong for him to rip open. Remember that's how Eric enters the room and why Steve and the other vampires don't just escape in the first place. The time line looks like this, Bill enters with a solution, his blood. He doesn't waste time with the door for whatever reason. The other vamps won't let Steve get any blood, Eric opens the door presumably to save everybody but Bill's already doing his thing. Eric then prevents Steve from escaping and he's the only one who needs to by this point.
What happened to Grandma Bellefleur?
- A minor issue, but what happened to Grandma Bellefleur between Seasons 4 and 6? When we first meet her, she's very reserved and dignified, a Southern Belle-flavored Grande Dame. In Season 6 however, she's a racist, senile old bag who steamrolls over Arlene for Terry's funeral, and during said funeral, her lack of tact is a Running Gag. Did she have a stroke or something and that's why we didn't see her in Season 5?
Why did Bill kill the doctor?
- Why did Bill kill the doctor when he invaded the compound? The man was in such bad shape after Eric ripped off his genitals that he was dying a fairly painful death. He was begging for death and after finding out the man had hurt Jessica, Bill gives him a mercy kill.
- I got the impression that if he hadn't hurt Jessica, Bill would have treated him. Basically, he was pissed enough to kill him, but he's still compassionate enough to not want to let him bleed to death from a torn-off dick.
- Also Bill may have respected the doctor for telling the truth.
Eric's sunbathing
- What in the world possessed Eric to go nude sunbathing? Even if Warlow wasn't killed right that second, the faerie blood would have still ran its course at some point.
- Fairy blood seems to wear off pretty slowly under normal circumstances. Presumably Eric would have had plenty of time to if not get to shelter (it does seem to be implied he's pretty far from civilization and shelter) at least bury himself in the snow and wait for night had it worn off at the same rate it did Bill when he first nearly killed Sookie or Eric and Russel in the earlier seasons. It was still stupid mind you but the kind of stupid that a lot of people would have made. Especially since this time it seemed to be sticking.
- FAIRY blood would have run it's course. WARLOW blood was thought to be permanent. Still stupid on his part, but yeah.
Vampire strength
- Vampire strength is very clearly driven by age in this series. It's flat out stated in the early seasons that Eric could kill Bill with relative ease if he was actually trying. An entire chapter, kingdom, state of vampires all step down when Godric glances at them and Russel's curb stomped a group of supposed bad asses. How was Bill vs Warlow anything but a complete and utter curb stomp complete with no selling anything Bill threw at him?
- The vampiric strength might have been tempered by the Faerie blood.
- And Bill might not have lost 100% of Lilith's power.
- Also, despite the weird Heel–Face Revolving Door the writers ran him through, Warlow was supposed to be a decent guy who just lost control at times, especially at night. It's entirely possible Warlow's faerie side didn't want to hurt Bill or anyone, and was fighting his dark side the whole time. He may well have been hoping they'd be able to kill him, as he had no reason to live after Sookie's rejection of him.
- Warlow being a decent guy is seriously questionable. Let's not forget that at the beginning of season 6, he slaughtered all of the faeries at Hot Wings (including Claude) just so they wouldn't intervene with his plans for Sookie (or banish him to another realm the same way Claudine did). Let's also not forget that, regardless of what happened with Sookie's parents or his reasons for killing them, he still intended to take Sookie as a child and groom her into becoming his bride, which is all kinds of messed up. It's most likely that the reason he didn't kill Bill or anyone else is because he didn't feel like he needed to. He could just knock them out or imprison them, grab Sookie, and disappear before they could do anything about it. Or it's likely he spared them because he planned to use them as leverage against Sookie if she caused problems and resisted being his faerie-bride and didn't act the way he wanted her to.
Warlow's blood
- So Warlow's blood has been confirmed by Word of God to confer permanent daywalking on vampires while Warlow is alive... How, then, was Lilith killed by sunlight? Did she really never drink his blood? Wouldn't she have had to, at least to turn him into a vampire? If it allowed her to daywalk, why wouldn't she drink some?
- She drank his blood while he was still just a fairy, which has been shown to be temporary. She apparently never thought to drink his blood after turning him because as most vampires know, vampire blood is less than useless to vampires.
- Also, according to the Vampire Bible, daylight is forbidden and fairies are an abomination. Lilith might have been directly commanded by God not to drink Warlow's blood.
- She drank his blood while he was still just a fairy, which has been shown to be temporary. She apparently never thought to drink his blood after turning him because as most vampires know, vampire blood is less than useless to vampires.
Tommy and Maxine
- Meanwhile, how DID Tommy end up with Maxine Fortenberry? There's a lot about the time jump that feels left out.
- Season 3 ends with Sam shooting him and Season 4 opens a year later with him buttoned up and living with her, but we don't get the sense that he has any particular loyalties to her (he tries to steal from her, even though she's taking care of him in a way that no one else has). And folks seem to know that Sam shot him but he hasn't done jail time. So how did he end up in the care of a woman who, before this, seemed more interested in gossip and controlling her flesh and blood than taking care of a strange boy?
- And Jessica and Hoyt mention that Maxine tried to shoot Jessica. How did that possibly end without Maxine being arrested or killed? Why were there so many throwaway moments that should have bigger consequences?
Turning Tara
- Why do Sookie and Lafayette ask Pam to turn Tara into a vampire, instead of just giving her some of her blood? As Sookie reminds Lafayette, Tara hates vampires, and the blood would heal her just as much as turning her into a vampire would, without the side effect of turning her into something she hates.
- Tara was shot IN THE HEAD. She was already dead at that point. There was no way to save her with vampire blood without her becoming a vampire. As for whether or not it would've been more respectful to let her stay dead than turn her into the thing she hates the most, that's a different discussion altogether.
Hep-V wipeouts
- How Hep-V vamps able to wipe out whole towns over multiple nights? They can't get into peoples homes without being invited.
The terms of release
- When Bill releases Jessica in season 3, does that mean Jessica is actually free? Or does it not count because Jessica does not understand the concept of "releasing"? He does summon her multiple times afterwards and uses the phrase “as your maker...” on her numerous times.
- Jessica didn't accept it in Season 3. Notice that later, when Eric releases Pam, Pam says that she accepts. Another progeny demanded her release and it was granted. Since Jessica didn't want to be released, and Bill accepted her back as his progeny, it meant that the release didn't take. Same really on Bill's part: Eric later kind of hints that it’s something you have to feel, and mean, and in this particular instance, Bill didn’t.
Why was Sookie still in love with Bill after finding out the truth?
- Finding out your boyfriend hired 2 guys to beat the shit out of you so he could save you and make you fall in love with him should make you question their feelings for you.
- Sookie didn't find out about that until season three. We know that Sookie had been drinking Bill's blood (lots of it, and with quite some frequency) since episode two of season one. Vampire blood has a powerful affect on the minds of humans who drink it, and we know Bill was trying to make Sookie love him. Like Lafayette said, "You take this [vampire blood] in and you take in a piece of the vampire it came from." Sookie had a lot of Bill's blood, so undoubtedly she'd been influenced by that. It impeded on her ability to think clearly, to have a mind of her own. There's more to it than the blood of course, since Bill manipulated her in a lot of ways, but that's a major aspect of it.
- It should be noted that Bill didn't hire the Rattrays. He just didn't stop them right away and let them beat her to near death so that he could give her his blood. Furthermore, love is a DEEP feeling that doesn't go away very easily, sometimes never. Then when you take into account that Bill was Sookie's first love (which makes her feelings for him that much more profound), the fact that she drank his blood which bonds them even closer than the average couple, AND the fact that sleeping with a corpse made her feel "normal", it's very understandable that Sookie retained her feelings for Bill even after discovering everything Bill did. Bill represented something very significant in her life. Not only that, but for Sookie, the events between the beginning of Season 4 and the end of Season 6 all took place within a matter of weeks. The end of Season 6 jumps six months and then all of Season 7 takes place within a matter of days/weeks. So we're talking about a year - if not less - that Sookie had to get over Bill which was not nearly enough time to shake the deep affection she felt for him. It's really complicated when powerful emotions and attachments are put into the mix.
