True Blood, 1x06, “Cold Ground”

Episode Title: Cold Ground
Writer: Raelle Tucker
Director: Nick Gomez
Originall Aired: 10/12/2008
Grade: A+

This was a beautiful episode, well-done Raelle Tucker. Supernatural may not be as good without Tucker, but I’m glad she’s on this show instead.

Sookie’s freakout over the pie, and then her crying as she ate the last pie her grandmother baked was heartbreaking. I mean, truly, poignantly, relatably heartbreaking. Many, many people associate their grandmothers with good, comforting, made-with-love food, so it was a perfect way to illustrate Sookie’s grief.

Mrs. Fortenberry’s thoughts about how she should have gotten there sooner to see the blood and maybe she should’ve brought red velvet cake were horrid beyond the point of believability. We all have strange and inappropriate thoughts, but we usually have the decency to feel guilty about them even within our own heads. She didn’t sound guilty at all, and the inside of her brain was disgusting to the point where I’m wondering if she becomes a murderer at some point in the future.

Speaking of murder, again, some more, I do think the strangling attempt on Sookie was real, and the fact that she survived is, I’m guessing, due to the infusion of V she got from Bill in the second episode.

The romantic cliché with the white nightgown and running through the night to Bill was almost like a joke, but it worked with her character as presented on the show. I can see Sookie wanting to make a dramatic ritual out of it, especially in her grief, and especially because if she’s been a virgin for this long, there may be a traumatic reason why. It was also rather refreshing that Bill biting her for the first time was visceral and, well, gross, as opposed to sexy and romantic.

As for Tara and her mother, I am speechless. Somewhere along the way, Tara became my favorite character on the show. I’m not sure when it started, because I thought she was obnoxious in the pilot, and I can’t even put into words why I like her so much, but there it is. I’m not sure I like this demon angle, which is also hard to explain. I guess it’s because it sounds supernatural in a “Christian” way, whereas the other supernatural things on this show seem to fall outside of religion? I just don’t want to start seeing angels and demons—I can go watch this season of Supernatural if I want that. I’m definitely hoping this “demon” is figurative and psychological, not a literal supernatural being.