Breaking Bad: Down

 "That was before my housing situation went totally testicular on me, ok?"

This is another cleverlt structured episode, with Walt and Jesse given perfectly contrasting parallel dilemmas in an episode which very much focuses on the drama as opposed to terrifying excitement. It's also an episode which shows even further what a superb double act Walt and Jesse have already become, to the credit of bot actors: we all know Bryan Cranston is extraordinary, but so is Aaron Paul.

After an artily shot beginning the two paallel narratives begin, reflecting cleverly upon each other. Walt is desperate to stay at home for a while to allay Skyler's suspicions, meaning no more cooking for a good while. Alas, it also means some bad lying from Walt- he comes across as far too desperate and secretive about the second phone thing, and Skyler isn't stupid. He's trapped, and his family life seems to be slipping away, as shown most subtly where e fails to connect with his son while trying to tach him to drive. I suspect, by the end of the season, Walt will no longer be with his family as for him to be a family man, while doing what he does, is simply not sustainable. Yet it's the very thing that gives his life meaning in the first place.

Jesse, meanwhile, is summarily evicted by his long-suffering parents, and is suddenly reduced to desperate sofa surfing. There's a nicely huanced scene of him in the house of an old man, now married with a young son, with the massive culture clash between them made awkwardly clear. Jesse needs to start cooking pretty damn quickly. And he needs Walt, as is made very clear indeed by the end.

I think I know where this is going- to the full transition from family life to one of criminal ambition. The scene between Jesse and his old mate illustrates how one cannot have both. But this is, again, a superb bit of telly.

True Blood: Hitting the Ground

"Never really thought I was smart enough to get depressed, but here I am..."

It's a miraculously if temporarily recovered Bill to the rescue; what other resolution could there have been? The pre-titles teaser ends with Lorena's death. Her last words are "I love you, William."

Alcide's ex, Debbie, is the adversary for much of the early part of the episode, and I suppose she's very real as a character- an addict who has chosen a very bad relationship. She certainly doesn't react well when Alcide shoots her new bloke, the one she got herself branded for.

Hoyt's new girlfriend is incredibly annoying. He's only with her to get back at Jessica, and now he's stuck with someone he can't stand. And she's really into him. Oops. Bill is into Sookie, too- literally; he has to be physically restrained from drinking too much of Sookie's blood when unconscious. This goes down very badly with all concerned, especially as Bill is on very thin ice at the moment. There's an awful lot of drama over a supposedly dying Sookie until Bill is finally allowed to turn up and save her. None of this is doing anything for Tara's current hatred of all things undead, understandably given her recent experiences.

Sam finally finds out what his family is up to- and it's truly reprehensible: his birth parents are using Tommy, their own son, to take part in dogfights to earn income for them all- and his feckless dad just gambles away the money. Sam, quite rightly, takes Tommy away from them, but he's a troubled kid. 

Perhaps even more surprising as this, mind, is the revelation that Jason is the older sibling. Really? The really big reveal, though, is Sookie's dream in which she meets others like herself, one of whine, Claudine, is played by Itene Adler herself, Lara Pulver...

We end with Eric and the King rescuing Pam... by murdering the Magister, although naturally not before getting him to declare Russell and Sophie-Anne married: the King of Mississippi has just annexed Louisiana. What with the Authority do? And, actually, just who are they?

Perhaps there's just a little too much hospital, but this is a brilliant episode with revelation after revelation.

True Blood: Timebomb

"I reckon I've already been to Heaven. It was inside your wife."

This episode focuses on Godric; that he's Really Important is signalled by the reverent behaviour of Eric, until now a huge authority figure. And then there's his Christlike bearing and behaviour, far more "Christian" than anyone in Steve Newlin's ridiculous cult, defusing the whole situation (and ending the sub-plot so that Maryann can take centre stage) with enormous grace and dignity. It's tempting to see this 2,000 year old vampire as an older and wiser version of Bill, which has obvious implications. Huge themes of sin, redemption and the wisdom of religious ethics as opposed to actual belief are at work here.

Bill escapes, interrupting Jessica and Hoyt in coitus to get them to flee to Bon Temps. Sam is framed for Daphne's death, joining an awful lot of licentious locals in jail. Daphne was missing a heart...

The grossest bit is, of course, Maryann serving Daphne's raw heart to Tara and Eggs in a pie, but this spectacle is narratively necessary to ficus us on her as the proper big bad of the season, now that the Reverend Mr. Newlin's little sideshow is over. The most tragic bit is that Jessica's hymen has grown back as it always will; for her, sex will always come with the pain of her first time. That's awful.

It's a rich, powerful episode even before we get to the ultimate cliffhanger: Luke as a suicide bomber...

True Blood: Never Let Me Go

"I would no more allow you to feed on that young man than watch pornography on television!"

Sam has a shock; Daphne knows what he is, being a shifter herself. At last he's not alone, and has a lover he can really feel close to. Nothing bad will come of this, right? This is narratively paralleled with Sookie finding another telepath in the unwilling Barry and, embarrassingly, Sam and Daphne also find Arlene and Terry arriving for their own woodland sexual adventures. This series is plotted with the precision of a farce. I love it.

Meanwhile, we discover why Eric is so keen to rescue Godric; he's Eric's maker, as we establish with an unexpected flashback set in (roughly) Beowulf-era Sweden. The fact we've seen nothing like this before makes it extraordinary to watch, and our first sight of Godric is in this context, an interesting choice.

We also have Maryann and her tribe moving into Sookie's, after a little manipulation of Tara, and Jason's continuing experiences woth his religious cult. This plot strand still feels a little dragged out, but ends rather interestingly as Sarah visits Jason for rather unpuritanical reasons. That Jason...

True Blood: Mine

"If we can't kill people, what's the point of being a vampire?"

We begin to meet more vampires, and it's definitely seeming as though Bill is the exception in not being evil and highly menacing: is this what we're intended to think? So far it's far from clear cut that vampires should indeed be treated as a minority deserving of rights, but we'll see how things progress. Bill explains that vampires become evil from living in nests, but that hardly lets them off the hook.

We're told of Hepatitis D, a vampire disease which weakens them and which, by the law of Raymond Chandler's revolver, will eventually threaten Bill's life, I strongly suspect. Sam and Tara (I love her) chat about their respective unattainables, Sookie and Jason and, in a refreshingly honest and unpuritanical scene, end up having some no-strings sex to deal with their mutual drought. Good.

Sookie is still yet to be deflowered, much as her libido is clearly getting intense by now, but she shags Bill only in her dreams. We learn more of Tara's mother issues- she now has to stay with Lafayette which, given the wine and ganja there, seems not to be a bad choice. The episode ends on a pop cultural note as Sam wishes for "Buffy or Blade" to come to Bon Temps. The gripping plot and characters continue to unwind in this already-excellent series.

We finish, again, on a cliffhanger: Sookie's found another body...