True Blood: I Don't Wanna Know

I'm "I used to scratch your butt in the parking lot at the bar!!!"

A theory: are all the episode titles the names of songs we hear during the episode?

Anyway, we begin with what could be described as an awkward conversation between Sam and Sookie. He's a "shape-shifter", apparently. Werewolves exist too. They're bad. He's really sorry for not telling her sooner etc. And, of course, Tara doesn't know. Awkward.

Meanwhile Tara goes through her expensive and horrible, horrible exorcism and Amy explains to Jason that her psychopathic tendencies towards vampires are perfectly fine because "I am an organic vegan, and my carbon footprint is minuscule. So that's all right then.

Things get worse for Tara: she discovers that, yep, the "exorcism" was indeed all a scam, but the placebo effect appears to be working for her mother. What to do? It's a realistic reaction from a multi-layered and very relatable character. I love Tara.

Bill's "sentence", it now seems, is to kill and turn a teenage girl called Jessica- and she's played by none other than Deborah Ann Woll, she who plays Karen Page in Daredevil. Another superb instalment.

True Blood: Plaisir d'Amour

"There's vampire in your cleavage..."

Apparently Bill is in trouble with Eric, "sheriff of area 5", for killing Longshadow while saving Sookie, which means he has to go on trial and stuff. This is dodgy. Why are vampires on the cusp of legality and civil rights of they presume to operate an entirely parallel legal system? If I were Sookie then I would simply tell Eric that, if he has a problem, he should simply call the police- and, if he doesn't, call them herself. Simples.

Ok, perhaps realistically that wouldn't help now, I grant you, but the State simply can't tolerate this in the long term.

Meanwhile, Amy and her himbo bitch Jason are keeping Eddie in the basement, milking him for blood like a cow while they have trippy hippy sex. Tara is being treated little better, beating charged $800 for some deeply unpleasant quack "exorcism". Oh, and someone has killed Sookie's cat when she gets home. So, you know, all sweetness and light.

But, as the series is nearing its end, things inevitably get worse. Tara dumps Sam out of nothing but self-loathing. Eddie tells Jason his life story, and it's a tragic one: it's clear that vampires, as a minority, can be a metaphor for sexual orientation rather than race and, tragically, Eddie stillhasn't embraced his true self as a vampire. And now it's too late.

We end with a big reveal- that dog that's been hanging around the bar is in fact Sam. Wow. Wasn't expecting that. This sublime series has such a capacity to shock and surprise.

True Blood: The Fourth Man in the Fire

"I don't think my boyfriend likes silver!"

Yeah, this is another good episode, let's just say that straight up. A lot of it consists of Amy's and Jason's trippy relationship, full of good sex, good drugs and bad vibes, especially when Amy gets Jason to help her kidnap Eddie, the rather docile vampiric source of Lafayett's supply, so they can presumably use him as a V-Juice cow until he dies. Lovely.

Bill isn't dead. Quelle surprise. And he makes quite an entrance. Cue lots of sex and a happy Sookie. Poor Tara isn't so happy, with her mother having swapped hardcore addiction to drink with a hardcore addition to religion, which she is pushing on to her daughter with appalling aggression. Poor Tara isn't having an easy time of it, and manages to mess up her ambiguously sexual relationship with Sam. Poor Tara.

We end with Sookie being summoned to (groan) "Fangtasia by the mysterious boss-man Eric, "sheriff of Area Five", who uses her to find out who's been embezzling money off him. She finds out who, but only at the cost of a perilous cliffhanger...

Oh, and a prediction: one of either Arlene or Rene will die before the wedding.

True Blood: Burning House of Love

"I don't know how to be with somebody."

An episode about relationships here as, in an interesting contrast with Buffy losing her virginity to Angel, Sookie's post-deflowering relationship with Bill continues to develop realistically and nicely, to Sam's increasing annoyance. Well, until Bill's apparent death, that is. Meanwhile, Jason gets together with the superficially nice and hippyish Amy, whose tendency to quote Crowley and desire for a good-looking but thick partner she can manipulate set alarm bells ringing.

Sookie spends much of the episode on Cloud Nine until Bill's apparent death (much as we, the viewers, know damn well he's not really dead), so much so that she's happy for him to, we, feed on her every day. There's a dark side to this, though; Bill has no qualms in simply killing Sookie's paedo uncle. It's clear that vampires have no respect for established legal structures.

The exorcism is weird, creepy and, if not being carried out by a black person, would constitute a vaguely racist mockery of West African Animist customs. But I suppose that's the point; the descendants of slaves are so alienated from their own Bantu cultural heritage that vaguely racist stereotypes are all they have. Poor Tara has to foot the bill for this nonsense and you just feel more and more sorry for her. And then the quack in question starts aiming a particularly nasty hard sell at Tara, whose wise scepticism is sadly undercut by her lack of self-esteem. Poor Tara.

There are only so many ways of saying, episode after episode, that this is brilliant television. But it is.