Episode Title: "Bad Blood"
Story: Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) is forced to deal with the fallout of the apparent abduction of her boyfriend and would-be fiance, Vampire Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer), leading her to seek out the aid of Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård). The persons responsible for Bill's kidnapping are revealed. Andy (Chris Bauer) helps Jason (Ryan Kwanten) as struggles with his decision to kill Eggs (Mehcad Brooks). Tara (Rutina Wesley) is grieving as well, leading her to make a shocking decision. Elsewhere, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) has left Bon Temps in order to reconnect with his estranged shape-shifting family.
After the jump, check out our spoiler-filled recap!
Waiting No Longer Sucks: After several months of unbearable suspense and tantalizing teasers, "True Blood" is back — and right away, you can see that this show hasn't lost a bit of momentum!
Very early on in the episode, we're introduced to the men who kidnapped Bill: a group of werewolf thugs led by the vicious Coot (Grant Bowler). The motivations behind this literally blood-hungry pack aren't readily known just yet, but once Bill gets through with them, you can bet that we'll have some answers — if nothing else, let's just hope that he didn't have to feed on that sweet old woman for nothing!
Even if Bill's a little bit worse for wear, at least he's still alive. (Well, I guess he's technically undead, but he's not all dead, and that's the important thing!) Poor Sookie, on the other hand, has no idea what's happened to her supernatural boyfriend. It's a good thing that she has those telepathic powers, as she's going to need them on her quest to track down the people responsible for kidnapping Bill. Even if Eric isn't fully on board right now — as we saw, he has his hands (and some other unmentionable body parts) quite full at the moment — there's no doubt that his affection for Sookie will cause him to assist her as much as possible... assuming he's able to overcome his and Queen Sophie-Anne's (Evan Rachel Wood) vampire blood dealing dilemma, that is.
Still, Sookie isn't entirely without help thanks to the assistance of Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll), although she's busy with some problems of her own: namely, a kidnapped trucker she accidentally over-drained. As a newly minted vampire, this is something of a fresh problem for the southern belle — and on top of that, she's got to deal with incessant advances from Hoyt (Jim Parrack). I'm sure I'm not alone in rooting for that relationship to work itself out, but something tells me Hoyt wouldn't be OK with that dude currently bleeding out in Jessica's basement.
Jessica isn't the only character dealing with bloody problems, as Tara is reeling from the death of Eggs, her former boyfriend who everyone thinks was shot by Andy in the line of duty. Her depression is so deep that she attempts to commit suicide by swallowing a ton of prescription pills. Tara hasn't had it easy on "True Blood," but it looks like things are only going to get worse this year.
While Tara's busy thinking that Andy was the one who killed Eggs, she's unaware that the real shooter was none other than Jason, her longtime crush. Jason's actions are weighing very heavily not just on his sadly simple brain, but also his libido, so much so that he can't have sex with two beautiful college women without imagining them with bullet holes! The one upside to Jason's current situation is that he's got a brand new roommate in the form of Hoyt. Without Jessica, Hoyt doesn't normally have much to do on "True Blood." His continued friendship with Jason will hopefully fix that.
The major outlying factor in this episode is Sam. The lonesome bartender is digging deep towards the roots of his family tree, having just met Tommy Mickens (Marshal Allman), a guy that Sam believes to be his brother. This plot thread strikes me as something of a slow burn, but hey, I'm not going to complain about more shape-shifters joining the cast! But Sam's current journey is hardly the character's most buzz-worthy moment of the night: that distinction goes to his sex dream with Bill, a result of having ingested the vampire's blood in the season two finale. It should be quite interesting to see where that story goes!
My one complaint about the episode is that it was completely impenetrable for a new "True Blood" viewer. Without a good amount of knowledge of the characters and previous seasons, this episode wouldn't be an easy one to watch. Thankfully, that wasn't a problem I had to deal with myself — for longtime viewers of the series, "Bad Blood" should go down as one of the most memorable episodes of "True Blood" to date.
What was your favorite part of the season 3 premiere? Were you as awestruck by Sam's dream of Bill as we were? What did you think of Eric's scenes with Yvetta? Share your thoughts in the comment section below!
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