"True Blood" Episode 406 Recap: An Officer and a Panther-Man

This week's episode is positively Shakespearean.

Just like in all those Shakespeare comedies, everybody winds up wandering around the woods, acting all confused and silly and lusty, before several of them couple off. Sure Shakespeare typically ends with everybody married off, while this ends with certain couples getting off, but it basically amounts to the same thing.

All that's missing is a snarky fairy to observe all the action and declare, "What fools these mortals (and vampires) be." Wait, what am I saying? There is a snarky fairy around who is totally prepared to make just those sorts of observations … me.

WTF these storylines be …

EXECUTING ERIC

Eric and Sookie bring their groping session into the house, tearing off each other's clothes as he lays her on the couch and proceeds to take the Downtown Express: destination Crotchland. Amnesiac Eric has clearly forgotten that the only thing the old Eric cared about when it came to sex was taking care of himself.

With Eric's face directly in Sookie's happy-place as she begins to moan, Bill naturally comes barging in. Goodness, this is awkward.

Bill snarls, and Eric says, "Mg erish mmsh freeemunigggg!!!" Bill's all, "What???" so Eric lifts his head up and says, "Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?!!"

Bill and Eric come to blows, but Eric being the older, stronger vamp overpowers him and gets ready to stake him. Sookie puts a stop to it. When Eric asks who the fangy asshat is, she responds, "He's your king." So Eric gets all meek and subject-y, falling to his knees in front of Bill. And Sookie's all, "Um, could you maybe finish me off before getting started on him? [Sigh.] Men are the worst."

Bill's goons drag Eric into his mansion and proceed to put him in silver chains. Sookie points out this is cruel and unnecessary, since Eric is being a total wet blanket now and basically cowing to whatever Bill demands of him.

Bill insists that Eric is a danger to himself and other vampires. But Sookie is having none of it, rightfully sensing it's much more personal, and she and Bill FINALLY have the bitter, mean-spirited post-break-up fight we've all been dying for. I love every second of it.

She remarks that Bill had his fangs "and who knows what else" inside every hot girl in town, but the second she moves on, his response is to put the guy in his own personal dungeon. Then she tries to pull the old, "If you ever loved me, you won't hurt him" line that usually works, but this time Bill ain't buying. He orders Eric put into custody and tells his goons that if Sookie ever shows up on his property she's to be arrested.

Eric is placed in a cell in the basement. He gives the air a sniff and then makes a face like he's inside the bathroom of an old age home on burrito night.

"Smells like death in here," he says.

"It's me!" comes a wail from behind him. It's Pam, and she removes this blanket that's covering her to reveal her freshly rotted face. Actually, she looked much worse last week when hunks of flesh were falling off. But now that she's mostly skull she's got a sort of anime look about her. You could put her picture on cute little purses and pencil cases and sell them all over Japan.

Pam says they've got to break out and fight, but goody-goody Eric is aghast, all, "That's treason!" So Pam pulls a Moonstruck, slapping him with a, "Snap out of it!"

She tells Eric that he is a "Viking vampire god" (so true!) and Bill is just a "dork" (so true!) who they hate. She reminds Eric how she and he travelled for a hundred years together, "killin' and f*ckin' and laughin'" – which sounds remarkably similar to my post-college backpacking jaunt through Europe (if you swap out "killin'" and "f*ckin'" with "battlin' food poison" and "pickin' up a nasty rash").

Pam says they've got to get Eric's memory back, but Eric says he doesn't want to. From what he hears about his old self, he doesn't like the guy and doesn't want to go back to being him. In other words, this entire season has become the movie Regarding Henry.

Meanwhile, up in his office, Bill Skypes with Nan Flanagan. I like Nan, but it seems like every conversation with her is always something along the lines of, "Hey, watch me make a cavalier reference to something horrifically violent and follow it with an ironic reference to tolerance, image control, or equality."

Bill tells her he's got the necromancing witch in custody for observation, and also Eric Northman. He argues that if Eric is controlled by the witches he could be a dangerous weapon in their hands, and he requests permission from the Authority to put him to death. Nan says she'll start the paperwork and get back to him. Wow, King Bill is a real bastard!

The next night, Bill and his goons escort Eric to the lawn and set him up for a nice moonlight execution. Vampire Authority bureaucracy must move remarkably fast, given Bill only just asked for the warrant the day before. Maybe we can get them on this debt ceiling thing.

Eric is still playing up the whole "what a good boy am I" shtick for all its worth, saying he won't fight his sentence. But he asks for a few requests: one, that Bill release Pam, since she's rotted away so much and doesn't pose a real danger. And two, to tell Sookie that he appreciates all she did for him, that at least he'll die knowing that he was able to love someone.

At this point, this is all so maudlin that I'm kind of hoping they'll just stake him already. Bill must feel the same way because he grabs a stake and gets ready to do the deed.

Then Eric says that he knows Sookie still cares for Bill and he hopes that after he's gone those two crazy kids can find a way to make it work. Dumbfounded, Bill wonders why in the world he'd want that, and Eric says, "She deserves happiness with whoever can give it to her." Cue violins, puppies, rainbows, and me barfing.

Later on, Sookie is wandering around the woods looking for Jason (more on that in a minute – let's just say that Sookie spends much of this episode visiting other storylines). She hears some rustling and thinks it's something wicked this way come.

Then she sees that it's actually Eric, born free from his death sentence. So apparently even if Bill is now a bastard, he's still enough of a sap to buy into Eric's "just let her love me" plea and released him.

Eric and Sookie run to each other, embrace, and resume the nookie. After a short glimpse of solitary King Bill wallowing in loneliness on his porch, we see Eric and Sookie naked, making beautiful love together outside, on the mossy ground, in the moonlit bayou. I guess it's supposed to be romantic and all, but all I could think about was getting bug bites in places you really don’t want to be scratching.

BTW, throughout this whole sequence, there's this gorgeous Neko Case song playing, "I Wish I Was the Moon," that I kept thinking would make a beautiful wedding song because, BTW, I got married last Sunday on the first day of marriage-equality in NY. (I was hoping I'd find a slick way to stick this into a recap, and I think I pulled it off … eh, probably not, but who cares? Just send gifts).

WTF Rating: 2. Here's a theory: what if Eric actually does have his memory back and has in fact been playing at this lost, soulful goody-two-shoes bit to screw Sookie and screw with Bill?