"True Blood" Episode 408 Recap: "A Couple of Real Nice Bitches"

First order of business … a big thank you to Dennis for covering last week and doing it so brilliantly. Honestly, I'm glad I didn't have to recap that episode, given it had one of the most riveting cliffhanger moments we've seen on this show and I'm not sure I'd have been emotionally capable of writing so soon after.

I'm talking, of course, about Andy storming out on his date with Holly, leaving us all in high suspense over the future of their romantic relationship.

Oh, I guess something also went on with Jessica about to burn to death. Might as well kick off with how that all turned out …

BURNED & SPURNED

Picking up right where we left off, Jessica opens the mansion doors to blinding sunlight and immediately bursts into flames, thereby freeing actress Deborah Ann Woll to star in that remake of Bewitched everybody's suddenly so keen on.

Kidding! She's fine, other than some minor facial blistering (you didn't really think they'd kill off Jessica, did you?). Because just as she prepares to exit, Jason comes running in and tackles her, quarterback style, bringing her safely to the ground inside the foyer and slamming the door behind him. Conveniently, they wind up in a position highly conducive to dry humping.

Instead, Jessica flips Jason over onto his back, and starts snarling like she's going to chomp on him. Jason screams. Then the credits roll just to make us wait a few minutes before discovering that of course they're not going to kill Jason off, and Jessica is going to quickly come to her senses.

"My hero!" she says, batting her eyes. Then they start dry humping.

Of course, there's nothing to stop her from continuing to march right back outside, but fortunately the witches have decided at that very moment to stop with the spellcasting. I thought that was hysterical, like they couldn't be bothered to chant for a little longer, maybe send out a scout to make sure there are vampires burning all over town. Instead, Mantonia's like, "Eh, what say we quit for now. I'm sure that all worked, and I've got laundry in the dryer I've got to get to before Bachelor Pad comes on."

Bill, at least, thinks more pragmatically. When Jessica and Jason return to the downstairs dungeon, he suggests the witches have stopped only momentarily, just to get them to drop their defenses. So he urges Jason to re-chain Jessica and even tighter this time around.

So Jason and Jessica delicately step over the bloody corpse of the security guy she'd killed earlier, her all, "Oops. Sorry about the mess. I always was a sloppy drinker."

Jason chains Jessica down, and the blood and the seared skin steaming starts up again while she moans in pain. And there's this hilarious bit where he tries to cheer her up by telling her to think happy thoughts, like getting tan and eating barbecue. Then he realizes she can't enjoy those things, what with being undead and all, so he switches tactics, telling her to think of how great it is never to catch cold.

Bill realizes this isn't helping and suggests Jason leave them to get some rest. On the way out, they cut a deal: Jason won't arrest Jessica for murdering the security guy, and Bill will kindly overlook that Jason sort of shot one of his security goons outside.

Later on, we see Jessica return home, to find Hoyt waiting for her. She starts in with the dreaded "we need to talk," and he starts babbling about how he's got all sorts of ideas how to strengthen their relationship, maybe starting to wear his 'n her bowling shirts, or taking that erotic massage class over at the Bon Temps Learning Annex.

She tells him it's too late; she loves him, but she's come to realize that she's just not hard-wired for monogamy, and she wants to move out. That's when Hoyt, right before our eyes, shifts into a spineless jellyfish. He gets all pathetic and needy and weepy, blubbering about how he always suspected he wasn't good enough for her. He whines he'll do anything to make her stay, anything, like drink her blood every day, or do that other thing they've tried a few times that kind of hurts him but he's sure he can get used to.

She insists she needs to leave him, and he says he'd rather not be alive than lose her. "I'll die!" he blubbers. "Oh, just die then," she says, and forcefully smashes his head into a table leaving it a bloody mess.

Then she happily runs outside to find Jason in a waiting car. He tells her she looks hot covered in blood like that, then he rips his shirt off and tells her he wants her to "bite and f**k me at the same time." She happily hops in the car and …

Dream Sequence! Gotcha! And that's not even me making sh*t up the way I do sometimes – the show actually unfolds that way. Nicely played, Mr. Ball. Nicely played.

We see that Jessica is still chained up in Bill's basement and has drifted off into this dream sequence. She's now awakened by a blood donor who King Bill sent down to let her drink from and replenish her strength.

Later, she returns home to Hoyt, and tries the "we need to talk" thing for reals this time. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie 500 Days of Summer (a movie I adore), but there's this bit in it where there's a split screen that shows how Joseph Gordon-Levitt imagines an encounter with Zooey Deschanel on one side, and how it really happened on the other. Well, this Jessica-Hoyt thing is like that.

She again comes in and again tells Hoyt that she loves him but just isn't hard-wired for monogamy (again with that? Did Dan Savage help write this episode?). But rather than getting all spineless, he goes on the offensive, essentially calling her a 'ho and arguing he suspects she's been cheating. Then he says Jessica doesn't deserve someone like him. In fact, he deserves someone who can actually give him children and is, you know, a real live human being, which is just cold.

She's completely flummoxed by this response (Jessica honey, if you dump someone, you can't really expect them to thank you for it or break into a spontaneous tap dance). Then he rescinds his invitation – basically the equivalent of kicking her out and changing the locks. The kicker is he also says his mother was right – "God hates fangs, and so do I!"

Where's a girl to turn? Why into the loving arms of the new f**kbuddy/rebound BF she's got all lined up, right? She goes running to Jason's house and is all, "Good news! I dumped Hoyt! Now you and I can be together, take off your clothes." Jason's all, "Wait, what now? Hoyt's my best friend!" He's horrified she would break Hoyt's heart this way and guilty that he had something to do with it. So he rescinds his invitation, sending Jessica forcefully flying out the door.

My goodness, she's having a bad day! Like why not head over to Merlotte's now so Sam can fire her, rescind his invitation, and send her flying ass-backwards across all Bon Temps?

WTF Rating: 3. With Hoyt hating on all vamps now, it looks like we've got a new recruit for Team Wicca. And I have to say I'm loving the Jason-Jessica relationship and how it's progressing. How long will Jason stay honorable to Hoyt before his raging libido takes over?