After last week's explosion of excitement, how could True Blood's vampires top the insanity? Simple: with Quantum Leap special effects and big, fat bloody tears. This was the episode where everybody cried themselves silly, because being a vampire is hard.

Last week's True Blood left the viewers with a big splodey cliffhanger. The Fellowship of the Light soldier, who loved Jason a little bit more than a bunk mate should, popped into the "Godric and his pajamas are awesome" party to spoil the mood completely, with a giant silver chest bomb. And then everybody cried: Eric cried, Sookie cried, Jason cried, Bill didn't cry because it would ruin his powdery makeup, and I cried...then I cried some more out of shame, and went on the roof and screamed "Gooooooodriiiiiiiiiiiic," into the new morning sun.

Now that enough time has come and gone I think we're all ready to let the healing begin with this week's Pros and Cons of True Blood:

Pro: Before all the death and destruction, Bill manages to slip in this little gem, "You may be immortal Lorena, but you are dead to me." Come on, even if you were the blood-tear-faced Lorena, I couldn't get through this conversation without stopping and saying, "wait, what excuse me did you just make a silly play on words while breaking up with me eternally?" Pro for being one of the reasons I love this show.

Pro: Then the great big bomb goes off, and it gets a pro for not being a stupid vision or premonition or something of that nature.

Pro: Pro to Sookie being worried about her brother, and pro to Jason for his "thumbs up" response.

Pro: Bill not killing the Fellowship of The Light kid. But Con for everyone thinking that Godric was the first vampire to show patience and understanding while being incredibly tired of the antics of his people. Mopey Bill has been doing this forever. He's cornered the Southern market on "self righteous/self hating vampires just trying to do the right thing." He's just been busy cleaning up after all of Sookie's messes, and trying to keep her out of trouble. Sure Bill doesn't really want to be here, and he's tried countless times to pull Sookie out of the whole Dallas mess because it's "not their problem". But this is the moment when we see Bill involved, and it's bad ass. And that's really the only difference between these two: Godric is trying, and clearly failing, to make a difference and Bill is still finding his voice and spine. Don't forget he willingly led a "meet the local vampire" talk at Gram's church.

I caught a lot of flak last week for calling Godric the Dad vampire, and saying that I just wasn't that invested in a character that started off as an interesting new addition to the True Blood family but later traded all of that cred in for a giant MARTYR t-shirt. Especially since Bill has been acting like a wet blanket forever — but when Godric does it, it's cool. More on this later. But the moment when Bill was yelling at the terrified youth about mercy got me thinking about how the two vamps are similar.

Pro: So lets all just agree that Eric tricking Sookie into sucking on his chest was brilliant, and Sookie is an idiot for doing so. Every single moment is delightful, especially her disgust. BUT in her defense, she calls herself a moron for falling for Eric's shtick multiple times. Plus snaps for calling Eric a "big lying a-hole." Sookie lying is just too precious for words. While Bill may be thinking Eric preyed upon her "goodness", we know he really preyed upon her idiocy.


Con: Stan's death means no more cowboy vampires in studded shirts, black hats and tight pants... Sniffle.

Con: Something needs to be done about Bill's make up — he still looks like Alan Cumming via Cabaret.


Pro: Hoyt wants Jessica to meet his Mom. Aw, this guy just does everything right.

Con: Except for the singing, this... this.... was forced. I was uncomfortable, it was awkward. Don't become that weird guy that goes all crazy after having sex, and start making Jessica hair dolls, writing songs about the way she smells or showing up at odd intervals during Jessica's undead life.

Con: Tara waking up with bruises all over her body and not being pissed. I would be pissed, really pissed, especially at Eggs. And not just because I woke up bruised and battered next to a guy named Eggs, but because I woke up bruised with a guy named Eggs who insists on holding my hand at the breakfast table after I blacked out, possibly from having too much to drink/eating heart souffle. Get off already.


Con: Maryann trying to justify the blackouts to Tara and Eggs by saying it's transcending a higher plane and then bringing up mystics. M... have you met the people you're living with? Tara and Eggs don't care about the Mystics of India. In fact, I'm not even sure they know what India is, let alone a mystic, but I will take a Bloody Mary, hold the boring blackout plot line, k?

Pro: Jason saying that people liked him for his good looks and "sex abilities." Jason everyone loves you for that, not like, love. They also love you because you know this, and hilariously label them as "abilities."

Pro: I enjoyed the Sookie and Jason's bedtime reminiscence session. It needed to be done — the two characters had a lot to talk about with all the murders and death running a muck in their lives. And they both needed to tell one another that it's time to grow up.

Con: But, someone needed to stop Sookie's incessant sexy head craning, towards the end. It skeeved me out. Thankfully they cut away very quickly, to the Newlins.


Pro: Watching the Newlins unravel on TV. From his bruise to Sara saying she hates his hair, it was a great thing to see.


Pro: Terry and Arlene are slowly riding up on second favorite True Blood Couple. Especially when Arlene breaks down in tears, I like that she's kind of an open book about her life.

Con: Why is Eggs surprised that Lafayette freaked out when he walked in with the completely battered and bruised Tara? How did he not see this coming? She practically has a broken jaw. And his response is "don't give me shit?" it's like he wants to get a beating. Then he accidentally wallops Tara midfight — uuuugh-disgusted-eye-roll.

Pro: Maxine Hoyt's mom and her hate for just about everyone for no real reason — especially when she says her hatred of black people is supposed to be a secret — is a pretty damn realistic character. I've met and had excessively long dinners with people just like this who, coincidentally, told me that, "only two kinds of women wear red shoes, school girls and hookers." I feel like I know you Maxine, and that's sad and scary, but I'm glad True Blood is getting a taste of your insecurities.

Pro: Eric being all naked and putting the sexy moves on Sookie in her dreams.

Con: How it slowly turned into Eric hand holding and gabbing like a school girl in bed. Why would you ruin this for me? After all the work and haricuts we went through to make him sexy again.


Pro: Lafayette's intervention see-through top. Along with his delivery and back and forth with Maryann, Eggs and Tara. It's about time people — let's spice it up, shall we? Sadly, I really could have done without Tara screaming
"EEeeeeeggggggsssss." No one wants Eggs that bad — Eggs doesn't even want Eggs that bad.


Pro: Maxine's baby zinger to Jessica. That's one for the racist old lady. But Jessica did look very pretty.


Pro: Nan Flanigan. The TV vampire is a stone cold bitch of reason. She's tough as nails, and I love it. No idea why they would send the talking head to deal with big issues, but I like that she knows she doesn't have supreme authority but is aware that being on TV gives her some level of power. This is pretty much real life fact, sadly. Plus when Godric is all "I'M GOING TO KILL MYSELF OMG I'M SAD AND A LONELY VAMPIRE DON'T TRY AND STOP ME" Nan doesn't even compute what's happening and brushes it off with a "It's not a big deal." Nan, come back next week please!


Con: Seconds after Godric gives the big "I'm going to kill myself but I'm saying it mysteriously but not really at all...did you hear me? I'm going to commit suicide in like an hour" speech they cue up the violins of sadness.

Pro: Bill, for punching Eric.

Con: Bill, you probably should have done this seven hours ago.


Pro: Whatever Andy is watching on TV. "That is one nutty ostrich."

Now let's talk about the sun suicide. Because there was a lot of good and bad. And remember I did get a little choked up until the whole blue blaze debacle.

Pro: Eric brought down the house. Sure it was cheesy but when he broke into their super secret ancient Viking code language, I felt it. Yeah it was drenched in cheese, and sure the last episode Eric was all "I don't know what love is," and then he got on his knees and wept and, sure, we all saw this coming 10 miles on down the road, but I still wanted it to happen. We needed it to happen, there's more to Eric than evil and hopefully a lot more to Eric than the cuddle fight dream Sookie had. I think we got a chance to see it here. Fingers crossed he goes bananas and just kills all of the humans in hotel. Turns out that secret code language is actually Swedish, which is about as close to a super secret viking language as I'll ever get, so yeah I'm good calling it that.

Pro: Some of Godric's words really helped explain his mood. When Eric told him he could forcibly keep him alive, the little manchild looked up and whispered, "Why would you be so cruel?" Had they not paraded Godric around in the last episode as the male Childlike Emperor with a gigantic death wish, I probably would have got a lot more out of it. I understood, but I didn't care. It was more compelling when Eric was smile crying his feelings and begging.

Pro: Godric admitting that he knew his whole "I'll let them kidnap me, what could go wrong?" plans with Fellowship of The Light were pretty bad, and I can understand his justification of "I don't think like a vampire anymore." I needed that, thank you.

Con: Godric's 1,000 goodbyes "do you believe in god, will god punish me, take care of Eric, I'm not scared, I'm surprised, I just found god" Yes, yes, yes we know — pick one. You got the big goodbye with Eric. You don't get another. By this point I just thought, Get On With It.

Then it actually was all happening and I was sad, because the music told me to feel that way and I liked half of the things the childlike Emperor said. We knew he would die the moment we met him, but now he's leaving...and the music is rising and tears are welling up.

Con: But then this happened...


and this....


I don't think there is a word for how bad those effects were. So I'll call them Quantumleapamechanicsvamp terrible. Lets hope the next body Godric jumps into isn't a girl with trouble or he's really gonna need Al's help and a little remote controller thingy to get out of this one. Uh boy.

Also, special thanks to Loving True Blood In Dallas who was kind enough to have silly old me on their show last night. It's a great site for TB fans.