My esteemed colleague, Will Harris, asked me to cover the “True Blood” blog for a couple of episodes while he does his thing at the TCA press tour. So before we move on, let’s go ahead and lower those expectations.

Lowered? Good.

First, there’s the issue of Lorena, who is about to kill Sookie in the woodshed. (That sounds a little like some backwoods version of Clue, doesn’t it?) Lorena marvels at how good she tastes, underlying the ongoing question of the third season — just what is Sookie Stackhouse?

Bill manages to jump Lorena and hold her down while Sookie stakes her. Killing off a minor, yet important character is always an interesting way to start an episode, and it looks like Lorena’s hold over Bill is finally over.

There were a couple of scenes in the episode where Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak” would have been an appropriate soundtrack. First, to get off the King’s compound, Alcide had to kill Cooter and lock his ex-girlfriend in the shed — instead of putting her down, which will no doubt come back to bite him, pun intended — before loading Sookie, Bill and Tara up in the truck to get them the hell out of Dodge. During the escape, he kills another werewolf, which will only serve to embolden the pack’s desire to track him down.

The other jailbreak was Sam’s adventure to the dogfights, which have to be one of the most despicable ways to spend a sunny afternoon. After cheering him on when he let all of those dogs loose, I laughed out loud (literally LOL) when he convinced that Rottweiler that he’d be far better off making a run for it than standing there snarling at him.

One question that I have with regard to Tommy’s involvement in the fights — why doesn’t he just shapeshift into the biggest, baddest pit bull in Louisiana?

Back to the truck — Sookie offers up her blood to Bill, and he partakes — oh man, does he partake. It’s obvious that her blood has an effect on Bill, because he doesn’t have any recollection of what happened when he comes to. Funny that Lorena didn’t have the same reaction — it must be something specifically about Bill, right?

Anyway, Tara leaves him at the side of the road, and Sookie’s blood has apparently made him resistant to being in the sun. He bolts off in the other direction, which makes me wonder — why didn’t he just use his superspeed to keep up with the truck?

The scene with Jason and Hoyt (and later, Summer) at the house is a great example of why “True Blood” is so entertaining. Creator Alan Ball has so many knives in the air at one time, and does such a great job of keeping track of them all. In this scene, Hoyt pushes Jason forward on his quest to discover the truth about Crystal. Jason wouldn’t think to interview the drug dealer he locked up so Hoyt has to think of it for him. Then sweet/stalker Summer shows up for a quick scene that will no doubt set up a few scenes in a future episode. I’d love to see how the writers organize all of these storylines.

As for Jason’s ‘interrogation’ of the drug dealer… He discovers that Crystal is the dealer’s cousin, and almost finds out what’s up with that ‘a-hole she’s living with’ before the dealer stops himself and says, “Oh, you’re smart.” That has to be the first time anyone has said that to Jason Stackhouse.

Andy only made a brief appearance in this week’s episode, but it led to a great exchange with Jason:

Andy: “What the hell, Stackouse? You ain’t supposed to be back here.”
Jason: “I’m just sweepin’.”
Andy: “Yeah? Where’s your broom?”
Jason: “That’s a good point.”

To spill the beans about Crystal, the dealer wants meth, so Jason heads to Merlotte’s to see if Lafayette can hook him up. Tara calls to tell him about Sookie, so they both head to the hospital, where Lafayette has one of the best lines of the episode after a nurse starts to talk to Jason about his ‘options.’

Lafayette: “Listen to me. F**k her. This s**t ain’t over.”

Truer words were never spoken.

While Sookie was under, we finally got a glimpse into her true nature, but it was more of a WTF? moment than anything. She had a cryptic and entirely uninformative conversation with someone named Claudine and then all of the dancing fairies (for lack of a better term) hightailed it into the pond when the darkness came. Before Claudine left, she said to Sookie, “Do not let him take the light from you.” Um, okay…

The setup for Sookie’s vision was Erik’s interrogation of the Queen’s human, Hadley, who apparently spilled the beans about why everyone’s favorite mind-reader is so important to Sophie-Anne. They used the ol’ dying-whisper-in-the-ear trick so that Erik would find out before the audience. Whatever she said, it surprised him, as all he said was: “Well, I sure wasn’t expecting that.” Now that he knows the reason behind Bill’s interest in Sookie, it will surely lead to a few interesting conversations in future episodes.

To wrap up the hour, we head back to Fangtasia for arguably the best scene of them all. Erik, the Queen and the King show up to confront the Magister, who goes on and on about ‘the authority’ that he’s loyal to.

Finally, the King has had enough — “Perhaps you have not quite grasped the subtex of our earlier exchange, but THERE’S A NEW F**KING AUTHORITY IN TOWN!”

When the Magister is finally convinced to marry Russell and Sophie-Anne, he thinks the King will spare his life.

Not… so… fast.

Russell surprises everyone and chops off his head. The closing credits role as PJ Harvey sings “Hitting the Ground.” Fitting.

I’m sure there won’t be any consequences to that decision. (Yeah, right.)