True Blood: If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?

Filed under: Recaps & Reviews

Having a clean slate after over a thousand years' worth of killing and feeding on humans may sound like a good thing but amnesia for a vampire doesn't quite mean a second chance. Not when there are witches involved.

In "If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?" Sookie takes in a memory wiped Eric, after his run in with the witches, and tries to protect him for a change. Pam warns Sookie Bill might have known this would have happened to Eric so Sookie turns to some outside help. Tara and Jesus also attempt to talk some sense into Lafayette and his plan to seek vampire forgiveness for the witches' actions. Jason enters the seventh level of hillbilly hell and things are only getting worse. A lite episode action wise, yet all this set-up teases at some good stuff to come.

Not a whole lot may have happened in "If You Love Me, Why Am I Dyin'?" compared to most episodes but that doesn't mean this set-up episode was at all boring. Some of the smaller story-lines probably got more attention than they normally would but True Blood thankfully has more than just one story arc worth following. Small stuff like Andy's escalating 'V' addiction or Tommy's plan to con Maxine out of her property's new found value. One of the most interesting of this small story-lines showcased this week, probably the most under played, was the creepy old doll from Jessica and Hoyt's place.

The doll was in last year's final episode and has also popped up on the screen in these last couple of episodes. Leading me to think its not just a prop from prop sakes. If it doesn't have any supernatural properties to it my theory is the dolly could be some kind of surveillance device to spy on their vampire & human relationship. Sounds stupid but hear me out. This episode already showed that it is too dangerous for vampires, from a public stand point, for any vampire to be caught feeding on film; so that creepy looking doll could be some kind of nanny cam. This theory could be a stretch but both Jessica and Hoyt have said they got rid of thing multiple times and it still keeps coming back. With Jessica feeding on Hoyt (although willingly) and now her glamouring him it won't look very well for the vampire public image if that kind of stuff got out. With the vampires head opposition, Reverend Steve Newlin, being MIA for so long might mean he is behind something like this. Or I could be wrong and reading way too in to this freaky looking Cabbage Patch reject.

All the speculation aside, for other plots in this episode it was really about the aftermath of Eric's amnesia after approaching the town's new coven. Skarsgard is fantastic in his transformation from portraying a sarcastically confident killer vampire to his new stray puppy dog killer vampire alter-ego. He plays this new Eric perfectly following Sookie around like a star struck teenager while she acts like his babysitter. Other than Eric's new demeanour being hilarious to watch his current wardrobe had gotten equally as funny. Eric is usually one of the better dressed characters in the show, always wearing some kind of stylish suit, but seeing him in a sleeveless baby-blue hoodie and basketball shorts from Jason's old clothes was a pretty funny sight.

The next biggest focus for the episode has to be Jason and his werepanther nightmare. This hillbilly hell gets crazier by the episode; with reference to some kind of 'Ghost Daddy' and 'panther magic'. I'm a pretty open guy when it comes to the strang and supernatural but I'm lost on this one. After getting bitten and clawed almost to death from last week's episode Jason seems to be in some kind of transitional phase. The poor bastard is still tied to a urine soaked mattress, has his wounds patched up with what looks like cement spread, and to top it all off is given Mexican Viagra and train rapped. True Blood has done some f***ed up things in the past but this takes the cake. Credit has to go to Ryan Kwanten because his character (Jason) is put into some pretty raunchy situations.

Lastly I want to quickly point out a great new addition to this 4th season in Courtney Ford as Portia Bellefleur; sister to the sheriff Andy, but more importantly lawyer/business partner to Bill. After seeing the scene with Bill and Courtney as she propositions him to adding sex to the equation to their business relationship I was impressed. Impressed for one about how great of a pickup line she had, but more impressed by her delivery. I didn't know what to make of her at first, I thought she might just be a pretty face to make Sookie jealous for a while, but this woman can act so I'm looking forward to what True Blood has in store for her.

At first I thought Eric calling Sookie "Snooki" would be the best line of the episode but they saved the best for last. The True Blood quote of the week goes to Sookie for the final line of the night:

"You just killed my fairy godmother!"

(I actually lol-ed at this one)

Tags: True Blood, Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, Alexander Skarsgard, Sam Trammell, Rutina Wesley, Nelsan Ellis, Ryan Kwaten, Courtney Ford

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Andrew Burns loves film and comics, and can be found writing about when those worlds converge. You can follow him on Twitter at @myAndrewBurns.

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