Spoilers, darling. Spoilers. 

We are one week closer to the end, and that means that the episodes are becoming increasingly difficult to watch. This week’s episode “Death Is Not the End” has been my favorite of season 7 so far. Here are a few highlights from the episode:

Sookie Stands Up For Herself

At the end of season 4, we had a Sookie who chose neither Vampire Bill or Sexy Undead Viking Eric because she wanted to be independent and stand on her own two feet. In the two seasons that followed, Sookie’s character development took an interesting turn with the Warlow incident. The inclusion of Alcide as a serious love interest was abrupt, and even more abrupt was his onscreen death. His death, however, has put Sookie in a tough place: she is saddened by Alcide’s death (as her phone call with his father shows), but she is also committed to saving her friends.

So when Jason begins to break down after witnessing the death of both Maxine Fortenberry and Alcide, Sookie tells her brother to get it together because he can’t afford to waste time crying. He’s the law now, she tells him, and he needs to act like it. They both need to be okay, because if they’re not, what will happen to their friends? To Arlene and Nicole? Sookie is on a rescue mission, but who is going to be saved? Her friends? Her own peace of mind?

When Sookie visits the recently-rescued Holly, she doesn’t take no for an answer when her former coworker is reluctant to have Sookie read her mind. Similarly, when she visits Jessica, she gives her a “pep’ talk to convince her to eat again. Jessica isn’t eating, and Sookie doesn’t care about the reasons. She cares about the results. Our empathetic fairy waitress is gone, and in her place is a woman on a quest for justice and redemption for her past mistakes. 

LaFayette

LaFayette is the person I care about most on the show, and I’ll tell you why.

1. His sass is unequaled. My obsession with Supernatural‘s Misha Collins ensures that I have a healthy respect for those who can sass and do it well. In the world of sassing, LaFayette is reigning queen supreme.
2. He’s a fucked up person and he knows it. In last night’s episode, LaFayette had only one scene with Jessica and James, but to me it was the most compelling scene of the episode. We’ve seen that LaFayette and James have serious eyefucking sessions intense chemistry, but LaFayette still goes out of his way to help our favorite poor lost baby vampire. He tells her that he’s fucked up too (she ain’t the only one), and for the first time in a long while he admits to killing Jesús. And boy, doesn’t that rip your heart out a little?
3. He knows who he is, and he accepts himself for it. In a show that places heavy emphasis on “coming out,” LaFayette’s strength as a character is that he’s come out, and he refuses to change himself to fit society’s expectations for him. Yeah, so he puts on fake eyelashes and can sashay with the best of them, but he’s also a strong man who doesn’t define masculinity by how many action movies he can quote or how many guns he owns. He realizes that even bad ass mofos can and should express emotions, and if this season’s writers decide that he’s one of the “expendable” characters, they will be killing the one person who reminds us on a weekly basis that humanity is all a gray area, so we should just make the best of it.

How Pam Met Ginger

Once upon a time, two vampires were exiled to Shreveport, Louisiana and given a video store to run. The two vampires were lonely, miserable, and 100% done with having to rewind VHSes. Then one day, a young, naive college coed walked in and changed their lives by showing them that the way to breaking away from the video store prison was to embrace the fetishism of vampirism and create a bloodlusty bar called “Fangtasia.”

And then Pam stole the idea and passed it off as her own.

Bonus: Ginger’s most apt description of Eric Northman.

Eric Northman is nothing if he is not pure fucking sex on a throne. -Ginger

Sookie and Eric’s Reunion

Do yourself a favor and listen to this on repeat 237 times.

While I was watching last night’s episode, I mentioned to my roommate that I’m not sure I ship Eric/Sookie anymore. And then a diseased, dying Eric knocked on Bill Compton’s front door and Sookie ran into his arms.

Do I ship them? Hell yes I still do. If Eric loves Sookie and that’s who he wants, then my beautiful undead Viking better damn well get her. As I said last week, the trajectory of the writing for the season is setting up a Sookie/Bill finale, but, really, we all know as long as Eric is still alive, would Bill stand a chance?

So let’s talk about Eric Northman, which is something I could do all day everyday, but I digress.

Eric is infected with hep-V, and the only reason he didn’t die in a French vineyard is because Pam offered him the perfect incentive to live: revenge. For a being who has lived for over a thousand years, the concept of revenge must be more thorough and complete than a mortal’s. He doesn’t mean to just kill Sarah Newlin, he means to disintegrate everything she has been or ever was. This is the woman who (in his eyes) caused the death of his Maker, Godric; this is the woman who unleashed hep-V and destroyed the vampire population.

Yet, when Pam tells him the first step in their revenge quest, he makes a detour to Shreveport. “Why, Shreveport?” Pam asks. Well, they have plenty of stake in Shreveport: Fangtasia, Willa, etc. When they arrive, Eric heads to Bill Compton’s house first. Why? Out of some respect for the other vampire’s territory? Those are the rules of the Vampire Authority, which is dead and staked.

I’m not saying that Sookie’s on his mind…wait, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

When Sookie tells him that her boyfriend, Alcide, was killed that morning, he automatically wraps her in his big, strong, Viking arms and all the Northman-lovers melted into puddles of goo. When Sookie asks him for help, he puts aside his revenge quest and helps her and Bill infiltrate the rogue vampire lair–his former bar, Fangtasia.

I’m not saying that when Eric Northman risked the True Death, Pam’s eternal glare, and his revenge quest to help Sookie, it is an indication that the 1,000-year old vampire has found something else to live for, okay, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.

I’ll ship them till I die.

Until next week, Truebies. Rest in peace.

-The Collectress

You can follow me on twitter @dearcollectress