True Blood Watch: Bad Blood

True Blood returned tonight and the premiere episode of Season 3 delivered on a slightly bigger dose of sex, blood and lots of aftermath from the second season finale.

I want to say off the bat that I’m glad tonight’s premiere picked up right where last season left off, if only to give Sookie more time in that lavender dress. Tonight she spent about half the episode storming into places and demanding that people help her find her almost-fiancé. No one could help her with Bill. The cops need him to be missing for forty-eight hours and everyone else has their own issues to deal with.

While Sookie attempted to find Bill, Bill dealt with his kidnappers, who were apparently only after his blood. Strange things happen in a car full of V-junkies, as evidenced tonight when one of them took a break from playing with his nipples to spit blood into another guy’s mouth. The party ended when the driver lost control and the car crashed. Bill managed to get away from them and feed off some old lady. For the briefest moment, I thought we were seeing bad-Bill as he attacked the woman, but he made amends for borrowing some of her blood by replacing her memories of the incident with one that involved her son coming to visit her and giving her some money, which given the state of the woman’s life, would probably be worth a lot more than a little blood.

The last we saw Bill, he was surrounded by angry looking wolves. I guess werewolves are a Mississippi thing as we heard the howling begin the moment the old woman told Bill where he was. In the meantime, the bigger of the cliffhangers involved Bill surrounded by the pups and telling them that he just fed.

Meanwhile, Sookie used Jessica to search for Bill. Vampires have a sort of mental connection to the vamp they create. So Eric can mental-dial Pam when he needs her, which is how Sookie figured out that Bill could contact Jessica. Sure enough, Bill did put out a call to Jessica but she was too busy trying to hide the trucker she bit (who inevitably died) to deal with Bill at the time. She and Sookie traced Bill back to his car, which was where he was when he called her. By that point, he was long gone.

Eric might’ve been more of a help in finding Bill if he wasn’t busy violating his new dancer or dealing with Sophie-Ann and the Magister. The Magister knows someone in the area’s peddling V and he wants Sophie-Ann and Eric to get to the bottom of it. Eric thinks maybe the Magister knows more about the situation than he’s letting on but either way, he and/or Sophie-Ann are in big trouble if the guy finds out it’s them that are supplying the area with vampire blood.

I sort of like the rule about the blood being sacred and used only for creating life as opposed to being turned into a drug. I also think this mess will be interesting as I have a feeling Eric and Sophie-Ann are only staying together on this because it suits them now. If the blood hits the fan, it’ll only be a matter of time before one of them sells the other one out.

Speaking of secrets, Andy is taking the blame for Eggs’ death, despite the gaping hole in the story, which has to do with the mystery of Eggs being shot from twenty feet away when he was supposedly on top of Andy when he died. Andy’s trying to keep a cool head about the whole thing and hope no one figures out that they lied. Meanwhile, he wants Jason to go back to his normal life and pretend like nothing happened. Of course, this isn’t so easy for Jason, who was trying to turn over a new leaf to begin with and now has Eggs’ death on his conscience. Poor thing couldn’t even get it on with two hot, aspiring-vets that wanted to sleep with him and Hoyt. Hoyt’s still hung up on Jessica and isn’t looking for random hook-ups it seems.

Tara’s a complete mess, which means that for the most part, nothing is all that out of the ordinary for her. In this case, her drama comes in the wake of Eggs’ death. It’s sad that she lost Eggs, though in truth, I’m trying to remember how much time she actually spent with him when she wasn’t under Maryann’s influence? Maybe that’s part of the reason I’m having a hard time relating to her grief.

I want to take Tara’s side on the spat she had with Arlene, as the redhead wasn’t exactly the most sensitive when chattering away about Eggs’ death as though it was something she watched on a soap opera, while sitting just feet away from Tara. Arlene’s kind of a space cadet and that came through tonight, so Tara wasn’t entirely in the wrong for getting angry there. And I want to take Tara’s side again when she got mad at Sookie, after Sookie admitted to helping Eggs regain his memory because after all, Tara’s grieving and anyone who had anything to do with what happened to Eggs isn’t going to be her friend right now. I want to take her side on all of this but in truth, I’m kind of tired of Tara’s drama. Maybe it’s because she spends more time in the middle of messes than she does helping other people or maybe I just want her to be more like Lafayette, who’s been through a lot of stuff and still manages to hold his head up. I don’t know. Either way, seeing Tara stuffing pills down her throat at the end of the episode, while her oblivious mother sat in the living room and Lafayette stormed to Tara’s rescue seemed like familiar territory. I’m not saying the girl shouldn’t be hurting. It’d just be nice if she let Lafayette help her and realized she does have other people around that care about her.

Finally, Sam’s on a quest to find his family. He’s also having homoerotic dreams about Bill. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising given that he fed off Bill at the end of the last season but it hadn’t occurred to me to assume that the “connection” they would have might be as sexually charged as the one Eric and Sookie have. We also found out that Arlene’s pregnant (probably… if her heightened sense of smell is any indication, anyway). Should we assume that Terry’s the father or is it possible the baby’s daddy could be anyone among the male population of Bon Temps, given all of the black-eyed orgies that went on last season?

Looking at this first episode, I’m more interested to see how things play out for Eric, Sophie-Ann and the Magister than I am in seeing how the show explores werewolf territory.