"Pretend You're All Normal"

A review of "I Smell Rat"
by Courtney Hilden


In this episode of True Blood, Bill revealed to Sookie that she was a fairy, Jason revealed to Tara that he had killed Eggs, Hoyt revealed his true love for Jessica, Crystal revealed her true nature to Jason, and Lafayette and Jesus revealed their mutual familiar histories with magic. Oh, and Eric may be a bad guy now since he appears to be sacrificing Sookie.
The revelation that Sookie is a fairy was as bad as the other things involving Bill this season. In the books, it happens later in the series, and with such absolute casualty as to be funny. Here, it felt like they were reaching for something genuine and failed. It was the closest the show as ever gotten to feeling like a soap opera. Much of the rest of the episode felt like it belonged in a soap opera, since much of the episode dragged, had random craziness that made no sense, and had bad background music.
Finally, there are some consequences for the murdering that Jason has made a habit of on this series. It was nice to see those flashbacks, as a reminder to the audience that Jason has never killed anyone that wasn't a minority in some way.
That said, the best flashbacks on this show are the short ones, and even the flashbacks about beloved Sam were bad. Heartbreaking, of course, because so much of what happens to Sam is heartbreaking, (including all the tiptoeing that went on around him after his fight with Calvin) but still the flashbacks always slow down the momentum of the show, and not in a good way.
Bill did do one good thing this episode: he promised to give up feeding on Sookie's blood to gain her trust. It was good to hear that, and the one redeeming feature of Bill.
Speaking of trust, it's too bad that Crystal didn't decide to stay with Lafayette and Jesus, because I would trust them far more than Norris, who is far more of a racist on the show than in the books.
Though maybe it's best that she didn't, considering that Jesus wanted to do V. This didn't make a lot of sense given that Jesus was angry at Lafayette for selling drugs. It makes even less sense when you consider that trippy drug scene was boring. The only thing that worked was that grin on Lafayette's face as they were walking into the second room.
By far the worse and most boring episode of the season. A lot of this may be because they are setting things up for their two final episodes, but this was True Blood at its worse.