Close To The End: The Racialicious Roundtable For True Blood 5.7

Alea: Daaaamn. I….did not see that coming. Might that have been too easy? Can’t that dude just possess Laffy now?

Latoya: And where is this shiftless brujo?

OMG Tara, Why?Joe: I KNEW her Mama Thornton was gonna show up.

Latoya: While she was on the pole, no less. (Also, why is Pam’s hair crimped? ) Interesting how Tara faced down her mom.

Alea: That crimped hair might be the first aesthetic tragedy I’ve ever seen on Pam. When did Fangtasia become the set of a Tiffany video? I don’t know, but Imma need a moment of silence.

Latoya: Or a moment of Tiffany.

Wait, she’s still crimped for Jessica’s vlog!

Joe: Jeez, Ma Thornton, that’s pretty cold. It is like certain people to choose something over unconditional love. I think Tara’s character will be much better off without someone as emotionally damaging as her mother. I hope, at least.

Alea: Tara looks and is so damn fierce here that even Pam is having trouble hiding her maternal pride under her crimpy-ass bushel of loathing. She’s the only mom Tara’s got left, and that could actually end up being a good thing, if Pam stops being such an inconsistent ass [read: if the writers could actually examine her trepidation about being a maker instead of copping out by replacing emotional depth with facile racism].

Joe: Oh, Tara chose to be a dancer. Interesting. I know that outfit says S&M, but with the current state of Pam/Tara racial relations, I feel like that costume reads more Amistad than 50 Shades.

Latoya: Right? Why did being a vamp make Tara some big fan of confessing her feelings to people she used to disdain? I thought vamps got more evil.

Alea: I don’t think they get more evil automatically, especially if they’re not evil as human beings. Also, Tara’s looking for a mom.

Latoya: In Pam? Gram is rolling over in her grave, provided she isn’t elsewhere…

Joe: Looks like Pam is taking over as mother. Love doesn’t seem to come easy to her. Pam ran a brothel, and she did act as sort of a mother figure to those girls at one time or another, one could assume. She didn’t seem like an abusive pimp or anything in the flashback, and she even mourned for the loss of one of them. I wonder what the deal is with her closed offed-ness.

Alea: Lazy, lazy, lazy writing.

Tami: I’m not getting why Tara seems to be going through some sort of vampire hazing. Eric, who is no more prone to emotion than his progeny, was Pam’s maker/boss, but he generally treats her respectfully and not like a servant or slave. Yet, this is the relationship the show runners have chosen for Pam/Tara. Given the women’s racial differences and the show’s Southern setting, it is cringe-inducing.

The Authority Drops VLatoya: Were these background speeches as tedious on Buffy as they are here? This whole divergence into vamp Ecstacy is amusing, but I still feel like this is a spin-out plot, like the whole Maenad thing. And there’s not even an Eggs to look at this time.

Alea: Ditto. Watching that ragtag group of vamps rolling their asses off was pretty great–Eric giving Bill a piggyback ride!! Next week, please let there be sweet make-outs!–but I don’t actually feel like it’s taking us any closer to anything interesting. I’m not that keen on Lillith and this whole Sanguinista storyline has mostly been a bust for me so far. I mean, who didn’t guess at least two episodes ago that Salome was behind the whole thing?

Latoya: Are they going to do anything with Russell besides up the camp factor on the show?

Joe: I think like Michael Kors on Project Runway, the powers that be have decided to devolve him into a series of sassy one-liners. “Our snappy murderer is back and this time he’s going to sing ‘The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.’” Bleh.

Tami: They are camping it up, but frankly Denis O’Hare makes anything work. I’m a bit of a fangirl after watching him in TB, American Horror Story and in an episode of Law & Order. Russell getting his Debby Boone on is right up there with his “we will eat your children” monologue.

The Speech

Latoya: Let’s talk about Sam and Sookie’s convo in the hospital. While a bit hamfisted, the speech served the purpose of returning to that familiar territory of the “others” versus a hostile society.

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