True Blood season 1 episode 11 review

11. To Love Is To Bury

After Sookie’s brush with the fang banger killer last episode, she and Sam decide to play detective and track down the girl Sookie saw in the killer’s mind – ever the practical psychic, she wants to find the killer before he has a chance to get to her again.

The pair head off to a Hicksville diner where they learn that the waitress in the vision, Cindy, was murdered. Suspect number one is her brother, Drew Marshall, whose whereabouts are unknown. Cindy was also known to bang fangs, and the connection between her murder and those in Bon Temps is not lost on the detective duo.

After working her mojo in a beautiful way on the Hicksville sheriff, he agrees to fax a photo of Drew Marshall to his counterpart in Bon Temps. Detective work done, the pair kick back and do a little too much bonding, considering Sookie’s recent admission that she might love Bill. The girl is nothing if not confused.

Said vampire, struggling with the bundle of joy that is parenthood, has come to the conclusion that Jess is just too much for him to handle right now. A bratty, whiny teenager, Jess is less than pleased with Bill as her maker, mostly because he won’t let her kill anybody.

Desperate to get back to Sookie, Bill takes Jess to Fangtasia and begs Eric to babysit for a while. After imparting his own particular brand of parenting advice, the Sheriff agrees, and bill races back to Bon Temps only to find Sam’s definition of keeping Sookie safe generally involves making out on the couch.

Indulging his penchant for attempting to kill anyone who touches his human, Bill and Sam tussle before Sookie throws the vamp out of the house, rescinds his invitation and storms off in a fantastic display of petulance.

While Bill is locked out of Sookie’s house, Tara has been locked in – the big house. After wrapping her car around a tree, it seems the police aren’t buying the ‘I swerved to avoid a naked lady with a pig’ story, and she’s arrested for DUI.

When her mother finally arrives at the station – she had to pray awhile first – the woman has the gall to refuse to bail her daughter out, and in an incredible salt/wound double whammy, tells Tara she can no longer come home. Apparently, she’s bad for Lettie Mae’s soul. Charming.

Stuck in a cell, wearing a ridiculous dress and feeling very sorry for herself, when salvation arrives in the shape of Maryann Foster, a local do-gooder who offers her a place to stay, Tara almost refuses her help. When she arrives at Maryann’s house though, she’s glad she said yes – the good Samaritan lives in an enormous mansion.

In what seems to be a one in, one out policy at the Bon Temps sheriff’s station, as Tara leaves, Jason Stackhouse arrives – in cuffs. Having told Amy that it’s time to give up the V or leave – a decision brought on by cleaning up what was left of Eddie – the toxic twins decide to have one last V fling before kicking it for good.

Passed out in a V-coma, Amy was unable to defend herself when a mystery man broke into Jason’s house and strangled her with his belt. When Jason wakes from his own V-coma and finds her body on the bed next to him, the silly boy assumes he must be the fang banger killer and turns himself in.

The Sheriff locks him up despite a complete lack of evidence, just as the fax from Hicksville with the mug shot of Drew Marshall – a man who looks suspiciously like Jason’s best friend Rene Lenier – arrives. As is always the way, the crucial fax is buried beneath a pile of folders by the incompetent secretary before anyone can see it. With Jason in jail and Bill banned from the house, Sookie had better pray that Rene’s likeness to a murder suspect is just a coincidence…

The end of the road is in sight, and To Love Is To Bury has left us with a tantalizing prospect. Is the lovely Rene really Drew Marshall, murder suspect? It’s more than possible, if you consider that Rene actually asked Jason if Amy had slept with vampires earlier that day. It would also explain why all the fang banging women who have died in Bon Temps were involved with Jason. Either that or Hoyt’s the killer, and there’s no way a man who voluntarily goes to a baby shower for the games is a killer.

All of which means that for the third time this season, Jason is suspected of murder, only this time he’s the one doing the suspecting. Only the man-whore would think that no memory = guilt, and turning himself in may be the stupidest thing he’s done so far. Let’s hope, for Jason’s sake, that the killer, or Rene as we’re now calling him, tries to kill Sookie sooner rather than later. Jason Stackhouse will not do well in prison.

Season one’s penultimate episode may solve the central mystery of the show, for us at least, but it also introduces a couple of new players to the mix, in the form of fledging vamp Jess and do-gooder Maryann, as well as splitting Bill and Sookie up for the billionth time, giving us plenty to look forward to in the finale, and beyond – only a week to go!

Check out our review of episode 10 here.