True Blood Recap: “F*ck the Pain Away”

by Sarabeth Pollock:

True Blood Recap: “F*ck the Pain Away”
Original Air Date (HBO): Sunday July 14, 2013
Season 6 Episode 5

Well, fellow Truebies, believe it or not—we are halfway through the season.  I want to remind everyone that DarkMedia and The Vampire Source will have coverage of the True Blood panel at San Diego Comic Con next week. Last year, Chris Meloni sat on the panel and acted like everything was going great for his character…and then Roman was killed off in the episode that aired that same weekend.  Not cool.  So make sure to follow me (@SarabethPollock), @DarkMediaOnline, @TheVampSource, and my fellow contributor @dvsduo for all the latest SDCC True Blood information.

We start where we left off last week.  Sookie is on the couch with Warlow.  “Get the fuck off me or die, Warlow,” she growls.  He tells her that she doesn’t understand.  She doesn’t want to listen, but he explains that it is destiny for them to be together.  If that is the case, she asks, then why did he kill her parents?

At the Compton compound, Jessica laments over the dead faeries.  She crawls into Bill’s lap for comfort but ends up kissing him.  He admonishes her and explains that she’s high on faery blood.  She thinks she’s a monster.

Warlow explains that Sookie’s parents were trying to kill her.  He saved her.  Sookie doesn’t believe him and she grazes him with her faery fireball.

As Warlow reacts, Bill reacts as well.  He tells Jessica to return to her bedroom to sleep off the faery blood, and then he walks away.

Sookie marvels that Warlow can heal.  Warlow begs Sookie to hear him out.  That’s when Bill shows up at Sookie’s house.  He looks at Sookie in her underwear but keeps his eyes fixed on Warlow.  Sookie thinks that he’s there to rescue her, but he’s not.  Bill is there for Warlow.  Warlow warns Bill to leave Sookie alone, threatening to kill the man that has been harassing her.  But then Bill pulls the trump card out and tells Warlow that he already killed him.  “As your maker, I command you to come with me.”  That does it.  Warlow follows Bill from the house, leaving Sookie staring after them.

Sheriff Andy heads to Bill’s house, shotgun drawn.  Bill isn’t home.  He enters the house and finds the dead girls.  Then he realizes that these girls are his daughters.  Thankfully, one of
them is still alive.  Andy takes two seconds to figure out how to save her.  “Daddy’s going to make you ok,” he promises, carrying her from the house.

Tara finds Eric to tell him that Pam has been captured.  The shock and horror on his face is evident.  The duo finds a group of police (it looks like the same place where Nora was captured) and surrender to them.

Back at Governor Burrell’s “camp,” Pam is dressed in a blue denim prison outfit and she is escorted down a long hallway.  They pass windows where all manners of tests are being conducted on the captured vampires, ranging from tooth extraction to running in a giant hamster wheel to vampire sex.  All in the name of science, indeed, Pam sneers.

At the Governor’s house, Sarah tries to keep Burrell from leaving the house to escort Willa to the camp.  She points out that she lost Steve and her sister to vampires, and that once they’ve turned they’re gone forever.  She sees the whole thing as a sign that maybe she and Burrell are supposed to have a baby together.  The Governor is shocked by her proposition, reminding Sarah that he was there when Willa was born and he can’t just forget her and start over again.  He must go to her.  Sarah is angered that she is being pushed aside yet again after all she has done, emotionally and financially, to help him.  She unties her coat as he walks out the door, revealing black lingerie.  “When a woman comes to you in black lingerie, you unwrap her!”

Bill leads Warlow to his underground laboratory.  He explains that Lilith is a part of him and he shares her memories.  He commands Warlow not to resist him as he extracts his blood.  Together they share a vision of a mortal Warlow in 3500 B.C.  Lilith appears one night, and it looks like Warlow is the first man she has ever seen.  She pulls off his clothes and fucks him, and as she does she tears open his back and tastes his blood.  She believes that he was destined to save vampire-kind.  As the memory fades, Warlow says Lilith made him into something he despises, while Bill calls him their salvation.

Jason returns to his house to find Sarah Newlin on his steps.  She tells him about her new calling, and her new, powerful man.  He says it’s good because Steve turned out to be a “gay vampire.” Sarah wants to save Jason’s soul.  She thinks she misjudged him and failed him, and now that she’s had a vision of what God wants.  They’re both different people.  She’s been with “a gay guy, and an old guy,” and now she knows that she was meant to be with Jason.  “God wants me to fuck you,” she says.  And Jason does that, mostly out of a need to reinforce his heterosexuality.  “How’s God doing now?” he asks.  “Righteous,” she breathes.

Andy rushes his daughter into his office and pulls some old V from a storage box.  After a few tense moments, she wakes up.

Alcide meets up with his father and some pack members at The Unfriendly Possum.  He approaches Jenny, a shifter, who thinks he’s there for sex.  He’s really there because he’s hunting for Sam and Emma.  Jenny claims not to have seen them.  Apparently Shreveport wolves aren’t really welcome there.  Jackson Herveaux sees the writing on the wall with his “newly elected” son.  He wishes that he’d been around for his son when he was younger.  Alcide knocks him to the ground, reminding his father who is in charge.  Jackson points out that he never joined with the pack…and he needs to borrow some money.  Alcide throws some cash at him and leaves.

At the camp, Eric and Tara are led inside wearing hoods.  Eric tells Tara to find Pam.

Jason is awakened by someone pounding on the door.  He leaves Sarah to find Jessica there.  He invites her in, and Jessica tries to tell him what happened.  She doesn’t understand why God doesn’t strike her dead because she kind of enjoyed feeding on the faeries.  Of course, Bill might be God.  Then again, Bill could be the devil.  That sends her into a frenzy knowing that she might have been aiding the devil.  She wants to know if Jason ever loved her.  He fumbles his words, but he admits that they had their moments.  All of this existential pondering rouses Sarah, who is outraged that Jason has a vampire girlfriend.  Jessica recognizes Sarah as Steve Newlin’s ex-wife, but Sarah doesn’t go by that name anymore.  Jessica attacks her, and she pins Sarah to Jason’s breakfast bar.  Sarah quotes scripture and ultimately casts Jessica from the house, rescinding her invitation.  Once Jessica is outside, she is taken into custody.  Jason demands to know how Sarah threw Jessica out of his house.  Sarah tells him that she called the LAVTF on her, and he will never see Jessica ever again.

Eric is placed in a plain white room along with three other vampires.  They stand on red marks on the floor.  Three balls drop from the ceiling and Eric picks one up.  Two more vamps pick them up, and the one without a ball is shot dead.  This happens until Eric is left facing a female vampire.  Two doors open, revealing rifles.  Eric grabs a gun first and shoots the woman dead.  Eric is given a set of prison clothing and sent into a holding cell.  It looks like the vampire version of Lockup.  He asks if anyone has seen Pam.  There are no responses.

Pam is visiting with the doctor.  He wants her to lie down; she wants to know what’s going on.  He tells her that there are real (not metaphorical) guns pointed at her to ensure her compliance.  As she lies down, she jumps back up and demands to know if she’s in therapy.  She doesn’t want to talk about her feelings.  She wants to go to the room where the vampires were fucking.  The doctor patiently explains that the “copulation study” was for level three inmates, and Pam is a level three.  They want to understand how she thinks.  He tells her they will remain there until she responds.  And there is a reward system attached to this.  Watered down Tru Blood or a donor.  Pam requests a female donor, and once the donor walks into the room she lies down and the session begins.  The doctor wants to know how much value Pam places on human life.  His, for example.  She says she cares more about the tuna fish he ate for lunch than she does him (this is humorous considering that Pam’s real-life counterpart is a huge animal activist).  Because she was forthcoming, Pam is allowed to feed.  The doctor watches, rapt, as she bites the donor’s neck.

Sookie rushes into Merlotte’s (look, she finally made it to work!).  Lafayette knows she isn’t there to actually work, though.  She asks for his help to find out what the truth is about her parents.  She wants to know if Warlow was telling the truth.  All her life, Sookie knew what she thought was the truth, and now it isn’t so clear.

Terry has called his old buddy Justin to come to lunch.  He wants to know if Justin will kill him.  Terry says he tried to do it himself but he can’t do it.  He tells Justin they killed people in the war, and that he actually killed Patrick just last week.  Arlene wants to know what’s going on, and they tell her that they’re just visiting.  Justin agrees to kill Terry for free.  Terry just needs a few days to get things in order, and he really doesn’t want to know that it’s coming.

Andy keeps watch over his last remaining daughter.  Holly is with him.  Andy says that his daughter told him that Jessica killed her sisters.  Holly can hardly believe it, especially because Jessica is so sweet.  And says it wasn’t an accident because Bill was taking their blood.  Andy vows to put a wooden bullet in Bill’s heart.  Holly stops him by reminding him that his daughter would be left without a father if he goes off half-cocked.  She tells Andy that she is going to call off the search party, so that people will think the other girls went off with their mother.  Andy is inconsolable over the loss of his girls.

Sam wakes up to find Nicole getting dressed.  She is upset because she always wanted to know what it was like to live like a shifter, but all it has been so far is running away to stay alive.  It was not as glorious as she thought.

Jessica enters the female general population at camp.  She rushes over to Tara and tells her she was in the same white room that we saw Eric in.  Tara says they’re in hell.  They sit in a remote corner and Jessica asks if Tara believes in the devil.  Tara talks about her mother seeing the devil in everyone.  Jessica confesses that she wanted to kill those girls.  So where does that leave her?

Pam is chatting it up with the doctor, who asks if they should be concerned about nesting vampires in the barracks.  It appears that Pam has been so forthcoming that her poor donor is exhausted, but Pam is full at the moment.  Pam explains that she doesn’t feel remorse at killing other vampires, but that the death of one’s maker is an entirely different thing.  Of course, now the doctor wants to talk about that.  Pam expounds on the nature of pain to a vampire.  She says that her maker released her, but she doesn’t feel the pain because it’s a worthless emotion.  For a human, forever is a blink of an eye, but for a vampire it’s really forever.  Her maker released her, it hurt, she moved on.  The doctor sees through her façade.  Looks like more therapy is in order.  Pam’s donor sags at the thought of donating more.

Nicole is on a pay phone outside the motel.  Sam hangs up the phone before the call can go through.  She wants to tell her parents that she’s ok, but he reminds her that if she tells them otherwise, the wolves will kill them.  As they argue, Jackson sees them across the parking lot.

It’s meal time in the female holding cell.  Jessica isn’t hungry, which sends half a dozen vamps circling her in a feeding frenzy.  Tara holds them off, and then a woman tells them to “cool it.”  She tells Tara and Jessica that they owe her.  Willa is led down the long hallway.  She sees Tara, but the guard says that the Governor’s daughter won’t go into general population.  He propositions her, “I scratch your back, you lick my balls,” which outrages Willa.  The guard points out that her father sent her to Vamp Camp, so she shouldn’t hold her breath that she will be freed.

Jason tries calling Sookie.  He leaves her a message telling her that he messed up with Jessica and he needs to make it right.  Once he hangs up, he walks into the LAVTF recruitment center.

Lafayette and Sookie are preparing the séance to call her parents’ spirits.  He tells the other spirits to shut up and get in line.  They don’t want to come out, but eventually they show up and send a wind through the room.  “Stackhouses, calm the fuck down!” he shouts.  Sookie asks her parents if they tried to kill her.  She has a vision of Warlow meeting with her parents.  He explains that John Stackhouse had promised her to him, and when she was of age she would become immortal.  He pops his fangs to drive home the, ah, point.  Corbett Stackhouse doesn’t want to hear of it, and he tells Warlow to leave.  Rather than allow his daughter to become a monster, he puts her in the trunk of his car and explains to his wife that she won’t feel anything, but that death is better than becoming what Warlow is.  Before they leave, his wife jumps into the car as well.  The vision ends, and Lafayette sees Corbett in the room.  Corbett rushes into Lafayette’s body, and the next thing we know, he is carrying Sookie out to the car to finish what he started.

Back at Bill’s house, Warlow holds Dr. Takahashi prisoner.  Lilith murdered his entire village, and now Warlow wants the one thing that has been promised to him.  We flash back to a scene from the village.  Warlow, now a vampire, returns and sees his parents as the village sits around a fire.  Warlow’s teeth pop out as he embraces his mother.  His wife tells young Niall to stay inside.  Niall was Warlow’s son.  Warlow doesn’t want to save the vampire race.  In the vision, we see that Warlow went into Lilith’s cave and used his faery light to open a hole in the ceiling while she slept.  She burns up, and Warlow tells Bill that he wishes she’d remained dead.

Sarah leads Governor Burrell through the Vamp Camp hallway, telling her that she has a surprise for him.  Steve Newlin is standing in the room and he happily tells the Governor that he will be pleased that he’s there. Eric is led into the white room again.  The Governor is glad to see the man who captured and turned his daughter, but Eric merely says “fuck you.”  However, when Eric hears that Willa is at the camp, he is thrown off.  He can’t believe the Governor would do that to his own daughter.  A stake is presented to Eric, and then Pam is ushered in.  Eric is to kill Pam to show that she doesn’t mean anything to him.  Steve is gleeful that he could save his own ass by providing the intel.  Eric and Pam stare at each other in disbelief.

Lafayette pulls Sookie from the car and leads her to the swamp.  She screams and cries, but he insists that this is how it had to be.  She doesn’t want to die.  He pushes her head underwater.  She screams.

Well.  That was a roller coaster ride.

So far, it looks like Bill’s vision is coming true.  The vampires are all locked up.  Sookie is in danger, and Jason is about to go on a mission to save Jessica.  Andy is dealing with the loss of three of his daughters, Lafayette is possessed again, and Sam is on the run with Emma.  Oh, and Alcide is being an ass and Terry wants to die.  Steve Newlin looks like he has a chance to live now, but Nora is conspicuously absent.  And is Niall gone forever?  Surely the Faery King, and Warlow’s son, could return from wherever he is.

As I mentioned, we’re halfway through the season.  I am happy that we have five more episodes, because we need time to get through all of this.  I need a nap to process all of this.

Until next week, Truebies!

Sarabeth Pollock is a contributor for Dark Media. She covers The Walking Dead, True Blood, Doctor Who, Fringe and American Horror Story, as well as the True Blood comics and whatever movies and books happen to catch her fancy.  Watch for her coverage of San Diego Comic Con 2013.  She’s an avid writer, reader, and pop culture fan, with interest in everything from Star Trek to Anne Rice to Deborah Harkness.  She’s also a nerd who loves the color pink.  Follow her on Twitter at @SarabethPollock and check out her blog at http://sarabethpollock.wordpress.com