'True Blood' Season 4, Episode 5 'Me and the Devil' Recap

You guys this was kind of a rough one – children murdering parents, racist exorcisms, goat killings, multiple levels of bff betrayal, incest advocacy and also Pam’s face is falling off.

Rather than just shifting into a bird or something tiny to escape the choke chain that’s been put on him, little Tommy Mickens just straight up murders both his parents. I can’t say I’ll miss them but that was hard to watch. He hightails it over to Sam’s and it seems a little homicide is just what these two needed to make up with each other. Sort of. So, based on what we’ve learned from Sam’s shifter crush Luna, Tommy is now set to become a skinwalker as well.

Marnie still has no idea what happens when the Inquisition witch takes over and cannot replicate or reverse any of the vampire curses she’s been dealing out. She continues to tell her coven that this spirit is benevolent and they have protection but it looks like every last one of them has a fully functional bullshit detector and they leave her ass in the woods.

Lafayette and Jesus head straight to Mexico to visit Jesus’s sketchy grandfather. He apparently forced Jesus to kill a goat and drink its blood (as a birthday present!) when he was 9. Jesus is convinced that this weird present allowed him to access a powerful spirit and since it’s looking like vamps vs. witches, they’ll be needing that kind of magic ASAP.

Freaked out by some supernatural graffiti that appeared on the living room wall in the last episode, Terry and Arlene decide that Rene’s ghost is haunting them and call a reverend in to cleanse the house. Their own (white) reverend doesn’t do house cleaning and so Terry has brought in Reverend Daniels and his new wife (!!) Lottie May. This scene made me all kinds of uncomfortable, the racial coding is really intense and while I want to believe the writers are thoughtfully and deliberately provoking this response, it also feels tone deaf to me in several places.

Uneasiness abounds as Portia Bellefleur storms in to see Bill, quoting all kinds of nonsensical statistics meant to entice her undead great-great-great-great-great-grandfather to keep banging her. Bill is unreceptive to say the least and gives her a good old-fashioned glamouring instead.  But his problems are far from over.

His sexy librarian spy witch throws Marnie into lock up and Bill glamour-interrogates her as well. Again, Marnie has no idea which witch has been casting these spells but the vampires are starting to figure it out. Antonia is her name and way back in the 1600’s she exposed the many vampire priests and nuns who were working within the powerful Catholic Church by necromancing a whole bunch of them out into the daylight.

Pam, whose pretty face continues to rot, accidentally spills the beans to Bill that Eric is hiding out at Sookie’s. Her timing couldn’t be worse. Eric has spent the episode being vulnerable and adorable – crying over bad dreams where Godric tells him he is evil and will never love and also seeming to feel real shame and repentance about all the jacked up things he’s done to Sookie and her friends.

This new personality is really starting to get to her and despite a direct warning from beyond the grave Gran that the situation is temporary, not to mention the justifiable hurt and outrage Tara throws in her face when she finds out Sookie’s been hiding Eric and lying to her about it, Sookie goes right ahead and makes out with him anyway.

Next week – full moon!