Review - HBO - True Blood - Episode 4 - Escape from Dragon House

True Blood
Escape from Dragon House
Season 1, Episode 4
HBO
September 28, 2008
9:00 – 10:00 p.m. ET/PT
Other HBO playdates: Sept. 28 (11:30 p.m.) and 30 (11:30 p.m.), and Oct. 1 (10:00 p.m.), 2 (8:00 p.m.), 3 (midnight), 4 (1:05 a.m.) and 16 (8:00 p.m.)
HBO2 playdate: Sept. 29 (8:00 p.m.)

Episode Blurb:
Another killing in Bon Temps finds Jason back in custody with officers Andy (Chris Bauer) and Bud (William Sanderson). Tara gets him off the hook, but neither she nor Lafayette has the antidote to his current ailment. Urged by Gran to use her telepathic abilities to weed out the murderer and exonerate her brother, Sookie persuades Bill to take her to a Shreveport vampire bar called Fangtasia, where she impresses a dominant Nordic bloodsucker named Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) with her prescient powers. Later, Bill demonstrates his own considerable powers when an abusive patrolman stops the couple on their way home.

Written by Brian Buckner; directed by Michael Lehmann.

My thoughts:
When another woman is discovered murdered, and Jason is found at the scene of the crime, he’s once again taken in for questioning. With Tara’s help, and with nothing concrete to hold him on, Jason is released. In the process of his arrest Jason puts himself in an alarming position, and after confronting Lafayette about the unfortunate condition it’s caused, he gives in to the reality that he requires medical attention.

Despite her on again, off again, darker thoughts on Bill’s character, Sookie asks that he take her to a vampire bar in Shreveport, explaining that it’s not really a date. She’s hoping that someone can provide answers or clues on who may have had a reason to murder the women in Bon Temps. After meeting the vampire hostess, Pam, and the bartender, Long Shadow, Sookie has her first encounter with the powerful vampire Eric, an experience she won’t soon forget. As they part he makes a point of telling her that he enjoyed meeting her and a more ominous comment that she would come again.

This is the fourth installment of HBO’s True Blood, and if you watched last week you have an idea of what opens this episode. With Jason finding himself once again in the wrong place at just the right time, his sister’s longtime friend, Tara, comes to his rescue. Meanwhile, Sookie has jumped into the vampire world with both feet and her mixture of fascination and repulsion of Bill continues. Jason and Lafayette are both a source of entertainment in the storyline, and their scenes together are usually too humorous not to laugh. The Coroner is a creep, Andy is disgruntled by the lack of respect he gets and Sookie’s Gran is as supportive as ever. The ending isn’t quite a cliffhanger in this episode, but it’s surprising even if we might have guessed what was coming. Kudos on the music choice in the final scene, it helps answer the question some viewers will have on why he’s doing it. Escape from Dragon House continues the show’s fast pace and will have fans coming back next week hungry for more.

Kimberly Swan, Darque Reviews