So it looks like we might be getting somewhere. Heavy on the ‘might,’ if only because it looks like “Almost Home” is trying to wrap up a lot of loose threads and moving the plot along. Sure, things ramp up a bit, but at the same time, we retread familiar territory. Some of what we got was a bit too predictable, but we did get an interesting end that did manage to interest me to see how the plot would progress from there.

The episode begins with Sarah dreading her inevitable death, even though she’s convinced that she will return as the Princess of Peace. She surrenders herself, but Eric goes in for the kill. Rather than fight back, Sarah actually pleads to be killed. Pam, realizing that Sarah must be kept alive, puts a gun to heart and threatens to kill herself if Eric kills Sarah. Instead, Eric takes a quick bite and in moments, he’s fully healed!

After their rendezvous between the sheets, Bill and Sookie talk. Sookie’s been wondering why Queen Sophie-Anne sent Bill after her in the first place. The plan was for Bill to find out if Sookie was, indeed, Fae, and if she was, bring her to the queen so she could begin breeding her. Yeah, it’s like that. But, as we know, Bill didn’t bring Sookie. He accepted the mission without risking it, and spending time with Sookie reminded him of his humanity and all the darkness he carried. However, Sookie believes that there was love present.

Lafayette and Lettie Mae are still digging in this poor family’s yard. Reverend Daniels, even though he has no real reason to be there, apologizes to the family. He’s still unconvinced by what the two have told him about Tara, so Lettie Mae asks him to join them, courtesy of James, who picked the perfect time to arrive. Obviously, the Reverend doesn’t want to, but Lettie Mae reminds him that he once wanted her to take a blind journey and asks him to believe in her. Yeah, pretty sure your terrible parenting and drinking problems don’t measure up with this, Lettie Mae.

So the three go on a V-trip and Tara leads them into the house, where a young Sookie, Tara, Lafayette celebrate Tara’s birthday. You know who wasn’t invited to the party? Tara’s dad, Joe Thornton, played by Malcolm Goodwin, enters and throws a fit about not being invited. After knocking Lettie Mae around, Joe looks for his gun.

In the present, Brigette and Jason look over some photos of Hoyt. Brigette brings up the possibility of having kids, but Hoyt isn’t on board with that, given all of the things that his family has been through. As this happens, Jason receives photos from Violet. No nudes, though- just pictures of a bound Adilyn and Jessica. He quickly calls Andy and Holly, who are still far away, and rushes into action. Brigette decides to tag along.

Mr. Gus talks with Eric and Pam about synthesizing Sarah’s blood for their new product. He doesn’t want the finished product to be too perfect or work too well. It shouldn’t fully heal the infected vampires, but just alleviate enough of their symptoms that they’ll want to come back for more. And the more vampires purchase, the more money for the people higher up. Eric and Pam are on board with more money, but no one else can know about this plan.

Jason arrives at Violet’s villainous lair and arms Brigette with a gun while she’s in the car. Yeah, she won’t be joining in on the fun. Not long after Jason enters, Violet gets the jump on him and puts him in one of her many torture devices. Side-note, why does Violet even have so many devices if she’s not going to ever use them? She gives a long, drawn out speech that most villains give while the hero prepares to make their sudden, but inevitable and telegraphed counterattack. All she wanted was for Jason to worship her. She does have an order to how she’ll go about this torture: Wade first, so Adilyn can see him suffer. Adilyn will be next and get to experiment with Violet’s handy-dandy breast ripper, and then she’ll be drained slowly. Jessica is next and will be subject to a red hot phallic poker. Again, why does Violet have these things? But before we can start the fun-

-boom, in enters Hoyt, who puts an end to Violet. So there’s that, I guess.

Back in Flashback Land, young Tara pulls her father’s gun out of her dresser drawer and is very close to pulling the trigger, but decides against it. Instead, she heads to the yard and buries the gun while her father gets in the car and leaves.

In the present, Tara apologizes to her mother for not pulling the trigger when she had the chance. Lettie Mae says that responsibility wasn’t on Tara, but Mae should have been a better mother. No one’s questioning that at all. A lot of bad things happened to the two of them, but Lettie Mae needs to forgive herself and let Tara go. She does, and with that, Rutina Wesley walks off the True Blood set one last time.

Andy and Holly return after the fun, but still console Wade and Adilyn. Hoyt introduces himself to Jessica, while Brigette and Jason talk. She asks if Jessica is Jason’s girlfriend, but to be honest, Jason doesn’t even know what to call Jessica right now.

Eric pays Bill a visit and reveals to Sookie that he is fully healed. He can’t tell her how, despite the fact that Bill is very sick, but the cure isn’t ready yet. Hey, if it worked on Eric, it should work on Bill, right? Eric hesitates, unsure what to say. He tells Sookie that dawn is approaching, but she doesn’t give a shit about that. Eric promises to come back tomorrow night and leaves. Sookie, not satisfied with that, heads out into the night.

Not long after, Jason and Jessica pull up. The two talk about the whirlwind of events they’ve been through. Jason decides, again, to stop making bad decisions, but his affection for Jessica was never a mistake. Despite everything Jessica has been through, she never felt that Jason betrayed her. In fact, she feels that their relationship hasn’t been too complicated. They made sense. After the two share a brief kiss, Jessica heads inside and lets Bill know that she’s there.

The next day, Sookie heads to Fangtasia, alone, to meet with Eric. She’s let in, though Mr. Gus is curious about the relationship between Eric and Sookie. Eric tells Mr. Gus that Sookie is just a fangbanger, coming back for more. However, she shouldn’t be killed. Not just because she’s the main character, but because her brother is part of the Sheriff’s Department and if something happens to Sookie, the authorities will come after them. Eric tells Mr. Gus that he’ll glamour Sookie, but it’s obvious that he’s playing him. Oh, and that musical sting that plays whenever a vampire glamours a human? It doesn’t play for that long, either. But Sookie does take the opportunity to read Mr. Gus’ thoughts and learns that something important is downstairs.

At Bellefleur’s, Jason is loving the eggs. Just thought that was worth mentioning. Hoyt shows up and the two talk about the previous night. Hoyt asks about Jason and Jessica, though he makes it clear that he still loves Brigette. She’s just in a rough place right now.

Next thing we know, Hoyt shows up at Bill’s doorstep. After heading into another room, Jessica lets him in. Hoyt offers up his own clean blood to help alleviate Bill’s pain. When Jessica apologizes about the death of Hoyt’s mother, Hoyt admits that he does miss her, but at the same time, he doesn’t. He would just like to head to an easier time when you’re a child and the only thing you need to get you through the day is a parent’s love.

Sookie uses her fairy powers to enter the side wall that the vampires previously used to enter Fangtasia and comes face to face with Sarah Newlin. Sookie reads her thoughts and learns that she’s the cure. Again, Sookie makes the practical choice of actually not letting Sarah go.

Instead, she returns to Bill’s and tells Jessica that there is a cure and promises that Bill will survive! Sookie, don’t make promises that you can’t keep.

Bill, meanwhile, dreams of a life with Sookie and their…evil, black, shadow demon ghost baby. All right.

Mr. Gus is heading to Dallas, so Eric and Pam better not cause any problems while he’s away! Some of his men will remain with them. When Gus leaves, Eric tells Pam that he plans to give some of Sarah’s blood to Bill.

When Bill, Jessica and Sookie arrive, however, and after Jessica briefly considers biting into Sarah’s flesh, even though Eric is offering the cure right in front of him, Bill refuses to take Sarah’s blood.

Well, what do you know? The writers must have realized that the show ends in two episodes, so they’re trying to tie up as many loose ends without creating new ones. The episode feels like it has less filler moments- there’s no Sam and Nicole, for one thing, and no Andy admiring the silence. It’s just dealing with the season’s plots as best as possible. That doesn’t mean the execution was handled all that well.

If last week’s episode dealt with one final shot at happiness, this one feels with making a choice to ensure a good future and prolong your life. If we had a second chance, would we go about doing things differently, and should we even have to? More than that, the episode dealt heavily with forgiveness. As profound as these messages may seem, they’re nothing new to True Blood or even this season. The show is just retreading messages, which is a letdown that we have to enter familiar territory so close to the end.

Violet was an odd one. I’m upset she’s gone, if only because she was so beautiful, but man, did her whole kidnapping amount to a lot of nothing. Like most villains, rather than just do what she wants to do, she has to talk about it. I mean, don’t tease us with a red hot dildo or breast ripper and then don’t use it! I don’t understand why Violet didn’t just drain Adilyn and kill Wade when she had the chance. Jessica clearly wasn’t able to stop her, or she wouldn’t wound up as a hostage. If this was supposed to make for easy drama, it failed, and even worse because this subplot dragged out for so long and it was Hoyt, of all people, who put her down!

Jason, meanwhile, looks like he’s up to swap Jessica for Brigette. I mean, he couldn’t keep his eyes off of her last week, so this seems obvious. But he’s talked of wanting to grow up before, so I don’t see why we needed to hear him say it again.

It doesn’t seem right for Jason and Jessica to have no regrets about their relationship, considering what it led to with Violet. Jessica’s vampire vagina can’t be worth Adilyn and Wade suffering. But I’ve never had it, so what do I know?

If Jessica somehow ends up back with Hoyt, then fine, but I wish this transition was handled better. Don’t get me wrong. I loved the scene where Hoyt talked to Jessica about a parent’s love, but I thought he was a bit too irrational when he got on Brigette for talking about his pictures and wanting to have a kid. It came out of nowhere. He says that Brigette is in a rough place, but she certainly doesn’t give off that vibe.

And then we’ve got Tara. This was just foul. So, we have to settle with the fact that Tara was killed off-screen. We’ve had to endure Lettie Mae admitting that she was a bad mother and confronting another addiction issue. We’ve already seen and heard of Tara’s past. So what was the point of all of this, if only to give Tara a proper on-screen sendoff? At least it wasn’t an episode-long funeral. But Lettie Mae has had chance after chance to come to terms with Tara’s death. We did not need to have this stretched out as long as it was. And I’m not sure what compelled Reverend Daniels to eventually concede, just because Lettie Mae threw his words about a blind journey right back at him. He’s not struggling with an addiction.

Heck, he even made Lettie Mae choose between him and Tara, and she chose Tara! Why even ask that if you’re eventually going to join in anyway? This entire subplot was ridiculous and a poor sendoff for a character that has been around from the beginning. Treat one of your longest standing characters with some dignity, True Blood. Though, for me, Tara should have met her end when she was killed the first time, before Sookie decided to have her turned. Oh, and what was up with all the crosses and snakes and unrecognizable language? Couldn’t Tara have just led Lettie Mae to the house from the start and saved us all some time?

I like that Sookie was a bit more proactive this week. Instead of waiting for something to happen, she confronted Eric on her own and refused to help Sarah, given all of the trouble she’s caused. And we learn about even more stuff she doesn’t give a shit about.

At least Eric’s healed. I get why he’d want to keep the cure a secret from Sookie for now. At the same time, we see that he’s willing to use Sarah to help Bill. The fact that he doesn’t glamour her, despite promising to, shows that he wants to keep her safe and alive.

And I still love just how loyal Pam is, willing to follow Eric, even into death.

This was just a decent episode, as has been the trend this season. We got some nice moments with Jason, Jessica and Hoyt, wrapped up Violet’s storyline and Eric’s healed. In that sense, we’ve progressed. Where the episode stumbled was how it handled Tara’s sendoff, given how long she’s been around and the amount of time spent on this subplot.

And what’s up with Bill not taking the blood?

Any questions, comments, concerns, issues, complaints, would love to hear them.