True Blood was back last night to scratch and claw itself an inch or two closer to the finish line. Most of the episode was another installment of Operation Hey Bill's Really Not That Bad a Guy, Right?, though we were given some deliciously sassy moments from Lafayette and Pam to keep us awake to the credits. Let's dig in!

Things get dicey with the Yakuza, and Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) is losing strength. But he's able to kill a dozen more or so before surrendering because they have Pam (Kristen Bauer Van Straten) in chains. They load them into cars from The Fast and the Furious and take them over to Yakonoma Corp., where they get locked in a room with a big window and a clock ticking down to sunrise. Eric quips, "Our first sunrise together," and they both smile. Awww!

OPENING TITLES

Bill (Stephen Moyer), wearing just a towel in what looks to be a VERY cold room, calls a lawyer and says that he has Hep V and needs to get his affairs in order. Jess (Deborah Ann Woll), sneaking in, overhears this and is sufficiently rocked. She tries to get Beel to talk but he won't, and he leaves and she cries. (Yep - two corpses, everything's fine!)

Lala (Nelsan Ellis) takes Lettie Mae (Adina Porter) home with him and is surprised to find James (Nathan Parsons) there, asking if he can stay the night. Lala is just fine with that, but he warns Lettie not to try to cut boyfriend for his blood. James willingly offers it, and Lala says fine, but he's going with her. Wait, isn't this about the time where Lala should reveal that he is still a super-powerful witch? Sigh. Instead, they both take James' blood and he's all, "Have a nice trip!" And they do.

Jason (Ryan Kwanten) is scared to go into his house because of Violet (Karolina Wydra), but when he finally does it is all rose petals and candles and vampire blowjobs, which sound like they could be a bit dicey. But Jason's a trooper! Literally.

Bill arrives at the Kapneck Law Office, and his wait time is about 7 hours. This waiting room came straight out of Beetlejuice. The guy behind the window is reading gay pulp classic The Why Not because... well, why not?

Pam quips, "I never thought I'd meet the sun in a place with wall-to-wall carpet..." They are then greeted by a Yakuza cowboy named Mr. Gus Jr. (here we go...) who wants Sarah Newlin dead for toppling his TruBlood empire. Eric says she's his to kill, and the boys fight until Pam brokers a deal as the sun is rising.

Sarah (Anna Camp), meanwhile, breaks in to her sister's house, and Amber Mills - love her granola! - tries to bite her but is suddenly sick and vomiting blood on the floor and passing out. Guess she doesn't like Chanel #5?

Jess calls Jason - who is sleeping with Violet in a froufrou cellar boudoir of horrors - and asks him to bring Sookie over, it's about Bill. Jason leaves and V trashes the bedroom, because it's daylight and she can't follow him. Wait, why isn't Jess falling apart from staying up so late? Wasn't that a pretty big thing a few seasons ago?

Andy (Chris Bauer) catches Wade (Sorry, Not Gonna Bother) and Adilyn (Bailey Chase) banging and chases Wade out of the house in his altogether. Nice, but Joe Manganiello, we miss you! He and Addy declare love for one another as Andy and Holly (Lauren Bowles) argue about which one of them is the worse parent.

Jason wakes up Sookie (Anna Paquin), who is seriously hung over. Hair of the dog, Sook? Oh, sorry - too soon?

Lettie takes Lala to the cross that Tara (Rutina Wesley) has been hanging out on (all season, literally, and since Season 1, figuratively), with the snake and the babbling in other languages and shit. They let her down and she leads them off into the swamp.

Nicole (Jurnee Smollett) tells Sam (Sam Trammell) that she's going home - for good - because "this town is fucking crazy. You're the mayor of crazy." Well, I guess it beats being Mayor of Simpleton?

Jess tells Jason and Sookie that Bill has Hep V and Sookie thinks that she must have given it to him after the slaughter in the woods. She asks Jason to take her to get tested right away.

Arlene (Carrie Preston) and Holly return to Bellefleur's... and there are piles of blood and muck everywhere. What, was last night karaoke?

Bill's symptoms are accelerating at an unprecedented rate, because they only have four episodes left to tie this shit up.

Sookie gets tested, noticing a "SILENCE = TRUE DEATH' sticker. Subtle! She tells Jason, "nothin' left to do but wait..."

Tara leads Lettie and Lala to the front yard of their old house, where she is digging lots of holes. Lettie thinks she's trying to tell them something, but then they are pulled back to reality (?) by the Reverend (Gregg Daniel), who tells Lettie that it's either the V or him, even though Lala tries to convince him that Auntie actually might be onto something (and not just on something). But even Lala's side-eye isn't enough to save the day, as Lettie tells him that between him and Tara, she chooses her baby girl.

Holly and Andy argue about who is to blame for their kids banging, with Holly implying that all faeries are sluts. Yet again, Arlene is MVP of the episode, as she unites the future spouses together against their ugly-bumping children.

Jason and Sookie drink 40s out of paper bags at a gas station and talk about love. Sookie suggests, "Love shouldn't make you scared," and Jason decides to call it off with Violet. She gets the call - yes, she has Hep V.

Bill's lawyer tells him that he has no right to his own property because his will was drawn after he turned, and his house won't go to Jessica because she's not really his offspring. His only option is to adopt her, but it will take a year, but she can expedite the process for TEN MEELION DOLLARS. Bill accuses her of extortion and she confirms that accusation. Get it? Lawyers are horrible! Bill stabs her with a letter opener that an attorney shaking down literally hundreds of desperate vampires a night would totally have lying on her desk.

Holly gets out of Rocky that Wade and Adilyn are at Fort Bellefleur.

Amber isn't dead. Sarah insists that she's a different person now - not the one who invented Hep V and knowingly infected millions of vampires. She's now a "new me" - literally, Noomi. [pause for groans] Oh, and she also drank the antidote to Hep V before the Authoritaaaaay was destroyed. What, and she... digested it? And so it's in her bloodstream forever? Is that how science works now? Okay! She offers to heal Amber, because Buddha.

Sookie tells Jess that it was she who infected Bill, but she really had no idea, honest. Jess hugs her.

Jason psyches himself up to go into his own house (again) but when he does he finds no Violet, and their basement bedroom trashed, and a terse note that it's over. He's thrilled.

Violet goes to Fort Bellefleur, where she lures the idiot children away from their cell phones in no time.

Pam and Eric arrive at Amber's to find her healed. Wait, so can Eric drink her blood now and he'll be okay, too? Science!

Beel gets home and covers up his arms and stumbles before heading into the house, where Sookie and Jess cling to each other like the Olsen twins on a red carpet. He closes the door as some song about karma plays. Really? Karma? I guess there wasn't a song available called "Lazy Writing".

SCENE

Notably Dead: A lawyer, Yakuza

Notably Absent: Willa, Keith (was it Keith? Whatever.), Ginger, Jane Bodehouse

Guys. Guysguysguys. At this point I feel like Rev. Daniels, wanting to give this show the benefit of the doubt but knowing that if I give her an inch, she'll dope my spaghetti sauce and stab a bitch at a funeral party. Just when there's a faint glimmer (last week) of this show returning to its former gory, we spend an entire episode watching Jason realize that his psycho vampire girlfriend is a psycho vampire girlfriend and rolling our eyes as they try to pull an Angelina Jolie on Bill's reputation. At this point I'm with Lettie Mae - gimme the damn V and let me run around in the swamp with dead Tara.

While making universally loathed Sarah Newlin the walking key to curing the Hep Vamps is stretching credibility even for this show, it at least justifies her continued presence. I could give two shits about Wade and Adilyn, despite their being obvious pawns in Violet's attempts to take down Jessica - and that's probably because I could also give two shits about Violet and don't think she has a snowball's chance of surviving more than another episode, thank Godric.

I'm also becoming increasingly uncomfortable about the sloppy parallels being drawn between Hep V and HIV, particularly in this ep. Did they really end the episode with a musical cue telling Bill that he basically deserved to contract the virus? That's... well, that's irresponsible at best, and flirting with downright offensive. If you're going to make your vampire show into some grander metaphor about subordinated classes and their struggles, you take on added responsibility to handle these topics with slightly more care than goes into mocking up a parody of an ACT UP sticker with fangs.

At this point - and I am truly sorry to be saying this - I'm with Nicole. I'm more than ready for my mommy to pick me up and take me outta fucking crazy for good.

I'd give it two WTFs: