'True Blood:' Everyone must choose a side

As "True Blood" heads toward the finale of season four it's ratcheted up the action. "Soul of Fire" brought a deadly, yet hilarious conclusion to the Marnie vs. vampires war.

Picking up right where last week left off, our favorite vampire team channeled by Michael Bay with a pitch perfect slow motion "we're about to blow something up" walk.

Unfortunately, Sookie was inside which rendered both Bill and Eric unable to finish the job. Jason then appeared and gave a hard dose of truth to Sookie's vampire lovers about how much she had sacrificed for them. They relented and decided to come up with a plan b.

Meanwhile, inside witch HQ Marnie and Antonia are having a lover's quarrel until Marnie forcefully binds Antonia's spirit to her. She then does the smartest thing ever and tells Bill and Eric to kill themselves or she'll kill Sookie. It's surprising no bad guys have been this direct with their plans before now.

Thankfully, Pam is thinking straight and uses a rocket launcher to break up the proceedings. This doesn't sit well with Eric, who banishes her from his sight.


Alan Ball, this will not do. Pam and Eric are the best couple on TV and need to make up immediately. Besides, she really was the only one thinking straight in that moment. Even Jessica questioned Bill with a placed "suicide, really?"

Marnie, upset that Sookie ruined her plan to make the vampires walk into her sun-fuel protection barrier, surrounds her in a ring of fire. Sookie, with all her powers, just stands there screaming. No huge display a fairy magic, even though she had done just that, moments earlier. It was a rare unrealistic moment for Ball.

Finally, the intense, dark magic Jesus is working in the back kicks in and separates Antonia and Marnie, thus breaking the sun filled forcefield surrounding the Moon Goddess Emporium (A ridiculous name by the way).

Everyone rushes in and Marnie's lone, faithful disciple says the magic words "if you want Marnie, you'll have to go through me." Eric takes this literally and goes through his chest to his heart, then menacingly stands in front of Marnie eating her follower's heart. Bill then shoots Marnie with an automatic weapon, which seemed a little anti-climatic for someone who had caused so much chaos.

Almost immediately after the carnage cleared, the awkward high school love triangles kicked in with long looks between Sookie, Bill and Eric, and uncomfortable conversation between Jason and Jessica.

Here's the thing, fans of the books know who she chooses, so why not buck convention, save us from two more seasons of "will they, won't they" madness and have her make a choice at the end of the season, then deal with what that decision means.

The best of the rest:

• Sam and Alcide had the best revenge road trip ever, when they track down Marcus, kill him and Alcide coldly dumped Debbie.



• Does anyone else think Sam and Alcide should leave Bon Temps and start their own supernatural detective agency.



• Andy inexplicably runs into a random fairy in the woods and has sex with her. Was there a point to this?



• No crying Boyd this week, but that was ok. Will he be one of the many deaths Alan Ball talked about at comic-con?

Next week Marnie returns, first inside Lafayette, then harnessing Jesus' power.