True Blood: WOW.

I'm still a week behind on True Blood, so I'm taking a chance posting on this (and please don't spoil me for this week's episode in your comments!) but I just had to say something after watching that incredible rooftop scene in the August 16 episode, "I Will Rise Up." It was so beautifully done, and paid homage to similar scenes that had come before it.

Long before Joss Whedon humanized vampires, or Cylons made us question whether robots were unfeeling machines or creatures with souls, there were replicants. Whenever anyone asks me if I have a favourite scene in a movie, I probably say this one. At the end of Blade Runner, after Deckard has been chasing the replicants through the entire movie, he corners Roy Batty on a rooftop, and as the replicant "dies," he delivers one of the most incredible and moving speeches I've ever seen in a film, and Deckard immediately begins to question what he'd been doing:



It's one of those scenes that stays with you. In a similar scene (minus the death, thank god), in the season 7 Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, "Beneath You," Buffy tracks a crazy Spike to a church, and through his rambling she realizes that he's managed to get his soul back, in a sense. As she watches him in horror, he becomes more coherent, and tired of everything he's been through, he walks to the altar of the church, drapes himself on the cross, and says, "Can we rest now? Buffy, can we rest?" as smoke begins to rise from his body. I remember meeting James Marsters shortly after this scene had aired, and I told him I thought the scene was Shakespearean. His face lit up and he said, "Really? Because that's what I was going for!" Well, it worked. It's one of the most haunting scenes of any television show I've ever watched.

And now I've seen another. In season 1, True Blood was a campy delight that I enjoyed watching, despite all the naysayers saying it wasn't living up to the cred of other HBO shows. This season has been far, far better, not least because of Eric. Oh, Eric... I'm sorry, Spike, but as much as I love you, my allegiance has suddenly moved to another blonde vampire putting on an accent that isn't really his. Alexander Skarsgard. Oh, where you have you been all my life? Let's just look at him for a second, shall we?:



Mmm. OK, where was I? Oh yes, the August 16 episode. In it we discover -- shockingly -- that when Godric had been captured by the Brotherhood of the Sun, he'd done it on purpose. After 2000 years, he was tired. He was tired of the fighting, the hiding, the distrust, the bloodshed. He'd once been a bloodthirsty vampire, but he no longer even drinks blood, allowing himself to waste away. He was hoping the Fellowship would put a hasty end to his suffering, but his protege, Eric, came to his "rescue" just in time. Now that the PR woman who's touting Vampire Rights on CNN every night asks Godric to step down as sheriff, he gives up his post happily, and asks a distraught Eric to join him on the roof right before sunrise.

Alexander Skarsgard and Alan Hyde, who plays Godric, are both Scandinavian. I don't know if the language they used on the roof was something that they could both speak more easily, but what I did notice was when they switched to it, their already stellar acting reached new heights. Eric falls before his maker, begging him to stay, with blood running down his face (vampires in this world cry blood). He offers to burn with him, but Godric refuses, and asks him to find a safe haven. Sookie, who earlier in the episode had been tricked into drinking Eric's blood, and is now connected to him, is particularly tender and kind to Eric, despite the disgust she feels toward him, assuring him that she'll stay with Godric until the end. And she does.

Godric has clearly been set up as a Christ figure (he even refers to Christ in one episode), one who will die to save the vampire race. If he sacrifices himself, imagine the spin the PR woman could put on it. But that's not his ultimate end game. He's simply... done. Like Roy Batty, in his final moments he's completely humanized, and marvels at it. He stares at Sookie, and says he can't believe that at the very end, he's standing next to a human, who is crying real tears for him. He assures her he's not scared at all, but is in fact filled with joy. And yet, he belies this confidence in one brief moment when he looks at Sookie and asks her how God will punish him. She tells him God doesn't punish, he forgives.



He steps forward, seeing the sun rise for the first time in two millenia, and opens his arms to greet it. He'd already told Sookie that it would be quick, because he's so old. She stands back, sobbing and frightened for him, as a look of peace falls over his face and he is obliterated in a magnificent blue light, leaving nothing behind but the white tunic he'd removed just before stepping forward. This from the man who, centuries before, stood above Eric, about to turn him into a vampire, and answered, "I am" when Eric asked him if he was death. Now Godric knows there are things much worse than death.

In an episode that had its share of laugh-out-loud moments -- Steve and his wife bickering on national television while he sports the giant red bruise from the paintball on his forehead; Sam showing up naked at Andy's hotel room -- this moment was divine. I haven't seen anything like it on television this year, and it brought me to tears in a way that only Buffy used to do.

And now my husband's away for a week interviewing a musician for a feature story and I have to wait until he's back at the end of the week to watch the next episode. It's already killing me, but in the meantime, I will continue to be haunted by that scene of Godric giving himself over to fate and disappearing from a world that has only given him pain.