It wasn’t particularly easy watching that crucial scene on last Sunday’s True Blood. You know, that bit when things really got going during Tara’s birthday party. People start shoving cake in their faces and punch each other while laughing–and then the very much expected sex–all while Maryann starts chanting those Greek terms again, and amidst all the gasping, she’s transformed… to that monster that ripped Miss Jeanette’s heart out.
Sure, some of us had it coming, but you know that feeling of being drawn to something we very well knew (or felt) anyway? Yeah. So enough of those thought bubbles, then, for there are questions to ask. Like, both Maryann and the heart-ripping monster are sinister in their own ways. Or at least that’s what they want us to think. So is she a villain?
“I am maenad,” Michelle Forbes told TVGuide.com.
Okay, quick search… hrm. “Often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by [Dionysus] into a state of ecstatic frenzy, through a combination of dancing and drunken intoxication.” Well, that’s what Wikipedia says. Apparently maenad roughly translates to “raving ones”. Okay. Makes sense. But I can’t seem to connect the creature with the Maryann doing all that. Or am I missing something? Anyway.
“Maryann lives in a different moral construct than the rest of us,” Forbes said. “Tenderness, violence–they’re the same to her. The more that somebody is feeling alive and in their adrenaline and feeding that appetite for what we’re not supposed to do, the more that they’re in what she considers purity … She wants to push people into their vices, their purity, their ecstasy. That’s what she considers happiness. It’s not a nefarious or villainous thing in her mind. She wants everyone to feel the same glory and joy that she feels.”
Uh-huh. So shallow questions, then. Like the actual monster, which we saw in the episode two weeks back. Was it really her under all those prosthetics? “It is!” she said. “[It] was really created as we went along. They knew about the prosthetics for the claws, but it became something more as we went along … the claws just made everything come together, without a doubt.”
But obviously uncomfortable. “It really only takes an hour and a half [to put on], but it’s very uncomfortable for the rest of the evening,” she said. “You can’t text; you can’t make phone calls. People have to feed you sandwiches.”
At least people feed you sandwiches. That’s what Maryann would’ve wanted. I digress.
So, again, Maryann and that heart-ripper are one and the same. She transformed to that monster as she started chanting those weird chants and vibrating like crazy. If that sounds familiar… yep, the flashback with Sam, which almost became bestiality on the telly, which could’ve been a more uncomfortable sight. So was Maryann really trying to have sex with a dog? Or, why did she want to turn Sam into a dog while they’re having sex?
“That is a season-revealer, so I can’t say anything,” she said. “That’s a really important scene; people will be going back to that scene when they see the entire season.”
For now, we’ll have to get used to seeing Maryann vibrate more and become a monster. And that’s just one aspect of this season. Oh well. At least the last scene of the last episode was easier to watch. And cute, too.
– Henrik Batallones, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: TVGuide.com
(Image courtesy of HBO)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
