When Maryann showed up towards the end of season 1, she was clearly positioned as some kind of “alternative lifestyle type” (perhaps Wiccan, or at least “former hippie”) who had somehow managed to accumulate wealth and become a mysterious benefactor. This is all still fairly unexplained, though, in the same way that “doggie Sam” was relatively unexplained until rather well into season 1. She seems to be able to “control” people (and shape-shifters) and is arguably positioned as a “good witch” (by 2009, as opposed to 1939, standards), but the question really is this: what does she have to do with vampires? (Didn’t her pseudo-Latin or “alien” or “DEAD!” brain-language remind you of the vampire language we sometimes hear spoken by Eric and his cute sidekick?) And what was with all the food and all the sexy dancing? Maybe the “Tinkerbell” thing, the excess food, the controlling, the weird language, etc. has something to do with the vampire/shape-shifter equivalent of “multiple souls.” Her “flitteriness” also reminds me of that original series “Star Trek” episode with those people infected by something that makes their physiologies “run fast” (so that they are invisible, but also highly susceptible to injury.) Clearly, whatever category Maryann is in, she’s at least as “powerful” as Eric. Maybe she actually is “alien” (or something else) and has to consume all that food in order to keep up her human appearance. That would be an interesting twist, and the actress did once play a recurring role as an alien on “Star Trek: TNG”!

I found ep. 2 otherwise oddly “flat,” in terms of the main characters, because Jason and the freaky “Christians” had to be made to seem “off,” as much as possible, so that many of the others (Jessica, Tara, “cute black boy,” and even Sookie and Bill) were made to seem somehow less “interesting,” at least until Eric, etc. changed Lafayette towards the end and Bill showed up at Jessica’s house at the very end. Setting up Lafayette’s new turn (presumably in ep. 3) perhaps also explains why he was made to seem so much less, uh, “queer” in ep. 1. He should be quite interesting as a vampire!

I found the episode’s music quite interesting, especially the hymn-like instrumental music when Sookie looked at an old picture (it vaguely looked like herself, Tara, and Gran from a few decades ago, but I’m not sure), which abruptly (and very pointedly) cut out for the next scene of Jason and the “Christians” at the “Bible camp.” The anti-fang “praise songs” and “Christian rock” were also pretty funny.