'True Blood' season 4 premiere recap: Something Wiccan this way comes

When last we saw Sookie Stackhouse, the heartbroken part-fairy telepathic waitress and "True Blood" heroine had disappeared into a ball of light, and although Alan Ball didn't want reviewers saying where she ended up, is anyone surprised when she and Claudine touch down in Fairyland? It's a softly-lit courtyard with trees heavy with glowing fruit -- it borrows heavily from Maxfield Parrish-- and looks around. Some are remarkably attractive and dressed like Claudine in gauzy dresses and white linen, and others are dressed in everyday clothes like Sookie, many eating the glowing fruit, and presumably part-fairy like Sookie. Claudine introduces herself to Sookie as her fairy godmother. Sookie is blunt: "If your job is to look after me, can I just say, you suck?" "You're still alive," aren't you," Claudine answers, a little testy.

Sookie spots Barry, the telepathic bellhop from Dallas, who's thrilled to pieces to be here -- "the one place in the universe we're not freaks!" -- and happily accepts a lumiere, or light fruit. "This is like biting into pure happiness," he says. Sookie is not so sure. Getting suspicious, she watches her fellow part-fae feasting on the fruit, but then spots a guy in a flannel shirt across the courtyard. It's her grandfather Earl, but when she introduces herself to him, he doesn't believe it's her -- he just saw her last week at her birthday party. No, she tells him gently, that was 20 years ago. That's how long ago he disappeared. He asks about her grandmother and her parents and can't believe they're all gone. He feels like he's been there only a few hours .... ah, the lotus-eaters.

Suddenly Sookie, the only one who hasn't eaten the fruit, hears screeching, sees some very bad CGI goo seep through the stone walls, and spots a gremlin-type creature stalking the room. Her lumiere is covered with maggots. Sookie asks her granddaddy telepathically if he can hear her. He can. And yes, Sookie, so can everyone else. They hear her tell her grandfather that this place is a trap. Everyone goes quiet and turns toward them, and one elegantly dressed woman emerges from the crowd. "The trap is the world you left behind," says the woman, who introduces herself as Mab. Mab insists that Sookie eat the fruit, but Sookie won't, tossing it to the ground, where it turns into moldy mush. Mab's face flits from ethereal fairy to pointed-eared, dagger-toothed gremlin as she berates Sookie for letting a vampire breach their world by drinking her blood. Vampires nearly drank fairies into distinction in the "old world," which is whey they are "harvesting" the part-fairy from the human plane. The other fairies hold Sookie down and try to force-feed her the lumiere, but she uses her power-hand-thingy to throw Mab off. She crashes into a tree and suddenly, they're in a desert wasteland and all the fairies have turned into rag-dressed gremlins. "Do not let the girl escape!" screams Mab, and the fairies all start throwing light bombs from their hands. Sookie and Earl run, and meet up with two more gremlins who claim they can help. One gets hit by the light bomb and disintegrates. As the two bands of gremlins battle it out, the head rebel gremlin leads Sookie and her grandfather to a yawning chasm and tells them to jump. That will take them back to their world. Sookie wants to know why she should believe him. He says that his sister is the one who abducted her -- so this would be Claudine's brother? -- and that Mab wants to seal off the fairy world, but some feel they have the right to travel back and forth. He tells Earl that he can't return because he ate the lumiere, but when Mab starts to dissolve the portal, Earl grabs Sookie, and they both jump.

Okay, that was kind of silly.

They land in the Bon Temps cemetery -- we flash to Eric and Bill registering her return in their hidey-holes -- and it's clear immediately that Earl is in a bad way, sort of flashing on and off and looking 30 years older, sunken-eyed and gray. She helps him over to her grandmother's grave, and he gives her his pocket watch to give to Jason, then turns to dust. Sookie cries, but in a refreshing change of pace, does not scream.

She walks home, and sees that workers have done some sprucing up at her house. In fact, someone is still working on the outside, and tries to stop Sookie when she walks inside. He tells her he's going to call the cops. Soon we see Jason, now sporting a little goatee and wearing a Renard Parish deputy uniform, enter the house. He's shocked to see her. She's surprised to see him in uniform. He explains that they thought she was dead and tells her she's been gone for more than a year. She's less concerned about this than the fact that Jason sold her house in her absence. She says it felt like she was gone for 10 or 15 minutes, that time works differently in the fairy world. Jason doesn't really believe her, and warns that no one else will, but when she gives him their grandfather's watch he seems to come around. It's 6:35 p.m., so Sookie knows what that means. Bill speed-vamps over, immediately begging her forgiveness for thinking her gone. Eric then coolly saunters up, saying he never believed she was dead. Bill turns on Eric, masterfully ordering him back to Fangtasia -- there's a switch -- and Eric accedes a little grumpily. "Apparently I have to go, but understand this: Everyone who claims to love you -- your friends, your brother, even Bill Compton -- they all gave up on you. I never did."

Sheriff Andy Bellefleur shows up -- oh, William Sanderson, I miss ye -- and is pissed. Bill explains that they thought he killed her all this time, but no one could prove it. Andy tells Sookie to show up at the station tomorrow and he'll take her statement; maybe they'll find the person who kidnapped her. When Sookie explains that no one kidnapped her, Andy goes ballistic. Bill steps in, explaining that Sookie had been working for him on some top-secret vamp business and apologizes for misleading him for a year. "You owe me a Safe Streets plaque," Andy grumps and turns to leave. Back in the patrol car, Jason accuses Andy of using again. It become clear that Andy has become a V addict.

Sookie tells Bill that she feels like she's been gone only an hour or so, so it feels like he just broke her heart. (Because Eric told her that Bill came to Bon Temps to "procure" her for Sophie-Anne, giving him an ulterior motive for their romance.) He's just happy she's okay and wishes her goodnight.

HBOMarnie (Fiona Shaw) has big ambitions for her little Wiccan circle.

Over in (presumably) Shreveport, Jesus has dragged Lafayette (sporting a fierce mohawk) to the Moon Goddess Emporium for a Wiccan group meeting. Lafayette's appears tired of Jesus trying to interest him in his supernatural experimentation. "Five minutes," Lafayette says. "Ten if they got dranks." One woman in glasses -- I didn't catch her name -- welcomes them, and Holly, the blond waitress from Merlotte's, brings them into the circle, where Marnie, the head Wiccan, is muttering to herself. Suddenly she looks over at Lafayette and motions him. She appears to be hocking up a hairball or in the middle of a particularly troublesome bowel movement, but in reality, she's communing with the spirit of Lafayette's dead trick Eddie, the one who traded sex for V. Suddenly Eddie takes over -- in a thick, nearly indecipherable accent, she/he tells Lafayette that he was worth it, and when he mentions the merlot Lafayette used to drink, Lafayette gets freaked out and backs away. Marnie comes out of her trance and appears in real life to be an apologetic, timid sort. Looks can be deceiving. Lafayette accuses Jesus of telling Marnie about Eddie to lure him in to the group, and storms out.

While we're at it, let's catch up with our pals from Bon Temps:

Arlene comes home and sees her baby (from now-dead serial killer boyfriend Rene) on the floor surrounded by decapitated Barbies. She calls for Terry and freaks out. "What the hell kind of baby does that???" Terry tries to reassure her -- "When I was a kid, I used to put a squirrel head on a lizard body and invent animals" -- but Arlene is not buying it. She's convinced the baby is evil. She picks him and looks him in the eye: "Mommy loves you very, very much but you have to understand, killing is wrong."

Suddenly we're on Bourbon Street, and we pan down a side street to a ... cage-fighting match? It's Tara, beating the heck out of a brunette beauty and having a blast doing so. Later, we see the brunette catch up with Tara outside; turns out they're an item. A drunk passer-by propositions them, but Tara, showing a newly calm side, tells the guy she's just sad for him, and plucks the $10 out of his hands. "That's for me not reporting you for solicitation." She and her girlfriend -- who calls her Tara -- walk off.

Hoyt comes home to Jessica, and he's in a bad mood, which worsens when he sees that there's no food in the fridge and no dinner on the table. He wants to know if maybe she could scramble an egg for him every once in a while. She says that food is disgusting to her, that going to the Piggly Wiggly is like going to the morgue for Hoyt. "You think bleeding out into your mouth wasn't gross for me at first?" Hoyt tells her. "You get used to it!" Jessica starts throwing eggs in a pan, shells and all, then pours the mess onto a plate. Hoyt starts eating it, crowing about how delicious it is. Jessica starts to see the humor in the situation and laughs, telling him he'll get sick if he keeps eating it. He starts to laugh too.

At Fangtasia, Pam, proper in a Chanel suit, is filming a PSA about how vampires aren't really that evil, but is utterly unconvincing. Nan Flanagan, the face of the American Vampire League, expositions that in this post-Russell Edgington world, they have to win back the human public, one smile at a time. Eric turns up, takes over for Pam, and turns up the charm. "I'm a taxpaying American and small business owner in the great state of Louisiana. I also happen to be a vampire ... We were humans. We ask to be treated as such. We welcome you into our wrold as well. We're always more than happy to serve humans here at Fangtasia. And I don't mean for dinner." Eric's PSA is intercut with Bill cutting the ribbon on the new senior citizen center named for his Confederate-era wife. We get a glimpse of Portia Bellefleur, Andy's sister, and kind of technically Bill's descendant, right? Keep that in mind.

Sookie returns to Merlotte's, where she gets big hugs from Arlene and Terry, a nice welcome from Lafayette and a prickly one from Sam, who tells her she can return part-time, because Arlene and Holly have kids and need the shifts. Back in the kitchen, Jesus shows up. Lafayette is still angry about the Wiccan meeting and thinks Jesus set him up, but Jesus tells him that Lafayette is trying to run away from what makes him special. Andy shows up and orders Jesus out, then hits up Lafayette for some V. He starts roughing him up when Lafayette tells him he's no longer in the business, but Jason shows up and defuses Andy, then tells Lafayette that this never happened.

Maxine Fortenberry shows up at Merlotte's with Tommy, who's sporting a leg brace. Guess Sam did shoot him at the end of last season. Tommy seems to have turned over a new leaf. He's clean-cut, and leads a prayer before the meal. Sam all but rolls his eyes and asks Tommy how the physical therapy he's paying for is working out. Tommy says he may need a couple of more months, and wants to know how Sam's anger management is coming along. Sam says he might need some more therapy as well.

Sam's anger management turns out to be a support group of fellow shapeshifters ... and plenty of alcohol. There's a guy, Emory, and a couple of attractive girls, one of whom is named Luna. After sharing some stories, they're ready to move on from wine ... into horses. They go cantering off into the night.

Tara and her girlfriend are in bed when Tara gets a text from Lafayette telling her Sookie is back. Tara lies and says it's from her father, who informed her that her grandmother died. The girlfriend is suitably concerned and asks "Toni" if she needs to go home. Tara says she'll probably just send flowers.

Sookie is meeting with a rather uppity Portia about getting her house back from the mystery concern who bought it. Portia says she'll try to chase down the owners, but they've put a good $50,000 into it and will want to be repaid. Sookie says the house has a lifetime of memories in it -- and here Sookie listens in to Portia, who's thinking, yeah, a lifetime of misery, of murder, and of banging Bill Compton, who hardly mentions Sookie at all. Hmm, are Portia and Bill an item? Sookie looks distressed.

At Fangtasia, Jessica is dancing while Hoyt gets a drink. A cute guy spots her and hits on her, but she says she's here with her boyfriend. He goes off, disappointed, but she gives him the eye while dancing with Hoyt. Pam looks on knowingly. When Jessica escapes to the bathroom, Pam confronts her in her signature snarky way. "We've been worried sick about you," she tells Jessica. As Jessica responds eaglery, "Really?" Pam simultaneously says "Not a bit." Ha. Jessica tells her she and Hoyt are having a date night. "The way you're eye-(bleeping) fangbangers from across the room is especially romantic," Pam drawls. What is Jessica doing, tying herself down to Hoyt? She's a hunter! Pam starts laughing because Jessica so ridiculous. But Jessica says that regardless of what Pam thinks she saw, she loves Hoyt and she'll be going home with him.

Sigh. Back in Hot Shot. My lease favorite subplot. Jason pulls into town, his car loaded up with food. Apparently Felton and Crystal's departure made him the provider around here. One of the kids tells Jason that they're having trouble with the ice box. Jason, who looks like he's had it up to here with these folks, checks it out. While he's poking around inside it, someone -- not the kid -- pushes him in and locks the ice box.

Back at the coven, Marnie tells the group she wants to help guide her dead bird Minerva into the spirit world. Lafayette's sitting off to the side. She starts the ritual, talking about guiding Minerva to her new realm, but then switches course, asking to restore Minerva's spirit to life. Uhhh, Marnie?, the rest of the coven asks. "You!" she orders Lafayette. "Join!" He reluctantly comes in, and the second he completes the circle, a jolt of psychic electricity passes through the group. Marnie continues the ritual, chanting Latin or somesort, and then the the bird takes flight. Everyone is startled, and when Lafayette drops the hands on either side of him, the bird falls to the ground, dead. Lafayette apologizes, but Marnie appears pleased with the effort.

The bespectacled woman from the Wiccan group, apparently a vampire spy, reports to Bill, who has given his crumbling mansion a sleek makeover. She kneels before him. Bill is now the King of Louisiana. Interesting. Guess Sophie-Anne lost.

Back at her house, Sookie is getting changed. She tosses her shirt over her shoulder, and it doesn't hit the floor. She turns around, and Eric is clutching her shirt. She covers herself up. "Mmmmm. Such a strange sensation when the reality matches what you're pictured in your mind so precisely," Eric says. Sookie tells him she's rescinded his invitation, but Eric tells her now he owns the house, holding up her key. "I always knew you were alive," he tells her. "If I owned the house, well, then I would own you. Sookie, you are mine." He flashes his fangs. And Sookie, again to her credit, does not scream.