Get Ready For True Blood Season 4 With 'Rolling Stone' New Eric Still

The last time we saw Sookie Stackhouse, amid all the rampant gore and sweat and naked flesh of True Blood, she had a bit of a revelation: "I know I am basically vampire crack." Well put, Sookie. There's something about this girl that drives all the monstrous creatures around her sick with desire. It might be because — as she discovered at the end of last season — she has a tinge of faerie in her blood, which renders her irresistible to vampires. Somehow, this small-town waitress keeps proving she's made of much tougher stuff than any of the otherworldly fiends she encounters. Nothing fazes her, not even her discovery about her ancestry. As she put it, "I'm a faerie? How fucking lame."

The kinkiest twist of True Blood is how regular Sookie is — she's the girl next door, even when she's swept up in all this occult madness. The more tangled up she gets in the bloodlust of the vampire underworld, the more of an ordinary Southern girl she seems. And that's more tantalizing than faerie blood any day. So it's no wonder she's at the center of a centuries-old erotic battle. Scary monsters and supercreeps keep her running scared — but she likes it that way.

True Blood got crazy in its superb third season, stretching out into all sorts of supernatural subcultures, as Bon Temps, Louisiana, became overrun with witches, faeries, shape-shifters and, of course, were-panthers. Russell Edgington, the vampire king of Mississippi, apparently met his doom when he got buried in cement. Sookie and Bill came to a breaking point, since she decided there's a limit to how often you can keep forgiving your hot vampire boyfriend, especially if he's just been pimping you out all this time to the vampire queen.

The new season keeps up the standard of excellence, with more fetishes, more lust, more evil, more startling ways for bodies to change and transmogrify. There are more unmentionable surprises. There are old faces and new faces. There are more strange creatures we haven't seen before. But mostly, there's more love gone wrong, which is something Bon Temps never runs out of. And inevitably, there's a moment where somebody gets Sookie's name wrong and calls her "Snooki." (That one had to happen, right? Who knows? One day they might throw in some were-guidettes.)

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