Eric Northman

True Blood - Season 1 Episode Guide

For more detailed summaries, visit HBO's official site for season one.

Ep 1x01 Strange Love

We are introduced to waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who can read people's thoughts. She meets Bill Compton, a vampire who now lives in her small town of Bon Temps, and she saves him from a couple of vampire drainers. The next night, she is attacked by the couple, who are out for revenge.

Ep 1x02 The First Taste

Bill rescues Sookie from the Rattrays and gives her some of his blood so she'll live. Bill "calls on" Sookie and meets her grandmother, brother, and best friend Tara. He tells Sookie what it means to drink a vampire's blood, and the couple share their first kiss. When Sookie later goes to visit Bill, she finds three frightening vampires at his house.

Ep 1x03 Mine

Bill's three guests want to have Sookie for themselves, but Bill stops them by telling them, "Sookie is mine." The next day, Sookie discovers the dead body of her coworker, Dawn.

Ep 1x04 Escape From Dragon House

Trying to discover who's behind the recent murders in Bon Temps, Sookie asks Bill to take her to Fangtasia, the popular vampire bar in Shreveport. Here she meets Eric, Pam, and Long Shadow. Eric takes an immediate interest in her. Reading the mind of an undercover cop, Sookie helps them escape from a raid on the bar. On the way home, Bill glamors a police officer who pulls them over.

Ep 1x05 Sparks Fly Out

Shaken by recent events, Sookie separates herself from Bill. Sam takes advantage of the chance to ask her out, and she agrees to go with him to her grandmother's Descendants of the Glorious Dead meeting, where Bill is the speaker. After the meeting, Sam and Sookie go out for coffee, but that doesn't end well. We learn about the night Bill became a vampire, as he flashes back after a meeting with the police. When Sookie returns home from her date, she finds her grandmother brutally murdered on the kitchen floor.

Ep 1x06 Cold Ground

Sookie deals with the aftermath of her grandmother's murder, including questions from the police and the rude thoughts of nosy neighbors. The cruel thoughts continue at her grandmother's funeral, and Sookie finally loses it, tells them off, and walks away. When night falls, Sookie runs out to the Compton house in her nightgown, and Bill carries her inside, where they have sex in front of his fire. She tells him to bite her.

Ep 1x07 Burning House of Love

Sookie tells Bill about the uncle who molested her as a child. At work, Sam is angry to learn that Sookie let Bill bite her, and Sookie defends herself. Bill kills Sookie's Uncle Bartlett, then rushes to Merlotte's, where his three vampire "friends" are threatening Sookie. He leaves with them, giving Sookie a signal that everything is all right. Royce and other rednecks attack the house where the vampires live in Monroe. When Sookie rushes over, she sees that four burnt coffins have been removed from the house.

Ep 1x08 The Fourth Man in the Fire

Sookie believes that Bill is dead, but when she goes to leave flowers on his grave, he pulls himself out of the ground. They have sex there in the graveyard. Eric goes to Bill's house to tell him that he needs a "favor." Bill takes Sookie to Fangtasia, where Eric needs her to discover a thief. The moment she realizes that it's Long Shadow, he attacks her, ready to kill.

Ep 1x09 Plaisir D'Amour

To the dismayed cries of book fans (ha), Bill rushes to Sookie's defense and stakes Long Shadow. Eric warns him that there will be a price to pay for killing a vampire for a human. He shows up at Bill's house the next night with Pam and his new associate, Chow, and tells Bill that he has to go to a tribunal. Bill insists on going to Merlotte's first so he can tell Sookie where he's going. Bill asks Sam to protect Sookie while he's gone. Eric warns the patrons at Merlotte's - who include Royce - that the vampires will have their revenge for the three who were murdered. Sam, in his dog form, goes home with Sookie and curls up on the end of her bed. In the morning, Sookie wakes up and screams to find Sam on her bed naked.

Ep 1x10 I Don't Wanna Know

Sam explains to Sookie that he is a shifter. At the tribunal, the vampire Magister sentences Bill to creating a new vampire to make up for the one he killed. Bill is forced to drain and turn an innocent teenager named Jessica, while the other vampires watch, amused and aroused. At Merlotte's, the murderer comes after Sookie, but she runs away and clings to Sam.

Ep 1x11 To Love is to Bury

Pam buries Bill and Jessica so that the newly-made vampire can rise with her maker. Sam offers to help Sookie find the nameless victim she saw in the murderer's head. When Jessica rises, she's much more of a handful than Bill expected, and he asks an amused Eric for help. Bill leaves Jessica at Fangtasia and returns to Sookie, but he finds her and Sam kissing. Enraged, he attacks Sam until Sookie rescinds his invitation to her house.

Ep 1x12 You'll Be the Death of Me

Troubled by the thoughts she's hearing from all her customers, Sookie leaves work early, followed by Rene. She hears his thoughts and realizes that he's the murderer. He chases her as she runs toward the graveyard. Awakened from his sleep by Sookie's distress, Bill rises and goes to rescue her, even though the sunlight is burning him up. Sookie kills Rene, and Sam helps her bury the badly burned Bill. Sookie doesn't know if he will live or die until he turns up on her doorstep that night, fully healed. Two weeks later, Eric and Pam take Jessica back to Bill because she is "extremely annoying." The season ends with the discovery of a dead body in the patrol car of Andy Bellefleur, a body that can only belong to the missing Lafayette.....