True Blood Season Premiere ‘Turn! Turn!Turn!’ is Hard to Turn Away From

Last night was the premiere of the fifth season of "True Blood" on HBO. At this point in the series we are so far from the books written by Charlaine Harris, but who cares Anna Paquin and Alexander Skarsgard are back as Sookie and Eric and that's what matters.

I can honestly say, even with the recap in the beginning of the show, I was having a hard time keeping up. A lot of new characters were introduced and some forgotten characters were brought back.

The beginning of season five picks up right were we left at season four: Sookie's best friend Tara took a shotgun blast to the head from Debbie Pelt and Sookie revenges Tara by taking out Debbie, Eric and Bill are cleaning up the mess they made of the authority forming a strange kind of bond, Lafayette is having to deal with killing his partner Jesús, and the resurrection of Mississippi King Russell Edgington.

We are introduced to Nora who is Eric's "sister," and apparently they have a deep bond that would make them stars of the Jerry Springer show, Martha is pack master Marcus's mom, and Patrick is Terry's marine buddy who's house was also burnt down. We are alluded to a night back in Iraq that has something to do with these arsons. This is a completely off the book storyline that I can't wait to see how it develops.

There are two new vampires introduced in the season opener, both very ironic because of their well known hatred of vampires. Reverend Steve Newlin founder of the Fellowship of the Sun church was turned last season, but is the season opener he came out of the closet! As a turn of unfortunate events Tara was turned by Pam to become a vampire. There is hardly any one in the world of "True Blood" that hates vampires more than Tara. Poor Tara just can't catch a break! She has been held hostage by a crazed vampire and lost Eggs in the aftermath of Maryann the maenad.

It was a little disappointing that Christopher Meloni was not introduced in the first episode as the head of the Authority. It will be an interesting change of character for the man who is used to portraying the good guy in Law & Order SVU.  For that though, we'll have to wait until Sunday.