'True Blood' Shapeshifter Sam Lays Out The Shapeshifting Rules
Last night's True Blood finally gave us some hard answers as to why hunky, lovelorn bar owner Sam Merlotte occasionally will pause from restocking the beer case to scratch behind his ear with his foot: He's a shapeshifter! "Shut the fuck up," you're likely saying, much as vampire-sexing cocktail waitress Sookie did when she first beheld her boss's amazing trick. (She was equally blown away by his ability to balance a biscuit on his nose without eating it, and say something that sounds a lot like "Obama!")Yes, it seems vampires aren't the only supernatural B-movie entities the population of Bon Temps has to mingle with on a regular basis. Sam was kind enough to lay out the shapeshifting rules: 1. He can turn into any animal, but leans towards dogs, because everyone loves a dog. 2. He needs an actual animal to use as the shapeshifting blueprint. 3. He can't do humans—too complex. 4. He can usually control the impulse, except on a full-moon night, at which point he can only turn back into a human once he falls asleep. 5. But that DOESN'T make him a werewolf—got it? But yes, werewolves do exist. 6. There's several thousand other shapeshifters out there, but he hasn't found them, and he doesn't know if it runs in genealogy because he was adopted. (And abandoned.) That still leaves a lot of questions unanswered: Should you feed your shapeshifter gluten-free kibble? What do you do if your shapeshifter doesn't get along well with other shapeshifters at the shapeshifter run? With only two episodes left, we doubt we'll learn everything there is to know about the ductile species. In the meantime, enjoy the above montage of Sam doing what he does best. Good boy! Attaboy, Sam! Whozagooboy? Yes you are!