We're now waist-deep in awards season, and the Grantland staff would like to take this opportunity to remind all the Oscar, Grammy, and Golden Collar nominees out there that should they have to step up to that podium and take that mic on national television, they owe it to themselves to study up beforehand and see how the pros handle it. Here are our favorite awards show acceptance (and unacceptance) speeches from all corners of the entertainment world.

Ugh, the Authority. We've been trapped in this stupid, sleek, modernist basement set all season. It's like being stuck at the airport. It almost makes me miss last season's evil Wiccan feminist bookstore (almost). Bill is lured into the temple of doom by Lilith's inviting voice. She instructs him to chug the vial of her fluids and become the clan leader. Bill somehow resists her goth, topless, tomato-sauce charms and flees. She leaves a bloody handprint on the glass to remember her by.

Fun fact: That time-lapse clip of a decomposing fox from the True Blood credit sequence is stock footage in the public domain. It has also been used in Adaptation, The Hunger, a Nine Inch Nails video ("Hurt"), a Katy Perry video ("E.T."), a Linkin Park video ("The Catalyst"), and an episode of Wonder Showzen. It's my favorite part of the opening credits. Here is the creepy/awesome/informative clip in its entirety.

When Sookie Stackhouse stops getting laid she turns into a murderer. Her single-girl Sunday-night meal of Chinese takeout in pajamas is interrupted by a rude late knock from Mike the coroner, who turned into a vampire sometime during the season he spent offscreen. Sookie unsuccessfully shoots him, and then stabs him with a chopstick so that he collapses into a pile of carmine goo. Sure, it's self-defense — but it's also second nature to the increasingly criminal Sook, who ought to head southwest and give Walter White a run for his meth money (or at least a competitive rate on fairy blood).

Continuing our hopes of a True Blood/The Newsroom crossover (first order of business: Pam drains and enslaves Will McAvoy), the show jumps ahead slightly for the first time this season. It would be amazing if the writers permanently freed themselves from the gimmick of every episode picking up where the last one ended. The cliffhangers have become laughable, resolving within the first minute of the next episode. It's impossible to wring much tension out of it that way.

So we begin with news footage of a fire at a Tru Blood factory in Houston that resulted in six casualties. Great timing for a flippant plotline about terrorist acts. (NOT!) This means some time must have elapsed since Bill hatched that idea at the end of the last episode and they followed through with its execution. Unless vampires can just light psychic fires in the outside world with their minds? I don't know, I don't expect this shit to make sense.

Sam watches as the burly bearded guy who helped orchestrate the anti-shifters hate crime is escorted off the hospital premises in cuffs. Frank Sobotka calls beardo a butt plug, which you'd think would be a compliment of the highest order in the usually kinky world of True Blood. A still-bedridden Luna is mad as hell and looking for a fight.

Sam reassures her that there's nothing to fear and that he will wreak enough vengeance for the both of them (FORESHADOWING). Luna has some kind of attack and drags herself to the bathroom, but rather than shift into a wild animal, she becomes Sam, and then passes out from the shock of turning into her own boyfriend.

Best Actress

Some years, it’s a stretch to come up with five decent candidates for Best Actress; such are the seemingly permanent inequities of the movie business. So it’s a pleasure to report that, despite a deeply problematic set of films, this year’s field is actually stronger than the roster of Best Actor candidates — the women contending for nominations this year did more with less. (But why should they have to? That’s another story.)