Mind you, “it’s not what you’re thinking” is kind of the situation in general with “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1,” a movie that masks its genuine perversity under layers of artifice and saccharine melodrama. I truly do not mean that as a criticism. To my taste, savvy Hollywood veteran Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls” and “Gods and Monsters”) debuts as director of the two-part “Twilight” conclusion in satisfying fashion, delivering a voluptuous if often inert spectacle that splits the difference between high camp and decadent romance. (This opinion may not be widely shared.) We will in fact see Bella bleeding copiously later in the movie — there’s a startling amount of gore, as well as an overripe, nearly pornographic sensuality, to this PG-13 film — as the direct, if delayed result of her deflowering by Edward. See, he has impregnated her with some kind of succubus-like demon child, which is impervious to the science of humans and vampires alike and poses an intriguing challenge to the pro-life, family-values fantasy universe of “Twilight” author Stephenie Meyer. Does life begin at conception even if it isn’t entirely human?

I have other logistical and/or theological questions that “Breaking Dawn Part 1″ cannot quite answer. I suppose it makes sense that vampires possess the power to block or distort caller ID, since in one scene Bella calls her pining dad — the young, single and handsome one played by Billy Burke, whose relationship with Stewart’s Bella has always had a Freudian undertow — from across town, pretending she’s in Brazil or Switzerland or something. But Bella and Edward are apparently married by some kind of priest or minister, and I can’t get my head around that one at all. Holy matrimony plus undead monstrosity — does not compute! Either they’re not telling the dude any version of the truth (and in that case are also lying to God), or the officiant’s got nothing to do with any Christian denomination I’ve ever heard of, and in either case the whole wedding, rendered in such sugary detail you can almost taste the cake icing, is a hypocritical sham. I could insert a Mormon gag here — but I’m no bigot! Not gonna go there!

I recognize that as a member of the educated upper middle class, and a man to boot, I’m supposed to feel outraged and horrified by “Twilight” on various levels. I’ve never seen the point of that. I haven’t read Meyer’s books and don’t intend to, but the Twi-movies so far range from mediocre teen horror to outrageous pulp melodrama, a combo I’m perfectly happy to absorb. This beginning-of-the-end chapter is without doubt the most momentous episode in the saga, and not just because Edward and Bella consummate their relationship (a risky narrative maneuver in any love story). In rapid succession, Bella gives up literally everything: her girlhood, her virginity, her childlessness, her life itself and even her humanity. Rarely have the metaphorical transformations of horror fiction been carried to such rococo extremes. Is this a story about a young woman coming of age or a deviant, heretical Christ legend with a female hero? If you’re going to wring your hands and insist plaintively that Meyer intended no such thing and that director Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg (who has handled an impossible task gracefully) have remained faithful to her vision, I shall nod sagely and say, of course, of course, but no artist or author can ever fully control meaning and interpretation. And that’s really going to piss you off.

“Breaking Dawn Part 1″ definitely involves less action than the last couple of “Twilight” chapters, and a lot more shots of Bella lying on the couch looking like crap. Taylor Lautner’s American Indian-slash-wolf-slash-shape-shifter character, Jacob, spends most of the movie brooding in the shadows, now that he’s definitively lost Bella and been thrust in the role of chaste, vulpine protector. (There is a major Jacob-related plot twist late in this movie, as many fans will already know.) But a lot of it is absolutely ravishing to watch, in the manner of eating hot buttered corn with marshmallows and Champagne; a woman sitting next to me at the New York media screening was literally moaning out loud during the wedding sequence. There are some bizarre, Goth-flavored fantasy sequences that are better than anything in the first three films, notably Bella’s nightmare version of the wedding, in which everyone she loves is killed. Of course it’s Bella herself who will learn not to fear the Reaper, and prepare for her new undead life in “Breaking Dawn Part 2.” But not until after Edward sits her down, at long last, and tells her about all the guys he’s been with. Some of you think I’m kidding, don’t you?

First off, no, Jessica didn’t die. Jason saved her (obviously) by running into the house and tackling her away from the sunlight. Then they make out, even though her face is all gross and burned (obviously x 100). This is an example of both wanton vampire nature and wanton Stackhouse nature at its finest. Apparently smooching a vampire is all it takes to break the witchy spell cast by Antonia/Marnie and her coven, though Vampire King Bill still demands that Jason chain his new lady-love back up until nightfall. Just to make sure that the witches haven’t taken 15 for an Orange Julius break, I guess. Jessica is very sorry that she killed a guard while under the spell. Jason is very sorry that he shot one of the king’s SWAT team in the arm while trying to save Jessica. It’s weird that in the world of “True Blood,” where all manners of creatures exist, the concept of “expendable henchmen” needs to somehow be justified with a couple throwaway lines about these people’s families. They should have just shown this deleted scene from “Austin Powers” in lieu of King Bill pretending to feel bad that some nameless guy on his payroll was killed.

When night falls, Jessica goes home to break up with Hoyt, because she now is in vampire-love with Jason. Oh brother. You’d think having a part of you in Jason Stackhouse would make you feel pity for what it’s like to be Forrest Gump with a gun and abs. Nope. Jessica is filled instead with undead lust. Hoyt takes it like we (the audience, Jessica) expect — by sobbing hysterically, acting like a giant baby, and crying that he’s not worthy of her love. “I’ll die without you!” Hoyt whines, and Jessica decides that maybe that wouldn’t be so terrible. She smashes his head into something and he dies. R.I.P. Hoyt Fortenberry. Jessica runs outside, where Jason is waiting with his pickup truck (that’s how you know we’re dealing with “Cool Jason” and not “Deputy Jason”), to tell her how sexy she looks covered in his best friend’s brains.

That’s when she wakes up. Yes, it was all a dream, and Patrick Duffy is in the shower, waiting to hear all about this wondrous world she imagined. This conceit could have been totally clichéd, but saves itself when Jessica actually goes to confront Hoyt. Instead of seeing a burbling baby who needs her, Hoyt explodes in a rage, telling Jessica she’s not good enough for him. (See what they did there?) He also throws her out of the apartment by revoking his vampire invitation, which is something that would make breakups a billion times easier. Sadly, in this scenario Jason is not waiting in an awesome car, and when Jessica shows up at deputy Stackhouse’s apartment, he actually plays the “Bros Before Hoes” card and revokes his invitation as well. Ya burnt, Jessica! (Well, not actually, thanks to Jason. But you get what I mean.)

In non-Jessica related news, Antonia/Marnie is so pissed that the coven was only able to kill one single vampire with their super-sun attack. Back in her day — the 16th century, for those just catching up — she was able to kill all vampires in a 20-mile radius by making them walk into the sun. Which, fair enough, lady, but times are a-changin’ and vampires have the Internet and cars now. They are a part of society and don’t have to pretend not to exist, which makes it much easier to keep in touch via email threads about the importance of staying indoors during the daytime. They also have King Bills to make sure that all subjects are silvered and kept away from the sunlight. (Although he himself is a terrible judge of how exactly that works, since his own ward was able to escape and almost die.)

Bill calls up Antonia/Marnie at her Moon Goddess ‘n’ Things shop to demand a truce, but Tara answers the phone. Bill is slightly surprised, perhaps because he assumed Tara had found some other cult to join in the last three episodes? Either way, Tara puts Bill on speaker, because ancient witches like Antonia can’t figure out simple technology like television remotes, let alone iPhones. Bill is very sorry that vampires killed Antonia like, a billion years ago, and he suggests that the two groups make peace. This involves Bill and the witch shaking on a truce at exactly midnight in a graveyard, completely alone. This is exactly how a lot of wars have ended, actually. Mutual trust about midnight graveyard meet-ups. Check it in your (fake) history.

Since it’s now nighttime, Sookie lets Eric out of his silver and feed off of her. Why? Because he is so hungry and had such good self-restraint when it came to not killing her fairy godmother? Sookie lets Eric bite her, though at some point he stops so she can suck his blood to get vampire/fairy high together.

Let’s just pause here a second. At this point, Sookie should technically be turning into a vampire, right? That’s how it happens, even by “True Blood’s” own internal logic: vampire drains human of blood, vampire feeds human vampire blood, something something living underground for three days — and then poof! Vampire! It is known. Yet for some reason when Eric and Sookie drain each other, they just go into a magical Narnia where there is snow and trees — and a bed for having sex. Seriously. Even Sookie is like, “Why is there a bed in my acid-Vampire-blood-trip?” And the answer Eric comes up with is basically, “For us to make sex on?” Even he doesn’t know what’s up, but who cares, it’s another Sookie/Eric sex scene. Look, I never said this show didn’t know how to deliver the goods when it needs to.

The third (Fourth? Eighth?) subplot in this episode concerns the newly formed werewolf pack, who spend the entire hour talking about how they don’t need to get themselves involved in the war between the vamps and the witches. Alcide and Debbie’s new pack leader, He of the Very Trustworthy Hair, takes a very pragmatic approach to letting those two supernatural groups fight it out amongst themselves. Perhaps we have judged him wrong this whole time, letting our deep prejudices against men named Raoul (LOL) with terrible pedo-grooming habits and a love for motorcycles get in the way of understanding the intentions of this very nice man. Maybe we are all Sookies and Bills with our trust issues in this scenario. Since it later turns out Raoul is actually the abusive ex- of Sam’s new shape-shifting girlfriend, Luna (LOL x LOL! This show really needs to conjure up some less ridiculous names), and he gets totally aggro when she won’t let him come over for midnight hangouts with his daughter. I guess we were right to be wary of this greasy weirdo all along. Go us.

But none of the werewolves know about Raoul’s custody issues, and as he did make some good points re: “Not getting involved in vampire issues,” Debbie tries to persuade Alcide not to worry about Sookie. It seems like the two of them have this conversation at least once a day, which is oddly unwarranted; Alcide is like, third in line to getting in Sookie’s fairypants. He really hasn’t even made that much of an effort, but Debbie forbidding him from trying to save Sookie from whatever Scooby Doo-mess she’s gotten herself into this time is the only way to actually tie the werewolf theme back into the show’s plot. So that’s what happens. Alcide’s disobedience happens to be fortunate timing, since he happens to be the only one around to save Sookie when she gets shot.

Oh yeah, Sookie is shot. About that. As it turns out, the mano-a-witcho peace treaty in the graveyard didn’t go exactly as planned. Both sides brought secret backup, which according to Bill, “is a sad testament to how much we can’t trust each other blah blah blah.” Shut up, Bill, you King of Hypocrites. To be fair, it was really Sookie who convinced Eric that he is a warrior and must help his king, and Eric who convinced Bill that he needed Sookie and his help — though again, it’s Bill’s misplaced trust in those two that turns a resolvable issue into a crisis. As it turns out, “Live together, die alone” doesn’t apply to situations where over 70 percent of your main characters are already dead.

At the graveyard, Sookie uses her telepathy to hear Antonia/Marnie cast a spell in her mind. I thought that only worked if you had a bunch of people chanting out loud, but what do I know. Antonia/Marnie screams at Sookie for using her unholy demon powers, which is really the ancient-witch pot calling the fairy-kettle black. Suddenly there’s anarchy: King Bill’s SWAT team descends to grab the witches, but the coven grabs and silvers King Bill. Antonia/Marnie makes a super-fog to confuse everyone, which seems pointless since vampires have super-sight, right? Before Bill is caught, he makes sure a newly re-faced Pam (looking good, Pam!) doesn’t eat Tara, which is supposed to be significant, somehow. “You know why,” says Bill, when Tara asks him why she was spared. But we don’t! Tell us! Why can’t anyone kill Tara, for the love of God!

A stray bullet from the SWAT team hits Sookie during the commotion, which is probably a metaphor for our own human folly. I mean, no humans were hurt in the making of this scene, unless you count the one hurt by other human guns. Eric would have saved her, but Antonia/Marnie gets to him first and makes him go all blanky-faced again. You’d think Tara could maybe be bothered to check up on the only person she cares about in this situation, but we all know that when push comes to shove, the only thing Tara is good for is getting drunk and yelling at other people for being bad friends. So it is up to Alcide, who has tracked Sookie through the fog, to pick her up “Bodyguard”-style and make sure she doesn’t bleed to death before the end of the season. He fails to realize that the white wolf that’s been following him since he left the pack is his girlfriend Debbie, even when she changes back into a human behind a tree and glares at her boyfriend for saving another person’s life. Bad dog!

Bonus material from this week includes: Sam’s brother skinwalking as Hoyt’s mom in order to sell her land to the guy from the natural gas company (man, what?), and Arlene’s baby getting kidnapped by Lafayette, who is possessed by that Creole ghost who formerly lived in Hoyt’s old doll. Ya know, regular Bon Temps stuff.

Usually “True Blood” is pretty consistent with its broad, ham-fisted metaphors of “humanity,” but Jessica was being straight-up literal this week. Luckily, King Bill was there to set her straight with all these analogies about fascism and genocide. Did you know that vampires can engage in holocausts? (Example: The Inquisition, the actual Holocaust.) Did you know witches want to destroy entire races of beings? (Example: The vampires, currently.) Did you know humans are also very good at mass murder? (Example: Everything else in history, until Alan Ball decides to change it around again.) Next season on “True Blood,” we will find out Stalin was actually a shape-shifter and 9/11 was orchestrated by a bunch of werebears.

Let’s rewind, though, and get to what everyone cares about: Sookie and Eric are still having sex. It’s still the night of the full moon, and they are just banging it out hard. Despite what every other fake-history book tells us, werecreatures don’t have to turn during a full moon if they don’t feel like it, as evidenced by Alcide and Debbie stomping off from their pack because Alcide is “worried” about Sookie. To her credit, for once Debbie isn’t slow to take the hint, especially when they stumble upon the endurance marathon that Sookie and Eric are currently engaged in. Alcide looks angry enough to turn into a wolf. (But he doesn’t. Werelogic!) Later on, Debbie can’t even have sex with Alcide before she breaks down in werewolfwomen tears and asks if Alcide really loves the magic fairy dream girl. What’s a wereguy supposed to say to that? Alcide unconvincingly convinces Debbie that he only has eyes for her. Now back to the good part.

Somehow Sookie and Eric manage to continue making sweet, sweet love all the way back from the woods into her bed without coming up for air. The only explanation I can come up with is that Sookie rode first-class on Air Eric all the way home, assuming the vampire remembers he can fly.

The two lovers lie in bed awhile and discuss whether or not Sookie would like him if he regained his memory. Wait, they love each other already? (Take note, Jessica.) Sookie’s answer is “Maybe.” Fair enough. Regular Eric was a jerk, albeit one with fewer self-esteem issues and more quippy one-liners. The question that “True Blood” is very subtly (not very subtly) asking is whether our “selves” are merely the sum total of our memories/experiences. Inhuman nature versus inhuman nurture, one could argue, if they were so inclined. Never failing on the symbolism, this show.

Meanwhile, Marnie, possessed by the spirit of the ancient witch Antonia, has escaped from her Ikea-prison and is planning on necromancing all the vampires into the sunlight again. She enlists Tara on this mission, who is more than eager to help after a scary Pam made her girlfriend go away. Well, Pam, and Tara’s unrelenting intimacy issues. If Tara went back to New Orleans with her girlfriend it doesn’t seem like anybody would miss her, although you could see why, after her incident with Eggs and her rapey vampire fiancé Franklin, she’s pretty damaged. Somehow, “True Blood” has managed to make Tara’s reactions to people seem logical, but let’s all remember that this character was kind of the worst even before she saw her last two boyfriends splattered all over Merlotte’s parking lot.

Sorry, did I say “logical”? Tara’s decision to join up with the witch coven actually seems like a totally rash and stupid decision, considering that the last time she punched in her membership to any sort of group, the leader turned out to be a maenad. Weird that she’s so trusting of a 16th-century ghost living inside a middle-aged hippie’s body, but that’s just good old Tara for you! She convinces a bunch of other women-spelled-with-a-y to take up arms with the spirit inhabiting Marnie to re-create the “resurrection,” which is that thing where all vampires suddenly thirst for the sunlight so bad that they leave their coffins during the day and explode. (That part isn’t a metaphor.)

King Bill is onto this plan, though, and demands that all vampire sheriffs — which include a lady, a kid who looks like Michael Cera, and a buff, black guy (because HBO ain’t nothing if it’s not diversified) — silver all the vampires in their coffins so they can’t go into the sun. Which is actually a good plan! Except that Bill doesn’t chain Jessica up quite as tightly as he does himself, because he has a weak vampire-heart for his progeny. Leading to Jessica being able to escape when the witches’ incantation brings about the resurrection, and here we are, back to the beginning of the end.

Oh, and Lafayette is a medium now. He can see Arlene’s ghost-nanny. And Sam throws Tommy out of the house again for shape-shifting into him and sleeping with his (Sam’s) girlfriend, who is also a shapeshifter. You guys!

Unfortunately, this argument smacks of chauvinism. McGreevy (currently adapting Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” for the big screen) blames this on a new, dangerous “female gaze” — as opposed to the misogynistic “male gaze” as defined by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” The female gaze, he suggests, makes these non-threatening vampires “pornography for tweens.” When he asserts that “Mad Men’s” Don Draper is actually more of a vampire than any of the “True Blood” or “Twilight” characters, what he’s saying is that Draper is more of a man.

“It is a killer’s heart that is the motive force of masculinity and predation its spirit. This is not to suggest nature is immutable, or that one ought to act in blind obeisance to it, but that ‘ought’ is not in the vocabulary of want, and choosing is meant to have consequences.”

But one could argue that original vamps like Stoker’s “Dracula” and Max Schreck’s Nosferatu are way more emo than Draper: They both are obsessed and stalkerish with women they like, stay secluded from the rest of society instead of engaging in it, and are ultimately tragic figures because they are so sexy, yet so sad. And if we want to get technical about the timeline, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” actually predates “Dracula” by 25 years, and revolves around lesbian vampires. So maybe that “female gaze” will come in handy after all.

McGreevy is arguing for vampires who are manipulative, coldhearted Patrick Bateman types — charming sociopaths like the “American Psycho” character who understand the human morality structure and can play the game, but whose nature compels them to kill in order to live.

In that way, maybe there is one television character that would be less of a “Castrati” vamp than Edward Cullen or Bill Compten: Cersai Lannister from “Game of Thrones.” That soul-sucking pit of evil puts on a pretty face in public while using her sexuality to stay in power. Her only desire is to protect her progeny; behind closed doors, she engages in incestuous taboos. She knows what’s expected of her in public, but could care less once the curtains have drawn. “You win, or you die,” says Cersai about the game in question, implying that holding onto power is its own version of immortal life — and the mark of a true vampire.

Hopefully this joke, tossed as a casual aside after Sookie punches Eric in the nose (like a shark!) for trying to eat her, is a harbinger of the return to “True Blood’s” better writing days. King Bill’s whole scene where he lays out that any vampire caught feeding on YouTube will meet “the true death” is pretty baller, if only because it reminds us (and not in a bonk-you-on-the-head kind of way) that these characters live in a world where viral videos, along with “Jersey Shore,” exist. The concept of the Internet having a place in the world of “True Blood” is 20 times more interesting than ghost were-panthers. Let’s 2.0 this bitch up! Give Eric back his cellphone for texting!

Speaking of the shirtless Nordic vampire, Eric still has no memory of who he is after Marnie invoked the spirit of a generically hot brunette to cast a spell on him. Well, he knows what he is, which is a vampire. And he knows that he loves Snooki/Sookie… or at least he figures it out after he tries to eat her. He also knows, as we’ve determined, what a Snooki is. But not much else. He’s lost his mojo, and Sookie agrees to help him out, because this new Eric persona is less sexually threatening. We’ll just conveniently forget the fact that last week Sookie was pleading with her ex to essentially take a hit out on him; now she’s going to invite him into her house. Though it’s technically his house. (Sookie doesn’t tell him that part.)

And as Bon Temps turns… Jason is still tied up, probably dying from were-panther wounds. If this season ends with Sookie’s brother kicking the bucket in some farmhouse due to the lack of penicillin, I might be OK with that. Crystal, Jason’s ex who is trying to make him into a panther (don’t ask) makes him take Viagra so he can mate with her and all her sisters/cousins/whatever. It’s a testament to how sick I am of Ryan Kwanten’s bewildered, doofy face that I start to zone out during any scene that he’s in — even when it involves male rape, incest and references to a “ghost daddy” during intercourse.

Lafayette and Tara are still all shook up about Eric Northman trying to eat them, but Marnie is excited! She’s a real witch now, she knows it! Later on, crazy lady tries to invoke the spirit again and ends up slicing her wrist open instead. But then the brunette spirit is actually there, so I guess cutting yourselves is really the way to commune with the dead, just like that documentary “The Craft” said. This can only end well.

Lafayette has a different idea when it comes to dealing with Eric: He’s going to go over to Fangtasia and beg for forgiveness for being in a coven, with the hope that the vampire won’t torture him in his dungeon below the bar again. As Lafayette is one of the smarter characters on the show, this was a surprisingly stupid move: Tara and Jesus figure out his plan just in time to save him from Pam, who is unsurprisingly torturing Lafayette in the dungeon to find out what happened to her master. In “True Blood,” all roads lead back to Eric’s BDSM basement.

This ostensibly life-threatening confrontation ends with everyone deciding to work together to find Eric, because when you stop and think about it, all the major characters on the show grudgingly have each other’s back. Maybe that’s why they have to keep introducing new, evil residents to the town: At this point, it’s not conceivable that even Pam would hurt Lafayette… not really. Nor would Eric harm Sookie’s best friend, as he looked like he was going to do last episode.

And again, this is where “True Blood” seems to be getting back on the right track, because despite what I said last episode about it being impossible for Bill’s character not to be as morally uptight as Ned Stark, he is developing some interesting traits. He’s unapologetic about having his bodyguards kill off the YouTube vamp (he almost seems a little smirky), and after a quick lecture to his sire Jessica about why she needs to tell Hoyt that she drank some other guy’s blood (OK, dad), it’s posited that maybe Bill did send Eric into the coven in order to get killed. Hey, it’s not like he hasn’t tried it before.

Now that he’s king, Bill is dangerous precisely because he’s so self-righteous: All that doubt and guilt that plagued him from the show’s beginning (and made him basically a surrogate Angel character from “Buffy”) has been replaced with an arrogant confidence in his ability to dole out justice. The thought that those years of Bill’s nagging and exasperated “Soookehs!” might have just been lead up to his becoming a power-crazed ruler makes me very excited. Let’s hope it’s not just a red herring.

Oh yeah, back to Jessica and Hoyt: she bit another guy, which is supposed to be a metaphor for cheating, since everything is a VAMPIRE ANALOGY on this show. Then she glamours him to make him forget it ever happened, which is a metaphor for drunk makeup sex, I guess.

Hoyt’s mom is sitting on a natural gas goldmine, and Sam’s brother plans to exploit it for the dollars. Sam is busy being in love with a shape-shifter who can turn into her mom. (Kinky.) Arlene still kind of wants to kill her baby. And at the very end of the show, we see the return of Claudine, Sookie’s fairy godmother, who demands that she come back to their glowing kingdom. Before Sookie can get in her full 10 minutes of lecturing on how she is a grown-up and will do what she likes, Eric whizzes by and eats Sookie’s fairy godmother. To be fair, afterward he seems very apologetic about it. New Eric is great!