Becoming a Maker’s an eternal commitment, greater than any marriage, deeper than any human bond. To throw that away is sacrilege.
I suppose I should apologize that the vast majority of screenshots for this week are Pam-centered, but she’s been burning up the screen this season. Of all the changes made from page to screen, giving Pam more to work with is one of the smartest. So sorry I’m not sorry.
Sookie, Lafayette, Tara
Tara rightfully ditches her two friends. We get a good look at her new vampire senses and how fast she heals from her silver wounds, but Tara doesn’t seem as thrilled by this as Jessica was when she was turned. She attacks a stranded motorist, apologizes for being a monster, and ends up with Sam back at the bar. Remember when they had a thing? He stashes her in the walk-in when the sun rises. 
When she rises and blows the door off the walk-in, and Sookie tries to play the innocent angel card with her, Tara righteously calls her on her bullshit. Lafayette and Sookie tried to save her, but it was a selfish impulse about their pain and their wants. Literally everyone on the show knows how much Tara hated vampires. To think she’d be grateful to be alive and a monster? That was a stretch even for Sookie’s ability to lie to herself.
Sookie is left crying and telling Alcide the whole dirty story, while Lafayette finds he has the demon ghost-Marnie stole from Jesus.
And Tara is breaking into a tanning salon to burn herself to death in a tanning bed.
Bill, Eric, Nora
Bill takes off his shirt. Eric takes off his shirt. They are explicitly instructed to do so at the same time to have their iStakes installed. You know what I’d like to see this season instead of gratuitous fan service? A coherent story arc.
So something something something, no shirts, sex with Salome, something something, iStakes, blah blah blah. Whatever. I had a hard time caring about most of it.
Nora admits, under torture, to being a Sanguinista, the faction of vampires who thinks humans should be farmed for food. Salome uses her vagina to determine that Bill and Eric are not. Detective Stabler and Salome are revealed as an item and he also takes off his shirt. Salome takes off her dress. Thus is the episode’s quotient of sexy-sex things filled.
Pam
Pam! Every scene Pam was in this episode was a joy and a delight, and I’m not speaking in hyperbolics. First, we get to see Pam vampire-texting, which is a skill I’d like to possess. And then she and Sookie have a snark-out that ends with Pam throwing her across the room and Sookie light-fingering her back. (Which sounds far dirtier than it was.) And then we find out how she came to be Eric’s child.
See, back when she was but a mere madam in a brothel, she had a problem with vampires killing her whores. We’re not sure how many whores she lost, but it was enough to cause a headache for any madam concerned about her bottom line. When Eric cruises by to visit, Pam puts him to work, siccing him on the vampires who were, right at that moment, upstairs murdering another one of her girls.
Of course, the vampires are Lorena (yay!) and Bill. You may sigh now, as I did, by the shoehorning of those two into Pam’s storyline. It was nice to see Lorena back, but I could have done without Bill’s abominable wig. Bill tries to kill Eric (laughably), Lorena tries to keep Eric from killing both Bill and herself, and we hear some themely exposition about the importance of raising your children right.
Afterwards, Pam and Eric do it.
Pam bluntly asks Eric to turn her into a vampire to save her from her inevitable turn into an old whore, and when he declines, Pam forces the issue by slitting her wrists.
Jason, Jessica
We learn that Jason lost his virginity to one of his high school teachers. It seemed like a happy memory, since Jason defines everything in his life by his sexual conquests, but after a chance encounter (and subsequent bedding) with that same teacher, he finds himself questioning his whole life. Remember last season when he was raped? And that whole incident wasn’t ever dealt with? These two things – the connection between his statutory and adult assaults – don’t seem to be logically linked in the story arc.
When Jessica comes over demanding sex because a sniff of fairy blood made her horny, Jason refuses, and they end up talking instead. Like friends.
And the rest
- After Sheriff Andy finds out that Holly’s boys put a naked photo of him on Facebook and he’s become the laughingstock of the Bon Temps police department, Andy swallows his pride and asks Holly to go steady. I know that this storyline seems superfluous in a show that overreaches on its plotting, but I really like it. Andy and Holly are charming together, with none of the shove-it-down-your-throat attitude of Sookie + anyone else.
- Alcide takes the news that Sookie killed his ex-fiance pretty well. He was far more pissed that she didn’t tell him about it than the fact that Sookie blew the head off the woman he once loved.
- There’s a fairy running errands for his 16 sisters in town. So there’s a new portal to Fairie now? Five bucks says Russell gets his teeth into one of the full bloods before the end of the season.
- Terry takes off to solve The Mystery of That Thing He Can’t Tell Anyone About in a Place He Won’t Name. Seriously, Terry is another gem of a character, but I couldn’t care less about that time he killed some people during the war.
- Jesus’s body is still missing, the Pelts have shown up in town, and we learned four days have passed since the start of the fifth season.
- Rev Newlin was, in fact, turned by the Authority. He’s their new “Nan Flanagan.” Which is a lie because Nan Flanagan was boss and Rev. Newlin is comic relief.
16 replies on “New Show Recap: True Blood, Episode 5.03, “Whatever I Am, You Made Me””
This:
Made me go here:
Apologies for the abysmal photohack job.
Aaah Slay Belle, I love that you don’t hate on Tara. I am now shipping TaraXPam. It would be so badass, er, it could be.
“Five bucks says Russell gets his teeth into one of the full bloods before the end of the season.”
Oohh, that’d be a good excuse to give him a speedier recovery, since it’s supposed to take him a year at this point.
This show is so damn scattered. They have interesting plot points but choose to water them down so as to save story-lines for peripheral characters. In a better show *cough*Buffy*cough*, I’d think they were doing it for some grand purpose, but I know that’s not the case here.
There was another callout to Estonia in this episode! And IT DIDN’T INVOLVE STRIPPERS OR PROSTITUTES OR EVEN ORGANIZED CRIME OMG OMG….. just a “Sanguinista uprising”. Ahaha. Ahahaha.
Digressing. A couple of months back, in a hotel elevator in the US, smalltalk led to some guy asking where I was from, and I said: “Estonia”.
The guy: “Ooh. Estonia, I know, that’s a scary place. Witches and werewolves and all that!”
Me, stepping out on my floor, grinning ominously. “Impressive. You’re well informed.”
I guess a vampire uprising around here makes sense to people.
Digressing further, but casual references to Estonian prostitutes, etc., is such a pet peeve of mine. I’ve picked up a random Lee Child at an airport for the flight home, and whaddayaknow, 150 pages in, there will be a mention of Estonian prostitutes. And of course Stieg Larsson has to have some poor dead Estonian prostitute with a ridiculous made-up name somewhere in the mix. Then Yvetta the “Estonian” stripper in True Blood (again a glaring naming mistake, and played by an actress from Kazakshtan), who at least had some lines besides being a background prop. The list of tired, unimaginative Eastern European stereotyping goes on and on.
For what it’s worth though, my Swedish BFF tells me Alex Skarsgard occasionally speaking that sexy, sexy old Swedish in TB actually sounds like the most full-of-himself kind of contemporary Stockholm twatspeak to Swedish ears.
As you may conclude from the above meanderings, the episode itself failed to hold my interest much. Although admittedly I am gloating over having called the upcoming Bill + Eric nudity in the comments for the last ep’s recap, haha.
That Eric + Bill both have sex with Salomé thing – that was stupid. I mean, really thick. I thought Eric, at least, didn’t think with his penis? Jeez, dudes, you ever wonder why a super-powerful, super-old vampire wants to have sex with you, a prisoner under suspicion of conspiring against the Authority?
I liked Jason + Jessica’s friendly scene. But I agree – Jason never dealt with what happened to him and I’d like to see him do that (in an intelligent, non victim-blamey, sex-positive way, please, writers).
I love Terry and Arlene and Andy and Holly, but I don’t get where this is all going to fit in.
I also wanted Alcide to be pissed – so much more than he was. Sookie has been getting more and more unlikeable.
Tara’s suicide plan – genius – but she’s not going to go through with it.
Plot question: has Jessica ever reacted that way to Sookie’s smell?
Plot question: nope. Maybe because she’s too young or Sookums isn’t pure enough.
I think that Jason backstory could actually be promising, but among all those storylines, there just isn’t enough space to do it justice.
I felt like was a sort of random inclusion into the storyline. If they wanted to grow Jason away from bimbo, wouldn’t that have been a natural fit for last season?
About the only redeeming thing was Salome playing them like a guitar — all hurt and vulnerable for Bill, and forward and adult for Eric. I thought from the expression on Eric’s face that he, at least, knew she was playing him and was going along with it, but then he has that bro moment in the elevator.
Unless he was playing Bill…? But maybe I just want Eric to be cleverer than he is.
I was also amused by her different personas for each guy. I kept expecting Eric to have a smart tables-turned moment, but alas, it never came.
Does anyone else read Oglaf (very NSFW)? Every time Salome is onscreen, all I can think of is her Oglaf cartoon and then it makes me giggle. Here’s the link (also read the epilogue, linked on the right). http://oglaf.com/salome/
OMG Oglaf has Salomé? Amazing. Now to sneak a look at a non-work time…
I really hope all of this comes together well, and soon. The first three episodes have felt so all over the place and I’m having a hard time caring about anyone or anything that’s happening.
The Terry story line can definitely go away. I don’t know if the writers are just trying to keep Arlene and Terry relevant in the show, but it’s not working out well for me.
They should have let Tara die.
I do miss snarky Lafayette.
I want to see more relationship interactions, how is Sookie not upset about dumping both Eric and Bill? And if she is why are we not seeing it? I don’t know, it all feels so disconnected. I hope this changes.
I’m gonna guess that Tara dies at the end of the season. They have got to trim down the cast and it seems like actually obeying the character’s wishes instead of forcing her to accept a monstrous existence would be the kindest thing the show has ever done for her.
But she’ll probably end up siding with Russell or some such bullshit.
I can only assume that Sookie is just too busy dealing with Tara to deal with her feelings about the boys.
Plot lines that can be killed off:
– Terry. Bye Terry, come back when you find your pet-armadillo again and are cute and bumbling. There is already enough drama
– Tara. She deserves a nice death
– Lafayette/Jesus/Jesus’ ghost. I want sassy Lafayette back. There is already enough drama.
-Jason/Jess. Why is this even happening?
I want to propose making it the Pam-Eric show with side-appearances of Growly and Faerie-Fingers. After all, you need to cut down a plant as well for it to blossom.
Although the past three episodes made me wonder if the difference of me liking it so much better has to do with Alan Ball’s absence.
Lafayette is not getting good script lately. I love seeing him, but seriously, he just killed the man he loved AND the body has vanished?! And then the Tara thing, and not getting any sleep – he is not acting anywhere near as messed up as he should be. And he was already supposed to have PTSD from being imprisoned in Fangtasia’s basement before.
I am just so glad to hear someone else doesn’t like the Jason-Jessica pairing. It just rubs me the wrong way. In not a good way.