'True Blood' Season 5, Episode 3 Recap - 'Whatever I Am, You Made Me'

There are a lot of words to describe "True Blood," but "cohesive" is not usually one of them. The storylines are so willy-nilly these days that it's hard to even fit them all into each episode, much less keep track of them.

But in this, the third episode of season five, we actually had an episode that was reasonably easy to follow, and had a theme that continued through the whole thing, or at least most of it.

"Whatever I Am, You Made Me" was the title of the episode, and also the through-line to our storylines. Let's visit our various monsters and see what made them:

Tara:

Tara's situation is the most obvious reference for the title, as she's still on something of a vampire rampage (a vampage?). She almost eats a poor stranded motorist before finally stumbling up to Merlotte's and drinking every drop of Tru Blood that Sam has in stock.

Sam shuts her in the freezer for the day, under orders from Tara not to contact Sookie or Lafayette about her. But the two show up anyway, and thanks to Sam being a terrible liar and terrible at hiding his thoughts, Sookie finds out where Tara is.

She manages to stumble out at the most inopportune time, right as Alcide is asking Sookie about what happened to Debbie. Arlene also sees Tara, and let's face it, she can't really be trusted not to gossip, can she?

That leads to a conversation between Alcide and Sookie about what's really going on, and Sookie finally spills the beans about what happened to Debbie. Alcide is predictably pissed, but mostly just storms off. However, with both Andy and Debbie's parents looking for Debbie's killer, the fewer pissed off werewolves that know about it, the better.

As for poor Tara, she wanders into a tanning salon and attempts suicide in the tanning bed. Pam senses the trouble for our cliffhanger... but responds only with "you stupid bitch."

Pam:

We also get more Pam flashbacks this episode, these ones showing how she actually got turned by her maker, Eric, in the first place. Eric came to her brothel to romance her, and even helped out with a little run-in with a younger Bill, who was a bit of an upstart at the time. He and his maker were draining Pam's girls, which seems un-Bill-like, but hey, he was young.

Pam asks Eric to turn her, saying that she is otherwise doomed to die alone in an alley of syphilis or TB, which sounds pretty miserable indeed. Eric makes a point that resonates to Pam's current situation: the responsibility of a maker is a big one. "Would you throw a newborn baby in a ditch?" he asks (I might be paraphrasing).

As it turns out, Pam slit her wrists, forcing Eric's hand and making him turn her. Fair? No. But it kind of explains a lot, doesn't it?

Jason:

Everybody watch out, Jason's having a serious change of character! He runs into his old teacher, with whom he had an affair when he was younger, at the grocery store. They have sex (this is Jason, after all), but afterwards Jason realizes that it was all a mistake.

He's so distraught over it that when Jessica shows up raring to go (she caught a whiff of the elusive Claude, which got her pretty turned on), he turns her away and tells her about the hole in his heart that he's been trying to fill with sex. Self-aware Jason isn't as fun, but clearly much more healthy.

Anyway, he and Jessica seem to have figured out this friend thing, and it's actually pretty sweet. But yeah, she needs to stop running around in little pink slips for this to work.

All three of these storylines share the theme of the origin of a monster: for Tara and Pam, it's their vampire selves, and for Jason, it's his dysfunctional love life. So there you go. Cohesion.

Bill & Eric:

The handsome captors seem to get a cautious go-ahead from Roman, but are also fitted with harnesses that will kill them instantly if they step out of line. So, bummer there. However, Salomé (who is revealed to be the exotic chancellor that Roman trusts so well) seduces them both in order to test their allegiance, just in case. Apparently Roman was still concerned as to whether they were Sanguinista or not, which Salomé claims they aren't.

Also, it looks like the new Nan Flanagan is Reverend Newlin. That should be interesting.

The questions for next episode: Lafayette is seriously still posessed? What the hell? Also, is Pam going to save Tara, or just let her burn?

Notes & Quotes:

- "Think about her boobs"

- Pam's vampire texting! What, was she writing an entire novel?

- True, a gentleman never brags about sloppy seconds