True Blood Double Recap – "Whatever I am, You Made Me" and "We'll Meet Again"

Sup, TrueBlood fans!  Last week's episode was so dull that I couldn't even bring myself to give it it's own recap.  I'll just jot off a brief summary before we get to the good stuff – this week's ep!  Which ruled at last! But first, here's what happened in "Whatever I Am, You Made Me":

Pam and Eric's backstory continues to be awesome, and we saw how the two wound up in bed together and how it was her own wrist-slitting that caused him to turn her vampire. We also got to see Eric get in a growl fight with the younger Bill, and saw his crazy bitch of a maker, Lorena, again!  Too bad the stuff in the past was the good stuff – back here in the present, we saw Bill and Eric getting suited up to go hunt Russell with tracking equipment strapped to their chests that could instantly stake them (did you catch a brief glimpse of Big Love's Tina Majorino as the techie vampire who set them up? Nice cameo). There was also more poking around from Debbie's parents about her death (and Alcide lying), Jessica smelling a faery and running after him into a field, Jason bedding a former teacher of his (what the hell point did that serve), Hoyt showing up at Fangtasia looking all goth'ed out and weird, and Lafayette putting bleach in the gumbo as Jesus' black magic surfaced from within. Sam also stashed Tara in the freezer for the day, and when she came out she was pissy as ever and went off to fry herself in a tanning bed.

Cut to Pam pulling Tara out of said tanning bed in this week's episode, "We'll Meet Again". As her maker, Pam commands her to never do that again. Good, because it's nasty lookin!  Melty flesh…ew…Pam takes Tara to Fangtasia, where Eric and Bill are waiting (best line of the night: "Congratulations, you're a grandfather!"). Tara FINALLY changes out of her death clothes as Eric grills Pam about whether she spilled the beans on Russell's whereabouts.  Pam insists she didn't and never would, and angrily tells Eric to release her from him if he doesn't trust her any longer.  He doesn't right then, but does later in the episode in a very sad and moving scene from the two of them.  I am definitely up for the Eric and Pam show – they are certainly the most interesting characters right now.

Sookie is all sad and reeling from Alcide's rage at her over killing Debbie (bitch did the world a favor...why is everyone whining?!) and then Lafayette comes out to lay into her some more.  He doesn't want to be implicated in murder after all the nonsense he's been through, and he calls Sookie the angel of death. Back inside Merlotte's, Sookie can hear all the patrons cursing her name, since they know she had Tara turned on top of everything else. She goes to Jason's to turn herself in, and Jessica hears the whole story. This turns out to be a good thing, as Jessica later glamours Sheriff Andy into forgetting about the Pelt case. Alcide, meanwhile, tells Debbie's parents that she's dead and gone at the hands of dead packmaster Marcus. Good.  Is this storyline done now?

Later, alone in the parking lot, Lafayette's evil magic within comes out and he messes with Sookie's car, which takes off going 80mph with her at the wheel.  Sookie manages to jump out before it hits a pole, which sets her to mixing up different kinds of booze back at the house.  She is right wasted when Alcide comes by, and he starts hitting the booze along with her. The two wind up making out, of course, as Bill and Eric watch from outside (which isn't creepy or anything!). They want her help finding Russell, and Bill doesn't intend to give her a choice. I am not a fan of Bill's asshole side.

Jason and Sheriff Andy got themselves invited to a party by a local judge – they let his son's speeding ticket go and he wanted to repay them.  Once in a limo with black bags over their heads, they wind up at a faery burlesque club in the middle of that field Jessica was frolicking in last episode. The club was pretty cool, and Jason sees his cousin Hadley, who lets it slip that his parents were killed by vampires for their faery blood. Jason demands to hear more, but he and Andy get ejected from the club for all their pushing and shoving, and pop back out into the empty field.

In a storyline we completely forgot about, Terry and his war buddy are off in South Dakota  looking for the crazy member of their unit.  Through a flashback, we see what haunts Terry's dreams – he and the rest of the unit were getting high on drugs and booze when one of them killed an Iraqi civilian. This lead to them being fired upon, and many other civilians died in the ensuing firefight. Upon reaching the crazy dude's house, they find an underground bunker filled with scary drawings and explosives, and the dude himself wielding a gun.  Good times, right there. I feel like HBO will come under heavy criticism for portraying Iraq vets as boozing on the job and slaughtering innocents. Too soon, you guys.

Back at the Authority's swanky digs, Roman and Salome are trying to make Nora give up the goods on fellow chancellors who may be Sanguinista sympathizers. She does, and Roman's team of thugs finds evidence on the little boy vampire's laptop.  Roman stakes him in a flash, ranting about how everyone must fall in line with mainstreaming or else.  Cut to black after many moments of Meloni's blood splattered, rage face.

My thoughts: This episode moved much faster and furthered the story in interesting ways than the previous three this season. Like I said before, Pam and Eric are great. I also enjoyed Bill's moment with Jessica while they were looking for surveillance devices in the mansion (and his line about the joint he found – low quality shit! Lol). Seems like all the dads in the place were feeling warm fuzzies.

Episode Rating: 7 out of 10 silver bullets. The lack of shirtless Alcide saddened me.