And on the other hand you've got Tara, who is so familiar with being out of control that every season has been another way for her to force control on herself: First by killing the possum and the black-eyed girl, then running to the Mommy Maryann that act invoked, then falling into the vampire-boyfriend trap with Franklin, then by becoming Toni -- a completely separate, way less fucked-up person. And nothing helped, not even Antonia, and eventually she died. I maintain that this show gives you a lot of options for fucking yourself over, and very few for getting clean again, but what I can't do is think of a single undead person on this show for whom death wasn't a good thing.

You'll never know about the roads you don't travel, I suppose, but that cuts both ways: All we ever know about are the ones where we do. And anybody who has been jerked out of their complacent patterns of self-destruction, whether by injury or sudden self-knowledge or death, has been given a second chance to become who they were meant to be. If you're intent on making this show "mindless garbage," I guess the obvious gay metaphor is enough: It always has been, for people like you. But Jessica and Tara, maybe even Sookie -- and, irksomely, now Jason -- are defined in a lot of ways by the fact that they were denied a childhood. But as anybody who has gone through this particular thing they are talking about in this scene can tell you, the next best thing to a healthy childhood is learning to live your adulthood with a little grace.

Jessica, tentative, orders a Tru Blood cocktail -- "two parts O-, one part B+" -- and Tara makes it for her, just as wary. She thinks about it for awhile before she says anything; this scene reminded me so much of when she met Hoyt, just her certainty that it's a conversation worth having and at the same time being very, very careful.

Jessica: "Hey. Are you okay?"
Tara: "Hmph. Trade you Makers."
Jessica: "Pam is ... not so bad. She'll probably let you feed off of a human, Bill made me drink nothing but Tru Blood forever..."

True enough. Tara has nothing to say to that, so she says nothing. She's already so grateful you can taste it.