True Blood Sucker Punch: Episode 5 from Mark Blankenship

Welcome to Sucker Punch, the only blog post that ranks the gaudiest moments on this week's episode of True Blood.

So... Are you guys excited for Turned By a Twink: The Eric Northman Story? Because after watching last night's installment, "Never Let Me Go," I'm positive that's gonna be the name of Eric's memoir.

Set in some ancient Viking forest, Eric's transformation at the hands of Godric, a ripped and barely-legal teenager with no shirt and a torso full of runic tattoos, is a homoerotic fever dream. It's also a compelling new vision of how vampires are made. We've seen Lorena turn Bill with deceitful selfishness, and we've seen Bill turn Jessica with a tidal wive of guilt. When Godric makes Eric, however, he does it with admiration. He's so impressed by Eric's warrior soul that he decides he can be a "companion of death". He bestows vampirism like a gift on a great man who is about to die.

Since Lorena rolls up in the final scene, baring her fangs when she hears Bill and Sookie hooking up in a Dallas hotel room, this episode consciously contrasts the different roads to vampirism. I don't know how that's going to play out, but for now, it's interesting to see that while some vampires are made through violence, others are made through a weird kind of love. For some people, becoming a vampire isn't a curse, but a salvation.

read on