United States of Tara, "The Truth Hurts": Chasing Pammy

A review of tonight's "United States of Tara" - plus some guest commentary from Diablo Cody herself - coming up just as soon as my heterosexuality stresses me out...

"What you don't get is, people can have a hard time, and then they turn it around. People can change." -Max
"Yeah, people change. And then they change right back." -Neil

Okay, I have to admit that this one kind of troubled me at first - both that Tara would let Buck's relationship with Pammy run for as long as it did before trying to either stop it or tell Pammy the truth, and that she would then go over to Pammy's apartment in what seemed, based on the earlier scene with Charmaine and Ted talking about gay experiences, like an attempt by Tara to see how the other half lives.

I wrote last week about how I understood Tara's reluctance to tell Max (which predictably blew up in her face here when Pammy made a spectacle of herself at the ice rink), and even to an extent that she wouldn't be able to tell Pammy the whole truth upon finding out. (Pammy understands that Buck's not a man, but not that Buck isn't real.) But to let two weeks go by with Buck in the life of that woman and her daughters, and then to apparently take advantage of Pammy's ignorance to satisfy Tara's own curiosity? To me, when I first watched "The Truth Hurts," that bothered me a lot. Tara's not a perfect person, even when she's herself, but she never struck me as someone who would let others be hurt in this way.

So, since it was bugging me, I decided to go straight to the source and ask "Tara" creator/producer Diablo Cody for her take on the Buck/Pammy/Tara triangle. Here's what she had to say:

The story of Pammy and Buck is meant to illustrate that Tara is becoming increasingly co-conscious with the alters. Last season Tara had to piece together video and stories to figure out what the alters were doing. This season, she's more aware, as illustrated by the way she "fights" with Buck over who gets the body, etc. We thought about how it feels, physiologically, to have an affair with someone. You feel more attractive overall. You feel energized. You feel excited. Even though Tara isn't technically having the affair, she shares a body with Buck, who is. So she's feeling a lot of those warm fuzzies too. And though she knows it's wrong once she realizes what's going on, she's addicted to Pammy in a strange, peripheral way.

A DID patient told us about a time she'd impersonated one of her alters in order to gain more information about what the alter had been doing. So we just thought it would be interesting, dramatically, for Tara to break up with Pammy as Buck as a way of both protecting Pammy and gaining for insight for Tara. Plus, it's really funny when Pammy wails, "I never get the guy!" In this case, it's literal - she wants the guy, and what she gets is a suburban mom in drag.

Pammy is of course, always aware that Tara is biologically female. But Pammy is so damaged and insecure that even a transgendered *representation* of a "strong man" is the most comforting thing she's ever experienced. Real men have never come through for her the way Buck does. If wounded women like Pammy are willing to date ex-cons and abusers (and they are), I'm willing to believe that they would even date a man who wasn't a man at all. Pammy's in as much of a fantasy as Buck is.

As I've said in the past, my understanding of DID comes primarily from this show and a string of "Incredible Hulk" comics circa 1991, so the co-consciousness thing is something I'm learning as I go - and maybe something the show should have been willing to spell out a bit more now that it's starting to drive Tara's actions.

But seen in that context (and understanding that Tara's primary goal in going there dressed as Buck was to break up with Pammy), most of my problems with the episode go away - and, in fact, I start to become intrigued by the possibilities. If Tara starts to become more aware of what the alters are up to, and starts to feel some of what they feel, does that make her more complicit when they do bad things? Or is the opposite the case - that even when Tara is Tara, she's not wholly responsible for her own actions? And how is Max - who's already furious with the return of the alters and with Tara's deception(*) - going to react if the line starts to blur between his wife and the weirdos who regularly hijack her body?

(*) But how does he feel about the affair itself? There was talk last season about Buck having caught crabs from a woman at the bowling alley, and there was an open question as to whether this was just another part of Buck's fantasy life, along with his time in Vietnam. But his success with Pammy suggests that Buck certainly could have had a sex life before now. In which case, was Max - who got mighty peeved when it looked like T might hook up with some random guy - okay with that? Or can he handle it so long as his wife's body is only fooling around with other women?

Max's anger (and his subsequent beat-down of Sully) was a good moment for John Corbett, particularly after the earlier scene where Max tries to convince himself and Neil that everything's all better with Tara. Raised expectations lead to increased disappointment when the reality doesn't match your dreams, but it feels right to see that Max isn't just some smiling, ever-patient saint. He has his limits, and the Pammy thing has pushed beyond them.

Early on, before the spit hits the fan, Tara jokes that Marshall dating a girl makes sense on opposite day, and there's a lot of upside-down behavior in this one (Kate, for once, is the most normal, even if she spends half the episode baked). The Gregsons just want an uncomplicated life, but Tara's condition and the world around them aren't making it easy.

Some other thoughts:

• Even by the standards of both pay cable and this show, "The Truth Hurts" felt very sexually frank. Kate calls Tara "doable" and later explains "dogs in a bathtub" to Marshall (my advice: don't Google it for a fuller explanation). Marshall and Courtney experiment with each other in the rafters (Marshall, nervous and not particularly aroused, tells her, "You're very skilled.") And Tara, Charmaine and the gay neighbors try to coin a new name for the vagina ("cou-ton?").

• Patton Oswalt makes a welcome return as Neil and does a nice job delivering a twist on a familiar joke when he tells Max, "I don't want a terrific woman; I want Charmaine."

• Kate's friendship with Lynda still isn't really going anywhere (though I'm sure some viewers weren't displeased to see Kate dressed as Princess Valhalla Hawkwind), but it does add another interesting actor to the recurring ensemble with Joshua Leonard (from "Humpday" and also HBO's "Hung") as Lynda's trustafarian pal/pot connection Ricky. (Incidentally, who coined "trustafarian"? I first heard it on the short-lived ABC sitcom "It's Like, You Know..." in the late '90s, but I always assumed Peter Mehlman got the term from someplace else.)

• Sorry, Lionel, but I, for one, would rather see a play about a slutty dental hygenist than one about a doctor from olden times.

What did everybody else think?