Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Being Human U.K. Season Two, Episode Eight: All God's Children

Now that Being Human U.S is on hiatus for the year, we thought it would be a good idea to continue our reviews of Being Human U.K. 

All of God's Children is the final episode of season two and so as you might well imagine, a lot happens.  In episode 7, Mitchell discovered that Lucy, the woman who he had been dating has betrayed him.  He is determined to make her pay for blowing up the vampires and to save George and Nina.  He arrives at Kemp's lair and systematically begins to slaughter the young men working with Kemp.

George, Nina and Annie are quite unaware of what is going on, though George senses that something does not feel right.  He is extremely worried about Mitchell and tells Nina that he is going to leave for a day to find him, but Nina convinces him to stay.  She believes that there will always be a reason to delay the procedure and because Mitchell is a vampire who is over 100 years old, that he should be able to take care of himself. 

George decides to at least give Mitchell a call.  When George calls Mitchell's cell phone, he gets no answer and so he decides to check the messages at the house in case Mitchell left a message there.  What George does not expect is to hear the goodbye message that Annie left for them both.  He is horrified and rushes back to his cell. 

In the meantime, Lucy and Kemp realize that Mitchell is in the building and that he is killing people.  Lucy ties this into the fact that earlier in the day a werewolf that was murdered in the chamber named Amy McBride appeared to her. Kemp reassures her that they did the right thing by removing McBride from the earth.  He sends Lucy down to the basement because Mitchell has already checked there and he believes that he will face Mitchell. Kemp orders that Annie and George be moved to a secure area.

Mitchell outsmarts them and doubles back to the basement where he meets up with Lucy.  They have a very tense conversation in which Mitchell demands to know why Lucy betrayed him.  Lucy minimizes his feelings and points out that he is a vampire and therefore a threat.  Mitchell counters saying that neither of them have any business have a conversation about morality, when they both have blood on their hands. 

George and Nina are about to moved to the secure area when he begs for a moment to see Annie.  George asks Annie why she would do this, and she responds that once he is human that she will be alone, because he will no longer be able to see her.  It seems that she cannot stand the idea of centuries laid out before her with no human contact.  George offers to stay human if it means that she will agree to stay.  Finally, he gets Annie to agree not to leave until they talk again.

George leaves, and both he and Nora get locked into a room.  They have a nice moment playing I spy, until Nora sees some writing on the wall.  The writing is actually a warning, stating that all of the werewolves have died.  At this point, George knows that come what may, they have to get out of there.

On the computer monitors, Kemp sees that Mitchell has Lucy backed up against a wall.  Instead of rushing off to save her however, he heads straight to Annie's room with the intent of sending her to the other side.  George manages to trick Daniel into releasing them from the locked room.  As he and Nina head for the door, they see the computer monitor and George realizes that Kemp is going to exorcise Annie.  He watches as Kemp kills Hennessey to open a door.  Hennessey is quickly dragged through the door and seconds later, Annie begins to feel the pull.  She screams for George to no avail and is dragged through the door.

Crying, Nina grabs George and tells him that they have to find away out of there.  In the basement, Mitchell is suddenly stricken with pain and so he half walks, half crawls out of the room.  As they reach the exit, George realizes that Mitchell is still in there and so he tells Nina that he won't leave without him.

Before he can find Mitchell, Mitchell finds Kemp.  Kemp tells him that he excised Annie and Mitchell threatens to tear his head off, to which Kemp responds, "I'm ready to meet my maker, are you?"  Before Mitchell can kill Kemp, George finds them and he begs Mitchell not to kill Kemp.  Mitchell tells George that Kemp killed Annie, but George says that she wouldn't want him to do this.  When Mitchell is insistent, George demands that he not do this in Annie's name and so Mitchell releases Kemp.

Three weeks later, George, Nina and Mitchell are living together in a new location. Nina has been researching Lucy.  She feels responsible for what happened because it was her idea to go to the institute in the first place.  When George leaves for work and Nina for the library, Lucy shows up on the driveway.  It seems that she has nowhere left to turn and she wants forgiveness.  Mitchell tells her that he has to live with what he has done and that she needs to live with her own guilt.  When she says that she needs to see Nina and George, Mitchell relents.  Nina is not the least bit happy to see Lucy and even asks Mitchell why he didn't kill her.  Lucy makes it clear that she wants forgiveness, or at the very least to be able to explain.  

When Nina, George and Mitchell go into the kitchen, George sides with Mitchell on not killing Lucy, even as Nina is disgusted by how quickly Mitchell is able to forgive Lucy for everything that she has done.  Nina storms out in disgust and Mitchell turns to George to say thank you, but George tells him that he agree that Lucy should not die, but that he has not forgiven her before walking out the door himself.   

That night George and Nina are in bed, but she cannot sleep.  When she gets up she realizes that Lucy is no longer on the couch.  When she goes outside and sees Lucy, Nina tells her that she wants her gone by morning.  Lucy cuts her off and tells her to run as Kemp thrusts a dagger through her heart. Kemp then grabs Nina as she screams out for George and Mitchell.  They both come running but before Mitchell can reach Kemp, he holds up a crucifix.  Mitchell crawls over to Lucy and promises to get her to a hospital, but she tells him that she wants to go.  George begs Kemp to let Nina and go and take him instead, but Kemp promises that he will spill both of their blood tonight.  Kemp is momentarily distracted and Nina stomps on his foot, and elbows him before sneaking away.  Behind Kemp a door opens and Annie walks out and drags Kemp to purgatory.

When Nina and George return to the house, they notice that a television which does not work is suddenly turned on.  Annie appears on the screen and so they call out to Mitchell who runs into the kitchen.  Annie asks if they are okay now.  It seems that she got into trouble for dragging Kemp over to the other side.  She is in some sort of purgatory and is scared.  She tells them that she loves them and asks that they not forget her.  They promise, and Annie disappears.  George asks what they do now, and Mitchell simply says, "we find a way to save her."

It didn't make sense to me that Kemp was able to grab Nina, because she is after all a werewolf and he is a senior man.  I did however like that though she called for George and Mitchell, she managed to save herself.  I also like that Annie was the one who took out Kemp in the end.  It would have been easy to have George or Mitchell bring about his end. I didn't buy Mitchell saying that, "if you want forgiveness first you have to offer it", as his excuse for forgiving Lucy.  They only went out for a few dates and yet they made it seem as though Lucy was his long lost love. Lucy is just as responsible for what happened as Kemp, but somehow most of Mitchell's rage seems reserved for Kemp.

After watching season 2 of Being Human U.S., it was a relief to get back to the U.K. version.  There is far less angst and the story makes sense.  You really get the feeling of a partnership between Annie, George and Mitchell, which is something that is strongly lacking from their American counterparts. There is also the added bonus of Russell Tovey.  For him alone I would watch the U.K. version.