Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Being Human (US) Season 3, Episode 13: Ruh Roh





Outside the romantic cabin, one-eyed Pedigree Liam confronts Nora and Josh. But he’s not there to fight, he’s there to warn them – the blood connection they have formed with Aidan isn’t a cure, it’s a curse. He wants them to come with him – and points a gun at them to make it so.

At the house, Aidan and Kat are having fun – and Sally is there to comment invisibly (being invisible may suck but it does allow Sally to snark) before she leaves Aidan and Kat to it. She returns to her rotting body upstairs (does someone want to do something with that) and laments on being a ghost again and how she could have just eaten one person, maybe.

Pedigree Liam takes them to a warehouse with a large collection of the horribly deformed vampires – apparently the result of what happens when you have a vampire that has fed on werewolf blood create offspring. And apparently they’re monsters that feed indiscriminately – and Liam wants Josh and Nora’s help getting rid of them.

While that’s going on, Aidan and Kat are having a bliss moment which sends Aidan into a flashback of his own wife and child back in ye olden times where his wife worries about their child telling the other kids that his vampire daddy’s back in town. The flashback is interrupted by Sally waking him up because Kenny’s in the basement screaming.

Downstairs, Kenny doesn’t look so good.

Back at the warehouse, Pedigree Liam has gone full bore over the edge and declared them a family since he was the one who made Josh a werewolf and wants to nurture him. Ok, yeah but that kinda sorta ignores an awful lot of badness. And now it’s a gift because Liam’s a purebred and has super-duper werewolfiness. Neither Nora not Josh are impressed. Nora rejects him as family, Josh rejects him as pack – Liam celebrates because Josh has accepted the notion of pack! Yes, he’s not an easy guy to communicate with. Josh says he’d rather die than run with Liam – Liam wonders if that’s a challenge and Nora tells him she killed Bryn. Why indeedy I do believe that is a challenge, Liam.

Back at the House Aidan tries to calm down and reassure a rather upset Kenny; Aidan tries to present what Kenny is feeling as normal (he feels like he’s on fire) but Kenny says he can’t know that since he doesn’t even know what he is. Sally speaks up since she knows what it’s like to have so much hope and then have it all fall apart – and tells Aidan not to make any false promises

Which is when Kat screams because she’s wandered upstairs and found Sally’s rotting corpse. Sally suggests telling Kat she’s a shut in because she’s helpful like that. And then when Aidan’s trying to understand, Sally shuts the door with ghostly powers in front of Kat and Kat runs for the hills. Wise wise woman. Commence Aiden hootymode. My gods he was almost happy for 5 minutes.

At the warehouse Liam gets his own vengeance; he gives Josh a stake and locks them in a cage with all the rising bodies of the new evil hybrid vamps, while he goes to see Aidan’s son for his own revenge.


Josh stakes one that attacks them and Nora says they need to find another way out – but Josh is worried, so could these vampires as well – and they’d go out and kill people. Nora calls killing them the act of vigilante killers. Another vampire attacks and Nora stakes it and Josh finds a can of petrol which he douses them with.

And at home Aidan is angsting – Kenny is drinking more blood than a normal vampire usually does, and this sends him into a brief flashback of his son telling him people know he’s back and think he’s a devil. Back to the present and Aidan mopes upstairs to talk to Sally about how much he wants a family. He also confesses to Sally that when he survived the virus he let his guard down and drank too much blood – which is what caused his black outs, especially with his tolerance so low after fasting. And he thinks he created at least one more vampire in that time – the one he killed. Sally gives him a bit of hell for not talking about this with them and Aidan explains himself a little. Aidan goes into full blown “I am a monster” mode – Sally slaps him with reality, this is what they are they have to learn to live with it. Aidan and Sally have a touching moment where she can’t hug him – and Liam arrives and shoots Aidan in the head.

He comes in and starts shooting Aidan and kicking him, asking where Aidan’s son is. Kenny calls out and Liam drags Aidan down to the basement where Kenny is. Aidan tries to fight back but Liam knocks him aside with a shovel – raises the broken handled of the spade to stake Kenny – and Sally yells “no” and sets the wood on fire. Nifty.

Josh and Nora arrive home and attack Liam, not especially effectively- and Nora is knocked out in the fight. Aidan is pinned to a wall, Liam and Josh are locked in combat – and Kenny sees Nora on the floor and bites her, feeding on her. Sally has a great idea of appearing between them and screaming in Liam’s face – so shocking him that he staggers back into Aidan’s reach – who then pulls him onto the same bar that’s impaling him.

Difference is, impaling a vampire is unpleasant and inconvenient. A werewolf is a mite more serious. Can we please kill him now? It seems I have my wish because Pedigree Liam reverts to wolf form once his body is dumped on the floor – and Josh drags Kenny off Nora.

Aftermath time, Aidan’s covered in bandages, Josh is treating Nora’s neck wound and Nora is sad because Josh didn’t get to kill Liam so can’t cure himself of his wolfiness. Aidan heads out, he has to find Kat since she said she was going to call the cops and they’re starting to make a collection of dead bodies in the house. Aidan also acknowledges that Kenny would have killed Nora, and Josh reminds him that Kenny WAS a good guy.

On the way Aidan speaks to Blake to express his… disappointment over the dead wolves. But he needs her superior ability at mind control to work on Kat. She is surprised at his methods of buttering her up, he makes it clear he’s not – he’s giving her the opportunity to do him a favour with a lot of underlying threat. She goes and puts the mojo on Kat and makes sure Aidan confirms that he owes her.

Nora and Josh have a talk – she’s worried about what happened – not the fight, she means Josh specifically. He's different and she doesn’t think he wanted to kill Liam – or rather he did want to kill him but didn’t want to life the curse. He says since he faced Donna with the vision his wolf seems to be hanging on, still with him.

Aidan leads Kenny into the woods; Kenny tells Aidan he wasn’t himself when he bit Nora and Aidan has another flashback to when the puritans were dunking his wife to prove she was a witch or not. She defies them and the priest signals them to lower her into the water and let the ropes go – just as Aidan arrives so he can look tragically at the water (rather than, y’know, diving in and saving her. Come on man, she’s only been under for 10 seconds and you have super strength, speed and endurance and super-insulating sideburns). The villagers grab him and start punching him for being an evil demon. He falls to the floor and they start kicking him while he whimpers around most pathetically. Really? They just killed your wife, make with the enraged vampire slaughter already! He sees Isaac and tells his son to run before finally going all vampiry and snapping some necks

The preacher tells Aidan he can’t hurt him. He’s wrong.

Back in the present he grabs Kenny’s head, preparing to snap his neck (that wouldn’t do anything surely?) But can’t do it and tells him to run – screaming at him until he does.

Ok, I don’t want to downplay Kenny biting Nora – but… taking him into the woods and putting him down for drinking blood as a new vampire unused to his hunger seems… extreme. How many times have we seen Aidan have a little blood oopsie? Or Henry? Or any number of vampires – I can’t imagine a newborn vamp is especially in control of his hunger. In fact, we’ve seen Aidan’s flashbacks to his creation where he couldn’t be allowed back with his fellow soldiers because Bishop KNEW he wouldn’t be able to control his hunger – which was proved right.

That night they bury Sally’s body in her grave. We have a perfectly little thankful happy moment “should we sing something?” “I really don’t want you to”. Heh, the dead having a say in their funeral. Instead they give Sally a minute alone and Aidan implies to Josh and Nora that he killed Kenny

Next day Aidan checks on Sally, seeing if she’s ok being a ghost again and they wonder about Josh turning that night – the full moon. But Sally also speculates it being easier with him being the same as Nora. And Sally begins her classic teasing of Aidan over Kat.

Left alone, Sally sees Donna, who says they’re connected. Hallucination, ghost spirit? Ugh didn’t we do this with the Reaper storyline? She wants Sally to go with her and shows some nifty powers. Then asks her if she knows what happens when a “death spot” is destroyed – and teleports them to Sally’s at the base of the stairs. Sally threatens to shred Donna – and Donna takes them to the top of the stairs and pushes Sally down them – making her relive her death. When she hits the bottom, the floor around her death spot starts to crumble into a deep pit – and Donna drags her down into it before it re-seals.

Aidan’s angsty and in the woods Nora wakes after changing. She dresses and goes looking for Josh – and finds him… still in wolf form.




So season finale – well it’s set us up with a whole load of cliffhangers for new storylines while kinda, sorta setting us up for the next season without the old storylines hanging on. I think, perhaps, there were a few too many cliffhangers, but still I’m intrigued.

As to season 3? I think season 3 did something massively important – it reset the awful drek that was season 2, completely reset it. The whole vampire council, Suren and Mother, everyone with very separate lives, Sally in Limbo it all reset and over the period of season 3 it set us back to our base – everyone living at home, everyone connected, Aidan a vampire, Josh a werewolf and Sally a ghost. The relationships, after much tension and fraught elements, have been reaffirmed and strengthened with everyone now firmly and completely having each other’s backs. Nora has evolved incredibly – I reiterate my concern that she may go from being a character I hate to being Saint Nora the Ridiculously Perfect – but I like how she’s grown to respect the friendship and become one of them, respectful of all of them even if primarily linked to Josh and not entirely part of the triangle.

Season 3 also brought them back together again – I think it was shaky in the middle with everyone following their own storylines a bit much and I really dislike how little attention for her issues Sally gets from everyone else. But it started really strongly and ended strongly as well, everyone in everyone else’s issues, everyone supporting everyone else and both Aidan’s and – far far far far better, Sally’s death scenes both reaffirmed that bond and mutual caring.

Things I want to see in the next season: them to continue to be involved in everyone’s story. I want to see them together more. They’re funny together. They’re happy together. They’re fun together and they have amazing chemistry. Being Human is at its best when they work as a team rather than each running off with separate storylines.

I’d also like to see more happiness. They don’t all need a storyline at once. They don’t all need something to stress about. And not all storylines need to be about worry and sadness. They can be happy, they can escape the constant exhausting tension and crying and angst all the time. In endless moping is getting old.

And I’d like to see them increase their representation. I like Sally but more side characters and background characters being POC will help cure the sometimes feeling I get that she’s the only POC in Boston. And I hope they develop Emily because this show over 3 seasons has been woefully lacking in more than the most tokenistic appearance of GBLT people. Yes, I know that tokenistic appearance is actually better than a full half of the shows we’ve watched, but it’s weak and their utter failing doesn’t make Being Human’s failing any more excusable.

All in all, I’m going to go with this being a good season and, considering what season 2 left us with, an excellent season.