Time for their wonderful, normal lives – including Josh
exercising all the time and trying to keep a track of wolf triggers and Nora
holding things together and making allowances. Those allowances also extend to
Josh having, as Sally puts it, the attention span of a dog in a field full of
squirrels. This also makes him unsuitable to help Sally find out about the
little girl who died she keeps seeing in magic visions. Sally has dubbed the
child Lil’
Smokie so I’ll run with that.
Aidan is having a wonderful dream about Kat – including turning her into a vampire to prove his eternal commitment to her – and a whole lot of sex which is interrupted most abruptly by Kenny. Aidan is not amused (kids always interrupt at the worst time). His ex-wife Suzanna, not-that-he’s-telling-anyone-that has just killed 10 more vampires – and since his men have seen Suzanna watching Aidan Kenny, naturally, assumes she’s after him. Aidan continues to deny all knowledge
Awww he’s just worried about Aidan – which causes all
kinds of guilt so Aidan lets him leave by the front door and not sneak out the
window. Which means Josh and Nora learn that Kenny’s still alive and not
dead after nearly killing Nora as Aidan had promised them. They’re not
thrilled but Aidan responds with sense, apology AND firmness; they’ve all made
mistakes and needed second chances, he has to be responsible for the creature
he created and, yes he lied but they wanted him to murder his son so not
entirely unexpected. Josh is outraged and angry – but Nora (the new awesome
Nora) is well aware of what she and Josh, as werewolves, have nearly done when
out of control. Josh listens but he leaves – having to run and not deal with
it.
Sally is pursuing her investigation by bothering Zoe. Zoe
is hardly thrilled given the number of times Sally has been involved in
terrible things happening to her. Sally babbles at Zoe until she gives in –it’s
a surprisingly effective tactic.
That doesn’t mean Zoe can’t be passive aggressive and
snarly. But then, even when she didn’t have good reason to be pissed at Sally
she was already pretty passive aggressive and snarly. She does find out that
Lil’ Smokey’s real name is Beatrice and that her parents moved to Brooklyn.
Road trip to Brooklyn! They find the Bensons – only to
find Mr. and Mrs. Benson are apparently dead. But Beatrice – Lil’ Smokey – is
surprisingly alive, along with her daughter. Zoe makes up an excellent cover
story to ask all about Beatrice, the neighbourhood, her past – and everything
seems stunningly normal. They get nothing, much to Sally’s frustration; Zoe
considers the case closed, no way is Sally going to drop it
On Josh’s run his wolf senses kick in and he runs up to
Caroline, rather startling her. She’s heavily pregnant – and a werewolf. She
welcomes the chance to unload to someone who understands and tells him all
about her – she and her husband Andrew were attacked by a werewolf 3 months
ago; they’re both werewolves and aren’t thrilled by it. But, on the plus side,
becoming a werewolf made them able to conceive after a long time trying and
failing. On the more questionable side, she’s 3 months pregnant and she looks full
term. Obviously, she hasn’t seen a doctor and Josh offers Nora’s help since
Nora and Josh are nurses.
Nora has some misgivings, especially given how they’ve
not had a great time with, well, any of the other werewolves they’ve been with
before. But they also remember her pregnancy and how, tragic as the miscarriage
was, it still felt like dodging the bullet since the baby will be born a
werewolf – the bullet that has hit Caroline and Andrew.
Andrew is rather classically tense and nervous, especially since neither Nora nor Josh are exactly experts on pre-natal stuff. The ultrasound, at a pitch painfully audible to Josh, is also audible to the baby who becomes agitated. Caroline begs Nora to continue, while Andrew gets even angrier and moves to grab Nora – and Josh grabs him, his eyes changing colour while the ultrasound shows the baby has claws. This spooks Andrew and he leaves taking Caroline with him and telling them to stay away.
Aidan drops in on Suzanna for brunch and explanations
about her going all Buffy on Kenny’s blood dens. Shocking absolutely no-one, it
seems Suzanna does this all the time – her whole reason for being is to kill
vampires before they kill people (it’s like an
ultra-musty-vampire, only with less whining). She calls vampires in blood
dens “junkies” who kill people when they slip – Aidan fights back that that is
why they help them and provide things like blood dens to stop them slipping;
but Suzanna only sees them as murderers waiting to happen – and quickly makes
it personal, about their own turning. He points out Suzanna must be drinking
blood to fight as she did – she is, a carefully measured 70ml a day and of
course she never slips. Aidan isn’t so pure, he openly admits to slipping and
that he will again; but she has decided to make a special exception for him
because she’s seen his humanity – and the way he lives proves he values the
humanity he lost.
But she’s not willing to give the vampires of Boston the
same chance to prove themselves to her. And she expects Aidan to join her.
Back at the house Aidan is finally pinned down by Kat to
plan a holiday he’s apparently been putting off; but he’s noticeably
distracted. He’s also having to play “dodge the personal questions” game
because Kat asks about holidays he’s been on when he was young… Especially
since he has all this excellent information about 200 years ago… but can never
seem to talk about last year, or 10 years ago.
Moving on, Aidan talks to Nora about his worries over the
holiday – finding and hiding blood feeding from Kat is going to be hard,
pretending to be human for an extended period of time harder, and there’s
places he can’t go due to apparent past murders that are still remembered. No,
what he needs from Nora is to memorise his fake identity – apparently vampires
make one every 30 years ago, fake family trees, fake personal history, the
whole shebang. This is all part of his master plan because he loves Kat so much
– on that score, and so long as he keeps Kat safe, Nora agrees. She also
creates a new highschool nickname for him which is a total bonus.
Sally vents everything to the perpetually exercising Josh
who listens, considers and points out the minor problem; obviously he doesn’t
think she’s crazy given the world they live in and their experiences, but
Beatrice – Lil’ Smokey – did turn up alive. But sally also thinks Zoe is acting
weird and hiding something – which is odd, I didn’t see it. She seemed quite
reasonable and snarky
Which is when the doorbell rings – Andrew and Caroline despite Andrew’s insistence they stay away because Caroline’s water just broke. Nora and Josh get Caroline to a bed, Andrew panicking away about worst case scenarios
Aidan, meanwhile, is trying to play both sides. He tells
Kenny where Suzanna is – and then tries to warn Suzanna to get out of town.
Suzanna is bitter and decides to verbally lash out about Kat – you can’t
pretend to be human, it will end badly and he should break up with Kat for her
own good. At least Suzanna seems to be leaving.
Sally goes to check on Zoe to see why she was being cagey
– and finds Lori, Zoe’s girlfriend. Sally is shocked (and offended) that Zoe
decided to keep this from her because Sally destroys everything. Time and
again, Sally obsesses over things and ends up causing damage and she only
helped with Beatrice to help protect Beatrice’s family from Sally. Harsh… but
not untrue
Aidan and Sally return home to the sound of giving birth
(Aidan wants to help, Sally points out a vampire isn’t exactly going to help
things). Aidan does have a good speech to reassure Sally though – have things
gone wrong? Sure, but they’re all doing the best they can with the limited
information they have; and all they can do is try to do better next time.
Andrew confesses all his worries to Josh, including how
other people who were attacked had babies and it all went horribly wrong. Josh
has some reassurance though – with both Andrew and Caroline being wolves their
baby has a better chance – hence the purebreds they’ve already met who were
fine (arseholes, but fine).
Dramatic birth moment – and the baby is born. A little
girl. With a little muzzle… and fur. Despite this, Andrew declares her perfect
and as the baby breast feeds, she shifts to become fully human.
Drama over, Josh and Nora laugh about not having to worry about a baby who shapeshifts, making lots of jokes that doesn’t cover the underlying WAAAAAAAAAAAANT from both of them
Flip to Beatrice going through her album of her as a
child – and seeing in the windows of the house (Sally, Aidan and Josh’s house)
a girl watching them – Lil’ Smokey. Beatrice isn’t Lil’ Smokey – though Beatrice’s
daughter looks just like her.
And Aidan goes to see Kat to tell her everything. No,
really. He babbles and babbles but… yeah it’s not very convincing to have someone
tell you they’re from the 1760s – and that he’s a vampire. Kat laughs,
unsurprisingly
The group’s separating again. Being Human is always at
its best when the 4 main characters are actually involved in each other’s
lives, interacting a lot and generally being awesome together. But Aidan is
with Kenny and doing his secret thing. Josh has his werewolf issue which makes
him just unable to do anything except work through his issues with Nora. Sally
would like to work with the others – and they can help her which is a change,
but they’re snowed with their issues making her turn to outside help (and, to
be fair, this differs from previous “Sally is being neglected” problems because
everyone is doing their own thing and, as far as issues go, Sally’s is probably
the least urgent. Someone dead since the 70s is probably still going to be dead
tomorrow).
I am encouraged that they do reconnect from time to time
which helps re-establish themselves and keeps them grouped, especially since
they don’t just make small talk, they do talk about their issues (except Aidan
the eternally secretive).
Is that it for Suzanna? Because for such a pivotal
character she seemed… resolved awfully quickly. Was she just there to give Aidan
closure? Some kind of permission to be with Kat?
And Zoe is a lesbian or bisexual! Excellent and past time
– I’m not going to celebrate entirely since I was kind of gleeful about Josh’s
lesbian sister as well but then she was firmly relegated to the plot box
forever more. Given the givens, there’s no real reason for Zoe to keep hanging
around (quite the opposite in fact) so I worry she may be a character they
decided to make GBLT for the express purpose of putting her in the plot box as
well….
…but I can hope, right? And after 4 seasons of only Josh’s
very rarely appearing sister, it’s something.
I think I’d be happier with the whole “I don’t know what I
am” line if there were hope of a resolve to this – the problem is with so many
of the GBLT characters we’ve seen depicted on the shows we follow will
adamantly refuse to use any identifiers that make up those letters. It’s like
same-sex attraction can, JUST, occasionally be shown, but actual GBLT identity
needs to be desperately avoided.
Season 4 is now on to its 4th episode – and I
remain curious. But I also think they’ve covered a LOT in a very short time – I
keep being shocked that the season is only 4 episodes old.
