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Friday, March 30, 2012

Review: Being Human (USA) "Don't Fear the Scott"

Non Spoiler Review:
Sally has to come to terms with all the damage she's done to ghost and human alike, while Josh is making the attempt to move forward with Julia—enter Nora to cause problems. But why not have a dinner party in the meantime with Suren and Julia? Sounds like a great idea.

A lot of decent ideas were thrown into this week, but the pay off is not there. The characters continue to respond to what the writers throw at them rather than have events evolve naturally out of their lives, amounting to contrived scenes and plot devices. So often we're told how we should be reacting to these people (the usual musical montage and flashbacks to fill in the gaps of story that we should have gotten long ago). It's driven home by having just watched the final episode of the UK season four, which has about twenty times the emotional investment of this version. 

Spoilers Now!
Mother is visiting again, so Henry and Aidan make preparations. Josh wants Julia to stay over, but she has issues with how Aidan treated her. Sally is still being tormented by her reaper persona and tries to ignore him, while lamenting about the lives and ghosts she's ruined. To make matters worse, Aidan fills her in that the doctor's girlfriend, Janet (whom Sally possessed) was brought in to the psychiatric ward.

Josh convinces Aidan to make peace with Julia so he can get on with his relationship, so Aidan suggests dinner (with Suren as well). At the dinner party, Julia is the only human present and Sally just watches making annoying commentary. It starts out awkward but Suren behaves quite well and treats Julia rather decently, and is okay with the fact that Julia was with Aidan before. 

But afterwards, Suren isn't sure she fits in with Aidan's human life now. However, Julia is comfortable enough with the situation that she will come back to Josh's place again. Except they run into Nora. She's come back to try to fix things, but Josh says she's too late. She was confused when she left and admits it was a mistake. Julia's worried Josh will leave her again.

Sally wants to possess Janet so she'll at least know she's not insane. The boys don't think that's a good idea, but she crosses paths with Nora at the hospital (failing to get her job back) and they commiserate about what's happened. She wants to help, so Nora visits Janet and tells her she knows who Sally is too, and explains why she has her memories. Janet decides Nora's just a mental patient like her, and tells her to prove it by reciting a poem Sally wrote when she was nine. She does. Janet believes her and they ultimately get her out of the hospital. 

Mother applauds her daughter's success and says she will remain in charge in Boston (much to Suren's chagrin, who just wants to go somewhere better, like the coast). She's yet to make up for eight centuries of disappointment, though. Mother does keep up her bargain with Aidan and grants him freedom, sealing off the vampire world from him, and anyone who does contact him will be put to death. That's not exactly what he meant by getting set free, so he lunges for her and is thrown out. 

Josh is elated Aidan is free. But Aidan explains he's banished, and that's not the same thing. He's in love with Suren and freedom means nothing to him now. So Aidan calls Henry in to help. He wants Suren to run away with him and announces to Sally and Josh he's leaving. So it's a final (cough cough) goodbye as there can be no communication (ever). They say their good-byes, and there's even a montage of all their happy times in the house which lasts all of three seconds.

Nora comes to see Josh again, apologizing for all she's done. She learned Brinn was the violent one, not Conner, and she got tired of it. But she's brought an interesting tidbit about werewolves she learned. He can get back everything he wanted and lift the curse—finding the man who turned him. If he finds Ray and kills him while he's still a man, he's free. 

Aidan and Suren go into temporary hiding in a hotel, but he has to run out to get Suren some food because she's being a bitch and turning into Sally. He's confronted by Henry and a few vampires with stakes who tell him they won't let him run.

The Verdict:
There's zero tension with Aidan's decision to abandon his friends in favor of Suren. The whole season has shown he's looking out for himself and not Sally and Josh. Why not ditch them for the crazy vampire princess? Why not ditch his own protege, as well, which he's fine to leave behind in Mother's company? Add in Aidan's send off that was a bit much...queue the lame music and (brief) montage. This season has obviously spanned a large amount of time (due to Josh's regular full moon transformations), so the three of them haven't been spending an enormous amount of time together. At least that we've seen, which is the whole point of seeing them interacting rather than just assuming.

Nora plays plot device in several ways—disrupting Josh's happiness, and providing an extra supernatural revelation that offers Josh the promise of a cure. He just has to become a murderer. Her whole scene with Sally and Janet was just ridiculous—oh my god, I can't remember that poem, but wait, oh ya I can. And the whole ordeal from last week really didn't accomplish much if Sally is still seeing the reaper. What was the point of all that, aside from filler?

Would Josh really let Aidan bring Suren in the house to meet his girlfriend and put them in the same room together given their history? I can't see it. But the writers seemed to feel it would make for some lighthearted Josh and Aidan moments. This American version has too many episodes and slashing it in half would make the writers hopefully come up with a concise and taught script absent of unnecessary scenes like Sally lying on tables (which they seem to love).

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