TV Roundup – August 20, 2012
I’m out of town for a wedding in Salt Lake this week, so I made a point to watch as much as I could before I left Denver, mainly to hopefully clear out my tivo enough that I don’t have to worry about losing things I actually want to see but haven’t had the time for yet. And I managed to finish season one of Being Human during all this.
Being Human 1.7 - I didn’t realize that Aidan’s newish vampire stalker is actually the vampire Josh and his werewolf sire beat up, so it makes a little more sense that he’s coming after both Aidan and Josh – Aidan because he’s a crap vampire, and Josh obviously because he beat him up. After stalker vamp attacks Josh’s sister, Emily, he proceeds to follow them to their parents house. Aidan shows up too, I think to help make sure they’re okay? I don’t really get why, he says he can help and he does but I don’t think he anticipated the way he was going to have to help. Anyway, it ends with a good old fashioned vampire fight and who knows what antics Marcus is going to get up to next.
Josh also seems to ultimately decide he can’t be with his family, even though he did come out to them as being a werewolf. I could be wrong, but the impression I get is his family is going to continue to not be a part of his life. He thinks it’s just too hard for humans to understand what is going on with him, and he will also be a threat to them at least once a month when he turns.
Sally tries to convince Bridget to leave Danny, on account of the Danny killing her thing…but Danny convinces Bridget that it was an accident and things were so unhappy between the two of them. She unfortunately buys it, and I just don’t think things are going to go well between the two of them. Before that happened, there was this whole exchange where Danny was aware that Sally was there, and he was a gigantic douchebag to her. I wasn’t a fan of Danny before, and he was so mean I dislike him even more now.
Aidan makes me want to cry, we get flashbacks to his life before he was a vampire, where we see him walking around with his son, and it kind of breaks my heart. It’s one of those reminders that none of these characters chose the life they have now. Sometimes you get a vampire who kind of wanted what they have now, like Spike in Buffy, for example…he made a conscious decision to feed from Drucilla and turn into a vampire. But Aidan, although we haven’t seen him turning, doesn’t seem to be one who asked for it in any way. It just happened. And it’s sad to think of him loving his family and having to leave them, watch them grow old and die.
At the end of the episode, we see stalker vamp go to visit someone with a bunch of things hanging from her barn ceiling…things that look suspiciously like vampires. But since none of the other vampires on this show do that, I’m guessing they’re like super old vampires, maybe vampire elders or something, and they’re here for…a massacre? I don’t really know, but I guess we’ll find out!
1.8 - Aidan makes a friend! I kind of had a feeling that it was going to be short lived, cuz a vampire like Aidan is set up to be miserable and all suffering, but this is another episode where we see some flashbacks of Aidan back when he was human. His new friend is a ten-year-old called Bernie, who is being bullied and Aidan saves him from the kids who are just little jerks. But unfortunately, the kid takes Aidan’s naughty DVD, one that Rebecca sent him with a whole slaughter scene on it, and Bernie’s mom finds out…which causes her to naturally freak out. It’s really sad, cuz you could see how happy Aidan was to be spending time with a kid, like he’s reliving what it was like to have a child of his own. Poor guy!
Sally decides to see if she can try to move on, so Aidan shows her some ghosts in the basement of the hospital. Although they freak her out at first, she eventually gets used to the idea and decides to spend more time with them. It’s hard to see Sally in turmoil, but hopefully things will get better for her.
Josh continues his slow relationship with Nora, where they are into each other but reluctant and eventually have one of the most unromantic sex scenes on TV. But I guess you could say it gets them to move on past the awkwardness, cuz they decide to continue with things and see where it’s all going.
1.9 - This episode was really sad, because things basically go as badly as they could. Aidan is doing his best to avoid Bernie, since the whole thing about the DVD went down and Bernie’s mom said stay the hell away from my kid! So Aidan sees Bernie being bullied again, and just goes in his house instead of trying to help. The bullying goes pretty badly, with Bernie backing up into the street and being hit by a car.
As if that’s not bad enough, Rebecca misinterprets Aidan’s sadness and thinks he wants Bernie back no matter what. Which means she decides to turn him, and that just seems like a bad idea to me. You rarely see child vampires in any show, even if there’s mention of feeding on children they aren’t turned, the only real exception I can think of is Kirsten Dunst in Interview With The Vampire. You just never turn children. And we see why, because Bernie brutally murders the kids who were bullying him, and he doesn’t really even understand that he’s done something wrong. Aidan explains, while yelling at Rebecca, that children have no moral compass by which to judge this kind of thing, so it’s like the worst kind of vampire ever.
In the meantime, Sally finds this guy she had a crush on in college – she finds out through the ghost wall in the hospital that he is likewise dead. He actually died before she did, so they sort of start this ghosty relationship. He really likes her, especially that she’s okay with the fact that he relives his death every single day. No one really knows why he’s caught in the death echo, but he kind of says he likes it in a way, cuz it reminds him of being alive. Which to me is just weird because…you’re dead dude. It’s not going to change. I’m not sure why you don’t just accept that and deal with it instead of trying to relive your life or death or whatever. It’s unclear if the two of them are going to have a relationship in the future, or if this was just a one off thing so Sally could have a relationship for a second.
Josh was boring so I’m not even going to talk about him, cuz all he did was find out that someone abused Nora in the past. Which isn’t awesome, and I’m not dismissing that, it’s just that nothing that happened with him seemed to matter in the slightest.
At the end of the episode, we have this really heart wrenching scene where Aidan takes vampire Bernie hunting for a deer, but actually stakes him. We don’t see the staking itself, but we see Aidan pull a stake out of his jacket when he’s behind Bernie, and you get the picture. It’s the right decision to make, but it’s still really sad because we’ve seen all this history for Aidan, and it’s just hard to see this. For a whole episode, he could have been happy.
1.10 - The major plot point in this one is basically that all their lives are affected by one little thing. The vampires are still holding a grudge against Josh, so they kidnap him to put him in this werewolf fight thingie. It’s entertainment for the vampire elders, the ones who have been hanging upside down in a barn…which is just another bit of evidence that I watch way too much vampire TV cuz that wasn’t hard to figure out. Apparently the elders only come around every 50 years and they want to just make sure things are going right. And that means Aidan has to tow the line and pretend he isn’t leading this whole anti-vampire lifestyle.
Sally is trying to figure out how to get Josh free, because his fight is a fight to the death. The fight is against an old dude, but Josh is convinced the other wolf is stronger and smarter than he is. However, Aidan strikes a deal with Bishop – he’ll come back into the fold if they let Josh go. It looks dicey for a bit, but Josh manages to win and is let go. The implication is that he’ll be left alone because Aidan is back playing the vampire game.
When Aidan goes to do his part with Bishop, everyone is going out to get their dinner. Bishop tells Aidan the elders are going to kill him the next day, and I’m not entirely sure why. It’s possible they found out that Bishop was allowing Aidan to try living a normal life, since we see a flashback where Bishop has been having a relationship with a human, who knows the truth about him, and the penalty is that his maker is killed by these elders. So that’s my best theory – Aidan is trying to mainstream, so he’s being shown that the consequence is to kill his maker.
Also, as a complete side story, Rebecca is really upset about Aidan staking Bernie. She seems to be having a hard time with the fact that she doesn’t have a human life anymore, and she’s never going to have the life she could have had: an ultimate happy life with a family of her own. She said she turned Bernie for Aidan, but I think she really did it because she wanted to know what it was like to be a mother. Turning a child was her closest chance at having a child of her own.
It’s all quite sad, but not as sad as it could be. I thing I spent too much time watching Joss Whedon do a vampire show – this one isn’t bad, but it’s not the best vampire show on US television, and it’s certainly no Buffy the Vampire Slayer 
1.11 - It turns out that Bishop has this whole plan for dealing with the elders, which we don’t find out about until later, but first he plays nice with them. Aidan is all hanging out with them, joining the flock and doing what he can to help it all work out. They take the elders to where they normally feed in peace, which is different from where the elders are used to feeding, but they compromise by feeding the elder way – in the new place, but basically draining the people. Fun times!
Danny and Bridget decide to have a medium get rid of Sally, and it doesn’t quite go their way. Sally ends up possessing the medium, who sees the real story of what happened, and freaks out. After that happens, Bridget finally believes that Danny killed Sally for reals, and she takes off. Unfortunately, it leaves Sally in not a great place and who knows how it’s going to turn out.
So Bishop’s plan is that he had the girls all consuming juniper, which is I guess this shows version of bad stuff for vampires, and it kind of paralyzes the elders long enough for Bishop to chop their heads off. At this point, Aidan thinks it’s enough and rescues the final elder before Bishop kills him. They are at war!
Marcus tries to take Aidan out, but Rebecca stakes him at the last minute, saving Aidan’s life. We learn pretty fast that she’s just not happy at all, especially after Bernie’s death. She found out along the way that Marcus was actually responsible for it – he’s the one who killed the bullies, not Bernie, so Aidan staked Bernie for no real reason. Rebecca just can’t handle it all, so she asks Aidan to stake her, and he ultimately complies.
We also see some more back story between Aidan and Bishop through meeting a woman Aidan used to have a relationship with. She unfortunately came down with cancer, is dying, and ends up at the same hospital that Aidan works at. She was going to have a future with him, but Bishop threatened her out of it. She wants to say goodbye to Aidan before she dies, which is also sad. Poor Aidan just cannot catch a break these days!
Josh finds out that Nora is pregnant, so they sort of decide to try working things out again. It’s really the biggest thing for him in the episode.
1.12 - The season finale is really a turning point for everyone. Aidan is having a hard time because Bishop almost staked him. They’re going to have this big final fight thing, to the death, even though Aidan is clearly not in a condition to fight right then.
Sally is still a mess after the exorcism attempt, so she goes to haunt Danny and actually does some damage. Doing that fixes her, then Danny tries to burn the house down to get rid of her, but Aidan and Josh come home just in time and reveal that they can see Sally because they’re like her. Aidan tells Danny he’s been wanting to kill him for a long time, but Sally ultimately forgives him, thus saving his life and he turns himself in. This causes her door to appear, but then she’s all worried about Aidan maybe dying, so she decides to wait. She waits too long and her door vanishes, so it looks like she’s around for awhile.
Josh is going to go fight and kill Bishop, cuz it’s the full moon and he’s going to wolf out. However, Sally and Aidan decide to not let that happen, so they just lock Josh up so he’ll turn and not risk himself for Aidan’s sake. Nora sees him, because he wrote her a letter saying he might die or something, so she follows him and he unintentionally scratches her while he’s turning. She sees the whole thing and finally understands his secret.
In the end, although the fight looks dicey, Aidan ends up winning and kills Bishop with a bit of help from Sally. She can now pick things up, and distracts Bishop long enough for Aidan to pull through.
Josh doesn’t know that Nora was scratched, so he has no idea that she’s totally going to turn into a wolf next month. Oh, and she has a miscarriage, but they decide to really give things a shot since Josh doesn’t have this big secret from her anymore. And lucky them, they’ll get to share it soon!
Although none of our trio knows what is necessarily going to happen for them, they’re hopeful about the future and think it’ll go well, all things considered.
