Being Human 3x08 Review

[iaria]

The Wolf Shaped Bullet

This was an excellent episode! I think it was a great finale to the strongest season of the series thus far. It made me cry at the end, it kept me glued to the screen throughout and it made me excited for next season. Why can’t that be now?

• I loved the final shot of Nina, George and Annie. The three of them standing together looking down on Mitchell’s ashes and then turning to face Wyndam with tear-stained and resolute faces as a team and George saying “I think you have a fight on your hands.” That was awesome. ♥

• I am so happy that Nina (and the baby) survived!

• I have two things that bothered me and that I very strongly wish had happened different. 1) I wish that after George staked Mitchell Annie had moved to stand beside George so that when Mitchell turned to dust he had been looking at both of them. 2) I wish it would have been Annie who had picked up the stake and passed it to George so that it had been them acting together to kill, and save, Mitchell.

• “I’m doing this because I love you.” – George. The end made me cry but I’m really satisfied with how it played out. Everything worked: Mitchell turning to his friends to finally end things (selfish, IMO, but so very him and understandable and his explanation about trying to save George’s soul worked for me), their debate about what the hell to do with him in the kitchen (“letting him go is still a decision”, everything about it really), George trying so hard to find a way to save Mitchell, Mitchell being cruel in order to push George into killing him and then taking it back because of course he didn’t mean it, and the eventual agreement to kill him. When Wyndam arrived I really thought for a couple minutes that Mitchell would survive with the introduction of a worse vampire but then we got that beautiful moment where George, after Wyndam has just laid out a horrifying future for all of them, stakes Mitchell. He stakes him out of love, to save him, and I love it. It was, almost, perfect.

• “Look after him. And look after the baby.” – Mitchell to Nian. The first part worked for me. George is his best friend and I liked that he asked (even though it was unnecessary). The second part very much didn’t. It’s her baby and she doesn’t need him to tell her to look after it! It really should have been ‘look after Annie’.

• “You were the love of my long life.” – Mitchell to Annie. This was actually the thing that I disliked most. It didn’t work for me at all. Do I believe that Mitchell loved Annie? Yes. But the fact is that Mitchell has been friends with Annie for only a couple years (how long since the pilot?) and has only been in love with her romantically for a couple months? There actually would be some pairings I would believe that sentence to be true about even in such short a time but they aren’t one of them. I mean when he died it wasn’t even her eyes he was looking into! Narratively, for these characters, I just don’t buy them as the loves of each of their lives.

• “You gave me a reason to fight again.” – Mitchell. Sigh. I mean that is totally Mitchell’s MO – he finds a woman, loves her and puts all his hopes of being ‘good’ on her. It’s what he does. So what he says makes sense but it also rings false to me because – what she and George as his friends wasn’t enough of a reason? Plus then he continues, as usual, to try and excuse his actions (this time about lying) by telling Annie “I fought so I could be with you” and you know, I do buy that he is so tired of fighting his bloodlust and lying and all the pain in his life but I don’t buy that him fighting so hard to survive – his worrying over the prophecy, his determination to learn how Herrick survived – was about Annie or anyone other than himself. He may hate his life for the most part but he kept fighting hard to keep it.

• “Do you even know who you’re in love with? ... Maybe you thought that we were worth it. But what the hell made you think I would?” – Annie. ♥ That was pretty awesome. God, I love what this show has done with Annie. Murdered Annie, who was killed by her fiancé, who believes in compassion and forgiveness and good and doing what is right. Annie who doesn’t just take Mitchell’s side, who doesn’t treat him like a woobie or victim, who refuses to accept his excuses. I love her.

• That George knew the truth, or at least that he suspected enough that learning that Mitchell had killed the people on the train wasn’t a surprise, actually does make sense. I mean George was friends with Mitchell for two years before they met Annie and Mitchell was still killing people then. I suspected he knew but the fact he did makes me a bit irritated with him because of how he reacted to Nina thinking Mitchell had done it.

• “I want to make sure you’re back in black.” – Herrick. Well, if that’s all he wanted then why not just give Mitchell an ultimatum? ‘Kill George or you both die’? Why does he care if George fights back?

• I love that there was never any prophecy. That Lia was just messing with his head. She told him it as fact and then set him loose banking on the fact that he would believe her and end up making it happen. That was... awesome.

• “Besides when Nina gets here I want her to see a friendly face.” – Annie. Oh, Annie. I love her. I would actually watch that – Annie, Nina and Lia the murdered girls, hey, add in Nancy – and then they can solve crime!

• I kind of wish that Annie had been more overtly compassionate towards Lia. I would have liked that hug. Still I do think it was played perfectly – Annie was compassionate, she completely understood where Lia was coming from and sympathised, but she also didn’t allow that sympathy to absolve Lia of the consequences of what she’d done, and she played Lia perfectly so she could go back to her friends.

• “I won’t know anyone here.” – Lia Um... what? That’s just stupid. I mean it’s not like she and Annie have been close friends. What about the other nineteen victims?

• I was a little conflicted about how things played out with Lia. I was expecting her need for vengeance to have played out differently – for it to be unwavering and for her to have a more direct role in the episode and Mitchell’s fate. So I was disappointed at first when it didn’t play out like that. But in the end I did like how her story ended. Lia was killed violently and wanted revenge for her death and her parents suffering but in the end she is a good person and seeing the ripples of her attempt at revenge – Nina possibly dying, George’s grief – were things she wasn’t expecting. She tried to play tough at first but in the end she wanted Mitchell to suffer, yes, but even more she never wanted to hurt other people. It really worked for me.

• Of course the fact that Lia was using Annie from the beginning was certainly a very morally grey thing for her to do and it’s not really addressed. The fact that there was collateral damage (Nina, George, Nancy and the cops) was mentioned when Annie brings it up but what Lia did to Annie isn’t. Lia encouraging Mitchell to fall in love with Annie but she also encouraged Annie to fall for Mitchell. She tricked Annie into returning to purgatory and had her watch what she thought was going to turn out to be George killing Mitchell as a failsafe in case Mitchell survived (thus as a backup plan of keeping Annie from him). In all of that she doesn’t appear to consider Annie as a person. Annie becomes just a tool, a weapon, to her. I wish Annie had called her on that.

• I love that when Annie told Lia that she wanted to cross back to be with Nina she meant it. She crossed back over and immediately went to Nina’s side and didn’t try and find Mitchell. The moment between them when Nina woke/came back to life was wonderful. How is it that Nina came back though? It seemed like Annie whispered something to her and she came back to life.

• Why can’t Lia crossover and be a ghost like Annie? ... I guess if Lia went through her door after she died she now can’t return? Whereas Annie didn’t go through her door, and as long as she only passes through the doors of other people she can always return to being a ghost? Or at least that’s my fanwank.

• I’m sad that Nancy wasn’t turned into a vampire. With the show moving on next season to our group taking on the vampire elite I really think the show needs them to have a vampire ally and Nancy would have been perfect. She had a very strong sense of justice, as a new vampire she wouldn’t yet be a killer and working against all the other vampires would make sense. I can’t think of any of vampire on this show that could fill that position. I can’t really remember how vampires are made so perhaps there is a chance that Herrick ‘recruited’ her?

• What the heck happened with Tom? We last see him giving up his chance at revenge, killing Herrick, to save George and then... nothing. I’m kind of surprised he didn’t move in with the rest of them.