Being Human: Wasted Opportunities [sort of meta on what could have been]
Series 5, with its clunky writing, does have moments that make me go 'oooh' instead of 'oh my God, why!?' Unfortunately, the bulk of these moments seems to be leading nowhere, so I thought I'd complain about that. Unsurprisingly (for those who know my history with series 5), a lot of that has to do with Rook.
1. Rook and Alex. Am I the only one who is kind of irked by the build-up that went nowhere?
(c) larryickard
Back in 4x08, Rook was apparently able to sense Alex's presence in the night club basement. It was never explicitly stated that he possessed some kind of ghost-sensing abilities, but that's a possibility. In 5x01, Alex toys around with him a bit and promises that she would one day get to see him die. Technically, she sort of did, though on the other hand, it's been established that it was a dream. I'm ambivalent about this scene. On the one hand, it extracted quite a few giggles from me; on the other hand, it's a bit... to dramatic for Alex? I just don't see her dispensing threats like that - maybe as a joke, but what's the point of a joke if he can't hear it? Basically, they failed to deliver a proper resolution to that promise. Alex does state later that she wants to get a revenge on Rook, but make it harmless, not kill him or anything. I think her "revenge" is one of the best and funniest moments of the series - but then again, we don't get to see his reaction! The best part of any prank is the result! We find out about his reaction to the letter, but only because Alistair calls Rook out on it. As far as we know, she also hid dead fish all over the office and superglued some things and whatnot - yet not only do we never see Rook's reaction to that, but we also never see him make any connections. If he's as smart and supernatural-savvy as he is, he should have probably figured out there was a ghost in HH without Hal having to spell it out a thousand times (the DoDD knew about Annie after all) and he should have connected the dots and realized that the ghost may have had it in for him! But no, instead Alex calmly forgets about her death threat to Rook and he pretends (because damn it, that's the way Steven Robertson plays it even if it's not on paper, and that's the way I see it because I refuse to believe Rook is really that stupid) that he doesn't know she's there every time she is. It's as if the writers deliberately ignore whatever previous set-ups they have.
2. Larry's murder and the Phone call
I don't care much for Larry, I think I've already made it clear many times. But Larry didn't deserve to die. Of course that was the whole point of that scene (or at least it should have been): Larry is a dick but Hal basically just kills him because he's annoying, and justifies it with Larry supposedly posing a threat to the household. I'm honestly okay with pointless deaths. I'm even okay with the fact that the others never found out. What I'm not okay with is that when Hal supposedly became human, it wiped his entire 500-year-old slate clean and not only did the others never call him out on everything he's done, but he was never shown feeling guilty. It's true that there was little screen time - but guess what? They could have spared us the overall idiocy of 5x03 and 5x04 and the dreadful sentimentality of 5x05 in favour of showing how exactly that human thing could have worked out, if at all. So what gets to me personally is that Larry's death basically served no purpose - either in the near future, or in the distant dream reality. Nobody found out about it; it wasn't for the blood; the only repercussion we saw was Rook claiming Hal now owed him a favour. Hal brushed it off pretty quickly, and tbh, I still don't get why Rook wanted the trio specifically to babysit Bobby.
And of course my number 1 sore spot of the entire series 5: the phone call. I make no secret of my feelings about 5x03: it's crap. Except for Rook's attempted suicide. I'm not just saying that because I'm biased in favour of the character: poor Rook suffered from the writers as much as anyone else did. I do think the scene was brilliantly done, and those last few minutes of the episode were gorgeous, writing- and acting-wise, kudos to both Steven and Damien.
Except... whatever happened after the phone call, happened offscreen. How can you possibly have two amazingly talented actors with great chemistry and not take advantage of that!? Alas, they absolutely had to waste time on Fugly and his poorly written attacks of completely unbelievable remorse. I did a meta on parallels between Hal and Rook once. It doesn't matter whether you have a shippy or a non-shippy take on them; they have a lot of things in common and they could potentially be set up both as intriguing opponents and allies. Before series 5 was released, some promos and interviews promised that Rook would be an ambiguous character, sometimes an enemy of the gang, sometimes an ally. In my opinion, it was another spectacular fail on the writers' part, because he makes an insipid enemy, one they can't even bother to kill or hate properly, and all the "alliance" largely takes place offscreen and is centred around Rook cleaning up their messes. Given Rook's dislike of supernaturals and his family issues and his human propriety, they could have built up something of the Valjean/Javert caliber (sans the singing because I've only read the book). There goes another wasted opportunity.
3. Crumb
Don't even get me started on that. I don't want to sound like a broken record, so let's not talk about how I hate the very idea of Hal going on a bloody recruiting spree, mmkay?
(c) fadeanddecay
Instead, I'll just say that I could technically be okay with Fugly himself, I could stomach his addition to the cast if it served any actual purpose. Because what is his purpose? He replaces Cutler as Hal's recruit/mistake and he does it very poorly. The whole idea of a "victim with superpowers" is good, but I can't even say it was executed poorly - because it wasn't executed at all. Crumb features in three episodes and there is no personal development to speak of, there is no function that any other character couldn't perform in his stead. He ominously predicts that Hal will end up where he is now - "on a pile of bodies with a hard-on" - but that's not technically true. There is a pile of bodies, but Hal isn't the fun, carefree evil guy he was in, say, 4x07. Instead, he's busy playing hero. Moreover, Crumb himself is never actually evil. Yesterday I said that evil with a plan is banal and boring. Mostly, yes. But it also depends on what the motivation is. Take Cutler for example: he was arguably evil (or at least he belonged to the bad guys camp) and he wanted to take over the world, but he was neither a minion (in the traditional sense), nor an overlord. He had an agenda, he worked for it, but he was believable and realistic. He didn't live in a game the way Crumb does. My main problem with Crumb is that they took a geeky loser and turned him into something unpleasant and crazy. The idea itself was, the way I see it, to show that vampirism wasn't a cure-all. Crumb was a loser in life and he is a loser as a vampire. The problem is: he is a loser because he sucks. As a person. He often blurts out idiotic and insulting things without thinking, he's very self-involved, he's cheap (see his date with Alex). If nobody can bring themselves to like him as a person, how can they make excuses for him as a vampire?
A minor gripe: the acting. I don't know what that actor is normally like, but he was overdoing it so hard! The only scene, which was in, I liked was his death scene because for once he was less in your face and more toned down.
(c) arthurdarvill
In my experience, contrasts make the best impact. Off the top of my head, a Young Dracula example [SPOILERS if anyone is bothered]: in the latest series, Vlad has to turn Erin into a vampire. Erin is a sweet girl, very anti-vampires. After she is turned, it turns out she can hold a wicked grudge for a hell of a long time. It's a children's show and this twist could be rather predictable: good girl gets vamped - good girl goes bad. The question is: how bad? Answer: a hell of a lot worse than Fugly could ever hope to be, and if a children's show can pull that off, why can't BH?
I remember thinking as I was watching 5x04 that all of this could have played out so much better if they hadn't set Crumb up as someone so annoying as a person. It could have been heartbreaking actually: a good person ruined by blood addiction and overlooked in favour of a far less good person (as we know, Hal is). Instead, both the writing and the acting made Crumb into someone personally I wouldn't want to deal with IRL, and blood's got nothing to do with that.
4. Hal and Rook. This is sort of an extension of what I said above re: parallels.
(c) beinghumancaps
So much could have been done. Speaking of: why are there no icons of this scene? T_T
Speaking of Rook per se, I am profoundly annoyed by the discrepancies in his character. 5x03 sets him up as a very lonely man; 5x05 disproves it by showing that he has Natasha who is almost like his family. Aside from the sheer teeth-rotting sentimentality of it, I find it annoying how much they focused on the Rook & Natasha relationship, which literally did nothing for the story, instead of showing f.ex. the evolution of Rook's views on the supernatural community. The extra post-5x05 scene with Tom hints that Rook might come to re-evaluate his attitude to supernaturals because he is clearly put off by how human Tom seems to be. 5x06 does nothing to elaborate on that, and Rook still maintains that vampires and werewolves need to be controlled and contained, as if he's not the guy who pretty much propelled Hatch to power! As a result, we've got a messy pile of issues that could all be balanced throughout the episodes; instead, the writers chose to focus on his work fixation and didn't let go until even the most loyal fans grew tired of it.
There are undoubtedly many more smaller things. These are just the ones that bothered me personally. As always, this meta is subjective; I'm not forcing my opinion on anyone here. :)
One of these days I swear I'll write about something that I like. XD
1. Rook and Alex. Am I the only one who is kind of irked by the build-up that went nowhere?
(c) larryickard
Back in 4x08, Rook was apparently able to sense Alex's presence in the night club basement. It was never explicitly stated that he possessed some kind of ghost-sensing abilities, but that's a possibility. In 5x01, Alex toys around with him a bit and promises that she would one day get to see him die. Technically, she sort of did, though on the other hand, it's been established that it was a dream. I'm ambivalent about this scene. On the one hand, it extracted quite a few giggles from me; on the other hand, it's a bit... to dramatic for Alex? I just don't see her dispensing threats like that - maybe as a joke, but what's the point of a joke if he can't hear it? Basically, they failed to deliver a proper resolution to that promise. Alex does state later that she wants to get a revenge on Rook, but make it harmless, not kill him or anything. I think her "revenge" is one of the best and funniest moments of the series - but then again, we don't get to see his reaction! The best part of any prank is the result! We find out about his reaction to the letter, but only because Alistair calls Rook out on it. As far as we know, she also hid dead fish all over the office and superglued some things and whatnot - yet not only do we never see Rook's reaction to that, but we also never see him make any connections. If he's as smart and supernatural-savvy as he is, he should have probably figured out there was a ghost in HH without Hal having to spell it out a thousand times (the DoDD knew about Annie after all) and he should have connected the dots and realized that the ghost may have had it in for him! But no, instead Alex calmly forgets about her death threat to Rook and he pretends (because damn it, that's the way Steven Robertson plays it even if it's not on paper, and that's the way I see it because I refuse to believe Rook is really that stupid) that he doesn't know she's there every time she is. It's as if the writers deliberately ignore whatever previous set-ups they have.
2. Larry's murder and the Phone call
I don't care much for Larry, I think I've already made it clear many times. But Larry didn't deserve to die. Of course that was the whole point of that scene (or at least it should have been): Larry is a dick but Hal basically just kills him because he's annoying, and justifies it with Larry supposedly posing a threat to the household. I'm honestly okay with pointless deaths. I'm even okay with the fact that the others never found out. What I'm not okay with is that when Hal supposedly became human, it wiped his entire 500-year-old slate clean and not only did the others never call him out on everything he's done, but he was never shown feeling guilty. It's true that there was little screen time - but guess what? They could have spared us the overall idiocy of 5x03 and 5x04 and the dreadful sentimentality of 5x05 in favour of showing how exactly that human thing could have worked out, if at all. So what gets to me personally is that Larry's death basically served no purpose - either in the near future, or in the distant dream reality. Nobody found out about it; it wasn't for the blood; the only repercussion we saw was Rook claiming Hal now owed him a favour. Hal brushed it off pretty quickly, and tbh, I still don't get why Rook wanted the trio specifically to babysit Bobby.
And of course my number 1 sore spot of the entire series 5: the phone call. I make no secret of my feelings about 5x03: it's crap. Except for Rook's attempted suicide. I'm not just saying that because I'm biased in favour of the character: poor Rook suffered from the writers as much as anyone else did. I do think the scene was brilliantly done, and those last few minutes of the episode were gorgeous, writing- and acting-wise, kudos to both Steven and Damien.
Except... whatever happened after the phone call, happened offscreen. How can you possibly have two amazingly talented actors with great chemistry and not take advantage of that!? Alas, they absolutely had to waste time on Fugly and his poorly written attacks of completely unbelievable remorse. I did a meta on parallels between Hal and Rook once. It doesn't matter whether you have a shippy or a non-shippy take on them; they have a lot of things in common and they could potentially be set up both as intriguing opponents and allies. Before series 5 was released, some promos and interviews promised that Rook would be an ambiguous character, sometimes an enemy of the gang, sometimes an ally. In my opinion, it was another spectacular fail on the writers' part, because he makes an insipid enemy, one they can't even bother to kill or hate properly, and all the "alliance" largely takes place offscreen and is centred around Rook cleaning up their messes. Given Rook's dislike of supernaturals and his family issues and his human propriety, they could have built up something of the Valjean/Javert caliber (sans the singing because I've only read the book). There goes another wasted opportunity.
3. Crumb
Don't even get me started on that. I don't want to sound like a broken record, so let's not talk about how I hate the very idea of Hal going on a bloody recruiting spree, mmkay?
(c) fadeanddecay
Instead, I'll just say that I could technically be okay with Fugly himself, I could stomach his addition to the cast if it served any actual purpose. Because what is his purpose? He replaces Cutler as Hal's recruit/mistake and he does it very poorly. The whole idea of a "victim with superpowers" is good, but I can't even say it was executed poorly - because it wasn't executed at all. Crumb features in three episodes and there is no personal development to speak of, there is no function that any other character couldn't perform in his stead. He ominously predicts that Hal will end up where he is now - "on a pile of bodies with a hard-on" - but that's not technically true. There is a pile of bodies, but Hal isn't the fun, carefree evil guy he was in, say, 4x07. Instead, he's busy playing hero. Moreover, Crumb himself is never actually evil. Yesterday I said that evil with a plan is banal and boring. Mostly, yes. But it also depends on what the motivation is. Take Cutler for example: he was arguably evil (or at least he belonged to the bad guys camp) and he wanted to take over the world, but he was neither a minion (in the traditional sense), nor an overlord. He had an agenda, he worked for it, but he was believable and realistic. He didn't live in a game the way Crumb does. My main problem with Crumb is that they took a geeky loser and turned him into something unpleasant and crazy. The idea itself was, the way I see it, to show that vampirism wasn't a cure-all. Crumb was a loser in life and he is a loser as a vampire. The problem is: he is a loser because he sucks. As a person. He often blurts out idiotic and insulting things without thinking, he's very self-involved, he's cheap (see his date with Alex). If nobody can bring themselves to like him as a person, how can they make excuses for him as a vampire?
A minor gripe: the acting. I don't know what that actor is normally like, but he was overdoing it so hard! The only scene, which was in, I liked was his death scene because for once he was less in your face and more toned down.
(c) arthurdarvill
In my experience, contrasts make the best impact. Off the top of my head, a Young Dracula example [SPOILERS if anyone is bothered]: in the latest series, Vlad has to turn Erin into a vampire. Erin is a sweet girl, very anti-vampires. After she is turned, it turns out she can hold a wicked grudge for a hell of a long time. It's a children's show and this twist could be rather predictable: good girl gets vamped - good girl goes bad. The question is: how bad? Answer: a hell of a lot worse than Fugly could ever hope to be, and if a children's show can pull that off, why can't BH?
I remember thinking as I was watching 5x04 that all of this could have played out so much better if they hadn't set Crumb up as someone so annoying as a person. It could have been heartbreaking actually: a good person ruined by blood addiction and overlooked in favour of a far less good person (as we know, Hal is). Instead, both the writing and the acting made Crumb into someone personally I wouldn't want to deal with IRL, and blood's got nothing to do with that.
4. Hal and Rook. This is sort of an extension of what I said above re: parallels.
(c) beinghumancaps
So much could have been done. Speaking of: why are there no icons of this scene? T_T
Speaking of Rook per se, I am profoundly annoyed by the discrepancies in his character. 5x03 sets him up as a very lonely man; 5x05 disproves it by showing that he has Natasha who is almost like his family. Aside from the sheer teeth-rotting sentimentality of it, I find it annoying how much they focused on the Rook & Natasha relationship, which literally did nothing for the story, instead of showing f.ex. the evolution of Rook's views on the supernatural community. The extra post-5x05 scene with Tom hints that Rook might come to re-evaluate his attitude to supernaturals because he is clearly put off by how human Tom seems to be. 5x06 does nothing to elaborate on that, and Rook still maintains that vampires and werewolves need to be controlled and contained, as if he's not the guy who pretty much propelled Hatch to power! As a result, we've got a messy pile of issues that could all be balanced throughout the episodes; instead, the writers chose to focus on his work fixation and didn't let go until even the most loyal fans grew tired of it.
There are undoubtedly many more smaller things. These are just the ones that bothered me personally. As always, this meta is subjective; I'm not forcing my opinion on anyone here. :)
One of these days I swear I'll write about something that I like. XD