Being Human 4.04
You know, I enjoy the current season, but still, it feels like we're back in season 1 territory emotionally and intellectually, which after the narrative heights of season 3 is... weird. It's not necessarily a bad choice and allows you to breathe which s3 did not, but all the same, there's this sense of - well, backslide. I'm trying to decide whether Miracle Day after Children of Earth or season 5 of Angel after season 4 (*waves s4 of AtS was the best* banner as determined as ever*) is the most appropriate comparison.
"A Spectre Calls" is a play on "An Inspector Calls" by J.B. Priestley, a play that gets revived on a regular basis because it's that well made. Not high literature, but it's both entertaining and emotionally gripping. Seemingly perfect, well to do family gets paid visit by inspector, and of course, it turns out they all have their miserable secrets and, more importantly, all have done damage out of their privileged position to other people; possibly, and the play leaves this ambiguous at the end because it's not the point really, to the same woman.
Annie, Hal and Tom are anything but a seemingly perfect family, they've barely begun to bond, and there's a lot of distrust to begin with, but the main reason why the episode fell short not just of the play its titel invokes to me is that the show itself did the "outside manipulative character stirs housemates against each other" plot already, more than once, and most recently in s3 when the outside character was Herrick and the result was one of the best episodes of the show. Kirby just doesn't compare. Also, Priestley's play uses the Inspector to reveal truths about the characters the audience didn't know yet, whereas everyone's interactions with Kirby don't reveal anything we didn't already know the previous episode. If anything, they show Annie has taken a frustrating step back from where she was at the end of last season to where she was at the beginning of s3 instead. The Annie who didn't let go of her train massacre investigation and confronted Mitchell, who pointed out to Nina and George that even sending Mitchell away was a choice and a responsibility (to everyone Mitchell would inevitably kill in the future) would not have been so easily manipulated by Kirby and also at the start of the episode wouldn't have been all "I don't want to know" towards HaL, knowing unconfessed secrets have a nasty way to bite you, literally, later on. (Not to mention that she saw where "I don't want to know" tactics got George.)
(Then again: I suppose it's human, believing that knowing the pinciple of the thing - i.e. that Hal, like virtually every other vampire we met, was a ruthless serial killer in ye olde days - is enough without being aware of the gory details.)
All this sounds as if I hated the episode, and I didn't. I felt entertained, sometimes amused, sometimes worried, sometimes irritated in a "oh come on, this is so transparent!" manner. Also, good to know Cutler the media savvy vampire is back and NOT another policeman. A lawyer makes for a direly needed change in evil vampire cover jobs and also makes sense. And Kirby's "I'm the Toymaker - what do you mean you never heard of me!" scene obviously, and successfully, took it's cue from Neil Gaiman's take on serial killers in A Doll's House, the second Sandman arc. But watching this directly after marathoning through two seasons of Breaking Bad where there's non stop character development and non stop narrative push forward, not backwards, just underlined that "we're back in season 1, aren't we?" feeling for me.
"A Spectre Calls" is a play on "An Inspector Calls" by J.B. Priestley, a play that gets revived on a regular basis because it's that well made. Not high literature, but it's both entertaining and emotionally gripping. Seemingly perfect, well to do family gets paid visit by inspector, and of course, it turns out they all have their miserable secrets and, more importantly, all have done damage out of their privileged position to other people; possibly, and the play leaves this ambiguous at the end because it's not the point really, to the same woman.
Annie, Hal and Tom are anything but a seemingly perfect family, they've barely begun to bond, and there's a lot of distrust to begin with, but the main reason why the episode fell short not just of the play its titel invokes to me is that the show itself did the "outside manipulative character stirs housemates against each other" plot already, more than once, and most recently in s3 when the outside character was Herrick and the result was one of the best episodes of the show. Kirby just doesn't compare. Also, Priestley's play uses the Inspector to reveal truths about the characters the audience didn't know yet, whereas everyone's interactions with Kirby don't reveal anything we didn't already know the previous episode. If anything, they show Annie has taken a frustrating step back from where she was at the end of last season to where she was at the beginning of s3 instead. The Annie who didn't let go of her train massacre investigation and confronted Mitchell, who pointed out to Nina and George that even sending Mitchell away was a choice and a responsibility (to everyone Mitchell would inevitably kill in the future) would not have been so easily manipulated by Kirby and also at the start of the episode wouldn't have been all "I don't want to know" towards HaL, knowing unconfessed secrets have a nasty way to bite you, literally, later on. (Not to mention that she saw where "I don't want to know" tactics got George.)
(Then again: I suppose it's human, believing that knowing the pinciple of the thing - i.e. that Hal, like virtually every other vampire we met, was a ruthless serial killer in ye olde days - is enough without being aware of the gory details.)
All this sounds as if I hated the episode, and I didn't. I felt entertained, sometimes amused, sometimes worried, sometimes irritated in a "oh come on, this is so transparent!" manner. Also, good to know Cutler the media savvy vampire is back and NOT another policeman. A lawyer makes for a direly needed change in evil vampire cover jobs and also makes sense. And Kirby's "I'm the Toymaker - what do you mean you never heard of me!" scene obviously, and successfully, took it's cue from Neil Gaiman's take on serial killers in A Doll's House, the second Sandman arc. But watching this directly after marathoning through two seasons of Breaking Bad where there's non stop character development and non stop narrative push forward, not backwards, just underlined that "we're back in season 1, aren't we?" feeling for me.