Being Human UK 2.08 + Thoughts on Season Two
Let's see if this season finale can live up to last season's.
- So does George know what Mitchell has done? Does he recognize the signs?
- Does it not occur to George and Annie that Lucy must think Mitchell is dead? Don't they think it's odd she doesn't mention this? Or has Mitchell told them nothing about what's going on?
- George and Annie have to die...and we're back to making sure Kemp looks like a bad guy so we can root for Mitchell.
- Mitchell vs. Lucy and they both have a lot of good points. There aren't any good guys here.
- Oh, Mitchell. You've made choices too.
- Wow, murdering humans now? Let's make Kemp more of a bad guy!
- Kemp survives? I wasn't expecting that.
- And George goes back for Mitchell! I can see now why people love George. He's still not my favourite, but I get it now.
- New city, new house, new start? I guess they'd have to run, though, with their their enemies still alive.
- And this is how Mitchell punishes himself? Listening to the news?
- I wasn't expecting another meeting between Lucy and Mitchell either. Or Lucy moving in.
- Oh, here we go! So Lucy doesn't survive after all, and probably Kemp won't either. That's what I was expecting! I should have checked the time remaining.
- Annie's back! Well, kind of. Who knew the afterlife was so bureaucratic?
- Cara's back? And healed too. And here's Herrick! Or zombie!Herrick? Something. Lots of surprises to end the season with.
Thoughts on Season Two
George and Nina seem to have made progress this season. Or at least they seem to have found ways to cope with being werewolves, which gives them a chance to move forward together. They also seem to have concluded they can't really be part of the human world, which is sad, but possibly true.
Annie has gained all sorts of power, but lost visibility and is now trapped elsewhere. Presumably (since I know the cast changes don't happen yet), they'll find a way to get her back next season.
And Mitchell...Mitchell has been set back years. What I realized this season is that he is so young. How do you live nearly a century and stay that young and naïve? I suppose being constantly drugged may impede emotional development (plus Herrick seems to have kept him pretty sheltered--privileged life there, never having to clean up after himself), but he's apparently been on and off blood since the sixties. And yet...yes, Lucy's betrayal was major and I'm sure it hurt, but to decide that all of the human race deserved to be punished for one woman's actions. Is he really that immature? Apparently. I suppose it's a reasonable counterpoint to Kemp assigning collective guilt to all supernatural beings for what happened to his family. Clarifying how wrong that is, in case we didn't pick up on it from all the things they did to make Kemp seem like a bad guy over the season.
I'm curious to see how they'll rehabilitate Mitchell next season...or if they'll decide that his response to George's speech was enough, and that the audience will be ready to forgive and move on? And maybe we will. We didn't know any of those people, after all. But it does make it harder to believe in the right of vampires to run free. Kemp and Lucy were wrong about a lot of things, but they weren't wrong about the danger vampires pose to humans.
I'm still puzzled by vampire mythology in this version of BH. How is it that a vampire who isn't even two centuries old is considered one of the Old Ones? How is it that Herrick claims that becoming a vampire doesn't change who you are, and yet all vampires seem to go on to kill? And how is it that the craving for blood goes away if vampires abstain long enough? That last, in particular, makes no sense to me. Unless...maybe they crave blood uncontrollably when they're first created--to the point that it overrides their consciences and control entirely--and then they keep drinking after that to avoid thinking about what they did at the beginning? Is blood really only necessary for the initial transformation? That might make some sense. It still doesn't explain why there are no truly old vampires around, however.
The other thing I don't understand in this episode is Lucy. Kemp I generally get--possibly because he's a bit of a cliché. A man who's hurt and seeks revenge, using whatever tools he has available to achieve that revenge (in his case religion), and who gradually becomes twisted by his quest and who twists his tools along with him. Chase after monsters too long and you become one yourself. Lucy, on the other hand--she clearly doesn't buy that werewolves are monsters, and she doesn't really seem to believe that vampires are soulless. And yet she allows werewolf after werewolf to die for no good reason, and every time she talks to Kemp, she affirms that vampires aren't people. I don't understand it her inconsistency, except she she seems to be a bit of a fuzzy thinker (intelligent design? really?) and she's very much under Kemp's sway. I wonder how much time he spent working on her?
One of the big questions that comes up this season--and in the show in general, and in BHUS--is how you deal with having a friend who is dangerous to other people. Innocent people. At what point do you decide that good intentions and genuine remorse aren't enough? That it doesn't matter if there's regret later, because those people are still dead. George has apparently decided to deal with this through compartmentalization and ignorance. If he doesn't know what Mitchell has done, he doesn't have to deal with it. Not an entirely admirable position, but I suppose it's that or he kills Mitchell himself, and as someone who's nearly done some horrible things himself, he's probably embracing Mitchell's belief that you need to offer forgiveness in order to receive it.
So yes, the second season of BHUK was completely different from the second season of BHUS. The basic issues are the same: George/Josh and Nina/Nora dealing with Nina/Nora having been turned into a werewolf and what that means for their relationship; Annie/Sally trying to figure out what happens now that she's missed her door; and Mitchell/Aidan dealing with chaos among the vampires. The implementation, however, is entirely different. That made watching a bit easier, since I wasn't constantly comparing the two.
ETA: One thing I did like about the finale of BHUK is how all four of them ended up confronting Kemp together. More or less. It's a bit different from BHUS, which has a habit of sending the various characters spinning off on their own stories each season, so that they end the season dealing with their problems alone. (And usually ending on a cliffhanger.)
This entry was originally posted at http://skieswideopen.dreamwidth.org/122639.html, where it has
comments. Comments are equally welcome on either entry.
- So does George know what Mitchell has done? Does he recognize the signs?
- Does it not occur to George and Annie that Lucy must think Mitchell is dead? Don't they think it's odd she doesn't mention this? Or has Mitchell told them nothing about what's going on?
- George and Annie have to die...and we're back to making sure Kemp looks like a bad guy so we can root for Mitchell.
- Mitchell vs. Lucy and they both have a lot of good points. There aren't any good guys here.
- Oh, Mitchell. You've made choices too.
- Wow, murdering humans now? Let's make Kemp more of a bad guy!
- Kemp survives? I wasn't expecting that.
- And George goes back for Mitchell! I can see now why people love George. He's still not my favourite, but I get it now.
- New city, new house, new start? I guess they'd have to run, though, with their their enemies still alive.
- And this is how Mitchell punishes himself? Listening to the news?
- I wasn't expecting another meeting between Lucy and Mitchell either. Or Lucy moving in.
- Oh, here we go! So Lucy doesn't survive after all, and probably Kemp won't either. That's what I was expecting! I should have checked the time remaining.
- Annie's back! Well, kind of. Who knew the afterlife was so bureaucratic?
- Cara's back? And healed too. And here's Herrick! Or zombie!Herrick? Something. Lots of surprises to end the season with.
Thoughts on Season Two
George and Nina seem to have made progress this season. Or at least they seem to have found ways to cope with being werewolves, which gives them a chance to move forward together. They also seem to have concluded they can't really be part of the human world, which is sad, but possibly true.
Annie has gained all sorts of power, but lost visibility and is now trapped elsewhere. Presumably (since I know the cast changes don't happen yet), they'll find a way to get her back next season.
And Mitchell...Mitchell has been set back years. What I realized this season is that he is so young. How do you live nearly a century and stay that young and naïve? I suppose being constantly drugged may impede emotional development (plus Herrick seems to have kept him pretty sheltered--privileged life there, never having to clean up after himself), but he's apparently been on and off blood since the sixties. And yet...yes, Lucy's betrayal was major and I'm sure it hurt, but to decide that all of the human race deserved to be punished for one woman's actions. Is he really that immature? Apparently. I suppose it's a reasonable counterpoint to Kemp assigning collective guilt to all supernatural beings for what happened to his family. Clarifying how wrong that is, in case we didn't pick up on it from all the things they did to make Kemp seem like a bad guy over the season.
I'm curious to see how they'll rehabilitate Mitchell next season...or if they'll decide that his response to George's speech was enough, and that the audience will be ready to forgive and move on? And maybe we will. We didn't know any of those people, after all. But it does make it harder to believe in the right of vampires to run free. Kemp and Lucy were wrong about a lot of things, but they weren't wrong about the danger vampires pose to humans.
I'm still puzzled by vampire mythology in this version of BH. How is it that a vampire who isn't even two centuries old is considered one of the Old Ones? How is it that Herrick claims that becoming a vampire doesn't change who you are, and yet all vampires seem to go on to kill? And how is it that the craving for blood goes away if vampires abstain long enough? That last, in particular, makes no sense to me. Unless...maybe they crave blood uncontrollably when they're first created--to the point that it overrides their consciences and control entirely--and then they keep drinking after that to avoid thinking about what they did at the beginning? Is blood really only necessary for the initial transformation? That might make some sense. It still doesn't explain why there are no truly old vampires around, however.
The other thing I don't understand in this episode is Lucy. Kemp I generally get--possibly because he's a bit of a cliché. A man who's hurt and seeks revenge, using whatever tools he has available to achieve that revenge (in his case religion), and who gradually becomes twisted by his quest and who twists his tools along with him. Chase after monsters too long and you become one yourself. Lucy, on the other hand--she clearly doesn't buy that werewolves are monsters, and she doesn't really seem to believe that vampires are soulless. And yet she allows werewolf after werewolf to die for no good reason, and every time she talks to Kemp, she affirms that vampires aren't people. I don't understand it her inconsistency, except she she seems to be a bit of a fuzzy thinker (intelligent design? really?) and she's very much under Kemp's sway. I wonder how much time he spent working on her?
One of the big questions that comes up this season--and in the show in general, and in BHUS--is how you deal with having a friend who is dangerous to other people. Innocent people. At what point do you decide that good intentions and genuine remorse aren't enough? That it doesn't matter if there's regret later, because those people are still dead. George has apparently decided to deal with this through compartmentalization and ignorance. If he doesn't know what Mitchell has done, he doesn't have to deal with it. Not an entirely admirable position, but I suppose it's that or he kills Mitchell himself, and as someone who's nearly done some horrible things himself, he's probably embracing Mitchell's belief that you need to offer forgiveness in order to receive it.
So yes, the second season of BHUK was completely different from the second season of BHUS. The basic issues are the same: George/Josh and Nina/Nora dealing with Nina/Nora having been turned into a werewolf and what that means for their relationship; Annie/Sally trying to figure out what happens now that she's missed her door; and Mitchell/Aidan dealing with chaos among the vampires. The implementation, however, is entirely different. That made watching a bit easier, since I wasn't constantly comparing the two.
ETA: One thing I did like about the finale of BHUK is how all four of them ended up confronting Kemp together. More or less. It's a bit different from BHUS, which has a habit of sending the various characters spinning off on their own stories each season, so that they end the season dealing with their problems alone. (And usually ending on a cliffhanger.)
This entry was originally posted at http://skieswideopen.dreamwidth.org/122639.html, where it has
comments. Comments are equally welcome on either entry.