Being Human: All About Expediency [A John Mitchell Meta]
ALL ABOUT EXPEDIENCY
A John Mitchell Meta
pic from arockdemonwithin
Before we get down to it, there are some things I should reiterate:
- I can’t write meta/discussion/review posts for the life of me. They’re never properly written, interesting to read or deep enough. So take that into account and hit the back button. XD
- Mitchell’s death was a tragedy for me. I considered dropping the show because I was pissed and upset and honestly believed that nobody could ever replace Mitchell. Yes, I was one of “those fans”. I got better.
- Having seen series 4 and thought about it (let’s face it, it’s all I think about these days, bar the perfection of Tom Hiddleston), I honestly believe that Hal is a better person inside than Mitchell.
Let’s hop to our tl;dr ramblings then.
Mitchell and Bloodlust
Like all vampires Mitchell is notoriously good at coming up with excuses. But what I always loved about him (and about the whole concept of the Being Human monsters in general) is that his defenses aren’t iron-clad. He doesn’t have a convenient, ready-made excuse in the form of not having a soul; he doesn’t whine about God having rejected him (the unreliability of religious items in this series is really refreshing); in fact, half the time he sounds like he doesn’t give a shit. If I had been any more attentive (and if Mitchell had been any less of an eye candy), I might have noticed it from the start. Mitchell is a selfish bastard who only seems to remember his vampire angst when it’s convenient. (And I’m saying all that because I love him.) But seriously, he could write a book on shitty excuses.
George: What is the point of us trying to build some kind of normality when you are attacking our friends and turning them into monsters? […]
Mitchell: How the hell do you think I’ve survived for the last hundred years? There’s no escape from it. I’m not like you, I don’t have days off. This is what I am.
BH 1x01, “Flotsam and Jetsam”.
And don’t even get me started on the whole “I’m in love so I think I don’t want my life to end now, so here, Herrick, eat this pretty blond detective girl and tell me how to survive a werewolf attack” thing.
Speaking of love: isn’t Mitchell in love kind of scary? Characters like that always are. I always believed that if a character wants to reform, his main motivation must be to do it for his own sake, not for someone else’s. And yet, Mitchell always seeks out someone to become dependent on. I suspect it’s so that he could later blame his failures on them.
Mitchell: I’ve gone clean before. It’s possible if the conditions are right and everything is in the right place. I can do it, I know I can!
Lucy: What conditions?
Mitchell: Someone to help me. Someone to change my life for. That’s what I’ve been missing all this time. Someone… someone like you.
BH 2x05, “The Looking Glass”
At least he knew Lucy for a while and had never done anything to harm her personally, which is more than can be said for Josie whom he’d almost killed, held hostage and then crawled back to to ask for help.
Mitchell: Help me.
Josie: Why should I?
Mitchell: Because I can’t help myself.
BH 2x05, “The Looking Glass”
The same story later repeats with Annie. She “makes people better”, so naturally Mitchell latches on to her. Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing bad about trying to change for the better for the sake of other people, but Mitchell’s words to Lucy imply that he pretty much consciously denies the possibility of changing for himself. We’ve seen his attempts at rehab before: with Josie and with Carl. But at least he was alone back then; with Lucy, he has Annie and George, even if the latter is going through some changes in his life and might not always be available. But no, friendship apparently isn’t enough. It has to be love, which makes me think of Mitchell’s self-confessed inability to differentiate between sex and blood. To him, sex is either about drinking blood or about abstaining from drinking blood. There’s no middle ground.
It’s interesting that his attempts at being clean never seem to last long. He keeps snapping in every series and he clearly admires Carl for having been dry for twenty years (he’s just never met Hal, hehe). But then again, how could they last long if he doesn’t try hard enough? Spontaneity is definitely a character trait there, and he takes it to the extreme when it comes to his blood-drinking habits, as illustrated by his words to Herrick:
Mitchell: It’s all about expediency with me - it’s skin-deep. The vampires were pissing me off so I threw my lot in with humanity. They betray me, and I get on that train and I’m washing bits of humanity out of my hair for a fortnight. So what do I do? I get the fuck out of Dodge, that’s what I do. I’ll do whatever it takes to survive, Herrick.
BH 3x08, “The Wolf-shaped Bullet”
The sincerity of that statement on Mitchell’s part (from his own POV, that is) may be questioned, seeing as he is talking to Herrick in a cage, but I think he does speak his mind. Not when he promises to side with Herrick, but when he admits his character flaws. Herrick has been called “consistent” a few times in the series, but I think Mitchell is pretty consistent with his changes too: he has them in every series. He’s truly a wild animal: if you poke him, he’ll bite. He flips out after the paedo scandal in series 1; he goes nuts after the explosion at the funeral parlour in series 2; fear of death and Lia’s prophecy drive him to more than morally questionable actions in series 3. Again with shifting the blame. Basically, Mitchell’s attitude towards pretty much everything is just a more complicated version of this:
gif by hiddlybatch
Episode 3x08 is a testament to the part that George plays in Mitchell’s rehabs. I’m not saying that Mitchell is a bad friend (we’ll get to that later), but maybe if he’d been focusing more on George’s problem instead of looking for blood-free romance, he would have been able to manage his own condition better. The thing is that people with problems are more selfish than people without problems, so in that respect, Mitchell is very realistic. And yet, it’s George, and George alone, who “decides” Mitchell’s fate in the end.
Mitchell: I don’t wanna know anymore.
Herrick: But you’ve been searching for this for months.
Mitchell: And then I saw the look of contempt on my best friend’s face. And I realised that this has to stop.
BH 3x08, “The Wolf-shaped Bullet”
And I can’t help but wondering: what if instead of making George his executioner, he’d tried to make George his “guide” (the kind of relationship that Hal and Leo had)? Would things have been different? Or is it just Mitchell’s own fatal flaw that stops him from ever breaking the cycle? Is it even possible?
gif by heathuschrist
The whole issue of blood-drinking and intimacy brings us to another interesting (and sad to say, just as negative) point about Mitchell: the recruits.
Mitchell Recruiting
Mitchell, as we know, was given a choice when he was recruited: his life in exchange for the life of the other soldiers he was with.
Mitchell: I wanted some company.
Herrick: You’ve got company.
Mitchell: Other company, Herrick!
Herrick: I said no recruitment. […] You know, the Old Ones, they kill at will but they don’t recruit lightly. In fact, most of them only do it once. They choose a protégé. It’s an eternal bond.
BH 3x06, “Daddy Ghoul”
Right, Herrick, your creepy crush on Mitchell is showing. Herrick is apparently a great believer in eternal bonds. He refers to a recruit as his maker’s “saviour” and “dark angel”. Creepiness notwithstanding, Herrick actually has some pretty sound ideas about the maker - recruit relationship, as demonstrated by his reaction to the Mitchell/Lauren situation.
Herrick: You just keep hurting her! You recruit her, that’s fine. Then you just leave her. She wakes up with us, she doesn’t know where she is, she’s calling for you. So fine, we pick up the pieces the best we can, but then, Jesus Christ, then you try and take her back!
Mitchell: She’s the one who came to me.
Herrick: Well, where else was she gonna go? She couldn’t exactly call child line, could she? When I recruited you I didn’t abandon you. I took care of you. You know why? ‘Cause it was my responsibility.
Mitchell: I was helping her.
Herrick: What, by getting her to buy into this ridiculous… your fad?
Mitchell: My what?
Herrick: This thing you’re doing with you and your furry friend. Raiding the dressing-up box, pretending to be human. It’s a game!
Mitchell: This… this is not a game.
Herrick: Meeting in hotels like you’re what, lovers? You, you rip her mortality away and then you try and patch it up with these scraps of human behaviour! That is cruel, Mitchell! Why can’t you just let her be the thing you made her?
BH 1x04, “Another Fine Mess”
gif by heathuschrist
It says something when a megalomaniac villain lectures you about responsibility. But worst of all is that Herrick is completely right. Mitchell lets himself get so caught up in his own guilt that he just cannot take responsibility for hurting people. The story repeats with Bernie: after Mitchell has recruited him, he can’t even bring himself to look at the boy. While the guilt is understandable, it should be noted that recruiting Bernie was Mitchell’s idea. Even after his mother was told who Mitchell was, she didn’t immediately rush into begging him to save Bernie. Mitchell basically insisted on it, and then he turned around and abandoned Bernie just like he had abandoned Lauren, without any consideration for what it might lead to. For all we know, the next thing that happens offscreen is Bernie munching on his Mum; he’s already told her he’s hungry.
It’s like Mitchell is a guilt junkie. He couldn’t let Bernie die because he would have blamed himself (though in my opinion, it would have been the mob’s fault) and now that he’s recruited Bernie, however noble the motivation is, he blames himself for it too.
Mitchell/Annie
gif by doctoremrys
Mitchell: What do you want from me?
Annie: Nothing. Don’t change the subject.
Mitchell: You want every little corner of me. But I just don’t wanna give it.
Annie: Why are you being like this?
Mitchell: Oh, come on, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed! All the bright smiles and the chat, it doesn’t make up for what just isn’t there.
Annie: No, you came and got me, you saved me, you said that you loved me-
Mitchell: I was in love with the idea of being a hero. Your rescuer, your saviour. I said I was in love but not with you. It’s for the best, one day you’ll realise.
BH 3x05, “The Longest Day”
A lot can be said about this pairing, but I’m looking at it in terms of its influence on Mitchell right now, and it’s interesting how after all his searching for love, he chickens out when he finally finds it. He even admits it:
Mitchell: You and me, it’s for eternity. Really forever. I was running scared, a typical useless man but I don’t wanna live without you. I can’t live without you.
BH 3x05, “The Longest Day”
But once again, I think there is a certain truth to Mitchell’s prior outburst. He does love the idea of being a hero. It makes him feel less guilty. And since what happened to Annie was to some extent his fault he just had to rectify it.
Mitchell vs. Nina
It’s very seldom that I see the middle ground in the Mitchell vs. Nina debate re: series 3. It’s either “Mitchell was evil, he deserved what he got” or “Nina was a bitch, she was mean to Mitchell”. I’m not forcing my opinion on anyone but very few people really do deserve dying. As for Nina’s side, I can’t imagine anyone acting differently in this situation. It could be argued that Nina was manipulated by Herrick, but let’s not forget that underneath all that exterior fierceness, Nina is a very compassionate person and Herrick never hurt her personally, not the way he hurt the original trio. She was faced with taking care of a vulnerable, amnesiac man whose very existence threatened the safety of her household. She wanted to make sure her baby would be safe and unlike the other three characters, she could never fully accept the way her life had changed because of becoming a werewolf. I think that what she says in series 2 is still very relevant in series 3:
Mitchell: I understand, I really do, but it’s gonna take time to adjust.
Nina: Adjust? You’ve gone native. The three of you. Maybe I’m being naïve, maybe it’s a consequence of your condition… our condition. I don’t know. Your humanity, this thing… Are you protecting it, are you looking for it, do you even know? Because take it from me, it’s long gone. And this house accelerates it, it’s insane here. You’ve got monsters and killers…
BH 2x02, “Serve God, Love Me and Mend”
In series 3, Nina is appalled when George agrees to killing Herrick. George can be understood too: Herrick threatens the household; but then, it’s not normal to solve problems by killing their sources. Nina’s reaction is the most human of all: even Annie eventually comes to the point where she considers Herrick’s death necessary. From a viewer’s POV, I considered it necessary too, but I wouldn’t have been so sure if I’d found myself in such a situation in real life.
So it’s not that surprising that Nina listens to Herrick when he shows her Mitchell’s journal. She refuses to believe it, but her actions, perhaps a little premature, are very normal: she is afraid, so she calls the police. Besides, it’s not like she points a finger at Mitchell and declares him a murderer (not that she would even be wrong in this case); she just tells the police to talk to him. That’s all. It’s what anyone would do. Mitchell does a lot of idiotic things because he’s scared for his life; Nina’s motivation is exactly the same: fear. So I’m not taking sides in that debate. In fact, I’d rather stop poking at it at all because it’s all too explosive.
Mitchell and Friendship
suicidalmime
Like I said, I don’t think Mitchell is a bad friend. He’s as good a friend as any fundamentally selfish person can be. I think it took me a while to realise that Mitchell was right when he wanted George to be the one to kill him.
Mitchell: He has to kill me because he has to disown me. You’ve all become corrupted by me but George most of all. He suspected more than any of you. And so he had to choose between his love for me and his ethics. And I let him choose me.
BH 3x08, “The Wolf-shaped Bullet”
George is the kind of friend everyone would want to have: the one who defends your every move, the one who always stands by you. He can be pretty self-involved too, but it’s not like he doesn’t have a load of his own problems to deal with. He still manages to pick up more pieces than Mitchell ever did. Even after everything Mitchell has done, George is still taking his side - except it’s not enough anymore. I used to think that Mitchell’s request was cruel, but the more I think about it, the more I see that it’s a girft to George. A really painful, hard to accept, screwed up and twisted gift, but a gift nonetheless. More than that, it may be the first entirely unselfish thing we see Mitchell do on the show. And it’s a logical resolution of his story.
That scene at the end of series 3 is so painful to watch because we finally see the true depths of Mitchell’s desperation. He was never above asking for help when he thought he needed it, but it never seemed so raw and sincere before. He’s not asking just to help him; he’s asking to help everyone else by putting him out of this world before he can hurt someone else (talk about ego though).
One thing about Mitchell’s reasoning bothers me, however:
George: What if I forgave you?
Mitchell: That’s not your right. I didn’t hurt anyone you know.
BH 3x08, “The Wolf-shaped Bullet”
Why is forgiving him not George’s right but killing him is? Is it because forgiveness just doesn’t work anymore? Maybe I should just stop overthinking things.
Mitchell vs. Hal
I’ve been thinking about their similarities and their difference a lot lately and even wrote a fic that somewhat dealt with that. They are indeed pretty similar when it comes to their background: both soldiers, both seem to have taken that path out of the inability to choose anything else (Hal tells Leo in the prequel that he didn’t have much to live for anyway and Mitchell tells Bernie that his dream when growing up was just to be happy because there hadn’t been many career options back then). Incidentally, both of them got to choose upon their recruitment and became vampires willingly. Both of them seem to have “cycles”, except Mitchell’s are much shorter and more sporadic, while Hal’s last from 10 to 50 years or so.
I think the fundamental difference between their ways of managing their condition is their motivation. They both have support networks in place, but Mitchell is always chasing his fairytale love story, while Hal appears to be more focused on himself. When Leo dies, he almost flips out and yet he miraculously shows enough restraint not to kill baby Eve. He later wants to kill the pawnshop owner, yet backs off at the mention of Leo. I believe it’s a testament to his respect and love for Leo rather than his dependence on him. The memory of Leo is enough to make Hal want to continue staying on the wagon. I’m not denying the importance of Hal’s friends, but I do think that he might have gone on alone if he really put his mind to it. We all need somebody to say no to us once in a while, but Hal seems to be strong enough to say that to himself occasionally. He stopped himself from succumbing to Yvonne’s influence. Even when he drank blood, his first priority was still to save the people in the club from Tom (saving Tom as well because Tom wouldn’t have taken well to having killed someone).
Another significant difference lies in their attitude to humanity. Mitchell wants to be part of it so badly that he considers every defensive action taken by humans against vampires as betrayal. I’m not trying to justify what Kemp and Lucy did to his coven, but “good” vampires are indeed few and far between. Not to mention that whatever they did is solely their fault, not Lia’s or any other Box Tunnel victim. Yet Mitchell views himself as the wronged party and seeks revenge against people who have nothing to do with it whatsoever. Hal, in turn, subscribes to Leo’s view of their position in the world:
Hal: Leo once said we were on the outside of humanity so that we might guard it. He made it sound like a priviledge rather than a burden.
Tom: I don’t think any of us deserve that job anymore.
Hal: Then we must earn it back!
BH 4x08, “The War Child”
He does not make the mistake of overidentifying with humans, thus he doesn’t feel “betrayed” when/if a backlash happens.
The Hal/Cutler story bears some interesting similarities to Mitchell/Lauren, but they are mostly superficial. First of all, Hal was legitimately evil when he recruited Cutler. Everything he did he did on purpose. He was trying to raise a monster and he succeeded (in a way). I don’t know if Hal subscribes to Herrick’s theory of eternal bonds (in my headcanon he doesn’t but that’s mostly because my headcanon deals with a lot of stalking done by Cutler, so Hal just wants him to sod off already), but he does take responsibility. Sure, he abandons Cutler too, but that’s five years later. After he’s taught him some stuff. For all of Hal’s cruelty and sadism, I wouldn’t say he is a bad maker, but Mitchell definitely is.
All things considered, I do believe that Hal is a better person at heart. That is not to say that Mitchell is rotten at the core or something. I believe he comes from a good place, he does want to get better, he does want to stop being a monster, but he’s essentially a far more selfish person than Hal is. Maybe it’s his inherent trait, maybe it’s because he’s younger and hasn’t had that much time to sort himself out, but when it comes to being a hero, I believe Hal has much more potential.
Mitchell As A Character
Given all of the above, it might seem that I hate Mitchell. I don’t. I love him. I loved him to pieces before Hal came along and stole some of that love, and I still believe that he’s one of the best fictional vampires ever, along with Hal and Spike. But he’s also one of the best fictional characters because he’s got more flaws than redeeming qualities and he still causes people to love him madly. He is complicated and layered and he’s not one of the good guys but he’s not one of the baddies either. He was never explicitly good or evil, but he was always painfully realistic.
Mitchell is funny, charming and he cares deeply about his friends. He’s also prone to leaving things half-done (as illustrated by his recruitment incidents and the way he basically forced a coven of “clean” vampires on Ivan when he thought he had a chance to get a normal “human” life). He’s a perfectly imbalanced cocktail of screwed up and sweet, a man with an unattainable dream, and that makes him so very human.
gif by marginallysecretsentiment
Death as a cure is a funny thing that can happen only in such weird stories as Being Human, but I do hope that it’s what it was for Mitchell. That he doesn’t feel hunger anymore and can dwell a bit on the things he did wrong in life and finally move on. Personally I don’t believe that he is waiting for Annie behind that door that Eve took her to at the end of series 4, but I do believe that she won’t just let it rest and that she will find him eventually.
All graphics found randomly via Tumblr and Google and belong to their respective owners. Being Human is propery of the BBC and Toby Whithouse.
A John Mitchell Meta
pic from arockdemonwithin
Before we get down to it, there are some things I should reiterate:
- I can’t write meta/discussion/review posts for the life of me. They’re never properly written, interesting to read or deep enough. So take that into account and hit the back button. XD
- Mitchell’s death was a tragedy for me. I considered dropping the show because I was pissed and upset and honestly believed that nobody could ever replace Mitchell. Yes, I was one of “those fans”. I got better.
- Having seen series 4 and thought about it (let’s face it, it’s all I think about these days, bar the perfection of Tom Hiddleston), I honestly believe that Hal is a better person inside than Mitchell.
Let’s hop to our tl;dr ramblings then.
Mitchell and Bloodlust
Like all vampires Mitchell is notoriously good at coming up with excuses. But what I always loved about him (and about the whole concept of the Being Human monsters in general) is that his defenses aren’t iron-clad. He doesn’t have a convenient, ready-made excuse in the form of not having a soul; he doesn’t whine about God having rejected him (the unreliability of religious items in this series is really refreshing); in fact, half the time he sounds like he doesn’t give a shit. If I had been any more attentive (and if Mitchell had been any less of an eye candy), I might have noticed it from the start. Mitchell is a selfish bastard who only seems to remember his vampire angst when it’s convenient. (And I’m saying all that because I love him.) But seriously, he could write a book on shitty excuses.
George: What is the point of us trying to build some kind of normality when you are attacking our friends and turning them into monsters? […]
Mitchell: How the hell do you think I’ve survived for the last hundred years? There’s no escape from it. I’m not like you, I don’t have days off. This is what I am.
BH 1x01, “Flotsam and Jetsam”.
And don’t even get me started on the whole “I’m in love so I think I don’t want my life to end now, so here, Herrick, eat this pretty blond detective girl and tell me how to survive a werewolf attack” thing.
Speaking of love: isn’t Mitchell in love kind of scary? Characters like that always are. I always believed that if a character wants to reform, his main motivation must be to do it for his own sake, not for someone else’s. And yet, Mitchell always seeks out someone to become dependent on. I suspect it’s so that he could later blame his failures on them.
Mitchell: I’ve gone clean before. It’s possible if the conditions are right and everything is in the right place. I can do it, I know I can!
Lucy: What conditions?
Mitchell: Someone to help me. Someone to change my life for. That’s what I’ve been missing all this time. Someone… someone like you.
BH 2x05, “The Looking Glass”
At least he knew Lucy for a while and had never done anything to harm her personally, which is more than can be said for Josie whom he’d almost killed, held hostage and then crawled back to to ask for help.
Mitchell: Help me.
Josie: Why should I?
Mitchell: Because I can’t help myself.
BH 2x05, “The Looking Glass”
The same story later repeats with Annie. She “makes people better”, so naturally Mitchell latches on to her. Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing bad about trying to change for the better for the sake of other people, but Mitchell’s words to Lucy imply that he pretty much consciously denies the possibility of changing for himself. We’ve seen his attempts at rehab before: with Josie and with Carl. But at least he was alone back then; with Lucy, he has Annie and George, even if the latter is going through some changes in his life and might not always be available. But no, friendship apparently isn’t enough. It has to be love, which makes me think of Mitchell’s self-confessed inability to differentiate between sex and blood. To him, sex is either about drinking blood or about abstaining from drinking blood. There’s no middle ground.
It’s interesting that his attempts at being clean never seem to last long. He keeps snapping in every series and he clearly admires Carl for having been dry for twenty years (he’s just never met Hal, hehe). But then again, how could they last long if he doesn’t try hard enough? Spontaneity is definitely a character trait there, and he takes it to the extreme when it comes to his blood-drinking habits, as illustrated by his words to Herrick:
Mitchell: It’s all about expediency with me - it’s skin-deep. The vampires were pissing me off so I threw my lot in with humanity. They betray me, and I get on that train and I’m washing bits of humanity out of my hair for a fortnight. So what do I do? I get the fuck out of Dodge, that’s what I do. I’ll do whatever it takes to survive, Herrick.
BH 3x08, “The Wolf-shaped Bullet”
The sincerity of that statement on Mitchell’s part (from his own POV, that is) may be questioned, seeing as he is talking to Herrick in a cage, but I think he does speak his mind. Not when he promises to side with Herrick, but when he admits his character flaws. Herrick has been called “consistent” a few times in the series, but I think Mitchell is pretty consistent with his changes too: he has them in every series. He’s truly a wild animal: if you poke him, he’ll bite. He flips out after the paedo scandal in series 1; he goes nuts after the explosion at the funeral parlour in series 2; fear of death and Lia’s prophecy drive him to more than morally questionable actions in series 3. Again with shifting the blame. Basically, Mitchell’s attitude towards pretty much everything is just a more complicated version of this:
gif by hiddlybatch
Episode 3x08 is a testament to the part that George plays in Mitchell’s rehabs. I’m not saying that Mitchell is a bad friend (we’ll get to that later), but maybe if he’d been focusing more on George’s problem instead of looking for blood-free romance, he would have been able to manage his own condition better. The thing is that people with problems are more selfish than people without problems, so in that respect, Mitchell is very realistic. And yet, it’s George, and George alone, who “decides” Mitchell’s fate in the end.
Mitchell: I don’t wanna know anymore.
Herrick: But you’ve been searching for this for months.
Mitchell: And then I saw the look of contempt on my best friend’s face. And I realised that this has to stop.
BH 3x08, “The Wolf-shaped Bullet”
And I can’t help but wondering: what if instead of making George his executioner, he’d tried to make George his “guide” (the kind of relationship that Hal and Leo had)? Would things have been different? Or is it just Mitchell’s own fatal flaw that stops him from ever breaking the cycle? Is it even possible?
gif by heathuschrist
The whole issue of blood-drinking and intimacy brings us to another interesting (and sad to say, just as negative) point about Mitchell: the recruits.
Mitchell Recruiting
Mitchell, as we know, was given a choice when he was recruited: his life in exchange for the life of the other soldiers he was with.
Mitchell: I wanted some company.
Herrick: You’ve got company.
Mitchell: Other company, Herrick!
Herrick: I said no recruitment. […] You know, the Old Ones, they kill at will but they don’t recruit lightly. In fact, most of them only do it once. They choose a protégé. It’s an eternal bond.
BH 3x06, “Daddy Ghoul”
Right, Herrick, your creepy crush on Mitchell is showing. Herrick is apparently a great believer in eternal bonds. He refers to a recruit as his maker’s “saviour” and “dark angel”. Creepiness notwithstanding, Herrick actually has some pretty sound ideas about the maker - recruit relationship, as demonstrated by his reaction to the Mitchell/Lauren situation.
Herrick: You just keep hurting her! You recruit her, that’s fine. Then you just leave her. She wakes up with us, she doesn’t know where she is, she’s calling for you. So fine, we pick up the pieces the best we can, but then, Jesus Christ, then you try and take her back!
Mitchell: She’s the one who came to me.
Herrick: Well, where else was she gonna go? She couldn’t exactly call child line, could she? When I recruited you I didn’t abandon you. I took care of you. You know why? ‘Cause it was my responsibility.
Mitchell: I was helping her.
Herrick: What, by getting her to buy into this ridiculous… your fad?
Mitchell: My what?
Herrick: This thing you’re doing with you and your furry friend. Raiding the dressing-up box, pretending to be human. It’s a game!
Mitchell: This… this is not a game.
Herrick: Meeting in hotels like you’re what, lovers? You, you rip her mortality away and then you try and patch it up with these scraps of human behaviour! That is cruel, Mitchell! Why can’t you just let her be the thing you made her?
BH 1x04, “Another Fine Mess”
gif by heathuschrist
It says something when a megalomaniac villain lectures you about responsibility. But worst of all is that Herrick is completely right. Mitchell lets himself get so caught up in his own guilt that he just cannot take responsibility for hurting people. The story repeats with Bernie: after Mitchell has recruited him, he can’t even bring himself to look at the boy. While the guilt is understandable, it should be noted that recruiting Bernie was Mitchell’s idea. Even after his mother was told who Mitchell was, she didn’t immediately rush into begging him to save Bernie. Mitchell basically insisted on it, and then he turned around and abandoned Bernie just like he had abandoned Lauren, without any consideration for what it might lead to. For all we know, the next thing that happens offscreen is Bernie munching on his Mum; he’s already told her he’s hungry.
It’s like Mitchell is a guilt junkie. He couldn’t let Bernie die because he would have blamed himself (though in my opinion, it would have been the mob’s fault) and now that he’s recruited Bernie, however noble the motivation is, he blames himself for it too.
Mitchell/Annie
gif by doctoremrys
Mitchell: What do you want from me?
Annie: Nothing. Don’t change the subject.
Mitchell: You want every little corner of me. But I just don’t wanna give it.
Annie: Why are you being like this?
Mitchell: Oh, come on, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed! All the bright smiles and the chat, it doesn’t make up for what just isn’t there.
Annie: No, you came and got me, you saved me, you said that you loved me-
Mitchell: I was in love with the idea of being a hero. Your rescuer, your saviour. I said I was in love but not with you. It’s for the best, one day you’ll realise.
BH 3x05, “The Longest Day”
A lot can be said about this pairing, but I’m looking at it in terms of its influence on Mitchell right now, and it’s interesting how after all his searching for love, he chickens out when he finally finds it. He even admits it:
Mitchell: You and me, it’s for eternity. Really forever. I was running scared, a typical useless man but I don’t wanna live without you. I can’t live without you.
BH 3x05, “The Longest Day”
But once again, I think there is a certain truth to Mitchell’s prior outburst. He does love the idea of being a hero. It makes him feel less guilty. And since what happened to Annie was to some extent his fault he just had to rectify it.
Mitchell vs. Nina
It’s very seldom that I see the middle ground in the Mitchell vs. Nina debate re: series 3. It’s either “Mitchell was evil, he deserved what he got” or “Nina was a bitch, she was mean to Mitchell”. I’m not forcing my opinion on anyone but very few people really do deserve dying. As for Nina’s side, I can’t imagine anyone acting differently in this situation. It could be argued that Nina was manipulated by Herrick, but let’s not forget that underneath all that exterior fierceness, Nina is a very compassionate person and Herrick never hurt her personally, not the way he hurt the original trio. She was faced with taking care of a vulnerable, amnesiac man whose very existence threatened the safety of her household. She wanted to make sure her baby would be safe and unlike the other three characters, she could never fully accept the way her life had changed because of becoming a werewolf. I think that what she says in series 2 is still very relevant in series 3:
Mitchell: I understand, I really do, but it’s gonna take time to adjust.
Nina: Adjust? You’ve gone native. The three of you. Maybe I’m being naïve, maybe it’s a consequence of your condition… our condition. I don’t know. Your humanity, this thing… Are you protecting it, are you looking for it, do you even know? Because take it from me, it’s long gone. And this house accelerates it, it’s insane here. You’ve got monsters and killers…
BH 2x02, “Serve God, Love Me and Mend”
In series 3, Nina is appalled when George agrees to killing Herrick. George can be understood too: Herrick threatens the household; but then, it’s not normal to solve problems by killing their sources. Nina’s reaction is the most human of all: even Annie eventually comes to the point where she considers Herrick’s death necessary. From a viewer’s POV, I considered it necessary too, but I wouldn’t have been so sure if I’d found myself in such a situation in real life.
So it’s not that surprising that Nina listens to Herrick when he shows her Mitchell’s journal. She refuses to believe it, but her actions, perhaps a little premature, are very normal: she is afraid, so she calls the police. Besides, it’s not like she points a finger at Mitchell and declares him a murderer (not that she would even be wrong in this case); she just tells the police to talk to him. That’s all. It’s what anyone would do. Mitchell does a lot of idiotic things because he’s scared for his life; Nina’s motivation is exactly the same: fear. So I’m not taking sides in that debate. In fact, I’d rather stop poking at it at all because it’s all too explosive.
Mitchell and Friendship
suicidalmime
Like I said, I don’t think Mitchell is a bad friend. He’s as good a friend as any fundamentally selfish person can be. I think it took me a while to realise that Mitchell was right when he wanted George to be the one to kill him.
Mitchell: He has to kill me because he has to disown me. You’ve all become corrupted by me but George most of all. He suspected more than any of you. And so he had to choose between his love for me and his ethics. And I let him choose me.
BH 3x08, “The Wolf-shaped Bullet”
George is the kind of friend everyone would want to have: the one who defends your every move, the one who always stands by you. He can be pretty self-involved too, but it’s not like he doesn’t have a load of his own problems to deal with. He still manages to pick up more pieces than Mitchell ever did. Even after everything Mitchell has done, George is still taking his side - except it’s not enough anymore. I used to think that Mitchell’s request was cruel, but the more I think about it, the more I see that it’s a girft to George. A really painful, hard to accept, screwed up and twisted gift, but a gift nonetheless. More than that, it may be the first entirely unselfish thing we see Mitchell do on the show. And it’s a logical resolution of his story.
That scene at the end of series 3 is so painful to watch because we finally see the true depths of Mitchell’s desperation. He was never above asking for help when he thought he needed it, but it never seemed so raw and sincere before. He’s not asking just to help him; he’s asking to help everyone else by putting him out of this world before he can hurt someone else (talk about ego though).
One thing about Mitchell’s reasoning bothers me, however:
George: What if I forgave you?
Mitchell: That’s not your right. I didn’t hurt anyone you know.
BH 3x08, “The Wolf-shaped Bullet”
Why is forgiving him not George’s right but killing him is? Is it because forgiveness just doesn’t work anymore? Maybe I should just stop overthinking things.
Mitchell vs. Hal
I’ve been thinking about their similarities and their difference a lot lately and even wrote a fic that somewhat dealt with that. They are indeed pretty similar when it comes to their background: both soldiers, both seem to have taken that path out of the inability to choose anything else (Hal tells Leo in the prequel that he didn’t have much to live for anyway and Mitchell tells Bernie that his dream when growing up was just to be happy because there hadn’t been many career options back then). Incidentally, both of them got to choose upon their recruitment and became vampires willingly. Both of them seem to have “cycles”, except Mitchell’s are much shorter and more sporadic, while Hal’s last from 10 to 50 years or so.
I think the fundamental difference between their ways of managing their condition is their motivation. They both have support networks in place, but Mitchell is always chasing his fairytale love story, while Hal appears to be more focused on himself. When Leo dies, he almost flips out and yet he miraculously shows enough restraint not to kill baby Eve. He later wants to kill the pawnshop owner, yet backs off at the mention of Leo. I believe it’s a testament to his respect and love for Leo rather than his dependence on him. The memory of Leo is enough to make Hal want to continue staying on the wagon. I’m not denying the importance of Hal’s friends, but I do think that he might have gone on alone if he really put his mind to it. We all need somebody to say no to us once in a while, but Hal seems to be strong enough to say that to himself occasionally. He stopped himself from succumbing to Yvonne’s influence. Even when he drank blood, his first priority was still to save the people in the club from Tom (saving Tom as well because Tom wouldn’t have taken well to having killed someone).
Another significant difference lies in their attitude to humanity. Mitchell wants to be part of it so badly that he considers every defensive action taken by humans against vampires as betrayal. I’m not trying to justify what Kemp and Lucy did to his coven, but “good” vampires are indeed few and far between. Not to mention that whatever they did is solely their fault, not Lia’s or any other Box Tunnel victim. Yet Mitchell views himself as the wronged party and seeks revenge against people who have nothing to do with it whatsoever. Hal, in turn, subscribes to Leo’s view of their position in the world:
Hal: Leo once said we were on the outside of humanity so that we might guard it. He made it sound like a priviledge rather than a burden.
Tom: I don’t think any of us deserve that job anymore.
Hal: Then we must earn it back!
BH 4x08, “The War Child”
He does not make the mistake of overidentifying with humans, thus he doesn’t feel “betrayed” when/if a backlash happens.
The Hal/Cutler story bears some interesting similarities to Mitchell/Lauren, but they are mostly superficial. First of all, Hal was legitimately evil when he recruited Cutler. Everything he did he did on purpose. He was trying to raise a monster and he succeeded (in a way). I don’t know if Hal subscribes to Herrick’s theory of eternal bonds (in my headcanon he doesn’t but that’s mostly because my headcanon deals with a lot of stalking done by Cutler, so Hal just wants him to sod off already), but he does take responsibility. Sure, he abandons Cutler too, but that’s five years later. After he’s taught him some stuff. For all of Hal’s cruelty and sadism, I wouldn’t say he is a bad maker, but Mitchell definitely is.
All things considered, I do believe that Hal is a better person at heart. That is not to say that Mitchell is rotten at the core or something. I believe he comes from a good place, he does want to get better, he does want to stop being a monster, but he’s essentially a far more selfish person than Hal is. Maybe it’s his inherent trait, maybe it’s because he’s younger and hasn’t had that much time to sort himself out, but when it comes to being a hero, I believe Hal has much more potential.
Mitchell As A Character
Given all of the above, it might seem that I hate Mitchell. I don’t. I love him. I loved him to pieces before Hal came along and stole some of that love, and I still believe that he’s one of the best fictional vampires ever, along with Hal and Spike. But he’s also one of the best fictional characters because he’s got more flaws than redeeming qualities and he still causes people to love him madly. He is complicated and layered and he’s not one of the good guys but he’s not one of the baddies either. He was never explicitly good or evil, but he was always painfully realistic.
Mitchell is funny, charming and he cares deeply about his friends. He’s also prone to leaving things half-done (as illustrated by his recruitment incidents and the way he basically forced a coven of “clean” vampires on Ivan when he thought he had a chance to get a normal “human” life). He’s a perfectly imbalanced cocktail of screwed up and sweet, a man with an unattainable dream, and that makes him so very human.
gif by marginallysecretsentiment
Death as a cure is a funny thing that can happen only in such weird stories as Being Human, but I do hope that it’s what it was for Mitchell. That he doesn’t feel hunger anymore and can dwell a bit on the things he did wrong in life and finally move on. Personally I don’t believe that he is waiting for Annie behind that door that Eve took her to at the end of series 4, but I do believe that she won’t just let it rest and that she will find him eventually.
All graphics found randomly via Tumblr and Google and belong to their respective owners. Being Human is propery of the BBC and Toby Whithouse.