Being Human: Season 2 Finale

When I first heard of Being Human, I knew it was a show for me. A friend described it as a bunch of prissy 20-somethings that live in a house, but one’s a ghost, one’s a vampire, and one’s a werewolf; and they’re all trying to be “normal.” And since they are obviously very far from normal, the audience is treated vicariously to these poor damned souls’ repeated failures. Doesn’t that just sound epic? With that description you KNOW there’s going to be angst. And indeed there was—bunches of it, in fact—especially in the finale episode.

But in the middle of this latest season, the angst sort of built up into a stagnant tsunami. There were a whole lot of feelings going on but the writers seemed to forget the fact that in order to balance out these feelings they needed to provide us with some sort of anchor for these emotional responses. You know, like plot n’ stuff. They were trying, but they didn’t get it right until later on.

I have this theory as to why things became so stale mid-season. I think that in regards to this particular show, it only works if the vampire is emotionally tortured, the werewolf is aggressive, and the ghost is ditzy. And they all have to have some sort of vengeance brewing on the back burner, like a personal vendetta or something. If the writers keep this intact, I feel like the audience will lap it up like a five-dollar latte. Of course, the way I put it, this theory sounds pretty loosely based. But if you consider that the main idea behind a narrative arc is to get an audience hoping and fearing for the protagonist(s), and that this is accomplished through flaws and conflict, and that adding flaws and conflict to characters turns them into moody bitches—well then, huzzah. My instincts are infallible!

In the finale episode, Aidan the vampire (Sam Witwer), after having been exiled by the vampire queen, Mother (Deena Aziz), has run off with his lady love, who also happens to be Mother’s daughter—the royal vampire heiress Suren (Dichen Lachman). Aidan and Suren must keep a low profile if they are to survive. The problem is that Suren is accustomed to the royal life. Everything has been handed to her and she is hungry…NOW. Will they be able to keep hidden? Or will they die in their attempt for freedom in love, away from the oppressive control of the vampire queen? Do you see what I mean? That is just one of the story lines going on in this finale, and it feels pretty tense, huh?

The second storyline deals with the werewolf Josh (Sam Huntington). Josh’s plotline is all sorts of messed up. At the beginning of the show he was going to be a med student at MIT, but the whole werewolf thing put a damper on that. He dumped his fiancée, abandoned his family, and got a job as a hospital janitor where no one would know who he was. Of course, this sort of curse looms. It wasn’t long before he was getting romantically involved with Nora (Kristen Hager), a nurse from the new hospital. And of course he gets her pregnant, and then accidentally turns her into a wolf too, and then…well there’s actually a whole bunch of stuff that happens to Josh, too much to name here. But in the current episode he has found out that there is a possibility of lifting the curse if he kills his maker. He has to track the original wolf down and kill him. And don’t even get me started on what happens once his old fiancée comes into town and starts to pursue him romantically again. Augh! Drama! Josh’s story line is rife with it.

And Sally (Meaghan Rath) has had a long and winding road in ghosts-ville, but recently she has discovered that she has accidentally become both insane and evil. She’s still getting over her latest psychotic break when she discovers that there’s a way that she might be able to help the people she hurt. Nothing is certain in the afterlife, so her only options are to blindly charge forward or to do nothing to help her friends. And of course she opts for the blind charge. That’s just good TV.

Do you see what I mean now? There are all these confusing plots and they are all interwoven, and so there is enough angst floating around to power a small country. And we carry that angst with us as we watch the plots move forward. It’s the kind of thing that’ll get you shoveling the popcorn in.

So if you like angst, and complex plots, and decent-looking otherworldly creatures, then you should catch this show for sure.