The Trouble with Being Human

[kingandy]

Spoilers for the last episode of Being Human ahoy.



I begin by saying that I loved it; emotionally and dramatically it was very powerful, and though I would have liked Cutler to have had more of an impact it was appropriate for a character so obsessed with making history to have no legacy whatsover. And it's fine that it was fairly obvious that Alex was going to replace Annie - "fairly obvious" is not "guaranteed", and they introduced her naturally and organically. And she's a good character. Even if it does mean all three main characters are now, essentially, blokes.

However, there are ... issues.

On a narrative level I would have liked at least part of the prophecy to have been misinterpreted. That parchment was so vague - "Godhead", "Death", "Arm", "Fire" - that it beggars belief they would have got it right. Expecially as the child didn't have to die. There was nothing special about her death that fixed everything, only the manner of it - an explosion in a room full of the most powerful active vampires on the planet. That's all.

The big one, though, is the bomb delivery mechanism. The moment - the moment - Tom said he didn't know how to build a remote trigger, I thought, "Well that's no problem! A ghost can just waltz in there and set it off, no bother. Or teleport it in. Job done!" And there is no reason in the world that they could not have done this. Annie can teleport an armchair. Alex can teleport a man-sized walking corpse. Either one of them could have taken a rucksack-sized bomb in and detonated the room at any time. Eve would never have been in danger for a moment.

That shouldn't detract from it, though. A very solid episode, creepy and driven and they even managed to squeeze in a bit of mundane chat amongst all the drama and posturing, too. Top marks.

Comments

[elektrobard.livejournal.com]

See, personally I thought it made a bit of a change that they didn't have a misinterpreted prophecy, and that they actually meant what they said. It was a vague prophecy I grant, but I think the majority of shows would have seen the child saved in an epically heroic manner with the prophecy either altered or unfulfilled somehow. That said, history had already changed partially in that Tom was not put in a position whereby he would never fight again (the previous episode) so there is an argument that may in itself have been enough of a history change to justify the rescue.

Naturally, it's clear they also did it to complete their reset of the 'three supernaturals in a house' dynamic.

I enjoyed it - Mark Gatiss at his sinister best too :)

[kingandy]

"that may in itself have been enough of a history change to justify the rescue." But it wasn't so much about changing history as it was about the future affecting the present. The prophecy - if Eve's interpretation is to be believed - was about travelling back and making the prophecy come to pass; Tom's escape, a successful change to the timeline, made Eve's death more compelling, not less. Or something. But yes, we've seen time and again the terrible prophecy that comes to pass in an unexpectedly benevolent way ... change is as good as a rest, as they say.

(Though, it would have been more refreshing to see a precise and explicit prophecy that comes true exactly as stated, rather than a vague and ambiguous set of nouns that everyone happens to interpret the right way. To be fair, everyone interpreting it either had milennia of study under their belt or a deep personal involvement, but still.)

Also: Yeah, the trinity is clearly a "format" that the universe favours. There may yet be deep supernatural significance to this, or possibly it's just a lampshading of the higher-up executives insisting they get back to an easily-encapsulable status quo. Or the one has led to the other. Either way is good; if executive meddling leads to a deeper, more epic resonance for the series, a feeling of being part of something stretching back through the ages, then so much the better.

Even if it was a teensy bit obvious they were going that way. Which is fine, because "fairly obvious" is not the same as "definitely inescapably" ... it could still have gone either way.

[elektrobard.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's right - the future was always the 'bad ending' you get in a video game. They may just have not wanted to find time to give us the prophecy in the great detail it may have been initially conceived as, but I get what you mean.

I'm not sure whether this executive meddling thing is good or bad either. They have certainly given themselves an excuse for a deep supernatural significance - and of course two precedents now - but if they pull out the 'Power of 3' thing, I'll bloody slap someone :)

At the start of this week's, we did think that one of the two ghosts was going to be gone by the end of it, and that it was more likely to be Annie. She wasn't exactly a spare part this series, but very clearly playing the 'mum' role that made that house dynamic ever so slightly wonky. I look forward to the next season with great interest, and no small wonder as to who the mysterious 'cleaners' are. Very Men In Black, in the Mage Technocracy sense, if you ask me.

[kingandy]

Oh, so much. The reality deviants must be purged...

[areteus.livejournal.com]

My main gripe with the prophesy was the interpretation of the 'death of all vampires' being transmuted to 'the death of all the old ones but one'. The implication of the prophesy (which Cutler, Hal and Mark William's character all seemed to follow) was that as soon as the baby did what it was supposed to do all vampires would immediately die... though I suppose with the death of their major powerhouses they may diminish significantly and could, in theory, die out in time.

Yeah, Cutler dying stupidly fitted the character wonderfully IMO. Though I would have liked to have seen him in more future episodes as an ongoing baddie or even (had he changed sides) an uneasy ally who could potentially turn again at any point.

[kingandy]

Yes, it wasn't like she released some sort of toxic vampire gas, or anything.

I wanted Cutler to be right, he knew about Twitter. It was really only the unknown quantity of the "cleaners" that threw him off. At the time I was wondering how "trick the humans into an alliance by showing them werewolves" would lead to "execute the prime minister" ... in retrospect it was a bit of a massive clue that it wasn't going to work.

[kingandy]

Though, at the same time:
- The cleaners don't seem very technological; most of those camera phones would have been uploading photos and videos to remote sharing networks the moment they were taken. It seems unlikely they would have been able to put that genie back in its bottle.
- On the other hand, we see evidence of such things on the internet all the time. Until it gets picked up and verified by the news - which they may well be able to stop - it's just another meme.

[kingandy]

Supplemental: They really, really should have run some sort of viral marketing campaign along the lines of "PROOF OF WEREWOLVES OMG" videos.

[binidj.livejournal.com]

Yes, they certainly missed a trick there.

I'd have felt better about the Grey Men if we'd seen one or more of them doing diabolical things to social media postings in addition to the hardware confiscation.

[areteus.livejournal.com]

There were You Tube videos - look at Puppy Love...

[kingandy]

About 34,300 results for "Puppy Love".

EDIT: Oh you meant IC. Yes, depending on how you view it that episode either completely fails to foreshadow the existence of the Cleaners (who some are calling the Magicians), or shows that they're really good at getting people to think that it's fake footage. Or just don't care, because people do that anyway...

[notdan.livejournal.com]

The thing I found really frustrating about the "Warchild must die to save the future" prophesy is that she's already done it! Adult Eve kills herself to travel back in time, manipulates events so that Hal ends up living with Tom and Annie, and it never once occurs to her that this might be significant! The whole line, "my future diverged from yours when I sent Hal, Leo and Pearl to you" seemed hugely weighted - the set-up seemed to be that by setting Hal up with the others, Eve had changed his evil destiny. When that wasn't paid off, it was pretty unsatisfying - especially as Annie pays it off by blowing up a baby instead!

[mistressp.livejournal.com]

We really enjoyed the season as well, despite being incredibly dubious at the beginning when the new characters were introduced. Over time I definitely warmed to them and I have to admit I now probably prefer Hal and Tom to Michell and George (certainly in season 3 anyway).

I thought it was nice that things didn't end in a traditionally happy way, and that someone actually included a story in which the 'right' solution was infanticide. It'll be interesting to see where they go from here. In terms of the prophecy being completed in its entirity, them I suspect we'll find out that it wasn't. Hal survived, and I'm pretty sure I spied a couple of old ones sneaking out the back door (specifically the very young girl in pigtails), so it may usher in the events that will ultimately lead to the death of all vampires, but there's probably work left to do.