The Trouble with Being Human
Mar. 26th, 2012 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kingandySpoilers 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.
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.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 02:09 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 02:22 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 02:25 pm (UTC)- 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.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 02:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 04:10 pm (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-26 04:27 pm (UTC)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...