Being Human - A Twofer

 

“The Times They Are a Changin”

Nora and Xander (who I’m sure has a character name but I don’t care) are ok after the standoff in the storage unit.  He helpfully reminds her of some wolfy code that “there is no worse sin than turning on one of your own.”  Oy.  This is the last we see of Xander but I’m guessing he’ll be back soon enough.

In other Josh and Nora news, Josh meets a teen patient, Erin, who got scratched during the last full moon.  Erin’s parents are meth addicts or some such so she’s been stuck in the foster system, which is why Josh and Nora break some rules and bring Erin home to help her through her first shift.  She finds their prediction about her turning into a wolf a bit hard to swallow.  Even more difficult is watching Josh’s video of him turning, especially the nekkid bits.  Heh.  The night of the full moon, they send her and Nora into the woods with a slab of meat and tips for pre and post-shifting.  Josh reveals that he’s packing some tiny heat (not a euphemism) just in case things go sideways.  The shift goes fine…bringing a new meaning to terms like ‘female bonding,’ ‘that time of the month,’ and ‘ladies’ night.’

If you remember, Sally kissed a guy from her past, Trent, and he died.  She wants to go to his funeral but there’s too much risk that other folks from her past would be there.  She manages to find his ghost and explains how she’s sort of responsible for his death. He takes it as well as you might expect.  To help make amends and to possibly help him get his door, Sally agrees to talk to his fiancé and apologize on his behalf for cheating on her with Sally.  Turns out the fiancé had been cheating on him for over a year so she felt a lot less guilty.  Trent yells at Sally a bit more, eventually finds his door and goes through it.  On the other side of the door is Donna the witch, with a really big knife.  She slices him, turns him to dust and eats it.  Then Donna the witch gets younger.

And Aidan?  Well Aidan and Henry are trying to find folks with clean blood.  It doesn’t go well and Henry is still pretty pissed at Aidan for setting his blood-slave girlfriend free.  Aidan asks Josh for help finding folks at the hospital who never got sick.  Josh is hesitant at first but agrees.  Henry is weak and has apparently fed on a tainted human because he’s sick now.  Oh and he feels the need to remind Aidan that everyone who loves him dies.  Nice.

“I’m So Lonesome I Could Die” aka Aidan Dances!!!

It’s 3am and Aidan is having a party while Josh and Nora are trying to sleep.  Erin’s drinking and Josh shuts that down quickly (she’s 15).  Sally spot checks to make sure she doesn’t know anyone and then joins the party.  She’s dancing with Aidan and it’s pretty cute.  Unfortunately Aidan is just covering up his pain with frat parties. 

Nora’s going home for her mom’s birthday and Josh wants to come along.  Nora doesn’t think this is such a good idea but he wears her down.  So he and Erin go with her and Erin makes an impression on Nora’s brother, RJ.  Josh was hoping to make a good impression on Nora’s dad (by asking his permission to marry his daughter) but the dude doesn’t have much personality.  Later RJ shows up at their house and makes out with Erin.  Josh shuts that down pretty quickly and they throw him out of the house.  This pisses off Erin and she runs away.

Sally has a dream that she’s killing people she knows.  She decides she needs a new identity and goes to Aidan for suggestions since vampires have been doing just that for hundreds of years.  He takes her to a dive bar where she’s sure to not run into anyone from her past but he’s really only interested in the rather large tattooed gentleman at the end of the bar.  Aidan follows tattooed dude outside and leaves Sally alone.  She goes outside and finds tattooed dude on the ground with fresh bite marks.  Later Sally yells at Aidan for being so careless but he makes a point about even people who didn’t get the virus before could be getting it now so there’s no way to be totally safe.  Aidan awakens to find Sally straddling him with a stake pointed near his heart.  They have a heart to heart, he shows her where the heart actually is and he decides to get his life together.  He takes a shower, the universal symbol for starting over and goes back to the hospital to get his job back.  At the hospital he finds a bubble boy who’s been locked up for the past eight months.  Oh boy.  Oh and Sally gets caught at the funeral home where she talked to Trent’s finace.  She was looking for possible new identities in the dead baby files (ew!).  The hot funeral director offers to help her and offers her a job too.

Last Night's Being Human

"(Dead) Girls Just Want to Have Fun"

I’m trying to make these recaps a bit shorter because I don’t need to recount absolutely everything that happens on the show.  Like Will says, “Brevity is the soul of wit” and wit is a goal of mine so I'm gonna attempt some brevity.  I just love the show and the actors so very much that I want everyone else to love them too.

Xander Berkeley (if you don’t recognize his name, you’ll recognize his face) opens the episode and he’s on a hunt for his son.  He’s under the impression some vampy Amish might have some information about him.  Xander looks off to the side, sees a wolf head tacked to the wall, and gets the unfortunate answer to his question.  After dusting the vampy Amish he vows, to the wolf head, to avenge his death and take out the killer’s loved ones too. 

Sally is back and in a new outfit!  Plus her hair looks very cute.  Apparently they found and unearthed Stevie and Nick and they’re looking pretty good in Josh’s clothes.  Nick is reunited with his girlfriend, Zoe the medium. Stevie wants to see the world so they send him on his way but before he departs, he promises not to kill himself again. 

Josh and Sally reunite with Aidan (yay!) and he’s understandably confused as to why he can hug a now corporeal Sally.  Oh and he notices that Josh doesn’t smell like a dog anymore.  Aidan’s been buried for a year but it seems like some pretty huge things have happened.  Back at the house and Aidan’s beard is gone.  Boo.  They throw out some literary jokes about him looking like a young Mark Twain, etc. and I’m bummed because I think he could have totally rocked a well-tended beard.  Oh well.

Sally is dying to get out of the house but they’re very nervous she could be recognized.  It’s a tv show, so it’s bound to happen, but I’m out all the time and never run into people I know and Charleston is a SMALL town compared to Boston.  Predictably she runs into a guy who cried at her funeral.  She tells him some unbelievable story about how she had to fake her death to get away from her abusive fiancé.  He walks her home, they kiss, she invites him in, but he refuses (huh?).  Apparently he’s not feeling well but would love to take her on a date tomorrow.  The next day he’s found dead on her street.  Uh oh.  Josh surmises that this is part of that clause about not talking to people who knew you before you died.

Aidan is nervous to drink from the blood bags Josh brought home for him because they could be infected.  Josh offers himself but is afraid that if there are still traces of the wolf inside him that it might send Aidan into fits.  So Aidan heads out in search of fresh blood, tries to buy baby blood (really?!?!) and gets beaten up by werewolves because of it.  Hottie Henry swoops in and saves him.  Henry brings him back to his place where he introduces Aidan to his uninfected but also compelled girlfriend, Emma.  Poor Emma hasn’t left the apartment in months because Henry doesn’t want her to risk getting sick.  Aidan is not ok with this and sets her free.  Henry is not ok with that and storms off.

Josh and Nora are sweet as usual.  She wants him to go enjoy his new life as a human and to stop babysitting her during her special time of the month.  No, not that time of the month; the one where the moon is full.  Josh has plans to propose to Nora but Sally doesn’t want him doing it the morning after a shift.  She probably has a point considering Nora will be all tired and bloody, etc.  Remember how Xander Berkeley was in town?  Well he finds Nora in her protective storage locker.  He catches her up on his search for his daughter, Brynn, and his wanting revenge for the death of his son, Connor.  We flashback to how Aidan killed Connor last season and we know it was to protect Josh and Nora but I’m guessing Xander won’t care.  Instead he wants to shift in the storage locker with Nora to find out what kind of wolf she is.  Ooookay.  The next morning, Josh shows up but there’s a huge hole in the door and no Nora inside.  Not good.

Being Human Season 3!

 "It's a Shame About Ray" 

Our friends, Aidan, Sally and Josh, are in the kitchen having a discussion about death.  Sally and Josh insist we all have to die someday.  Aidan, who is already sort of dead, counters that he’s not going to die.  Wait a tick, this isn’t right.  This isn't how we left everyone at the end of last season!  Then we see that this conversation is a hallucination and instead, Aidan is buried deep underground and fully bearded (love the beard!).  Oh and he’s freaking out a bit, understandably.

Being Human is back, y’all and I hope you’re watching. 

Nora is visiting another psychic in a long line of psychics because she is trying to contact someone dearly departed.  The psychic does her stuff and we cut to a handy-dandy flashback that acts as a “previously on Being Human.”  We get to see what happened to Josh, Nora and Josh’s maker, Ray at the end of last season.  If you don’t remember, the theory was that if they killed Ray, Josh and Nora could break their wolfy curse.  So they killed Ray but we don’t know if it worked.  Luckily for the psychic, she doesn’t see the gruesome flashback but instead sees that Josh and Nora are totally good for each other, blah, blah, blah.  As it turns out they’ve been trying to contact Sally who is stuck in limbo.  Speaking of…poor Sally and her two ghost buddies, Stevie and Nick, are stuck together.  Sally keeps unsuccessfully trying to get into the house.  Nick and Stevie keep unsuccessfully trying to talk her out of it.

At the hospital (where Josh and Nora work), Josh is questioning vamps about Aidan and his whereabouts.  The interesting this is that the vamps have all been showing up at the hospital as patients (instead of being there to feed) with these really gross lesions.  We flashback to see Josh and Nora on the first full moon after offing Ray.  This is so exciting!  Did it work?!?!  For Josh?  Yes.  Yay!!!  For Nora?  Not so much.  Boo!!!  Geeze, that sucks.  So I guess she’d have to kill Josh to break her own curse, right?  It’s too bad the law of transference didn’t work in this instance.  They’ve got another psychic en route but she refuses to even enter their house.  Um, no kidding.  Plus she’s been there before (during Sally’s exorcism).  There’s bad juju in that house and Ms. Psychic knows better.  Plus she tells them that bringing Sally back isn’t so simple.  Nora pleads with her and Ms. Psychic tells them to visit a Ms. Gilchrist who may help.

Meanwhile Sally pulls Nick out of the water (he’s back to his daily drowning schedule) and cuts Stevie down from a tree (he’s now killing himself every day and in places where he can watch his family go on with their lives).  The madness must end.  Josh and Nora find Ms. Gilchrist, er Donna, at a soup kitchen.  She’s up for it as long as they have $2,000 and a heart.  Oh and the heart has to be from someone they’ve killed.  It’s a good thing they’re murders!  Oh and they aren’t just bringing back her ghost.  They’re brining Sally back completely.  Like dig up her body because she will be rejoining it completely.  Whoa.

Donna wants to make sure they know she won’t be quite the same.  She’ll be like an aware zombie with emotions and stuff.  But she absolutely can’t have reunions with loved ones.  No contact whatsoever with folks from her past.  Yeah, I’m sure they’ll stick to that rule.  In limbo, Sally, Nick and Stevie are giving the door to the house one more shot.  Nick and Stevie are giving the whole talking her out of it thing one more shot too.  Except that the door opens ever so slightly this time.  Sally, the dear that she is, encourages the boys to come with her through the door.  Yeah, that’ll go well. 

Josh and Nora are keeping vigil and suddenly her body starts breathing.  Sure, she’s wrapped up like a mummy and covered in bits of heart from dead Ray but she’s breathing.  Somehow they have moved Sally’s body home now and are still watching her as she breathes.  She mumbles a bit and they know she’s awake now.  This is creepy, even if it means Sally’s back.  They unwrap her and the corpse is gone and has been replaced by lovely Sally instead.  She’s having trouble talking  but manages to squeak out the words Stevie and Nick.  Josh, bless him, hears something about Stevie Nicks coming back with her (my friend Dana tells me this was an ad-lib from Sam Huntington and it makes me love him more; even if he doesn’t have a beard).  It dawns on Josh that she’s referring to Stevie and Nick and that they’ve been brought back too.  Hey, they got three ghosts for the price of one.  Except, are they back in their own bodies?  Their bodies, which are still currently buried?  Yipes!

Lastly, we see Donna out in the woods and she’s pouring one out for her homies.  Actually she’s pouting out the rest of the witchy brew made with Ray’s heart.  The liquid starts flowing in one direction and she follows it.  Right. To. Ray’s. Grave.  Crap.  We don’t need him back.  And he’d be back as a ghost, right?

While all that was going on with Josh, Nora and Sally, poor Aidan has been having quite a day.  I mentioned the beard, right?  Well it’s worth mentioning twice.  He’s uncovered by a stake wielding dude who fits Aidan with some sort of torture helmet straight out of the Saw movies.  This will go well.  Aidan and his very special helmet awaken to get a glimpse of his new digs.  Then he passes out again.  Not that I’d offer to feed him, per se, but dude is very obviously starving to death.  I could not abide that.  Plus, I mentioned the beard RIGHT?!?!  Aidan’s kidnapper is draining his blood (like he has any to spare) and all the while is rambling about people paying big money because he’s pure.  Odd. 

A bit later, Aidan’s captor is making a deal for some blood and the deal goes pear-shaped.  The captor dude is now dead and we’re joined by the creepy Amish dude from last season.  He takes Aidan away from the helmet and creepy basement but doesn’t seem to be in a good mood about the whole thing.  Oh and he stops Aidan from drinking any of the blood that’s just hanging around because he’ll get sick.  They’re in a van and creepy Amish guy catches Aidan on what’s been going on since he’s been buried.  Vamps are getting sick and dying (again) from feeding on tainted humans.  I’m liking the potential of this storyline. 

Aidan is hallucinating again and is having a conversation with Sally, Josh and Bishop who are all in the van with him and creepy Amish dude.  Bishop is trying to encourage him to fight to save himself.  Too bad Aidan is done fighting.  He’s over it.  Bishop gives it one last try and convinces Aidan as well as Sally and Josh.  So Aidan gathers all his strength, which isn’t much, and tries to fight creepy Amish dude.  It doesn’t work.  Instead, creepy Amish dude feeds on Aidan and is really bummed when it doesn’t cure him.  Then he dies.  Yay!  Unfortunately now Aidan is stuck in the middle of nowhere and the van has crashed into a pole.  This seems like the end for Aidan but no.  ‘Cause remember at the beginning he was convinced he wasn’t going to die (again)?  He’s muttering to himself, while lying on the ground near the van, that he’s going to live.  Hallucinogenic Sally and Josh are there to watch him slowly die from his blood loss.  But then Birdie is singing “Skinny Love” and Aidan is just not giving up.

Hang in there, bearded Aidan!

Hotel Transylvania - How did I not know Sandler was involved?

First you notice Adam Sandler's voice as Count Dracula.  Then you recognize the voices of Andy Samberg, David Spade, and Kevin James.  That's when realize you just paid money to sit through an Adam Sandler production.  

Hotel Transylvania wasn't terrible but it wasn't ParaNorman either.  ParaNorman was deep, had a message and was kind of scary.  Hotel Transylvania was light, had a bit of a message and was not at all scary.  I think I actually did laugh or at least crack a smile a couple of times during the movie.  My main problem was that I couldn't get past what I thought was a big problem in the story.  Yes, I'm about to quibbling over the story in an Adam Sandler movie. 

The deal is this: Monsters feel all persecuted from humans for being all monster-y.  They need a place to get away and be themselves so Count Dracula provides them with a shangri-la of sorts.  Meanwhile, Drac gets on his soap box every chance he gets with his message that  humans are awful, terrible, torch-weilding, pitchfork-carrying meanies.  His hatred of humans is in reaction to the death of his wife and also serves as a way for him to keep a watchful eye over his beloved daughter, Mavis.  Of course Mavis wants to get out and see the world but Drac wants to keep her safely tucked away in his human-free hotel.  Enter the bumbling human, Johnny.  He stumbles into the hotel and Drac has to get him out of there without alerting any of his guests.  Too bad he falls for Drac's daughter and doesn't want to leave.  If Mavis finds out that not all humans are bad she might actually leave Drac behind. 

So my big problem with the story has to do with the "monsters" being so anti-human.  Three of said "monsters" are actually human or part-time humans.  The invisible man is human. Wolfman should be a part-time human but stays wolfie throughout the flick. Lastly we have Quasimodo who is definitely human.  The latter is the one who finds out about the Johnny being in the hotel and decides to try and cook him (being French of course he's the hotel chef).  So maybe we could argue that if the world sees you as a monster then you lose your humanity and buy into your monster mentality?  I dunno.  It's a kids' movie so there's no reason to get into deep discussions about what makes someone a monster.  However it would be nice to have a little accuracy.  Or is that just me?

Being Human - The Day After

"Partial Eclipse of the Heart"

We rejoin Aidan as he's about to be pummeled by Henry and the two thugs.  Too bad for the thugs, though, because Henry is forever faithful to his maker.  The thugs get staked and Henry offers his help to Aidan but only if they leave Suren behind. He refuses and stakes Henry in the gut, which will look good for Mother.  Suren is hungry and cranky (I've been there, girl) and thinks she should return to Mother to protect Aidan.  He promises her rainbows, unicorns and lots of blood if she can just sit tight a little longer.  Aidan has a plan and it turns out, that plan involves the "Dutch," aka, the Amish vamps.  He arrives at the farm and wakes up the ginger, Amish vamp who's now in charge of the group.  If Aidan can convince the rest of the Dutch to hide them from Mother, he and Suren will get protection for a little while.  Aidan returns to the skeezy motel to let Suren know there's some hope but she's gone.  She's back at the hotel and into Mother's good graces.  Poor Aidan.

Sally can't find Zoe in the hospital's nursery but then finds her in the cafeteria.  Zoe ignores her but Sally wears her down with the threat of reciting what she remembers from The Canterbury Tales.  Apparently Zoe isn't a fan of Chaucer so she talks to Sally.  Zoe is done with ghosts and is really tired of being a medium. There's an eclipse and one of the ghosts Sally shredded pops back up.  He seems like he's in a lot of pain.  This is where Sally shredded him so she assumes that Nick is probably back at the house since that's where she dispatched of him.  Danny's there too and writing on the ground.  Nick tells Sally they're all stuck in a horrible limbo and there's pain, lots of pain.  Zoe arrives and gets to say goodbye to Nick.  He lies to her that he's in a good place so she'll be able to let go and move on.  She buys it (because who wouldn't want to?) and now Sally has to live with that particular lie so that Zoe can get some closure.  Sally totally owes her this.  Danny tells Sally a bit more about limbo and acknowledges it's where scum like him deserve to be.

And in the bigger, more gut-wrenching storyline of the week...Josh and Julia are comfy in their relationship.  He has a dream about Ray (his maker) and decides to stalk Ray to see what he's up to.  Julia's best friend, Chelsea is coming to town for a visit. Julia wants to know if Josh is ok with telling her they're back together even if it means alerting their friends and families who will have lots of questions.  Also, Chelsea refers to Josh as "the demon man-child who ruins lives."  Not totally accurate but I understand why she'd choose that nickname. Ray is back with his wife and son, which gives Josh some pause about killing him.  Ray sneaks up on Josh during his emotional struggles and welcomes him back with open arms and a little advice.  Ray thinks it's a splendid idea to tell a loved one the secret about the wolfie stuff.  It worked for him so it should work for Josh too, right?  Josh meets up with Julia and Chelsea for drinks and vitriol.  Josh gives Chelsea a sweet and honest apology and she accepts it with a caveat...he better be deserving of Julia's love this time around.  The aforementioned eclipse happens after Chelsea leaves and Josh goes running out of the restaurant with Julia chasing after him.  He gets stuck in an alley with a chain link fence and Julia stands at its opening, waiting for him to turn around.  When he does she doesn't run.  He lets out a yelp of pain as he phases, Julia flinches, takes a step backwards and get hits by a car.  Nooooo!  Josh runs off for the rest of the eclipse and returns to the accident.  She's sitting on a curb all beat up and bloodied.  Josh goes to touch her but she waves him off.  He tells her the whole story and why he couldn't tell her.  Josh only wanted to protect her but she tells him it's too late and nods in the direction of the ambulance where her dead body is being loaded.  Double NOOOOOO!  Poor Julia.  Her door arrives (really quickly), she tells him she loved him enough for his secret he just never believed it and she's gone. 

Season finale next week!