Being Human Precap: The First Season

Hey Gasmii! Looking for more entertainment about vampires, werewolves and the women who love them? No? How about US remakes of wildly popular UK programs? No? Maybe a new SyFy series? Still no? How about Three’s Company for the New Millennium where they still think the Jack is gay, but this time because he’s living with another guy and they’re really smurfy around each other but no one can see the girl, and not because Santa Monica in the 70s doubled as Puritan New England? Eh? Ambiguous homoeroticism? Maybe? Well, whatever, you’re in luck! Here comes Being Human, a North American (US/Canadian hybrid because they needed cheaper talent and locations) a SyFy remake of a wildly popular UK show (Now with a 15% more attractive cast that appears to bathe on a regular basis, Aidan Turner.) about a hot vampire, his nerdy werewolf best friend and the lady ghost who came with the house they’re renting. With season two starting next Monday, here’s what you missed last season.

Josh Radcliff is a nice, nerdy, Jewish (they emphasize it several times, including making the Star of David he wears rather symbolic) ex-med student who’s now working as an orderly because two years earlier he went camping with his buddy and, just like the origin story they stole from An American Werewolf in London, he got turned. He’s BFF’s with a hot 257 year old vampire named Aidan McCollin who was turned during the Revolutionary War by Mark Pellegrino, the banal face of evil who plays Bishop, head honcho of the Boston vampires who’s a cop, owns Sapp & Sons, a local funeral home, with his other “son” Marcus, and runs a local “blood den” which is the Being Human equivalent to Fangtasia only instead of a punny name, redneck, meth-faced bartenders and Estonian strippers, it’s very artfully decayed with private booths and models who willingly let vampires feed on them.

Nothing unusual to see here.

Aidan and Josh are having a tough time with this whole “mainstreaming” thing because Josh has a penchant for killing deer when he’s a wolf and often forgets where he left his pants, forcing him to steal hideous dresses from clotheslines and needing Aidan to gather up his stuff and drive him home. Meanwhile, Aidan has a problem that sometimes, when he gets a boner, he also sprouts his fangs and accidentally kills people. They decide that the best thing for them to do to prevent this from happening in the future is to live together in an artfully ramshackle house that comes complete with its own lady ghost, Sally Malik. Who’s only been dead for six months and was 23 when she died, so her being a ghost is the least annoying thing about her. Seriously.

So they all set up house in the house where Sally died and is still owned by her ex-fiancé. Josh and Aidan work together at Suffolk County Hospital, and even though he was a med student, Josh has been relegated to being an orderly while Aidan has the super sexy job of being a nurse, which is the thing about Aidan that makes Josh go squirrelly. Vampire? Sure, why not. Nurse? Really? How Aidan managed to do things like go to school, get his degree or fill out an application what with his probably not having a birth certificate to get his Social Security number, which didn’t exist in the late 18th century, so he can work in the US legally is not addressed, because he’s hot and hot people don’t have problems. Just ask Josh’s sister, Emily.

Just realized she died before that hot oil treatment.

Once settled in, it’s time to delve into their own issues and damages. Sally’s are the simplest because she was a happy, 23-year-old, engaged woman ready to start her life when tragedy struck and she died. She doesn’t exactly know what that tragedy was, but gradually pieces it together and realizes that what she thought was her happy life was really kind of miserable and she died when her asshole fiancé, Danny, pushed her down the staircase because she dropped her engagement ring down the bathroom sink. Bummer. He’s also started dating her best friend, so Sally makes it her mission to break them up and force Danny to confess his crimes.

Josh has a thornier situation in that he’s still mostly human, with a human family and human weaknesses, frailties and mortality except for once a month when he becomes a vicious, brutal, killing machine. At the time of his accident he was a student at MIT who was engaged and set to go to med school, to please his psychiatrist father, but after the accident he moved back with his family to rehabilitate. Once home he started transitioning, and like the good scientist he was, began journaling about the transitions to see if he could figure out their origins to stop them. But Emily found the journal, gave it to their father, and when he determined that Josh was batshit crazy, Josh fled to Boston and never spoke to his family again. He settled into a menial existence working as a busboy at a diner until a chance meeting with Aidan after getting his ass kicked by Marcus led him to think that maybe he could mainstream and have something resembling a normal life, if nothing like the one he was on track for before turning.

So cute it hurts.

And Aidan McCollin, hot vampire, has the most operatic situation, because he’s a vampire and it’s never long before their issues get all Catholic. He lived the better part of his first two centuries being the vampire equivalent of a honey badger but suddenly found Jesus in Montreal in the early 70s and has been trying to live a clean life ever since, with very poor results. He fucks up regularly, including in the pilot where he accidentally mauls Rebecca, a co-worker, after a date and needs Bishop to “help,” which results in the young woman getting turned into one very angry and irrational vampire. Aidan confuses the guilt he feels over Rebecca being turned by Bishop with love and the two proceed to reenact much of Drugstore Cowboy only they don’t shove a dead Heather Graham in the ceiling of the crap hotel Aidan stashed Rebecca in, and I’m a little sadder for that.

But Rebecca is the least of Aidan’s worries. He has this whole two-century dysfunctional family dynamic going on with Bishop and Marcus. Seems Bishop turned both men at about the same time, except Marcus was kind of a regrettable drunken impulse and Aidan was the real prize. Nearly two hundred years of Aidan being the Marcia to Marcus’ Jan vying for Bishop’s affection has really turned Marcus into one bitter Smithers of a vampire.

Even in scrubs, she knows she’s too good for him.

While Sally’s busy picking scabs about how she died and what a dick her fiancé was, and Aidan’s torturing himself over how every time he tries to do the right thing someone either gets killed or turned into a vampire, Josh manages to meet a beautiful, willowy, blonde nurse named Nora who has just enough flintiness and bitchery to her to make sense of her finding the “doe eyed” but grossly inappropriate and awkward orderly attractive. Their give and take is actually rather charming and occasionally heartbreaking because she’s had her own, more human, problems with a dysfunctional family and abusive ex who left her literally scarred but even that’s not enough for her to understand Josh’s situation so as they get closer he gets more and more awkward, especially when he finds out she’s pregnant with his werebaby. He also learns the hard way that you never, ever, ask your girlfriend if you’re the father of her baby. The more you know.

Sally has her own moments of grace and growth when Aidan and Josh introduce her to Tony, a ghost who unfortunately died in 1987, forcing him to roam the earth in tight, high-waisted jeans, eyeliner and a mullet. He’s been at the whole haunting thing for Sally’s entire life, so he teaches her the way of the ghost, including how to focus her energy to travel beyond the house, that a door will appear when it’s her time to move on, and how to accept her fate when it does. She, in turn, uses her Sallyness to encourage him to find closure with the girl he left behind and when he visits her and sees she’s had a happy life his door appears.

Mark Pellegrino, the banal face of evil.

Aidan doesn’t really get that release, as he spends most of the season having a dick-swinging contest with Bishop. Except one of Bishop’s covers is as a cop, meaning Aidan needs just a little too much help in cleaning up his messes, giving Bishop the upper hand. Marcus is really, really tired of being the “mistake” to Aidan’s good son so he takes matters into his own hands and visits “the Dutch,” a powerful sect of “orthodox” vampires who don’t take kindly to Bishop’s power grab and modern ways. And in one last insult to Aidan, kidnaps Josh for a “dog fight” against an older, stronger werewolf to entertain the Dutch when they come to town. Aidan strikes a deal with Bishop to rejoin the family if he calls off the fight and let Josh go free. Bishop agrees but Marcus still forces the fight, which Josh wins handily, scaring the bejesus out of Sally because Josh is really gentle and nerdy as a human, so the vicious, brutal killer was surprising. Still, Bishop gave Josh his freedom, Aidan stands by his word and Aidan’s back with Bishop.

Which all leads up to final confrontations for each roommate. Danny, tired of Sally cockblocking him from beyond, takes matters into his own hands (pun not intended but amuses me) and stages an exorcism to get rid of Sally. Sally thinks it’s a joke except the medium is real and ends up locking Sally in the house. But Sally’s grown a spine over the season and manages to turn the situation to her advantage, and possesses the medium’s body to let her and Bridget know that Danny  killed her and he’ll kill Bridget, too, if she doesn’t fall completely in line with him.  Bridget and the psychic believe Sally and hightail it out of there, although Bridget promises not to go to the police.  Sally feels some vindication, except for the unfortunate side effect of looking like The Grudge.

That’ll teach Danny to kill his fiancée before her hot oil treatment.

Aidan, meanwhile, is by Bishop’s side when Bishop lets “slip” that the Dutch are planning on killing him. When the Dutch offer Bishop a penalty of killing off two thirds of the Boston vampires and “going to ground” for fifty years, Aidan offers himself instead, and Marcus offers a “power share” as further penance, but Bishop is Mark Pellegrino, so his plan was to feed the elders juniper to paralyze them long enough for him to behead them and keep all the power for himself. And he almost pulls it off until Aidan saves Hegeman, the eldest of the elders. Of course, as with all good horror stories, our hero has to trip and be confronted with his nemesis, so Aidan trips and just when Marcus is about to stake him, Rebecca stakes Marcus instead.

Rebecca realizes that she’s pretty much sealed her own fate and once Hegeman has recovered enough to leave them alone, begs Aidan to stake her to put her out of her misery. She was never supposed to be a vampire, she hates it and she’s really not very good at it. She kisses him goodbye and places the stake over her heart and he kills her. Sadness.

Not a pretty crier.

This just leaves the final, final confrontation as the roommates prepare to deal with the fallout from Bishop, and Aidan’s happy past catches up with him when he sees an older, but still attractive, woman at the hospital. It’s Celine, the woman whose name Aidan tattooed over his heart 40 years earlier. She has end stage cancer and moved to Boston to live out her final days with her daughter. Aidan offers to turn her, but she’s just there as a plot point to give us back-story on Aidan, and as a convenient blood fount. (SPOILER!)

More importantly, they haven’t a clue in hell where Bishop is or what he’s planning, so Aidan and Josh have taken to acting super hella paranoid and carrying around backpacks full of stakes. It doesn’t go well for Josh, who drops stakes and has to explain to co-workers that he’s taken up whittling as a hobby.

On the other hand, Josh is still trying to work out being a good boyfriend to Nora without telling her about his concerns that their baby is going to look like Eddie Munster and when her HCG levels spike, is also worried that she’s having a litter of Eddie Munsters but everything looks good and normal, except the doctor thinks she’s fourteen and not seven weeks pregnant, and I’m sure that their happiness will last to the end of the season.

Werebaby sonograms make Josh happy.

After Sally regains her good looks by exacting a little revenge on Danny, Danny seeks his own revenge on Sally by trying to burn the house down with her in it. But she’s picked up this ghosting thing and locks him in the house with her, forcing Aidan and Josh to first save him before scaring the living hell out of him and convincing him to confess to his crimes because rotting in jail’s a safer option than being free with a ghost, vampire and werewolf on your tail.

The roommates take a moment to forget about the Bishop drama as they survey the damage to their house. With the landlord comfortably in jail, they plan on making whatever changes they want but their domesticity is broken up first by Sally’s door, that she’s hesitant if excited to walk through, and then when Bishop busts through the front window, uninvited so he starts burning up, and stakes Aidan close to, but not in, his heart.

 RUDE!

This leads to Aidan healing very, very slowly, and many artfully staged shots of shirtless Aidan and all the people who love him, including Celine. Sally and Josh sit with him but when Aidan and Josh remember Sally’s door, they urge her to go back and move on. She’s earned it and they promise to see her on the other side…except by the time she gets home her door has disappeared and according to Aidan, she’s become more tethered to this plane.

Bishop learns about Aidan’s recovery and wants to meet up with him at an abandoned factory to finish it once and for all. Sally’s not keen on the idea and wants Josh to risk his own life and fight Bishop since werewolves are stronger and more lethal than vampires. At first Josh refuses because he wants to keep both his families, the parents and Emily in Ithaca, but also Nora and their baby in Boston, safe, but eventually agrees and he and Sally hatch a plan to have Bishop go to his dungeon while Aidan goes to the other place. Josh, being Josh, slips Nora a letter kind of but not entirely explaining his situation, including words to the effect that he’ll probably be gone in the morning, so she’s rightly freaked out when she sees him at the hospital.

Feeling so many feelings over a Star of David.

Of course, Sally and Aidan hatch their own plan to keep Josh safe and when he goes to the dungeon Sally locks him in and joins Aidan at his meeting with Bishop. Unfortunately, Nora isn’t the kind to just wait for morning, so she bursts into the dungeon while Josh is starting to transition. He’s already sprouted his claws and fangs and bum rushes her out, but the door has a window and she watches the full, gruesome transition before cramping and seeming to lose the werebaby. As she lies on the floor, the Josh wolf realizes she’s hurt and they share a meaningful glance through the gap between the door and the floor. Sniff.

Aidan and Bishop have a much less touching reunion and proceed to beat the shit out of each other, with Bishop really getting the better of Aidan for most of the fight. He almost stakes Aidan but when both Aidan and the stake go flying off scaffolding, Bishop takes enough time to mock Aidan while Sally distracts Bishop and Aidan grabs a length of serrated chain and decapitates Bishop.  How…anticlimactic.

The next day, Josh is taking care of Nora and apologizing for not being honest sooner, but she understands that you really can’t just tell your girlfriend you’re a werewolf without proof. She’s very sweet about the whole thing and wants to know how it happened to Josh. He tells her the plot to An American Werewolf in London again for the viewers who forgot the story from earlier, but she’s mostly focused on how it was just a scratch that turned him. He says yes, and then realizes he has to leave and makes sure she’ll be okay. He holds her hand but she quickly grabs his and when he’s gone she pulls back the sleeve of her sweater to show three very long, very wolf-like scratches. Oh. No.

Where to next?

The roommates are gathered on their floor, celebrating all of them surviving that long night. They discuss plans for the future and how they’re going to join that farm delivery service so Josh can cook fresh and organic when the doorbell rings. Aidan thinks it’s the pizza guy because he ordered a pizza for Josh so he and Sally can live vicariously through him, but it’s actually Hegeman. He’s grateful to Aidan for saving his life and “she” is impressed with how Aidan handled Bishop so Aidan’s scheduled to meet with “her.”

And the show sends us out with one final flashback to a year earlier, where Aidan is first pitching his “being human” idea to Josh as they walk down the alley next to their house. Aidan’s explaining how it would help them as we see EMT’s carrying out Sally’s dead body while her spirit is standing in the doorway and Danny “grieving” on the sidewalk. Josh and Aidan don’t know them, yet, and don’t pay any attention to the scene as they walk through the police tape and walk on.

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