Being Human Recap: Happy Mother’s Day!

Previously on the first season of Being Human: Aidan was a 257-year-old vampire who had a really weird relationship with Mark Pellegrino, but that’s probably just how Mark rolls, until Aidan found Jesus in a hot piece of Quebecois ass in 1970 and has been trying to live clean ever since, with disastrous results, up to and including killing Mark Pellegrino, which is always wrong even if he’s usually playing the devil in some form or other.

Josh was a 24-year-old Jewish werewolf with big, pretty brown eyes who was half Smurf/half jerk until he met the lovely, if prickly, Nora and then just became a weirdo who kept telling her horribly obvious lies but still managed to knock her up because never underestimate the intoxicating aphrodisiacal power of pretty brown eyes and social awkwardness. But she lost the baby when he scratched her while wolfing out and now she may or may not be a werewolf.

And Sally was an adorable 23-year-old ghost whose fiancé was obviously not just evil but stupid and never looked in the mirror because dude was totally dating out of his league but still killed the hottest woman he was ever going to convince to sleep with him. Then he rented their house to Aidan and Josh who spooked him enough to confess to killing Sally.

Even Josh’s wolf is adorable.

Happy, loving couple with ice cream cones walks down the street and past some creeper who vamps out when he sees them. He follows them briefly until Aidan comes up to him and grabs his face, but not to beat him up. He’s still Aidan, so he gives creeper a bag of hospital blood. He’s Tommy, one of Bishop’s “orphans” and much like Bishop, enjoys looking a gift horse in the mouth and whining that he left his family because Bishop promised him a new kind of life, he doesn’t know what to do, Aidan needs to do better than hand-delivering the blood bags and whinewhinewhine. No wonder Bishop was such an asshole. These baby vampires are exhausting. But Aidan’s a big pushover so he tells Tommy to come by the hospital the next day. Because that always worked out last season. Then Tommy asks who “she” is because that’s all he’s been hearing on the street. That “she’s coming.”

This leads into Aidan paraphrasing Kris Kristofferson, saying “Freedom’s just a pretty way of saying that you’ve gone off the grid. For better or for worse, you’re out of options.” Nothing left to lose, if you will. As Aidan continues waxing profound about freedom’s untenable nature we see Sally sketching door after door but has difficulty holding the pencil for long while Josh tries to write an email to the admissions officer at his former med school and Nora leafs through Josh’s wolf journal. Aidan starts winding up his voice-over telling us that “Freedom’s just that moment of calm before the dread sets in.”

As he walks to his front door, he’s beset by a bunch of tweaked out vampires who appear to basically be camped out on their doorstep, demanding blood from him and he finishes that “No matter what you freed yourself from you only get so far down the open road…before you have to take a turn, make a choice, and sentence yourself to your next adventure.”

No wonder Bishop was a dick.

Morning dawns and Nora’s in bed, still lazily leafing through Josh’s wolf journal on the floor. Clearly, she learned Sofia Vergara’s very important lesson from the Golden Globes this weekend of always sleeping in your LEEPSTEEK, and looks dewy soft and pretty instead of puffy-eyed, bedheaded and creased. Josh slips in next to her and it’s all very sweet and romantic because they’re very sweet and romantic but this leads into exposition that since the miscarriage the doctor recommended they not be intimate for at least a month and it’s been about a month so they should be good to go. So they’ve actually been a couple for three months and have had sex once. They could live with the Dutch because they’re practically Amish.

Josh tries to turn it into sexy time but he gets a little too frisky around her scars. Nora pushes him off, joking that he’s really a “morning” person and Josh apologizes, saying it’s the “wolf.” This leads Nora to play Sherman to Josh’s Mr. Peabody so he can further explain the whole heightened senses and raw meat cravings, but Josh stops when Nora gets a hella intense look on her face, telling her that she doesn’t need to take all his baggage on, that was never the point of “this.” Nora’s at a loss to what “this” is so Josh says his experiment with Aidan of living a “normal” life like regular people, having an apartment, a job, a girlfriend who’s too good for him. He clearly thinks he’s being thoughtful toward her, that she’s only asking because she wants to know all about him, but Nora’s expression says she’s not looking just to be the “good girlfriend.”

Happy, loving couples make it look so easy.

Oh, thank god. Aidan and Sally and her hijinks. I can only take so much of good looking people in love. With her new, more-tethered to this plane, existence, Sally’s trying to warm up Aidan’s “blood” in the microwave, but can’t press the button. Aidan tries to tell her it’s okay but she first snaps at him that she can do it then asks exactly how important it is that the blood be warm. I think I can actually see Aidan’s brain shaking in his skull from trying to figure out Sally-logic, but Josh comes in and saves the day by putting Aidan’s coffee mug of blood in the microwave and warming it up for him.

This is just a segue for Josh to ask Aidan about the tweaking vampires who’ve set up camp on their doorstep. Aidan says it’s just temporary and that he took care of them, but Josh was born at the end of the 20th century, not the 18th, so he knows a lot more about bums and creepers and lets Aidan know that a month isn’t “temporary.” Josh brings up the fact that he thought killing Bishop would wipe Aidan’s slate clean, but Aidan points out that killing Bishop meant he was responsible for containing the chaos. Sally’s still Sally so she doesn’t understand why it’s Aidan’s responsibility. Aidan brings up the really salient point that if not him, then one of their doorstep tweakers would step into that breach. This gets Josh’s and Sally’s attention, so Aidan says, as Sally gingerly walks across the kitchen clutching a coffee mug, he just wants to lead by example and teach all the “orphans” how to live a life of normalcy and civility. This may or may not make Sally drop the mug.

257 years, and he still can’t lie worth a damn.

With Josh indisposed cleaning up Sally’s mess, Aidan brings up Mother coming to visit. Josh is not particularly happy about the news because he figured they were freed from this “Mother” person or maybe she took a cruise, but Aidan tells him that she’ll determine the proper order of the Boston family, even the Council can’t go against that and “It’s all good.” For some reason this started playing in my head. I’ve always wondered what Andy Summers mother was like. I bet she was hilarious because while the rest of Synchronicity was Sting wanking about Jung because he was all tantrically sexy by this point, Andy writes the most fucked up song and just primal screams it, reminding Sting that he is, and will forever be, a douchebag.

Anyway, back to Being Human. Josh just wants things to not be their normal where Aidan’s talking about Mother and Sally’s breaking floating coffee mugs when Nora comes down because everyone has their limits.  Sally thinks Nora will be fine because she’s already seen Josh wolf out and Aidan not die after getting impaled by a giant pointy piece of wood, and she knows about Sally, so how much worse can it be? Josh has a catalogue, but doesn’t get to talk about it because Nora’s come downstairs asking after Sally. Seems she found the notice of Sally’s five year high school reunion (Even though the notice says “10 year” since…Sally’s only 23. CONTINUITY, people.) in the trash and wanted to make sure she knew about it. Sally knew, because she’s the one who tossed it.

I actually thought they were apples and oranges.

Aidan and Josh talk to Sally about not going, and Josh offers the benefit of being able to openly gawk at what losers everyone’s become, but Nora can’t hear Sally. When Josh tells her Sally doesn’t want to go, Nora tells her she has to because it would be like attending her own funeral…which Sally did, but Nora’s trying to be nice. Sally points out to Josh that reunions are supposed to be about your successes, and what can she do? Hold a spoon? Josh translates this to Nora as Sally having valid concerns, so Nora tells Sally they’ll only see her in the best light. That she was so young and so beautiful, which flatters Sally but when Josh agrees and tells her “It’s true,” (Aw, good doggie.) Sally gets flustered and says she has to go look at her hair. Josh’s moment of grace has passed, so he reminds her that she can’t fix it and she snots back that she can still look.

Nora continues trying to bond with Sally, but Sally’s gone and the guys just let her make a fool out of herself. She picks up on this quickly, though, and as Josh tells her that Sally’s “considering her hair,” Aidan remembers that they have to go to work. He offers Nora a ride but she’s on the afternoon shift. She kisses Josh goodbye and he promises to see her “before he turns” and leaves. Nora’s all frowny-faced, though. She dumps her coffee in the sink and is breathing heavy as she looks at the scars on her arm from where Josh scratched her. I’m sure it’s nothing.

It’s just a flesh wound.

Over at the hospital, Josh is in a good mood when he goes into an elderly man’s room to change his bed linens. The man appears to be dead but his leg is twitching. Josh pulls the curtain back to see Tommy the tweaking vampire sucking on the old man’s ankle, and Tommy’s resemblance to Steve Carell is only a little disturbing. He recognizes Josh from all the times Josh pushed past him while he was tweaking out on their doorstep and suggests that Josh page Aidan.

Aidan comes up as Josh stands outside the dead man’s room. Aidan stumbles to ask Josh to be his lookout, so Josh fills in for him, telling Aidan he’s been jonesing to be an accessory to murder. But I think his jovial demeanor was meant sarcastically. Tommy’s still in the room with the old man when Aidan sees him. He apologizes, saying he was looking for Aidan but settled for the geezer and Aidan’s all “Yeah, no. I get it,” then slams Tommy into the wall for being an idiot because, seriously, dude. An ankle-biter?

Oh, did I mention? The wolf also brings out the sarcastic jerk in me.

Tommy boomerangs from mewling to entitled in .1 seconds and tells Aidan he’s starving and everyone’s worried about Mother coming because of “The Culling” and that she’s just going to kill off all the newbie orphans to restore parity among the different families. (Prescient lyrics: “Oh mother dear, please listen. And don’t devour me.”) This is news to Aidan, but he tries to play it off like he has it under control. His David Boreanaz eyebrows would beg to differ.

Sally’s outside the high school watching the new batch under the Alumni Weekend banner when a teen boy’s voice tells her that every time he gets weepy, he remembers how Van Hogan used to pants him and how much high school sucked. Sally gets excited to see “Stevie Atkins” and is about to say “I thought you were dead,” but then duh. She changes the subject to wondering why he’s even haunting the high school and he jokes about how they totally glamorized his suicide (Teenage suicide, don’t do it!) and what a great message it is to send to the kids.

Murdered by my fiancé! FACIAL! I win!

Sally gets into a dead-off with Stevie and tells him she’s stealing his spotlight this year because she was murdered by her fiancé. Stevie agrees that’s cold then tells her Diane Alcott just died, too. Sally clearly didn’t like Diane so she comes up with ridiculous ways to die including “her boobs creeping up and punching her in the face,” which wouldn’t kill her but is pretty funny. Stevie brings down the room by telling Sally that she died of malaria while working on a humanitarian mission in Africa. Sally still can’t let the high school resentment go and says “Well, that’s just stupid. They have drugs for that,” but Sally’s not that much of a stone bitch, so she feels like an ass for it.

Aidan and Josh are walking the dead man down the hall telling each other they don’t have to do this. Josh still doesn’t get why Aidan’s handling everything himself because he thought there was this vampire Merry Maids that made all these things disappear. And there was, but as Aidan points out, Bishop was in charge of all that and since he’s kind of dead it’s all fallen into disarray and Aidan’s the only continuous thread. Josh finally seems to realize that things with Aidan are going to get really hairy, though, and he pulls up, telling Aidan that he has his own things to deal with like Nora and going back to med school and maybe he can’t be Aidan’s accomplice on this. Aidan’s understanding with Josh but freaked because, again, he can barely keep his own shit together.

This whole “man’s best friend” thing? Only once a month, dude.

Sally’s at the reunion with Stevie and when Sally sees one of the cute boys not holding up so well, Stevie shares his theory on why reunions suck. The women always look better while the men look worse, but the women still remember the cute boys from high school and will eventually need their friends to pick them up to save them from a walk of shame. Sally’s impressed with his wisdom, since he still looks 16, but no time to dawdle. There’s a memorial video for Stevie, Sally and Diane, accompanied by a Mazzy-Star-level annoying cover band droning Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

Stevie’s pictures are cute and awkward but most of the reunion people don’t remember him. Sally’s better remembered and you hear a few voices saying how much she’s missed and how pretty she was. Then Diane’s pictures come up and the whole reunion “Awwwws” which sets off Sally’s Sallyness. Stevie wonders when she got so bitter and Sally just says she never “saw the point” of Diane Alcott. Just as Sally will be 23 forever, Stevie will be 16, which is worse, and all he can see is how hot Diane was. But before Sally can pop him, Diane wanders up with her vapid, beauty queen voice talking about how sweet it is to know that you can touch so many lives without knowing it. Then she wonders if they went to school there, too, and Sally tells her they were in her class. Stevie tries to cover for Diane’s shallowness by telling her he killed himself junior year, so he understands why she doesn’t remember him and she just introduces herself while holding out a limp hand for them to shake.

Dead fish handshake? The mark of the beast.

An anxious Aidan’s dressed up real pretty and with his new brown highlights and over-gelled hair heads over to the Halloway Hotel. He walks into the lobby and is surprised to see Heggeman waiting. The full council is there which throws Aidan because he figured it would just be a meeting with him and Mother. He confuses Heggeman for Bishop and confides that things have been fucked five ways to Sunday since he killed Bishop and has questions, but Heggeman cuts him off and says he has no questions, only answers and the only answer he has is “Yes” when she offers him Boston. Then he says “Tradition,” like he’s Tevye and Aidan’s confused. He walks into the meeting room and there’s a conference set up with a bunch of geezers and I wonder if you have to look like a RomneyBot to be a member of the council. Because if you do, Aidan’s screwed.

Mother convenes the council meeting and offers Aidan her condolences for Bishop, since he and Aidan were “close.” That’s one way to describe it. Then she asks Heggeman for the Council’s decision, and he says that Aidan has their full backing and with hers they would bestow full legitimacy on Aidan taking over Boston. Her “hmmm…” is inscrutable and she asks what’s to become of Bishop’s orphans. Heggeman says that they were illegitimately turned so they will be culled. Mother’s been slinking like a cobra over to Aidan the whole time and is standing over him when she asks what he thinks.

Call your mom and thank her for not being this one.

He thinks about sparkle ponies and rainbows and says that the orphans are scared and confused and want to know why they’re being singled out.  He thinks they should receive mercy. The spooky gong sounds indicate that Aidan’s talking out of his ass, but he proceeds saying that they need to be careful to paint the orphans with the same brush they used on Bishop, because it was his ambition that was the enemy and his orphans could be valuable to their cause. Mother just says “No,” because she’s a bitch and just likes toying with the others. They’ll be culled, just like Heggeman said.

With Aidan in his place, Mother continues that they’re convened to name the new leader for Boston, and rather than naming Aidan, Mother decides nepotism works and names her “daughter.” Half the council make “Whuh huh?” faces but they all kind of skirt around the issue, with Heggeman wondering if being in that hotel wouldn’t be too “overwhelming.” But like all good, rich people Mother just decides that her “daughter” will succeed because Aidan will work as her “second,” which means he’ll be the guy who does all the work but get none of the credit. Ah, plutocracy. She does offer to overlook his “heresy” and to give him his freedom if he helps the daughter succeed, but, again, rich people have different definitions, so be careful what you wish for, Aidan.

I over-gelled my hair for this?

Nora’s in the cafeteria with a giant, raw steak for lunch. She’s practically getting high from the smell when some random nurse comes to help exposit that Nora’s probably a werewolf as Nora explains that she’s on some paleo diet where you eat a lot of raw meat and run like your fleeing dinosaurs. She’s an even worse liar than Josh. The other nurse tells her to take diet pills and Nora realizes it is kind of gross and starts eating the other nurse’s chips. Then the other nurse says “Thank God, you’re human,” because the foreshadowing may have been too subtle. Nora just twitches us out of the scene.

Sally and Stevie are bonding over being dead, and she wonders if he ever regretted killing himself without knowing what was next. Stevie admits that he never thought it would work, that someone would stop him and Sally gets sad for him. Then she tells him he at least has his “door” to look forward to, but Stevie tells her that it’s a “known known” that suicides don’t get doors. Sally shares that she missed her door, so she may be in the same boat. Stevie asks her if she ever tries to sleep. Sally thinks he’s making that up until she realizes he isn’t. He says it breaks up the endless nothingness and he even dreams, which feels like living but everything turns out right. Sally suggests that things can still turn out right for him, which triggers the 16-year-old horndog in him, but she suggests he try to make it work with Diane Alcott.

Sally suddenly realizes she’s not smarter than a 16-year-old.

Josh is finishing up his lunch in the courtyard when Nora comes up. She’s cute and wants to know what time he’ll turn. Josh is thrown, wondering why it matters. She wants to drive him to the woods. She’s a bit frenetic about the whole thing which tweaks Josh’s Joshiness and he thinks it’s a bad idea. Nora gets pissed and thinks that now that she’s seen him turn, what is there for him to be scared of, but he just wants to keep his human life as separate from the wolf as possible. He asks to be alone for the transition and says they can talk about it later. Nora still hasn’t told him about her scratches, opting instead to just get mad and accuse him of putting it off.

Mother and Heggeman are lingering behind, discussing the kids these day and how ungrateful they are. Heggeman is good at being a sycophant, though, so he tells Mother that her daughter will succeed in time, and that she blames herself too much for the daughter’s shortcomings. Mother decides to crawl up on her cross and whine that Heggeman’s wrong. It’s always the mother’s fault. Waaaah. Then she shit-talks Aidan and wonders how the Aidan she knew 80 years ago became a heretic. A minion brings out a case and Mother tells Heggeman that Aidan can’t fail and it’s their responsibility to see to it. There’s a rifle in the case. Mother hands Heggeman a bag of silver bullets and tells him that there is to be no folly, no distractions and “no wolf” in Aidan’s life.

Vampire pity party

Aidan comes home and sees Tommy on his porch. He tells Tommy that the plan is to cull the Boston family but that he’s doing what he can to stop it. Tommy knows that if Aidan’s not the leader there’s nothing he can do to stop it so Aidan suggests Tommy runs. Realizing he’s a dead vamp, Tommy guilt trips Aidan, telling him Bishop loved him above all others. That whole trying to kill Aidan was Aidan’s fault, I guess.

Feeling well and truly like shit, Aidan goes inside and tries to guilt Josh over being hard on Aidan. Josh isn’t really biting and brings up their agreement to help each other lead normal lives. Aidan says he knows and it’s the most important thing in his life, but Mother asked him to help lead Boston. Josh is all “And…?” but Aidan lays it all out that he needs to do this so he can be freed from the council and the families but there’s a good chance he’ll become something Josh doesn’t recognize and if that happens, he needs Josh to remind him of who he is. Sniff…ambiguously gay, overly emotional scenes between vampires and werewolves always make me cry.

Aiming for sad puppy dog, landing on nausea.

Back at the reunion. Stevie’s pouring his heart out to Diane. She’s swaying to the music and it looks like she’s listening to him until she randomly turns her back to him mid-sentence. Sally’s had enough, unleashing all the resentment she had toward Diane while they were alive, including spilling that she organized Stevie’s memorial to garner votes for Prom Queen, and tells her that even if life is easy for people like her death shouldn’t be. Diane really does have all the depth of a puddle and that’s enough for her to atone for her sins of vapidity and self-absorption, apologizing to Sally for being mean and being glad she no longer has to suck in her gut. This epiphany brings Diane’s door. While Sally stews over how the pecking order still remains, even in death, Stevie walks Diane to her door so she can move on.

Aidan goes to meet with Mother at the Halloway but she senses others lurking. It’s Tommy and a couple of other orphan noobs. They want to talk to Mother but Aidan tells them it’s a bad idea, that he would handle the situation. Tommy tells him to handle it with them and they all pull out stakes to kill Mother. That’s not what Aidan meant, so he tells Mother to stay back while he fights the orphans. Mother looks pleased with Aidan’s loyalty to the council but lets him get into it, first killing Tommy, then fighting the other two until they have him in a vulnerable position and Mother has to throw them off him before beheading them with one sweep of her hand. Damn.

Some mothers eat their young.

Josh lets Nora drive him to the woods. She’s grateful to him for letting her be there and tells him a humiliating story from her freshman year at college, where she woke up naked in some theater geek’s living room after drunkenly humiliating herself, repeatedly, the night before. She tries to bring it around to understanding what he’s going through but Josh tells her it’s not the same. She understands, she just wants him to know that he’s not alone in this. She just wants to be a good girlfriend to him.

He smiles and appreciates the effort and says, in a not unromantic way, that she wants to hold his hair back when he vomits. It works because he’s really cute and has big, sweet, brown eyes and Nora laughingly agrees. With that settled, Josh plainly says that he loves her but that she needs to get as far away from him as possible. They kiss goodbye and as Josh walks off into the woods to transition, Nora stares at the full moon.

Aiming for cute puppy dog, landing on adorable.

The full moon segues to over a rather tony house on a leafy street as a town car pulls up to the woods behind the house. Aidan in his fancy clothes gets out and closes the door on Mother as he walks off into the woods. The scene segues one last time to the house where Sally’s home from the reunion and looking for Aidan and Josh who aren’t home. She’s upbeat as she lies on the sofa.

In the woods with Josh and his rump roast on a leash as he strips and waits to turn. Nora hasn’t left, yet, and is waiting to hear Josh, hoping she’s not infected. Back to the house and Sally is levitating when a door appears. She walks over to her door and at first it’s a tunnel with a blinding, white light at the end. She calls for the guys to come see before she walks through, but it quickly turns dark as she sees a figure at the end. The figure starts moving toward Sally and she’s frightened, calling out for Aidan and Josh but they don’t come and the figure, a reaper, descends on her, coming through her door and engulfing her…before she wakes up, levitating over the sofa. Damn. Stevie forgot to tell her about the nightmares.

Not exactly a dream turning out right.

Aidan digs up the daughter, under Mother’s watchful gaze, and Josh starts to turn while Nora’s waiting to hear his screams. When she does, and hasn’t started to turn, she thinks she’s safe and starts the car but she just jumped the gun and starts to turn, as well. She screams for Josh and tries to flee the car, but the seatbelt has her trapped and the pain becomes too much for her to even unbuckle the belt. As we see her face transform, Josh hears one last scream and it puts the wolf at bay enough for him to run to her…except Heggeman is there and shoots Josh, grazing his shoulder, bringing back the transition. While the wolf is coming out, Heggeman takes aim once more and the scene fades to black and we hear one last shot. Obligatory OH NO!

But, my money’s on Josh being okay, since he’s one of the leads and Terry Kinney isn’t. Overall a good introductory episode to the season, and Aidan and Josh work that ambiguously gay, overly emotional aspect of their relationship beautifully. Mother scares the crap out of me but that could just be her bangs. Or pilgrim shoes. And I won’t lie. I might have actually squealed out loud when a certain creepy blond guy showed up at the end of the season long trailer. I’m looking forward to the season. Any other thoughts?

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