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selenakDisclaimer: It's been some years since my last rewatch. Pray forgive any wrongly remembered plot parts and/or misquotes.
Before the massacre, the way Mitchell and Nina saw each other and how each related to George was fairly avarage. Mitchell in the first season had encouraged George with Nina, as part of their "living human" ideal, but I doubt he wasted much thought on Nina as Nina; Nina was interested in George, Mitchell was George's friend and it was increasingly clear something odd was going on, but again, I don't think she thought much about Mitchell as Mitchell. Then the finale happens, and George inadvertendly makes Nina a werewolf. The only one of the trio who knows about this and tries to help her deal is Annie. Nina leaves and stays gone for most of the second season, only to return for the last three episodes, when things get seriously pearshaped and Mitchell, in retrospect, crosses the point of no return. Nina doesn't know about this, but, as we later realise, George has figured it out. The s2 finale still leaves it ambiguous how much George figured out; when Mitchell starts what could have been a confession, George stops him and says he needs to be able to look at Mitchell. It's season 3 which will specify, as it specifies so many things, and only in the third season do we have a dynamic between all three characters.
By then, Nina has gone from recurrent to regular, she's come to terms with being a werewolf (or perhaps it's that the s2 finale exploded her hope of ever not being one again, but she doesn't brood about this in s3, she's got other things to worry about), her relationship with George is renewed, she and she lives for the first time with George, Mitchell and Annie on a steady day to day, night to night basis. Which does give her an opinion on Mitchell, as the season shows. Mitchell for his part starts the season being informed that a werewolf will kill him, which reveals, layer by increasingly ugly layer, just how deeply his need to survive - at any cost - goes. Because George doesn't tell Nina what he guesses about Mitchell's responsibility for the box car massacre, and because Mitchell's willingness to hand over werewolves McNair and Tom, whom George and Nina have befriended, to the local vampires doesn't come to light, there is no direct conflict between Nina and Mitchell until the mid season 3 episode The Longest Day. But then it is massive.
Back in s1, George and Mitchell took a job in a hospital because it was the kind of low pay, exploitative job that came without questions to their background, the kind where their idiocynracies wouldn't get noticed. Nina, on the other hand, works in a hospital by choice, which is why she does it again in s3 when everyone has moved to Wales. She's a medic by passion, and she believes in the ethics this entails. This has formed her far more than the short of time of being a werewolf did. So when she comes across an amnesiac Herrick, her response is that of a member of the medical profession. Despite his resumé as a master vampire for centuries and his more recent attempt at supervillainous world take overs - which among other things resulted in George temporarily killing him and Nina becoming a werewolf -, Herrick in his amnesiac state qualifies as a patient and as helpless. Which causes Nina to not only defend his life but has her challenge George as well; standing by and let Mitchell kill Herrick to Nina would be as wrong as doing it themselves.
Now George has very good reasons to distrust Herrick's state and to wish him dusted. But the argument still resonates. Mitchell is his best friend, and the affection between them certainly was the core around which the entire Being Human saga evolved. At first, they thought it would help them to live human (however you define this), to not let their supernatural natures define them. But because of the love he has for Mitchell - and love isn't too strong a word, au contraire -, George has started to fall into a habit of looking away when it came to signs that Mitchell might still, not in some fareaway past but in the present, do wrong. This started when Mitchell sired Lauren in season 1, which he could handwave as a temporary glitch in the heat of passion. But the massacre Mitchell commits at the end of s2 was done with forethought and simply refuses to go away. Also, if George first has defined himself as "George and Mitchell" and then as "George and Mitchell and Annie", he's now not only in a committed relationship with Nina, who became a part of the supernatural world because of him, but about to become a father, since Nina is pregnant. He's become a part of "George and Nina" now as much as he's a part of "George and Mitchell". George eventually siding with Nina in the "how to deal with Herrick" question and giving Mitchell an ultimatum (i.e. if Mitchell proceeds with his plans, their friendship is over) is a first sign that these emotional priorities are starting to be in direct conflict with each other.
For Nina, who as opposed to Annie and George never loved Mitchell to begin with - as I said, back in s1 she simply didn't know him well enough to have an opinion beyond "best buddy of the guy I'm attracted to", Mitchell's reaction to Herrick is bound to look in addition to everything else hypocritical even before the bomb shell drops, for Mitchell saying a vampire doesn't deserve to live because of his past track record is definitely sitting ina glass house. But more to the point, the willingness to kill, to torture, it's all in the open now. Yes, Nina is lacking some important background information. (And about to find out that even as an amnesiac who actually really doesn't know he's a vampire, Herrick can be quite the manipulator.) But her statement to Mitchell in their big solo confrontation scene - "you have a poison in you that has nothing to do with being a vampire" - still sums it up. Or perhaps: the reason why Mitchell is still around despite periodic attacks of conscience and the ability to emotionally connect with non-vampires is that when push came to shove, it was always his life above anyone else's. And then there's his ongoing need for savior figures - Josie, Lucy, Annie, and in the most basic way George - and draw his justification for existing and see himself as good from them. Which of course makes him a vampire.
One thing worth noting is that Mitchell, while temporarily concluding Nina could be the werewolf spelling his doom, doesn't act against her. (The reason why he changes policies re: Herrick, however, aren't really because of George, or Nina, they're because he thinks Herrick can tell him how to return from the dead. (Again.) ) He had no problem handing both McNair and Tom over to what he thought would be their deaths, but these were strangers, and McNair spent a life time in fighting vampires to boot. He could tell himself that George would never find out, and that it wouldn't hurt George. But there's no way Mitchell could pretend to himself that acting against Nina - and a pregnant Nina to boot - no matter whether directly or indirectly - would not hurt George, might even destroy him. And George is still the person Mitchell cares most about.
Nina, otoh, doesn't see Mitchell solely in the context of George, or of George, herself and the unborn child, though that's important. When she finds out the truth - that Mitchell is responsible for the box car massacre -, her instinctive response after throwing up is that which you have when learning a serial killer is on the loose. She informs the police. This breaks supernatural etiquette, but Nina has no reason to believe in the self policing of the supernatural world (which mostly seems to consist of getting rid of the evidence and letting the killings continue), and as mentioned, she's far more imprinted by her human life. (Another example earlier the season of Nina cutting through the supernatural surroundings to define the basic dilemma in a human way: when the issue of what to do with Adam, a vampire eternally trapped in an adolescent form but so far not a killer, comes up. Nina's "did we just hand over a boy to a couple of racist snobs?" after they've accepted the local vampire head honchos' offer to take in Adam might have been simplifying things, but it still cuts to the chance, and she and George consequently turn around to retrieve Adam. ) People have complained that she must have known Mitchell had killed in the (pre show) past, and that she's using a double standard here by responding to this latest event the way she does. (Annie got the same complaints two episodes later.) And that she's not calling the cops on Herrick, whom she knows via the trio to be guilty of worse. But that's missing the point. What Nina has found out is that Mitchell is killing people now, in the present, keeps a souvenir album of them. And unlike amnesiac Herrick, he's compos mentis and therefore doesn't qualify in any way as a patient. There is of course the option of bringing up what she disovered with George and Annie instead of calling the police. And here, imo, we see that just like George is on a level aware of what Mitchell has done but doesn't want to talk about it, since it would make it real and force him to act on that knowledge one way or the other, Nina in the back of her mind is aware that George might forgive Mitchell even this, and that's something she doesn't want to find out for good.
In the end, it turns out that Mitchell finding out that George has in fact figured out the truth about him and had been looking away from it for quite a while is what gives him the strength to want to die. He presents George staking him as a kind of purification/atonement gesture for this, but that's not why George does it. George only is able to do it once it's about saving Mitchell from being used by the Old Ones and from endlessly repeating the cycle of repentance and killing. As for Nina, before the Old One shows up she sees Mitchell's "George must stake me" speech as one last self-aggrandizing gesture of Mitchell's at George's expense, but she's only just survived an almost certain death and is still worn out by it, so she doesn't belabor the point. Besides, as Annie says, whatever they do about Mitchell - even if they simply ignore him and turn away from this moment on - it would still be a choice that makes any future victim of Mitchell's their responsibility.
Still, when the end comes, I think the horror and hostility in Nina, the protectiveness of both her child and the world at large, have been redirected from Mitchell to the infinitely larger threat of the Old Ones. What's left is George, whom she loves, having to do something that comes close to being the worst thing he has to do (and only isn't the worst to happen to George because there's the s3 to s4 interlude to come) in his life, and she's there for him.
December Talking Meme: The Other Days
Before the massacre, the way Mitchell and Nina saw each other and how each related to George was fairly avarage. Mitchell in the first season had encouraged George with Nina, as part of their "living human" ideal, but I doubt he wasted much thought on Nina as Nina; Nina was interested in George, Mitchell was George's friend and it was increasingly clear something odd was going on, but again, I don't think she thought much about Mitchell as Mitchell. Then the finale happens, and George inadvertendly makes Nina a werewolf. The only one of the trio who knows about this and tries to help her deal is Annie. Nina leaves and stays gone for most of the second season, only to return for the last three episodes, when things get seriously pearshaped and Mitchell, in retrospect, crosses the point of no return. Nina doesn't know about this, but, as we later realise, George has figured it out. The s2 finale still leaves it ambiguous how much George figured out; when Mitchell starts what could have been a confession, George stops him and says he needs to be able to look at Mitchell. It's season 3 which will specify, as it specifies so many things, and only in the third season do we have a dynamic between all three characters.
By then, Nina has gone from recurrent to regular, she's come to terms with being a werewolf (or perhaps it's that the s2 finale exploded her hope of ever not being one again, but she doesn't brood about this in s3, she's got other things to worry about), her relationship with George is renewed, she and she lives for the first time with George, Mitchell and Annie on a steady day to day, night to night basis. Which does give her an opinion on Mitchell, as the season shows. Mitchell for his part starts the season being informed that a werewolf will kill him, which reveals, layer by increasingly ugly layer, just how deeply his need to survive - at any cost - goes. Because George doesn't tell Nina what he guesses about Mitchell's responsibility for the box car massacre, and because Mitchell's willingness to hand over werewolves McNair and Tom, whom George and Nina have befriended, to the local vampires doesn't come to light, there is no direct conflict between Nina and Mitchell until the mid season 3 episode The Longest Day. But then it is massive.
Back in s1, George and Mitchell took a job in a hospital because it was the kind of low pay, exploitative job that came without questions to their background, the kind where their idiocynracies wouldn't get noticed. Nina, on the other hand, works in a hospital by choice, which is why she does it again in s3 when everyone has moved to Wales. She's a medic by passion, and she believes in the ethics this entails. This has formed her far more than the short of time of being a werewolf did. So when she comes across an amnesiac Herrick, her response is that of a member of the medical profession. Despite his resumé as a master vampire for centuries and his more recent attempt at supervillainous world take overs - which among other things resulted in George temporarily killing him and Nina becoming a werewolf -, Herrick in his amnesiac state qualifies as a patient and as helpless. Which causes Nina to not only defend his life but has her challenge George as well; standing by and let Mitchell kill Herrick to Nina would be as wrong as doing it themselves.
Now George has very good reasons to distrust Herrick's state and to wish him dusted. But the argument still resonates. Mitchell is his best friend, and the affection between them certainly was the core around which the entire Being Human saga evolved. At first, they thought it would help them to live human (however you define this), to not let their supernatural natures define them. But because of the love he has for Mitchell - and love isn't too strong a word, au contraire -, George has started to fall into a habit of looking away when it came to signs that Mitchell might still, not in some fareaway past but in the present, do wrong. This started when Mitchell sired Lauren in season 1, which he could handwave as a temporary glitch in the heat of passion. But the massacre Mitchell commits at the end of s2 was done with forethought and simply refuses to go away. Also, if George first has defined himself as "George and Mitchell" and then as "George and Mitchell and Annie", he's now not only in a committed relationship with Nina, who became a part of the supernatural world because of him, but about to become a father, since Nina is pregnant. He's become a part of "George and Nina" now as much as he's a part of "George and Mitchell". George eventually siding with Nina in the "how to deal with Herrick" question and giving Mitchell an ultimatum (i.e. if Mitchell proceeds with his plans, their friendship is over) is a first sign that these emotional priorities are starting to be in direct conflict with each other.
For Nina, who as opposed to Annie and George never loved Mitchell to begin with - as I said, back in s1 she simply didn't know him well enough to have an opinion beyond "best buddy of the guy I'm attracted to", Mitchell's reaction to Herrick is bound to look in addition to everything else hypocritical even before the bomb shell drops, for Mitchell saying a vampire doesn't deserve to live because of his past track record is definitely sitting ina glass house. But more to the point, the willingness to kill, to torture, it's all in the open now. Yes, Nina is lacking some important background information. (And about to find out that even as an amnesiac who actually really doesn't know he's a vampire, Herrick can be quite the manipulator.) But her statement to Mitchell in their big solo confrontation scene - "you have a poison in you that has nothing to do with being a vampire" - still sums it up. Or perhaps: the reason why Mitchell is still around despite periodic attacks of conscience and the ability to emotionally connect with non-vampires is that when push came to shove, it was always his life above anyone else's. And then there's his ongoing need for savior figures - Josie, Lucy, Annie, and in the most basic way George - and draw his justification for existing and see himself as good from them. Which of course makes him a vampire.
One thing worth noting is that Mitchell, while temporarily concluding Nina could be the werewolf spelling his doom, doesn't act against her. (The reason why he changes policies re: Herrick, however, aren't really because of George, or Nina, they're because he thinks Herrick can tell him how to return from the dead. (Again.) ) He had no problem handing both McNair and Tom over to what he thought would be their deaths, but these were strangers, and McNair spent a life time in fighting vampires to boot. He could tell himself that George would never find out, and that it wouldn't hurt George. But there's no way Mitchell could pretend to himself that acting against Nina - and a pregnant Nina to boot - no matter whether directly or indirectly - would not hurt George, might even destroy him. And George is still the person Mitchell cares most about.
Nina, otoh, doesn't see Mitchell solely in the context of George, or of George, herself and the unborn child, though that's important. When she finds out the truth - that Mitchell is responsible for the box car massacre -, her instinctive response after throwing up is that which you have when learning a serial killer is on the loose. She informs the police. This breaks supernatural etiquette, but Nina has no reason to believe in the self policing of the supernatural world (which mostly seems to consist of getting rid of the evidence and letting the killings continue), and as mentioned, she's far more imprinted by her human life. (Another example earlier the season of Nina cutting through the supernatural surroundings to define the basic dilemma in a human way: when the issue of what to do with Adam, a vampire eternally trapped in an adolescent form but so far not a killer, comes up. Nina's "did we just hand over a boy to a couple of racist snobs?" after they've accepted the local vampire head honchos' offer to take in Adam might have been simplifying things, but it still cuts to the chance, and she and George consequently turn around to retrieve Adam. ) People have complained that she must have known Mitchell had killed in the (pre show) past, and that she's using a double standard here by responding to this latest event the way she does. (Annie got the same complaints two episodes later.) And that she's not calling the cops on Herrick, whom she knows via the trio to be guilty of worse. But that's missing the point. What Nina has found out is that Mitchell is killing people now, in the present, keeps a souvenir album of them. And unlike amnesiac Herrick, he's compos mentis and therefore doesn't qualify in any way as a patient. There is of course the option of bringing up what she disovered with George and Annie instead of calling the police. And here, imo, we see that just like George is on a level aware of what Mitchell has done but doesn't want to talk about it, since it would make it real and force him to act on that knowledge one way or the other, Nina in the back of her mind is aware that George might forgive Mitchell even this, and that's something she doesn't want to find out for good.
In the end, it turns out that Mitchell finding out that George has in fact figured out the truth about him and had been looking away from it for quite a while is what gives him the strength to want to die. He presents George staking him as a kind of purification/atonement gesture for this, but that's not why George does it. George only is able to do it once it's about saving Mitchell from being used by the Old Ones and from endlessly repeating the cycle of repentance and killing. As for Nina, before the Old One shows up she sees Mitchell's "George must stake me" speech as one last self-aggrandizing gesture of Mitchell's at George's expense, but she's only just survived an almost certain death and is still worn out by it, so she doesn't belabor the point. Besides, as Annie says, whatever they do about Mitchell - even if they simply ignore him and turn away from this moment on - it would still be a choice that makes any future victim of Mitchell's their responsibility.
Still, when the end comes, I think the horror and hostility in Nina, the protectiveness of both her child and the world at large, have been redirected from Mitchell to the infinitely larger threat of the Old Ones. What's left is George, whom she loves, having to do something that comes close to being the worst thing he has to do (and only isn't the worst to happen to George because there's the s3 to s4 interlude to come) in his life, and she's there for him.
December Talking Meme: The Other Days
