Being Human 3.02.
Feb. 2nd, 2011 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBusy life continues to be being busy (still have to write various replies, I know!), but now and then I do have the time for tv.:)
Way back in season 1, basically the first time I became really, really ticked off at Mitchell was the episode in which he befriended a child, things went kablooey, and at the end his solution to the kid almost dying was to make the boy into a vampire and send him off with his (still human) mother. First of all, it might be the double combination of Kenny from Highlander and Claudia from Interview with the Vampire in my formative years, but imo one of the worst things you can do to a child is to make it immortal. Because the mind grows up but the physical form doesn't, and I can't see how that wouldn't end in horror. Plus, in the BH case, to do it and then to basically hand off responsibility? I grrr, arghed basically the entire week.
Now the show revisits the topos of underage vampires, and does so in an interesting way that makes me even a bit reconciled with the earlier episode. There is an obvious difference - Adam had made it to teenage years before he got vamped, which is still one step better than an eternal prepubescent existence. More importantly, though, the neatest twist with the premise is that the prologue is set several decades in the past, so that when Our Heroes meet Adam, he's actually 43 years old, which allows some interesting conclusions about how vampirism works in the BH universe. For starters, if Adam in all those years really did not kill anyone but managed to feed only from his parents (who volunteered), and I don't think the show means us to question the narration here, then the mother and son from s1 might manage to work that, too. (For some decades, until, as with Adam, the parent dies and you're back to square one.) I could even buy it psychologically - a child who never grows up, who never stops needing you (literally), it's something some parents really want.
Then there's the question of 40something Adam still being a teenager in spirit as well as in body. Might be because he never stopped living with the parents who never stopped treating him as one (he does mature somewhat within the short time of the episode, after all), or it might be because the BH version of vampires really are stuck at the point of their death not just in physical form but in spirit as well, instead of aging in one but not in the other.
And still on a parent-child note, my suspicion that we'll find out the unprotected werwolf/werewolf sex has pregnancy consequences for Nina grows because in this episode George and Nina go something of a trial run as parents with Adam. Also they're being an adorable couple and only the fact that George was an ass to Nina in season 2 a lot makes me resist the temptation to unabashedly 'ship them. Because this season they're great together again, and an excellent team in dealing with vampires (both the teenage and the grown up variety) to boot. Loved the scene where they both realize that handing over an annoyinig teen to a pair of well-off racists is a shitty thing to do, finish each other's sentences and go back for Adam. Also their teasing each other at the hospital. Hell, just every scene they had together. Please, show, keep them this way. They make me happy.
It struck me that this week's (and possibly the season's?) vampires are a very British variation, as a satire of a specific branch of the upper classes not in the way an American (or for that matter, continent European) show would do it, with the combination of snobbish racism and S/M goings-on in the afternoon not presented in a tiltillating, "guilty secret" but shrugg, oh, yeah, and that, too, manner. (I was reminded of the Max Mosley headlines one or two years ago.) Adam being turned off by the combination of prissiness and bloodsport with sex-on-the-table aftermath instead of being turned on was believable in a way that wouldn't have been the case if the show hadn't pulled off making the whole orgy thing so satirically mundane. Plus, you know, Nina and George. Who wouldn't choose Nina and George instead? :)
On the downside, I'm not sure the writers have figured out what they'll do with Annie now. The whole subplot with her trying to help Mitchell get a job, in the process destroying his chances and then coming up with a way to get him the job after all felt like a worn out romantic subplot from the 40s that was done way snappier and better when it was Katherine Hepburn and Gary Grant. The one scene involving Annie I really liked was the one near the end where she explained why she was so fixated on helping when Mitchell challenged her not to define herself through other people.
Which, btw, is rich if you think about it coming from Mitchell. Can't decide whether his statement to Adam in the end that the way to deal with your vampirisim is to surround yourself with people who are better than you and live up to their expectations because otherwise "their disappointment is your punishment" is just a nicer way to express is fixation of making a person into his salvation (which, as last season pointed out, can have disastrous results) or an actually healthier way to deal with that fixation. Because the way he phrases it doesn't place the burden on the other people/person (aka "you have to save me") but on himself.
Lastly: the tunnel massacre won't go away, and I love it. Thank you, show, for continuing to deal with it and the enormity of what Mitchell has done.
Way back in season 1, basically the first time I became really, really ticked off at Mitchell was the episode in which he befriended a child, things went kablooey, and at the end his solution to the kid almost dying was to make the boy into a vampire and send him off with his (still human) mother. First of all, it might be the double combination of Kenny from Highlander and Claudia from Interview with the Vampire in my formative years, but imo one of the worst things you can do to a child is to make it immortal. Because the mind grows up but the physical form doesn't, and I can't see how that wouldn't end in horror. Plus, in the BH case, to do it and then to basically hand off responsibility? I grrr, arghed basically the entire week.
Now the show revisits the topos of underage vampires, and does so in an interesting way that makes me even a bit reconciled with the earlier episode. There is an obvious difference - Adam had made it to teenage years before he got vamped, which is still one step better than an eternal prepubescent existence. More importantly, though, the neatest twist with the premise is that the prologue is set several decades in the past, so that when Our Heroes meet Adam, he's actually 43 years old, which allows some interesting conclusions about how vampirism works in the BH universe. For starters, if Adam in all those years really did not kill anyone but managed to feed only from his parents (who volunteered), and I don't think the show means us to question the narration here, then the mother and son from s1 might manage to work that, too. (For some decades, until, as with Adam, the parent dies and you're back to square one.) I could even buy it psychologically - a child who never grows up, who never stops needing you (literally), it's something some parents really want.
Then there's the question of 40something Adam still being a teenager in spirit as well as in body. Might be because he never stopped living with the parents who never stopped treating him as one (he does mature somewhat within the short time of the episode, after all), or it might be because the BH version of vampires really are stuck at the point of their death not just in physical form but in spirit as well, instead of aging in one but not in the other.
And still on a parent-child note, my suspicion that we'll find out the unprotected werwolf/werewolf sex has pregnancy consequences for Nina grows because in this episode George and Nina go something of a trial run as parents with Adam. Also they're being an adorable couple and only the fact that George was an ass to Nina in season 2 a lot makes me resist the temptation to unabashedly 'ship them. Because this season they're great together again, and an excellent team in dealing with vampires (both the teenage and the grown up variety) to boot. Loved the scene where they both realize that handing over an annoyinig teen to a pair of well-off racists is a shitty thing to do, finish each other's sentences and go back for Adam. Also their teasing each other at the hospital. Hell, just every scene they had together. Please, show, keep them this way. They make me happy.
It struck me that this week's (and possibly the season's?) vampires are a very British variation, as a satire of a specific branch of the upper classes not in the way an American (or for that matter, continent European) show would do it, with the combination of snobbish racism and S/M goings-on in the afternoon not presented in a tiltillating, "guilty secret" but shrugg, oh, yeah, and that, too, manner. (I was reminded of the Max Mosley headlines one or two years ago.) Adam being turned off by the combination of prissiness and bloodsport with sex-on-the-table aftermath instead of being turned on was believable in a way that wouldn't have been the case if the show hadn't pulled off making the whole orgy thing so satirically mundane. Plus, you know, Nina and George. Who wouldn't choose Nina and George instead? :)
On the downside, I'm not sure the writers have figured out what they'll do with Annie now. The whole subplot with her trying to help Mitchell get a job, in the process destroying his chances and then coming up with a way to get him the job after all felt like a worn out romantic subplot from the 40s that was done way snappier and better when it was Katherine Hepburn and Gary Grant. The one scene involving Annie I really liked was the one near the end where she explained why she was so fixated on helping when Mitchell challenged her not to define herself through other people.
Which, btw, is rich if you think about it coming from Mitchell. Can't decide whether his statement to Adam in the end that the way to deal with your vampirisim is to surround yourself with people who are better than you and live up to their expectations because otherwise "their disappointment is your punishment" is just a nicer way to express is fixation of making a person into his salvation (which, as last season pointed out, can have disastrous results) or an actually healthier way to deal with that fixation. Because the way he phrases it doesn't place the burden on the other people/person (aka "you have to save me") but on himself.
Lastly: the tunnel massacre won't go away, and I love it. Thank you, show, for continuing to deal with it and the enormity of what Mitchell has done.
