Being Human 3.07
Mar. 7th, 2011 09:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which, as has become the custom in the one before the finale, things go from dark to black hole.
Okay, first and foremost of all: I'm really glad about that trailer at the end in which we see Nina in the ambulance and still breathing because if this had been the end of Nina, I would not stop yelling till next week (and, err, kingdom come). Am still afraid it might be but 50% certain it won't; my current guess is she's survive the broken neck via werewolf strength but will lose the child. (If she does die then the emphasis on werewolf babies developing at wolf speed instead of human speed this episode probably means she'll be comatose and living long enough for the baby to be born; there's no way the show will kill off both Nina and the baby.)
(And may I say: I hate each and every one who dared to comment that "Nina needed to be taught a lesson".)
And now back to the start. This episode was a testing point for Mitchell, Annie and Herrick. (With a side line of McNair.) Nina telling (still amnesiac) Herrick early on that you can define what you choose to be is in a way what these characters are challenged with and reply to. Mitchell, when initially deciding to feed Nancy to Herrick in order to both get Herrick's memory back and stop his own police troubles, starts failing the test as he has done all season (and, long before): he chooses to be a monster. (Also we get a great scene in which Mitchell gives Amnesiac!Herrick Herrick's own speech to him from ye World War I time). At the virtual last second, he reconsiders (and Nancy lives a while longer yet), proving there is indeed a spark of non-selfish acknowledgment of other people's right to live left, but as important is the moment when he's finally confronted with an Annie who knows. (Though this is more Annie's moment than anything else - I'll get to that in a second.) Mitchell allowing himself to get arrested instead of killing the police when Annie asks him to is not necessarily a moment of redemption, yet it's very Mitchell, needing to believe in the whole Love As Salvation concept. That he's immediately back to "don't do this to me" once Annie is out of sight is something else again, though yes, there is the larger issue of vampire discovery.
How Annie would react when finally discovering the truth about Mitchell has been one of the season's big questions. It's telling that she comes up with the most outrageous and unlikely scenarios (i.e. Mitchell trying to track down Daisy) in order to explain the mounting evidence (and btw that George buys this is also telling about George) until there is finally something she can't explain away, and then it sinks in. There have been two possible scenarios I've been afraid of - Annie having a breakdown, or Annie forgiving Mitchell in a love above all kind of way - so I'm really glad of what happened instead, because it strikes as both something entirely in character for Annie, and a strong stance. What Mitchell did was (mass) murder, and that's the reality she never avoids. (Btw, as infuriating as the Nina hate is the Annie chastisement on the grounds that she knew Mitchell used to kill people before.) Nor what it signifies re: Mitchell's ability of staying on the non-killing wagon. And she's not willing to let any more people die so Mitchell can angst some more. Yet she also still loves him and wants to help him, so promising she'll be there if he accepts the consequences of his deeds, accepts prison and gives the families of the dead the closure of knowing the murderer has been captures, that's Annie at her best.
(Is it practical given Mitchell's vampire nature and the larger issue of the supernatural world? That's another question, but if you were Annie, would you believe in this ridiculous concept of the vampires policing themselves, or would you just let it go given that as she says every single one of those victims was a person?)
One more thing about Annie: her saving Nancy via staking a vampire looks very much like foreshadowing to me, together with her scene with Herrick a few episodes ago. The only reason that makes me hesitate in my prediction Annie will stake Herrick is that I'm not sure the show would go to the trouble of resurrecting Herrick only to kill him off again in the same season, and that's leaving out resurrected!Herrick might not be possible to stake. Outside possibility: Annie will stake Mitchell at Mitchell's request to stop both the discovery of the supernatural world by humans and the vampiric retaliation led (presumably) by Herrick & Co? She's not a werewolf, but it would be symmetry to him bringing her back from the afterlife at the start of this season, and besides, we know Toby likes to crib from the Jossverse even though he denies it.
McNair: looks like really dead, not mostly dead. Which is the end of a good character and yet it also fits with the larger themes. Like some of the other characters, he'd been given another chance at a new life, but was unable to resist continuing old feuds and exercising his inner monster by hunting down vampires. Like Mitchell, he commits the sin of non-communication with friends and instead choosing to go after an old enemy. If McNair had gone with George, Nina and Tom into the woods, or even told them he had smelled Herrick and his backstory there, things would have gone very different. Instead, he went after Herrick, complete with boast of the other vampires he'd killed, and so in a perfect story symmetry just as a werewolf killed Herrick killing another werewolf is half of what brings the old Herrick back. (BTW, I suppose the big mystery of how still amnesiac Herrick survived an attacking werewolf and McNair ended as the dead body instead will be revealed in a flashback later, as it seems to tie to me to the rotten fruits - something about Herrick's nature post resurrection.)
Third time, unfortunately, was the charm for Nancy. Or fourth, if you count the vampire-in-disguise whom Annie saved her from. I am sad but otoh I don't scream "unjust" because they let the character go out with dignity and bring down the murderer she was after first, plus it was increasingly clear someone human would die to restore Herrick's, and making it someone the audience was given reasons to care about rather than a random bystander was honest storytelling.
And thus we have restored!Herrick and that great, scream-inducing scene with Nina. It is Herrick's moment of choice, since McNair attacked and tried to kill him and he was insanely starved and not yet compos mentis when draining Nancy. And I don't think he's muwahhaahing (i.e. has already decided and is just taunting) Nina about having a dilemma - he does acknowledge there is an alternative, there is some gratitude and connection because she's been consistently kind to him and saved his life. He could indeed let her go rather than use her as payback against George; Herrick has literally been given a new life. But he makes his choice, and his choice is to reaffirm his old nature rather than to choose a new one; and thus he returns and breaks her neck.
(If we're talking Jossverse parallels, it's an interesting counterpoint to Angel(us) killing Jenny Calendar, because the emotional context both overlaps and is different - it's about the boyfriend - and Buffy - solely for Angel, rather than being about Jenny, while Herrick not only wants to hurt George but stamp out the possibility of his own "going soft" because he likes Nina.)
Which brings me to my initial point again: this better be not the end of my beloved Nina for good, show. It better not be. I'm trying to be objective here: Nina has in no way reached the end of her potential as a character, she's been so crucial in this season, and what will be achieved if she dies? George feeling badly because he yelled at her on the Mitchell reporting and being a single father? That would be fridging, show, that would be fridging.
Biting my fingernails till next week...
ETA:paratti pointed out Herrick didn't break Nina's neck, he stabbed her with a knife which was hard to see because the camera didn't linger. Still, am oddly glad to hear it because traditionally in tv world, knife wounds are easier to recover from!
Okay, first and foremost of all: I'm really glad about that trailer at the end in which we see Nina in the ambulance and still breathing because if this had been the end of Nina, I would not stop yelling till next week (and, err, kingdom come). Am still afraid it might be but 50% certain it won't; my current guess is she's survive the broken neck via werewolf strength but will lose the child. (If she does die then the emphasis on werewolf babies developing at wolf speed instead of human speed this episode probably means she'll be comatose and living long enough for the baby to be born; there's no way the show will kill off both Nina and the baby.)
(And may I say: I hate each and every one who dared to comment that "Nina needed to be taught a lesson".)
And now back to the start. This episode was a testing point for Mitchell, Annie and Herrick. (With a side line of McNair.) Nina telling (still amnesiac) Herrick early on that you can define what you choose to be is in a way what these characters are challenged with and reply to. Mitchell, when initially deciding to feed Nancy to Herrick in order to both get Herrick's memory back and stop his own police troubles, starts failing the test as he has done all season (and, long before): he chooses to be a monster. (Also we get a great scene in which Mitchell gives Amnesiac!Herrick Herrick's own speech to him from ye World War I time). At the virtual last second, he reconsiders (and Nancy lives a while longer yet), proving there is indeed a spark of non-selfish acknowledgment of other people's right to live left, but as important is the moment when he's finally confronted with an Annie who knows. (Though this is more Annie's moment than anything else - I'll get to that in a second.) Mitchell allowing himself to get arrested instead of killing the police when Annie asks him to is not necessarily a moment of redemption, yet it's very Mitchell, needing to believe in the whole Love As Salvation concept. That he's immediately back to "don't do this to me" once Annie is out of sight is something else again, though yes, there is the larger issue of vampire discovery.
How Annie would react when finally discovering the truth about Mitchell has been one of the season's big questions. It's telling that she comes up with the most outrageous and unlikely scenarios (i.e. Mitchell trying to track down Daisy) in order to explain the mounting evidence (and btw that George buys this is also telling about George) until there is finally something she can't explain away, and then it sinks in. There have been two possible scenarios I've been afraid of - Annie having a breakdown, or Annie forgiving Mitchell in a love above all kind of way - so I'm really glad of what happened instead, because it strikes as both something entirely in character for Annie, and a strong stance. What Mitchell did was (mass) murder, and that's the reality she never avoids. (Btw, as infuriating as the Nina hate is the Annie chastisement on the grounds that she knew Mitchell used to kill people before.) Nor what it signifies re: Mitchell's ability of staying on the non-killing wagon. And she's not willing to let any more people die so Mitchell can angst some more. Yet she also still loves him and wants to help him, so promising she'll be there if he accepts the consequences of his deeds, accepts prison and gives the families of the dead the closure of knowing the murderer has been captures, that's Annie at her best.
(Is it practical given Mitchell's vampire nature and the larger issue of the supernatural world? That's another question, but if you were Annie, would you believe in this ridiculous concept of the vampires policing themselves, or would you just let it go given that as she says every single one of those victims was a person?)
One more thing about Annie: her saving Nancy via staking a vampire looks very much like foreshadowing to me, together with her scene with Herrick a few episodes ago. The only reason that makes me hesitate in my prediction Annie will stake Herrick is that I'm not sure the show would go to the trouble of resurrecting Herrick only to kill him off again in the same season, and that's leaving out resurrected!Herrick might not be possible to stake. Outside possibility: Annie will stake Mitchell at Mitchell's request to stop both the discovery of the supernatural world by humans and the vampiric retaliation led (presumably) by Herrick & Co? She's not a werewolf, but it would be symmetry to him bringing her back from the afterlife at the start of this season, and besides, we know Toby likes to crib from the Jossverse even though he denies it.
McNair: looks like really dead, not mostly dead. Which is the end of a good character and yet it also fits with the larger themes. Like some of the other characters, he'd been given another chance at a new life, but was unable to resist continuing old feuds and exercising his inner monster by hunting down vampires. Like Mitchell, he commits the sin of non-communication with friends and instead choosing to go after an old enemy. If McNair had gone with George, Nina and Tom into the woods, or even told them he had smelled Herrick and his backstory there, things would have gone very different. Instead, he went after Herrick, complete with boast of the other vampires he'd killed, and so in a perfect story symmetry just as a werewolf killed Herrick killing another werewolf is half of what brings the old Herrick back. (BTW, I suppose the big mystery of how still amnesiac Herrick survived an attacking werewolf and McNair ended as the dead body instead will be revealed in a flashback later, as it seems to tie to me to the rotten fruits - something about Herrick's nature post resurrection.)
Third time, unfortunately, was the charm for Nancy. Or fourth, if you count the vampire-in-disguise whom Annie saved her from. I am sad but otoh I don't scream "unjust" because they let the character go out with dignity and bring down the murderer she was after first, plus it was increasingly clear someone human would die to restore Herrick's, and making it someone the audience was given reasons to care about rather than a random bystander was honest storytelling.
And thus we have restored!Herrick and that great, scream-inducing scene with Nina. It is Herrick's moment of choice, since McNair attacked and tried to kill him and he was insanely starved and not yet compos mentis when draining Nancy. And I don't think he's muwahhaahing (i.e. has already decided and is just taunting) Nina about having a dilemma - he does acknowledge there is an alternative, there is some gratitude and connection because she's been consistently kind to him and saved his life. He could indeed let her go rather than use her as payback against George; Herrick has literally been given a new life. But he makes his choice, and his choice is to reaffirm his old nature rather than to choose a new one; and thus he returns and breaks her neck.
(If we're talking Jossverse parallels, it's an interesting counterpoint to Angel(us) killing Jenny Calendar, because the emotional context both overlaps and is different - it's about the boyfriend - and Buffy - solely for Angel, rather than being about Jenny, while Herrick not only wants to hurt George but stamp out the possibility of his own "going soft" because he likes Nina.)
Which brings me to my initial point again: this better be not the end of my beloved Nina for good, show. It better not be. I'm trying to be objective here: Nina has in no way reached the end of her potential as a character, she's been so crucial in this season, and what will be achieved if she dies? George feeling badly because he yelled at her on the Mitchell reporting and being a single father? That would be fridging, show, that would be fridging.
Biting my fingernails till next week...
ETA:
paratti pointed out Herrick didn't break Nina's neck, he stabbed her with a knife which was hard to see because the camera didn't linger. Still, am oddly glad to hear it because traditionally in tv world, knife wounds are easier to recover from!
