Being Human, season 1, rewatched
Aug. 11th, 2013 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI've started a Being Human rewatch (for new readers of my ramblings: when I mention Being Human, I'm thinking of the original, UK version only), it only having six episodes per season, and it was highly interesting to me to go back.
Some thoughts ensued .
Annie getting the opening monologue (the dvds don't include the original pilot) retrospectively fits very well. From what I vaguely remember about the pilot, Annie doesn't show up until the last third or so of the time, but on the show proper, she plays a far more important role, and the first episode establishes that right from the start.
I'd forgotten just how deeply twitchy and neurotic George was at the beginning. Also the sheer extent of George's self loathing and horror when it comes to the werewolf. Now George's arc in the first season includes going from denying the werewolf has anything to do with him to seeing it as part of himself (which isn't yet downright acceptance) and of course using it to protect his friends in the finale, but given the way Tully is presented in the second episode, with the sexual predator vibes, and then the shock (to George) revelation that he was the werewolf who turned George, it's very hard not to read George at the start as a not so metaphorical rape victim who starts coming to terms after confronting his rapist.
George and Annie both have a season long "get used to your new state, learn to deal with it, use its strengths, reject people trying to victimize you because of it" arc, but Mitchell doesn't; he has the same arc he'll have in the second season, which is why s3 felt and probably will still feel to me as something so radical, new and needed. Now granted, partly this is because in the Being Human verse, ghosts and werewolves can choose the way they use their nature, they don't have to do damage to others, whereas vampires, despite the attempts of some of them to get on the wagon now and then, are overwhelmingly and unrelentingly damaging by their very nature. (The only exception is Adam, but I'll get to that when he shows up.) Given the harmless vampires that (dis)graced books and screens in the last two decades or so, I can see why Toby Whitehouse did it - to put the menace back into them - but it also means there is a limit to the storylines unless you're getting repetitive. What Mitchell does in the first season - trying to live human, get disillusioned by some shitty human behaviour mid season, fall of the wagon, go back to being with the other vampires, repent, see the light, come through for non vampire friends and friends coming through for him - is exactly what he'll do in season 2. This being said, I wonder whether whether s2 will feel differently to me now that I'm aware it leads up to s3 with its radical answer to Mitchell?
Also, the way I recall it Mitchell isn't the only one with a repetitive storyline in s2. Annie's story about gaining confidence also will go through several resets. And I think the Doylist element about the way her powers work is too obvious. Letting her become visible to non supernaturals at the end of the pilot must have been deemed a mistake - as it takes away one element her brand of supernatural has and the others have not - so in s1 you have the retcon that becoming visible, or not, goes with how confident Annie feels at any given moment. Which within s1 still works, but given s1 ends with her completely controlling this, the writers evidently thought they had the same problem as after the pilot, because then in s2 we'll have Annie losing the ability to manifest herself to non-supernaturals mid season, in s3 its entirely gone, and the show never makes it an option for Alex in the first place (smart choice, because they really couldn't have explained it away again in Alex' case by lack of self confidence).
But back to s1. Annie having initially blocked the truth about Owen and the memory of her death makes the early "surely my destiny is to take care of Owen" scenes extra creepy, but they also, with the knowledge of the entire show, make for a good story, because later Annie will have learned from this, won't go into denial once she finds out the truth about Mitchell, and her empathy with his victims is grounded on experience. Incidentally, despite what I said earlier about the writers having trapped themselves and being in an eternal quandery re: Annie's powers, the scenes between her and Owen after Owen can see her, is past the initial shock and starts to gloat make the dithering almost worth it, because they're excellent. They make Owen, who isn't supernatural at all, such an extremely creepy real life menace, and of course make his comeuppance later very satisfying.
What Josie says to Mitchell when he offers to recruit her: "Being human is being mortal, Mitchell. It means to die." Of course now has yet another resonance, given the fates of the original three.
Of course, you also have George telling Herrick in the finale that being human means love and sacrifice. Which also bears out through the show.
And oh, Nina. Nina, my darling, my beloved, you still are my favourite among the s1-3 cast. (One of many reasons why s3 is my favourite: because Nina is a regular there.) When we meet her in the second episode, I was so happy to see her again. I really love how she's established so vibrantly right from the get go. Not as perfect - Nina sometimes jumps to wrong conclusions - but so very determined, so very non-nonsense and yet openly emotional. I had forgotten that she had that burnt scar tissue on her belly, btw, how did I forget that? And the way the relationship between her and George develops made it one of the few tv romances I could genuinely root for. Not in s2, I remember being furious with George on Nina's behalf then, but in s3 again. We'll see whether I'll still be furious with George this time around, because his fear of the supernatural hurting Nina in s1 was really poignant, given things to come.
This said: something I still like about BH is that, the vampire problem aside, it really makes those points about choice, and doesn't buy into the "if you kill me you'll become me" type of quandary many comics and shows put tup to ensure the heroes will never kill the villains. Killing Herrick doesn't turn George into a monster. What makes Tully a predator isn't that he's a werewolf, it's what he does with it. As George says, Tully scratching George (and killing another man) was something Tully couldn't have controlled, because by the rules of BH he wasn't conscious enough as a wolf for that, but what Tully did afterwards, those were his choices. Similarly, from how I recall s2, George's sin against Nina isn't that he turned her into a werewolf (which was an accident) but that at first he sees this as his tragedy, not hers. Self involvedness is a cardinal sin in the BH verse, and at different points, all three of the original three suffer from it. Though they also show themselves capable of getting over it.
During first broadcast, it didn't strike me that way, but now: both Mitchell and George want to end the Herrick problem with a fight. Mitchell, however, wants to go to Herrick in order to be killed. He doesn't expect to survive the encounter. And while he (wrongly) trusts Herrick to keep his word regarding George and Annie afterwards, he also doesn't do anything re: Herrick's plans for a vampocalypse. Basically, Mitchell is planning for his death as a martyr, atonment by death and keeping friends safe by death, it makes him the hero of his tale but doesn't really solve anything. Whereas George's plan definitely is all about a dead Herrick and thus not only a safe Mitchell and Annie, but also a non-vampirized humanity. It also involves self sacrifice - George has to deliberately kill as a werewolf and accept the werewolf isn't something apart from himself - but the primary goal isn't to end his own story.
Repeating stories: the big bads wanting the vampocalypse, of course, and also manipulators turning up to prey on one or several of the regulars, turning them against each other. This is why the Captain/Devil in s5 really, in retrospect, couldn't work, at least not as written. He needs the entire season when we've seen several small time supernaturals manage to do it in one single episode, and this starts with Tully.
So many forgotten details: the fact that Kara shows up in the first episode as a kindly hospital employee, for example, long before getting vamped by Herrick. BH's ability to make minor characters feel real most definitely applies to her. Also the priest George befriends in the finale - I can't remember what happened to him later (if anything, and don't tell me). Or Josie remembering that she and Mitchell checked into a hotel as Mr. and Mrs. McCartney in the 60s.
Very striking: Lauren's final death here versus Mitchell's final death in the s3 finale. (And not just the staging is very similar, the embrace of Lauren and Mitchell, of George and Mitchell.) Lauren telling Mitchell that she knows exactly what she'll become when/if she continues to exist, that she won't be able to stop herself. I remember that back then the show was first broadcast, I wondered whether the show was killing her off in order to free Mitchell of the responsibility he has for creating her, as an easy way out, but with the knowledge of the show entire, it's not, it's Lauren making a moral choice while Mitchell is still responsible for his own choices.
re: the darkness of the show versus the supernatural sitcom people thought they were getting (and partly did get throughout all five seasons, but along with the pitchblack tragedies). Given that in s1, we see Mitchell turned on by a snuff film (of a naked man dying, btw, and it's telling that according to the BH post about the male gaze I've memorized, the American equivalent of the same scene substituted female nudity despite having to change the rules for vampires in order to do so), handling what he did to Lauren at first really badly (he later actively and earnestly tries to help her, but that's what he should have done from the start after turning her, as opposed to just panicking and leaving her to revive on her own and stumble across the other vampires, Herrick was right about that), and going from seeing Lauren fall off the wagon to turning yet another person as a solution (rewatching the Bernie episode made me as furious as I was the first time about the irresponsibility of siring a kid) - given all that, the fact there is no happy ending for Mitchell really shouldn't have been a surprise.
All this being said? Mitchell is endearing enough in the first season to make it clear why George and Annie care so deeply about him, which is crucial. Incidentally, I was flabbergasted how much older Aidan Turner looks here compared to how he looks in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which was shot years later. Considering that during Annie's opening monologue for the show, we see him in front of an WWI memorial, I also wondered about the symbolism of the show putting his origin story there. WWI as the war who was supposed to "end all wars" and instead spawned almost instantly a new one, the war that shattered the illusion of heroic warfare in popular culture (for a while)? ("All the rethoric", Mitchell says to Herrick about the later's vampocalypse plans after having finally figured out the part of them that involve keeping enough humans around to have an eternal larder, "and it comes down to this: you just want to feed.") The sense of doom (you either die young in WWI, or you spend the rest of your life scarred by it) without the solution of a traditionally heroic narrative? (WWII in popular culture - and not just there: clear cut good versus evil scenario. WWI: anything but.)
At the start of the season, we have Mitchell and George close, with Annie as the new element who is a bit resented by George, and Mitchell as a mediator between them. Over the course of the season, George and Annie grow closer, until towards the end they have most of their key scenes with each other, whereas Mitchell becomes the one getting distanced by his returning to the vampire world. Of the relationships outside the trio, George's most important one is with Nina, i.e. a potential, then actual romantic partner, Mitchell has two of equal narrative importance (within s1, not within the show entire), one with Herrick, one with Lauren, i.e. one with his creator and one with his creation, though the later is also at least a sexual partner - and Annie's is with Owen - former romantic partner, but the reason why he's key to her s1 arc is that he's her murderer - does that also make him her inadvertent creator as far as Annie-as-ghost is concerned? It's also the only relationship that's one sided in nature, not just because Owen until the last two eps can't see or comunicate with Annie but because he has no emotional investment in her. He torments her when she tries to warn Jenny about him, but he doesn't seek her out on his own - basicall, whether she dissolves into thin air or hangs around is the same to him. Whereas Herrick and Lauren have an investment in Mitchell (not a positive one, but they definitely care whether he's with them or not), and of course there is a strong mutual one between Nina and George. I wonder whether this one sidedness is somehow symptomatic of Annie's ghost nature, or Annie being Annie.
Origami as the sign of the creep: is used by Tully in 1.02 already, which I had totally forgotten. Clearly, someone likes their tropes. :)
Some thoughts ensued .
Annie getting the opening monologue (the dvds don't include the original pilot) retrospectively fits very well. From what I vaguely remember about the pilot, Annie doesn't show up until the last third or so of the time, but on the show proper, she plays a far more important role, and the first episode establishes that right from the start.
I'd forgotten just how deeply twitchy and neurotic George was at the beginning. Also the sheer extent of George's self loathing and horror when it comes to the werewolf. Now George's arc in the first season includes going from denying the werewolf has anything to do with him to seeing it as part of himself (which isn't yet downright acceptance) and of course using it to protect his friends in the finale, but given the way Tully is presented in the second episode, with the sexual predator vibes, and then the shock (to George) revelation that he was the werewolf who turned George, it's very hard not to read George at the start as a not so metaphorical rape victim who starts coming to terms after confronting his rapist.
George and Annie both have a season long "get used to your new state, learn to deal with it, use its strengths, reject people trying to victimize you because of it" arc, but Mitchell doesn't; he has the same arc he'll have in the second season, which is why s3 felt and probably will still feel to me as something so radical, new and needed. Now granted, partly this is because in the Being Human verse, ghosts and werewolves can choose the way they use their nature, they don't have to do damage to others, whereas vampires, despite the attempts of some of them to get on the wagon now and then, are overwhelmingly and unrelentingly damaging by their very nature. (The only exception is Adam, but I'll get to that when he shows up.) Given the harmless vampires that (dis)graced books and screens in the last two decades or so, I can see why Toby Whitehouse did it - to put the menace back into them - but it also means there is a limit to the storylines unless you're getting repetitive. What Mitchell does in the first season - trying to live human, get disillusioned by some shitty human behaviour mid season, fall of the wagon, go back to being with the other vampires, repent, see the light, come through for non vampire friends and friends coming through for him - is exactly what he'll do in season 2. This being said, I wonder whether whether s2 will feel differently to me now that I'm aware it leads up to s3 with its radical answer to Mitchell?
Also, the way I recall it Mitchell isn't the only one with a repetitive storyline in s2. Annie's story about gaining confidence also will go through several resets. And I think the Doylist element about the way her powers work is too obvious. Letting her become visible to non supernaturals at the end of the pilot must have been deemed a mistake - as it takes away one element her brand of supernatural has and the others have not - so in s1 you have the retcon that becoming visible, or not, goes with how confident Annie feels at any given moment. Which within s1 still works, but given s1 ends with her completely controlling this, the writers evidently thought they had the same problem as after the pilot, because then in s2 we'll have Annie losing the ability to manifest herself to non-supernaturals mid season, in s3 its entirely gone, and the show never makes it an option for Alex in the first place (smart choice, because they really couldn't have explained it away again in Alex' case by lack of self confidence).
But back to s1. Annie having initially blocked the truth about Owen and the memory of her death makes the early "surely my destiny is to take care of Owen" scenes extra creepy, but they also, with the knowledge of the entire show, make for a good story, because later Annie will have learned from this, won't go into denial once she finds out the truth about Mitchell, and her empathy with his victims is grounded on experience. Incidentally, despite what I said earlier about the writers having trapped themselves and being in an eternal quandery re: Annie's powers, the scenes between her and Owen after Owen can see her, is past the initial shock and starts to gloat make the dithering almost worth it, because they're excellent. They make Owen, who isn't supernatural at all, such an extremely creepy real life menace, and of course make his comeuppance later very satisfying.
What Josie says to Mitchell when he offers to recruit her: "Being human is being mortal, Mitchell. It means to die." Of course now has yet another resonance, given the fates of the original three.
Of course, you also have George telling Herrick in the finale that being human means love and sacrifice. Which also bears out through the show.
And oh, Nina. Nina, my darling, my beloved, you still are my favourite among the s1-3 cast. (One of many reasons why s3 is my favourite: because Nina is a regular there.) When we meet her in the second episode, I was so happy to see her again. I really love how she's established so vibrantly right from the get go. Not as perfect - Nina sometimes jumps to wrong conclusions - but so very determined, so very non-nonsense and yet openly emotional. I had forgotten that she had that burnt scar tissue on her belly, btw, how did I forget that? And the way the relationship between her and George develops made it one of the few tv romances I could genuinely root for. Not in s2, I remember being furious with George on Nina's behalf then, but in s3 again. We'll see whether I'll still be furious with George this time around, because his fear of the supernatural hurting Nina in s1 was really poignant, given things to come.
This said: something I still like about BH is that, the vampire problem aside, it really makes those points about choice, and doesn't buy into the "if you kill me you'll become me" type of quandary many comics and shows put tup to ensure the heroes will never kill the villains. Killing Herrick doesn't turn George into a monster. What makes Tully a predator isn't that he's a werewolf, it's what he does with it. As George says, Tully scratching George (and killing another man) was something Tully couldn't have controlled, because by the rules of BH he wasn't conscious enough as a wolf for that, but what Tully did afterwards, those were his choices. Similarly, from how I recall s2, George's sin against Nina isn't that he turned her into a werewolf (which was an accident) but that at first he sees this as his tragedy, not hers. Self involvedness is a cardinal sin in the BH verse, and at different points, all three of the original three suffer from it. Though they also show themselves capable of getting over it.
During first broadcast, it didn't strike me that way, but now: both Mitchell and George want to end the Herrick problem with a fight. Mitchell, however, wants to go to Herrick in order to be killed. He doesn't expect to survive the encounter. And while he (wrongly) trusts Herrick to keep his word regarding George and Annie afterwards, he also doesn't do anything re: Herrick's plans for a vampocalypse. Basically, Mitchell is planning for his death as a martyr, atonment by death and keeping friends safe by death, it makes him the hero of his tale but doesn't really solve anything. Whereas George's plan definitely is all about a dead Herrick and thus not only a safe Mitchell and Annie, but also a non-vampirized humanity. It also involves self sacrifice - George has to deliberately kill as a werewolf and accept the werewolf isn't something apart from himself - but the primary goal isn't to end his own story.
Repeating stories: the big bads wanting the vampocalypse, of course, and also manipulators turning up to prey on one or several of the regulars, turning them against each other. This is why the Captain/Devil in s5 really, in retrospect, couldn't work, at least not as written. He needs the entire season when we've seen several small time supernaturals manage to do it in one single episode, and this starts with Tully.
So many forgotten details: the fact that Kara shows up in the first episode as a kindly hospital employee, for example, long before getting vamped by Herrick. BH's ability to make minor characters feel real most definitely applies to her. Also the priest George befriends in the finale - I can't remember what happened to him later (if anything, and don't tell me). Or Josie remembering that she and Mitchell checked into a hotel as Mr. and Mrs. McCartney in the 60s.
Very striking: Lauren's final death here versus Mitchell's final death in the s3 finale. (And not just the staging is very similar, the embrace of Lauren and Mitchell, of George and Mitchell.) Lauren telling Mitchell that she knows exactly what she'll become when/if she continues to exist, that she won't be able to stop herself. I remember that back then the show was first broadcast, I wondered whether the show was killing her off in order to free Mitchell of the responsibility he has for creating her, as an easy way out, but with the knowledge of the show entire, it's not, it's Lauren making a moral choice while Mitchell is still responsible for his own choices.
re: the darkness of the show versus the supernatural sitcom people thought they were getting (and partly did get throughout all five seasons, but along with the pitchblack tragedies). Given that in s1, we see Mitchell turned on by a snuff film (of a naked man dying, btw, and it's telling that according to the BH post about the male gaze I've memorized, the American equivalent of the same scene substituted female nudity despite having to change the rules for vampires in order to do so), handling what he did to Lauren at first really badly (he later actively and earnestly tries to help her, but that's what he should have done from the start after turning her, as opposed to just panicking and leaving her to revive on her own and stumble across the other vampires, Herrick was right about that), and going from seeing Lauren fall off the wagon to turning yet another person as a solution (rewatching the Bernie episode made me as furious as I was the first time about the irresponsibility of siring a kid) - given all that, the fact there is no happy ending for Mitchell really shouldn't have been a surprise.
All this being said? Mitchell is endearing enough in the first season to make it clear why George and Annie care so deeply about him, which is crucial. Incidentally, I was flabbergasted how much older Aidan Turner looks here compared to how he looks in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which was shot years later. Considering that during Annie's opening monologue for the show, we see him in front of an WWI memorial, I also wondered about the symbolism of the show putting his origin story there. WWI as the war who was supposed to "end all wars" and instead spawned almost instantly a new one, the war that shattered the illusion of heroic warfare in popular culture (for a while)? ("All the rethoric", Mitchell says to Herrick about the later's vampocalypse plans after having finally figured out the part of them that involve keeping enough humans around to have an eternal larder, "and it comes down to this: you just want to feed.") The sense of doom (you either die young in WWI, or you spend the rest of your life scarred by it) without the solution of a traditionally heroic narrative? (WWII in popular culture - and not just there: clear cut good versus evil scenario. WWI: anything but.)
At the start of the season, we have Mitchell and George close, with Annie as the new element who is a bit resented by George, and Mitchell as a mediator between them. Over the course of the season, George and Annie grow closer, until towards the end they have most of their key scenes with each other, whereas Mitchell becomes the one getting distanced by his returning to the vampire world. Of the relationships outside the trio, George's most important one is with Nina, i.e. a potential, then actual romantic partner, Mitchell has two of equal narrative importance (within s1, not within the show entire), one with Herrick, one with Lauren, i.e. one with his creator and one with his creation, though the later is also at least a sexual partner - and Annie's is with Owen - former romantic partner, but the reason why he's key to her s1 arc is that he's her murderer - does that also make him her inadvertent creator as far as Annie-as-ghost is concerned? It's also the only relationship that's one sided in nature, not just because Owen until the last two eps can't see or comunicate with Annie but because he has no emotional investment in her. He torments her when she tries to warn Jenny about him, but he doesn't seek her out on his own - basicall, whether she dissolves into thin air or hangs around is the same to him. Whereas Herrick and Lauren have an investment in Mitchell (not a positive one, but they definitely care whether he's with them or not), and of course there is a strong mutual one between Nina and George. I wonder whether this one sidedness is somehow symptomatic of Annie's ghost nature, or Annie being Annie.
Origami as the sign of the creep: is used by Tully in 1.02 already, which I had totally forgotten. Clearly, someone likes their tropes. :)
