Review: Being Human (US) – “Turn This Mother Out”

Hey there, Discriminating Fans! Long time, no see! It’s been a long wait for the second season of Syfy’s Being Human, but it’s finally here. And what a season premiere it is!

When we last saw our supernatural trio, Aidan cut of Bishop’s head and became the de facto leader of the Boston vampires, Sally settled her score with Danny and Nora saw Josh transform (and was scratched in the process) and she lost their baby. The last thing we saw was Hegeman telling Aidan that “she” wanted to meet him, with heavy emphasis like it was most definitely not a request but an order.

The following contains spoilers for “Turn This Mother Out”, with small spoilers for series 2 and 3 of the original BBC Being Human. You have been warned.

The episode opens with a montage of a young vampire out on the hunt. Aidan recognizes him and stops him before he kills a young couple enjoying a walk and some ice cream. Aidan takes him into an alley and gives him a bag of blood, which the other vampire downs greedily, then cries that he can’t stop hunting. Aidan assures him he can, but it takes getting used to. As Boston’s new senior vampire, Aidan is trying to deal with the power vacuum left by Bishop’s demise and realizes that all the systems they had in place to “handle” vampire activity before now risk exposing them to the wider world. He’s trying to limit damage, thereby limiting the risk to all of them. Bishop’s new recruits are feeling very alone and abandoned in the new regime and Aidan says he’s working on it. The young vampire says he keeps hearing “She’s coming” and wonders what that means. Aidan knows, but he tells Tommy he’ll tell him tomorrow.

The others are having a hard time getting used to their new normals, too. Sally is doodling pictures of doors when she can maintain her concentration enough to hold a pencil, Josh is writing and rewriting an email asking to be re-accepted into medical school and Nora is poring over Josh’s werewolf book and wearing long sleeves, even in bed, to hide her scars from Josh. And outside the house, a dozen or more vampires are waiting on the steps for Aidan to come home, begging him for blood when he finally arrives. There is a lot of uncertainty and our four (because Nora’s neck deep in it now) are at the epicenter.

The next morning, it’s been four weeks since the night of Nora’s miscarriage. That means it’s also been four weeks since Josh’s last change…so tonight’s the big night again. Josh is feeling randy but Nora’s not. She wants to know more about what it feels like when Josh changes. He begins to describe the heightened senses and stops, saying she doesn’t need to take on all of his werewolf stuff. He wants to be normal the rest of the time and that’s the point of having a girlfriend and an apartment and all that normal stuff.

Downstairs, Sally is having a hell of a time trying to open the door on the microwave. Her ability to touch things has suffered dramatically since she passed up her Door and she’s angrily determined to do simple physical tasks, which probably makes it all the harder. Josh mentions the “tweaky-looking vampires on the doorstep” last night and Aidan insists he’s doing his best to contain things so everyone can survive the transition and work on civility and normalcy. He tells Josh that Mother is coming and she will finalize the running of Boston, then everything will be okay. Josh reminds them that Nora will be coming down, so less talk of “Mother” and floating coffee cups would be greatly appreciated. Sally reminds them that Nora knows about the three of them so “it’s all good.”

Nora arrives and asks if Sally is there, since she can’t see her. She found Sally’s high school reunion letter in the bathroom trash, which Sally says she took a lot of effort to put there so it wouldn’t be found. Sally is definitely not going to her reunion. They try to convince Sally to go, with Nora standing in the wrong direction (until Aidan spins her around) and excitedly telling her “it’s like going to your own funeral!” Josh relays Sally’s reservations to Nora and Nora keeps at it, “you’ll be seen in the best light! ‘She was so young! So beautiful!’” This convinces Sally, who goes off to look at her hair, even though she can’t change anything. Not knowing she’s left the room, Nora continues to encourage the space where Sally used to be until Nora realizes by the guys’ reactions that Sally’s buggered off. The guys leave for work, leaving Nora to wash up and consider her scars…and what that means for tonight.

At work, Josh enters a room to change the sheets of an elderly man, only to find him dead with the vampire equivalent of an ankle biter actually…biting his ankle. Tommy smugly tells Josh he’d better go get Aidan. By the time Aidan arrives, he’s remorseful and worried about The Culling – the murder of Bishop’s illegally created army of new vampires. Aidan says he’ll do what he can to deal with it. As Josh helps Aidan wheel the dead man down the hall, Josh asks if there wasn’t some sort of vampire Merry Maids who came in and cleaned things up. Aidan says that all fractured when Bishop died and he’s still picking up the pieces.

Sally shows up at her old high school and immediately sees Stevie Atkins, a boy from her class who committed suicide in their junior year. He’s been hanging around the high school a lot, remembering how much it sucked. But they glamorized his suicide and made it “a great message for the kids.” Sally smugly says she’ll steal the spotlight because she was murdered by her fiance but he tells her they’ll both be overshadowed by Diane Alcott who died of malaria as a goodwill ambassador in Africa. “Well, that’s just stupid,” Sally sulks, her thunder stolen. “They have drugs for that.” Inside, Stevie explains reunion dynamics to Sally who says he is far too wise to look so young. They watch the “in memoriam” montage and bicker about Diane when Diane arrives and introduces herself to the two of them like they’ve never met. From Diane’s perspective, they probably haven’t, because she was popular and Sally and Stevie weren’t.

No one loves you like Mother. Credit: daemonstv.com

Aidan arrives at the Halloway Hotel (which may become important later on) for the meeting with Mother. Hegeman greets him, which surprises Aidan, who thought this was going to be a simple meet and greet, not a spectacle for the entire council. Hegeman lays down the rules. “When she asks you to accept, you say yes. That is all you say. That is all that is ever said. Tradition, Aidan.” They sit down in the designated meeting room and await Mother’s arrival. She descends the staircase looking very stately and very ancient, despite the physical appearance of a woman in her mid- to late-40s. After the most modest of pleasantries, she gets down to business, asking Hegeman what should be done with Bishop’s Orphans. Hegeman reminder her that since they were made in violation of their laws, the orphans must be culled. She then asks Aidan, who suggests mercy. It’s not their fault they were turned and they shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush as Bishop. After hearing him out, a flicker of a smile crosses her face before she announces that they will be culled. Second order of business: Mother wants her daughter to lead Boston’s vampires. Though they try to hide it, the Council are surprised at this proclamation and express measured concern for the daughter’s health and well-being. Hegeman goes so far as to hint that it might be unwise for her to return to that hotel because of an unfortunate event in the past. Mother insists that this is exactly where her daughter needs to be and Aidan will be the best of stewards to guide her. In return, Mother will overlook Aidan’s peccadilloes and heresy and, once her daughter is successful, would be willing to grant him “true release from all this.”

Nora’s at work, ready to sit down to lunch which is…a raw piece of steak in a Tupperware. Another nurse sees it and asks if raw meat is her secret to staying so thin. Nora blags it off as some new spin on the Paleo Diet, but the worry is written all over her face. She meets up with Josh outside and asks him when he turns, saying she wants to pick him up and take him to the woods, to be there for him. He brushes her off without answering her question. She wants to know him and he tells her she knew the version of him he wanted her to know, but now she knows the rest. She angrily says they’ll put it off discussing it for another month and walks off.

It's the full moon and Nora's asking a lot of questions about what it's like to be a werewolf. Credit: Philippe Bosse/Syfy

Back at school, Sally and Stevie talk about death and Doors. Stevie reveals that those who commit suicide don’t get a Door, meaning they don’t get to pass on. But he tells her he can sleep and dream and suggests she try it because it’s a good way to pass big chunks of eternity. Later, on the dance floor, Stevie bares his soul to Diane and Sally can see she’s not listening to him at all. Sally lays the verbal smackdown on her: “We’re dead, you’re dead. That pretty much levels the playing field. So don’t write off a guy like Stevie just because he’s not cool enough for you. Nobody from high school is watching, so you can do whatever you want.” Dian retorts if she can do what she wants, why then is Sally trying to force her on Suicide Stevie? Sally brings out the big guns and tells her she probably hasn’t gotten to the soul-searching part of being dead yet since it’s so new to her. Diane was selfish and shallow and didn’t even remember Stevie even though she thought she could maybe organize a memorial service because it would get her votes for prom queen. “Life is easy for people like you. Death shouldn’t be.” Diane has an instant revelation, so quick Sally suspects the sincerity of her confession. Diane says she was jealous of girls like Sally. With her last living thought, she felt she could finally relax – because she had been sucking in her stomach for fifteen years! She gives an underwhelmed Sally a cathartic hug and notices her Door. She’s so new to death she doesn’t even know what it is and Stevie offers to lead her to it. Diane walks through into the light and is gone.

Hegeman comes to see Mother alone. She wonders how Aidan has become a heretic. She insists he cannot fail and neither can her daughter. Not again. A lackey brings in a large wooden case which contains an elephantwerewolf gun and silver bullets. “No folly, no distractions, no wolf.” Hegeman understands.

At the kitchen table, Josh confronts Aidan. They made a deal and Aidan says it’s the most important thing in his life, but in order to be really, truly free, he has to do this and there’s a good chance that he’ll become “something” Josh wouldn’t recognize. He needs Josh to promise to remind him of what they’ve built together.

Aidan and Mother are ready to go somewhere, but Mother senses a presence. It’s Tommy and two other newbie vampires. They want to plead their case to Mother, but they brought stakes along just in case. Aidan tries to talk them down, telling them now is not the time. But they attack and Aidan is put in the position of defending Mother and staking Tommy. The other two get the drop on Aidan but Mother pushes them away and, with a practiced gesture decapitates them both. The next time we see Aidan, he’s digging a hole in the woods. A hole with something in the bottom we learn when he hits something solid. Mother appears and stares down into the hole. “My little girl,” she says through clenched teeth.

Aidan goes digging for trouble. Big Trouble. Credit: scifimafia.com

Sally’s at home alone and decides to try sleeping and dreaming. She sees her Door and opens it, seeing the bright white cloudy tunnel. She calls for the guys to come and see, but no one answers. Then the clouds go dark and wind starts blowing. She sees a figure at the other end of the tunnel which starts rushing toward her. She desperately calls to it and tries to shut the door when no one answers but a black smoke figure washes over her and she screams. She’s still screaming as she wakes up and finds herself floating ten feet in the air.

Nora does wind up driving Josh into the woods. She tells him a story about how she got so drunk once in college she woke up naked in a Theater major’s apartment and her hair still smelled of vomit as she did the Walk of Shame. She wants to be there for Josh and emotionally hold his hair back while he vomits. Josh assures her that he loves her, but he wants her to get as far away from him as possible. He leaves and she sees the full moon rising between the trees. Josh goes off into the woods to change and Nora is still sitting in the car. She hears him change and looks at her hands – she isn’t changing. After a multitude of thank yous, she gets ready to drive away when the pain hits her. She watches her teeth and fingernails grow and struggles in a blind panic to get out of the car, but her seat belt is holding her in. She calls out for Josh who hears her and starts running toward her, but is shot in the arm by Hegeman. Josh struggles to get up as Hegeman closes on him and as the screen goes black, we hear another shot.

There was a lot going on here to kick off the season and most of it was original plot, which pleased me greatly. I’m looking forward to Syfy’s Being Human to hit its stride this year and this episode was a good indication of things to come. We knew at the end of last season that BHUS would be following the original BBC storyline of having the werewolf’s girlfriend become a werewolf herself, so the Josh/Nora plot wasn’t anything new, but it was well acted, especially by new series regular Kristen Hager. At least I think she’s a regular. She has been upgraded, hasn’t she? I’ll have to check the title credits next episode. An interesting divergence is how much more supportive Nora is than Nina, at least initially. I’m looking forward to next week and we can see if the reality of her change impacts on whether or not she wants to be the emotional rock for the man who cursed her.

Sally’s story, while not advancing her character that much, brought some interesting tidbits of information about ghostly existence. We found out that suicides don’t get a Door so people like Stevie are stuck here forever. The one complaint I have about the Sally story was Diane’s turn-on-a-dime realization and how her vapid admission that she was jealous of girls like Sally (who, presumably, didn’t face the pressures to be pretty or popular like Diane felt she did) got her her Door. But while it was emotionally unsatisfying (I was neither pretty nor popular in high school, as many people probably weren’t,) it fit. Sure life was easy for Diane, so of course death would be, too. She was vapid and shallow in life, so her small admission, which to her must have been an albatross around her swan-like neck, was enough to satisfy and get her her Door. And that makes Sally’s dream of her Door, with its black clouds and menacing smoke monster, all the more sinister. We know that nothing is going to be easy for Sally from here on out. I’m curious to see who The Powers That Be send after Sally (because the US version doesn’t seem to have The Men With Sticks And Rope) and how they go about it. I’m also hoping Stevie becomes a recurring character since we know he can’t move on. Maybe Sally can find a way to help him move on in spite of his suicide. That would fit with American redemptive, “happy ending” storytelling.

And now we’ve finally met Mother. From the moment I saw her, she reminded me of Akasha from Anne Rice’s vampire novels. Not the movie version, but a more sedate yet equally sadistic and scheming version. She moves like a woman who’s been a queen for thousands of years, with an ancient presence behind the eyes of a woman seemingly in her 40s. Plus, her hair reminded me of ancient Egyptian styles. Intentional or accidental? Hmm. I liked Deena Aziz’s characterization from the moment she descended the staircase and her casual dispatch of the two orphan vampires with basically a wave of her hand makes me want to see more of her. And the way she talks about her daughter has me wanting to know all her millennia of back story right now!

And speaking of her as yet unnamed daughter, she’ll be played by Dichen Lachman, formerly Sierra on Dollhouse and most recently seen in Torchwood: Miracle Day. I haven’t seen Miracle Day, but if her performance on Dollhouse is any indication, she’s going to be one helluva sexy, dangerous (and probably crazy considering how the Council were talking) woman!

Did you stay watching for the season preview trailer? Nora and Sally have a real conversation! Josh finds “purebred” werewolves! (YAY!) Sally calls the things after her from beyond the Door “Reapers”! Aidan and the daughter get it on! Historically! And ZOMGWTFBBQ…BISHOP’S BACK! (Though it could be a flashback.) I know trailers are made to entice and use up all the best bits, but I have to say I am really looking forward to this season in a way I definitely wasn’t at the end of season one. Bring on those new plots and bring on those werewolves!