Review: Being Human (US) – “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”

It’s an exciting, action-packed week with our favorite Boston monsters (their word, not mine.) Aidan is having a hard time settling in to his new role as Mother’s Daughter’s Second. Josh and Nora’s relationship takes an unexpected turn (unless you’ve seen the BBC’s Being Human.) And perhaps most interestingly of all, Sally discovers more about what ghosts can do.

The following contains spoilers for “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” as well as series 2 of the original Being Human. You have been warned.

We open exactly where we left off at the end of last episode: Josh is on the ground, bleeding from a steaming silver bullet wound and Hegeman is closing in for the kill. Suddenly, a werewolf leaps out from behind him and rips his throat out in a savage attack. Josh, who hasn’t changed yet (possibly due to the silver impeding the change) sees scars on the other werewolf’s stomach and recognizes Nora. She has fully changed and, by doing so, saved Josh’s life.

Sally wakes up screaming from her dream. She turns on all the lights in the house, calling for Aidan, who is elsewhere – leading a shrouded figure through the vampires’ new digs at the hotel. We see the face of the person he leads, she is wizened and dessicated and most definitely a vampire. We see, through several cuts, a parade of seemingly willing victims to slake her thirst and rehydrate this vampire who becomes a beautiful, exotic-looking creature who very obviously has a long history with Aidan. At least the Aidan he used to be. She asks in a sultry voice why he didn’t feed with her. When he says he doesn’t drink live anymore, she laughs.

Josh wakes up alone in the forest, shoulder still wounded, and the werewolf gun not far from him. He dresses, grabs the gun and heads back to Nora’s car, which is the scene of enormous devastation. Nora is nowhere to be found. Instead, she wakes up in a pile of leaves in someone’s back yard, covered in blood and dirt, with her hair matted. She begins to cry in panic as she realizes what’s happened. Josh makes it home to see Nora sitting on his steps, most of the gore cleaned off, but wearing clothes that are clearly not hers. He asks how she is, knowing full well she’s a werewolf. He sees her scars for the first time and realizes he did this to her. He takes her inside, and they’re about to have a serious heart to heart when Sally pops up around the corner bubbling over with excitement to tell them about her “new social development”. Nora stares and says she didn’t realize Sally was so beautiful. Sally is surprised Nora can see her. She starts babbling about how she’s wanted to talk to Nora for so long, then stops and asks how she can see her. “You’re not dead, are you?” Nora, in shock, replies, “I’m a wolf.” The heavy moment, where Sally looks at Nora and then at Josh, and Josh can’t even meet Sally’s eyes, is broken by frat boy sounds coming from the sitting room.

Sally’s “new social development” is the return of Stevie (yay!) And he’s brought friends: Dylan and Boner, a.k.a. Phil, other teenage ghosts who are giving each other nad punches in the way that only forever teenage male ghosts will do. Josh is clearly startled and looks like a deer caught in headlights; Nora excuses herself to go have a shower. After Nora stumbles out, Josh asks, “What’s with the Lost Boys?” Sally tells him about her nightmare and how she thinks whatever came at her actually came out of her door, but Josh steers it back to the matter at hand. “Okay…but why are those ghosts here?” Because Josh and Aidan weren’t there to talk to last night, she went to find Stevie, who was at a sketchy diner with his friends. and she invited them over. Aidan power walks in and Sally says he looks worse than Josh. “And Josh just found out he turned Nora.” Aidan stops and turns, Josh is momentarily speechless, then asks “Why would you do that?” She explains her verbal diarrhea by saying for her bad news is like food poisoning, she has to “eject it as soon as possible.” Aidan comes back and demands to know “Why are there ghosts in there punching each other in the balls?” Sally sighs, says she can’t go through it again and tells Josh to explain to Aidan.

Surely, there must be more to the afterlife than hanging around with teenage boys for eternity. Credit: Syfy.com

In the kitchen, once cleared of nut-punchers, Josh confesses he wants to kill himself for what he’s done to Nora. Aidan, sucking on a pint bag of blood, tells him not to turn it around and make it all about him. And Josh knows he owes his life to Nora because she’s a werewolf. Were it not for her, the beardy boss vampire would have killed him. But he doesn’t want Nora to know her wolf has killed. Aidan knows it was Hegeman, but doesn’t put the pieces together for Josh.

Sally’s hanging out with her ghost posse and realizing just how disgusting teenage boys are, even if they’re dead. Apparently, Boner has…issues, and Stevie describes it as a phantom limb, saying “he can mind-whack it.” I really don’t even want to know. Nora has cleaned up and changed and just wants to go home. Josh offers to walk her, but she just wants to go by herself, promising to call him later. Sally tries to stop Josh with no success, but manages to snag Aidan before he can escape. Sally is having trouble relating to her new friends. “Besides beating off and playing X-Box, what do they do?” “That about covers it,” replies Aidan, then orders her to get rid of them. She says she has to start somewhere with friends, and this is it. “Come on, you were a teenage boy once…in Medieval times?” Aidan has the solution – he asks if they want to see “Scarface” in HD. The boys readily agree. Sally says she’s never seen it. “What’s wrong with you?” asks Stevie. “That is why you never moved on!” Sally thanks him and lets Aidan go.

Aidan returns to the Halloway Hotel, where Suren (Mother’s daughter) is waiting for him. She wonders how he wound up minding the errant princess again and he notes that he is her adviser and, though he was also Bishop’s adviser, those were different circumstances. The first thing they need to do is find someone within the police who can fill the role Bishop played – cleaning up murders and smoothing things over. She asks why he took the job and he says it was part of the deal – help Suren run Boston and he’d be free to live how he wanted, where and with whom. She reminisces about the last time they were in the Halloway Hotel’s ballroom, but Aidan called her attention back to the matter at hand, interviewing police candidates. Suren says it’s so like Mother to put them back at the scene of the crime, to rub her nose in it. We see flashbacks (to the 1930s?) to Suren in the ballroom, drenched in blood, surrounded by shocked, screaming people and many dead bodies. She laughs hysterically as two men carry her up the stairs and away from the carnage. She says she’s had 80 years to think about what she wants and won’t be distracted this time.

Josh catches up with Nora in the hospital cafeteria. She’s still visibly in shock. He asks if maybe she shouldn’t have taken a sick day, but she says being at work is the best thing for her – it makes her feel almost normal. She pointedly asks him if she can get a mocha, because it has chocolate in it and chocolate is toxic to dogs and she’s a canine now, right? Josh assures her that she’s not a dog and only one night a month, the rest of the time, they’re them. Nora is fixated on her new supernatural status: “I keep doing my rounds thinking, ‘I’m a werewolf…wrapping a burn victim. I’m a werewolf, inserting a catheter. I’m a werewolf, peeing in the ladies’ room!’” He asks how much she remembers, and she remembers nothing. Then he asks why she didn’t tell him about the scratch. He could have prepared her. She scoffs, saying she tried to talk to him and when he replies he didn’t know why she was asking she says had he known, he would have flipped out more. Before they can get into it further, Jesse, a med school soon-to-be-grad invites Josh to the med school mixer. Nora walks away and Josh tries to make excuses for not attending, but Jesse insists that all the first year students will be there and he’d be a social pariah if he doesn’t show.

Back at the house, Dylan and Boner amuse themselves reenacting scenes from “Scarface” while Sally explains her dream to Stevie. She looks at the other boys shooting at each other with imaginary machine guns and pleads, “This can’t be it – my eternal afterlife?” When he’s done playing Scarface, Dylan asks Sally “Are you ready to rage?” She smiles and gamely agrees. Stevie shakes his head.

Josh has broached the subject of attending the mixer to Nora, who can’t see anything other than two werewolves at a cocktail party. Josh says “it’s not two wolves, it’s us. This is who we are, Josh and Nora, the cute, normal, hard-working, why-is-the-gorgeous-nurse-going-for-the-strange-orderly couple.” He doesn’t have her convinced yet so he adds, “There are six-year-olds on the third floor battling leukemia and if they can still smile, so can we.” Nora snaps out of it enough to reply, “I can’t believe you just played the cancer card.” She smiles when he hands her a mocha.

Josh tries to convince Nora what she really needs to get back into the swing of things is a med school cocktail party. Credit: Syfy.com

At the hotel, Seren introduces Aidan to Cecelia, a cop Seren has hand-picked to become their new insider in the Boston PD. Seren wants Aidan to turn her but Aidan says he’s already working to find a replacement from the vampire cops already in place. Seren wants someone new, not one of Bishop’s leftovers who will have a hard time with the new order. He tells her she’ll have to turn Cecelia herself and Seren asks if she’s asking too much for him to break his diet. She reminds him that she’s already stuck her neck out for him by focusing on a new BPD liaison rather than on Hegeman’s disappearance when so many are wanting to find out what happened to the leader of the Dutch. Aidan knows he’s in a no-win situation.

Sally and her posse are at a college party and she sarcastically asks if this is “raging”. Dylan and Boner find two stoners who look like likely candidates and dive into them, possessing them. Sally is excited, but Stevie tells her it’s not that great. He then explains at length that drunk or high people are easier to get into because their resistance is lower, but some people are just naturally easier to enter. Sally asks why he isn’t “wearing someone” and he says he used to but it sent him down a very dark path. Sally wants to try on “someone with a cute pixie haircut” but Stevie says it’s not like trying on an outfit, it’s like a crack den. Sally’s addictive personality comes out and she talks about wanting to try even heroin once. Stevie begs her not to, but she tries with several different people until she finds a girl she can enter easily. She revels in the sensations of someone spilling a drink on her, the feel of beer as it slides down her throat and the taste of chips. Everything is new and exciting to her again.

Aidan is sitting with Cecelia, trying to be all business about their proposal, but she is hitting on him hard. She makes moves on him and he very nearly gives in, but then angrily shouts for her to get out. She calls him a nutcase and leaves. Later, Aidan arrives in the lobby to find Seren waiting for him. “You don’t feed, you don’t kill and you can’t turn. How is this supposed to work exactly?” Aidan stammers that it’s been too long since he turned someone and he would have killed her because he wouldn’t have been able to stop in time. Seren admits she used to idolize Aidan for his strength, calculating mind and ruthlessness. He knows that noting he could say could explain how he got to this point, but she won’t even let him try. She orders him out and he goes.

Cecelia is awfully frisky to be there strictly for business. Credit: Syfy.com

Josh and Nora are at the med student mixer and don’t have their stories straight. Nora’s drinking too much and giving away even more. “I woke up in a pile of leaf litter this morning with a squirrel in my mouth so I’m gonna need a little bit more [wine].” A flustered Josh tells Jesse and his girlfriend that he and Nora went camping last night and then Nora drops the “it’s not like I’m pregnant anymore” card, which elicits awkward sympathy from the other couple and stunned silence from Josh as he understands her deeper meaning. In the last 24 hours, she feels she has lost everything that she was. Josh catches Nora at the door and she says there’s no way to be normal, not now, not two weeks from now, not ever. She’s too drunk to pretend there’s anything can be done and Josh should know that better than anyone.

Back with the ghosts, Sally is still reveling in the sensory experiences riding this girl’s body allows. Dylan’s still riding someone, too. He makes a move on her and she stops him, saying it’s not even her body. “Then who cares?” he says. Sally is jolted out of her reverie. “You didn’t just say that.” But Dylan pushes her against a post and forces his lips onto hers. She struggles, but he is stronger. She tries to get out of the body and he tells her it’s way harder to get out than get in, implying that she’s trapped here with him physically overpowering her. Stevie reaches into her host and pulls Sally out as Dylan pulls out of his host. Dylan demands an explanation from Stevie and threatens to kill him again. They shove each other and light emanates from their hands as they make contact, heightening the tension as Sally tries to drag Stevie away. Stevie says Dylan gets “all aggro” when he takes people and Dylan reaches into Stevie’s chest, causing Stevie immense pain. In retaliation, Stevie grabs Dylan’s neck, his hands glow green and Dylan vanishes into a puff of smoke. Sally nearly hyperventilates as she asks Stevie what happened and he’s so panicked he’s nearly in tears. “I told you, this is what happens when you take. You lose control.” He apologizes and vanishes, leaving Sally in hysterical tears.

Back at home, Nora is clearly sorry for the scene she caused at the cocktail party. Josh says it doesn’t matter because he’s not going back to med school. Nora is angry, thinking he can’t face his classmates but Josh explains “pulling all-nighters so I can become a dermatologist seems beside the point now.” He wants to work on finding a cure for them but, more importantly, a cure for Nora. He needs to try to fix this for her. She doesn’t want the responsibility of him giving up med school for her. She wanted them to be happy, not be together because they were monsters. Josh tells her she makes him happy, but she can’t help but feel they’re screwed. He says that’s “the appropriate, human, non-psychotic reaction.”

Aidan walks back in at the hotel to see Seren has turned Cecelia. He says he hasn’t turned anyone since they were last together “because of what he did to you.” She asks why he took the job when he knew what he’d be asked to do. He told Mother he would help guide Seren and make her a success because then he would be set free to live how he wanted, with whom he wanted and never have to deal with vampires again. “No one knows Boston better than me. No one can move the pieces better than me. And if it ever came to a fight, I killed Bishop. And that’s worth everything here.”

Sally’s made her way back to the house and confides in Nora how awful she feels – and she looks it, too. Ashen, dark bags under her eyes…she looks almost as bad as when she was exorcised. But at least she’s still here. She knows Dylan is really gone because she felt him get snuffed out. She says “I didn’t know that we could do that to each other. That we were capable of this.” That makes Nora remember some shadowed vision of Hegeman and she says, “I think it’s better to know what you’re capable of. Then you understand what you’re dealing with.”

Finally, one of the Dutch is waiting in the lobby for Hegeman. He tells Seren they were to ride home together, but Hegeman was doing business for Mother and hasn’t been seen. Seren says Mother is away and Hegeman isn’t in the habit of checking in with her, so she knows nothing. The Dutch says he’ll take it up with Mother and leaves.

In some bar, Aidan sees the woman he saw earlier in the day to whom he gave interview advice regarding Dr. Norlick. She didn’t get the job because Norlick was a douche, but they exchange names (hers is Julia) and then proceed to get hot and heavy against the cigarette machine until she suggests they go elsewhere.

Nora is still remarkably calm and even-tempered in spite of what’s happened to her, especially when you compare her reaction to Nina’s in the British Being Human. It makes me wonder how much of her character was changed to suit American tastes or whether Nina’s reaction made her seem unlikable, so they softened the character for the American series. Either way, I feel a lot more sympathy for Nora’s plight than I did originally for Nina (though Nina did grow on me pretty quickly.) It looks like Nora might be moving on to the “anger” stage in the next episode, so we’ll see if that changes my view on her character. I really like the writing for Josh/Nora (if I were in her situation, I’d be wondering about chocolate too and obsessing about being a werewolf doing mundane things) and am really beginning to enjoy the chemistry between Sam Huntington and Kristen Hager.

I didn’t feel like there was much value in Aidan’s story this week, other than introducing the characters of Cecelia and Julia. We saw more of Aidan and Seren’s history, but not enough to advance things and what was revealed only raised more questions. Who is the “he” that did something to Seren that made Aidan change? Bishop? Hegeman? Someone we haven’t met yet? I imagine we’ll learn in due course, but it’s frustrating not having things move forward.

I’m ambivalent on the introduction of the Lost Boys. On the one hand, I am very glad to see Stevie back and think he could prove a good friend, sounding board and even mentor for Sally. On the other, I didn’t really like the other two boys and their appearance didn’t seem to fit with the story progression other than to introduce taking and to provide conflict when Dylan forced himself on Sally. And I really, really disliked the idea of ghost rape and how blase he was about it. I get that he was there to show the negative effects of taking and to provide someone for Stevie to kill to protect Sally and reveal another “ghost power”, but I thought it subtracted from the episode as a whole enough for me to downgrade my rating. And now I really want to see what’s going to happen to Stevie as punishment for snuffing out Dylan. If the American Being Human has The Men With Sticks And Rope, surely this is how they’ll be introduced.

In short, boo to ghost rape, but yay to Stevie! (Hope he doesn’t get ghost whacked.) Boo to mopey Aidan and boo to Seren. Ew to Cecelia and Dylan. And a big ol’ howl of excitement for more of Josh and Nora together!