Review - Syfy's Being Human, Season 1 Episode 4 "Wouldn't It Be Nice (If We Were Human)"

Photo courtesy of NBC Universal


Being Human airs Mondays at 9pm ET on SyFy.
Exclusive content and downloads at http://www.SyFy.com/BeingHuman

BH veterans, you need to try to forget what you've seen, partly to not be spoiled, but partly because some parts are, and other parts may be, different.  More than that I'll not say, lest newbies be spoiled.  Moving on…

An interesting theme this week, that of Together and Apart.  The opening monologue was once again given by Josh, but this time it was about himself, and his difficulty in trying to be alone - truly alone - during his time as a wolf.  He
had trouble being alone in the woods, and in fact woke to someone waiting for him.  "M'name's Ray, I'm a werewolf too" and his appearance was due; we met other vampires in the first episode, and another ghost in the last episode.  In each of those cases, for better or worse, those other mentors eased their students' transitions into their new lives.  Josh needed the same, and Ray served as tutor for not only Josh but for us as well.  We learned about how Josh might avoid killing any humans ("Rule number one, no one gets hurt.  We don't wanna kill anyone, or turn em"), what happens to him in the days before he turns, and more about the animosity between werewolves and vampires.  Hopefully now Josh has also learned that he had no business trying out Ray's pickup lines without Ray's age, style, choice of location, and southern drawl.

Ray has apparently been stalking Josh, which is somewhat disturbing.  And he also appears to be turning into The Thing That Wouldn't Leave.  He's already causing animosity between our formerly happy-with-each-other trio, but hopefully that will be resolved next week.  This cast and show in general don't "do" angst very well, but thrive in dealing with problems.  Will Josh embrace the wolf, recognize it and deal with it, or reject it to the extent that he can?

So… Sally's photos of her and Danny in the mountains were actually her and Danny - and her best friend?  I'm curious to see if they develop that further, or if she will simply move on from Danny and therefore that whole aspect of her life.  Bridget would have been the third wheel on that outing which makes one suspicious of her motives, but she was in fact the one who brought flowers to Sally's grave and she was the one who rebuffed Danny's email.  They nicely underscored Sally's ability to move to a place by thinking of it, by having her say that she tried to leave Danny and Bridget but kept thinking of them and therefore kept returning.  It was great that she was able to actually move an object, unfortunate that she had to build up a rage to do it.  Nice that she made the grand gesture and gave Bridget permission to be with Danny, but unfortunate that she couldn't do the same for Danny.

Then there's Aidan.  How exceedingly cool did he look walking down the street in his sunglasses?  He and Rebecca make a gorgeous couple.  And him teaching Rebecca about packaged blood and vampire blood vs fresh human blood was of course also teaching us.  Their scene in the restaurant was cute, their scene in the alley was hot, their race to the restaurant employee was scary, and their scene in the hotel room was sad, though I loved her line, "I can't go to a restaurant and pretend to enjoy it when all I want to do is eat the table next to me."  His promise that she is "not a monster" and her retort "WE ARE" was the perfect summation of the premise of the show.  Three monsters who are trying to not be, who were each once human and trying desperately to be so again.

Kudos to the writing, directing, and editing of the parallel attack scenes.  Aidan and Rebecca both started after the restaurant employee together, but at the last second Aidan snaps out of it and pulls Rebecca back.  Josh is repulsed by Ray's attack on the vampire but then joins in.  It was a lovely juxtaposition of more experienced pulling the new one up versus more experienced dragging the new one down.

Cheers as well for the soundtrack, and to Syfy for posting links to download songs featured in each episode.  I'm really looking forward to downloading this week's songs as soon as the playlist is posted.
Yet another solid episode in a solid rookie season, and I can't wait for next week.

Favorite line (besides Rebecca's, above): Josh - "I've been able to keep this thing small; I deserve to contain my own private hell."

First published by Good to Be a Geek on 2/8/11  http://www.goodtobeageek.com/?p=721