Recap and Review: Being Human (Syfy) 2.12: Partial Eclipse of the Heart

By Paula R. Stiles

[spoilers ahoy]

Recap: Josh keeps remembering what Nora said last week about curing himself by killing his sire, Ray. He has nightmares of being killed by Ray in the woods with Heggeman’s gun and wakes up next to Julia. But then he finds Ray and discovers he’s no longer homeless. Ray has shacked up with a woman and kid. Ray also welcomes him back with open arms, after moping about Josh’s previous rejection of him. Already wavering, Josh can’t bring himself to kill Ray, so he’s stuck with the wolf and the dilemma of telling Julia.

He ask Sally for advice and they talk it out. Josh admits that he can’t just go on without telling Julia. It’s not fair to her to start off a marriage with lies. But first, he has to face Julia’s bitchy best friend, Chelsea, who is even more bitter about Josh leaving Julia at the altar than Julia was. Chelsea warns him that he won’t get a third chance if he screws up this one and that he’d better come clean to Julia about anything that might still be coming between them.

That comes sooner than he thinks when a partial eclipse forces a change on him in a restaurant and he flees from a stunned Julia. She follows him down the street into an alleyway, insisting that he turn and look at her. But when he does, she’s horrified and backs out into traffic, where she’s hit by a car. Josh tries to help her, but runs because he hasn’t yet changed back. He returns later that night to find Julia sitting on the curb, covered in blood. She appears otherwise okay, but won’t let him touch her. He admits to her that he is a werewolf. That was why he fled the first time. He swears he’ll protect her, but she says it’s too late.

At that moment, a stretcher rolls past with Julia on it and the paramedics flipping a sheet over her face (This is not at all medically accurate, since she would have been carried off in the ambulance, full O2 and CPR, and pronounced dead at the hospital, long before sunset). Anyhoo, the main point is that she’s dead and he’s talking to her ghost. Once she understands why he left her, that it was to protect her from his wolf, her door appears. He tells her what it is and she goes through it, after telling him that she loved him enough to handle knowing, even though he never believed it. Nice final guilt trip, there, Julia.

In the cliffhanger from last week, Aidan is about to be killed by Henry and his posse when Henry turns on them. Henry stakes one while Aidan beats the other to a bloody pulp. When Henry hands him the stake, Aidan takes out the unfortunate henchvamp. Later, they talk about running. Henry thinks they should run off together (No, that’s not homoerotic at all!), since he’s been in hiding for eighty years and knows how to do it. But Aidan won’t abandon Suren. He has a plan. Going back to the motel room, he talks down a jittery and blood-starved Suren. While she waits, he drives down to Pennsylvania Dutch country. He barges into the vampires’ barn and demands to see one of them – the one who fled when the werewolves came after him and Aidan in the woods. At first, the elder balks, but Aidan coldly reminds him that he knows the elder turned coward. Aidan wants refuge among the Pennsylvania Dutch for himself and Suren until things cool down. They strike a deal where Aidan will get food for the Dutch that evening and they will hear him out. It’s too late, though. When he returns to the motel, Suren has already gone back to Mother. While Suren grovels, Mother smiles in evil triumph.

Sally, meanwhile, is juggling being Josh’s shoulder to cry on with trying to reconcile with Zoe. Predictably, Zoe is still into the black-and-white thinking she’s always had and rejects, not only Sally but all ghosts. Desperate to get her attention, Sally recites half-remembered poetry at Zoe until Zoe caves in frustration. Sally begs again for forgiveness, mainly say that Zoe should not turn her back on her “gift” out of her anger toward Sally.

They are in the playground where Sally attacked Walter, a ghost who was possessing a kid, when the eclipse occurs. Walter reappears, confused, bewildered and terrified of Sally. Zoe thinks it’s the eclipse. She once saw an eclipse during a field trip and ghosts suddenly popped up all over the place. Sally realises that Nick is back at the house. She tells Zoe to meet her there. In the living room, she finds Nick and also Danny, lying on the floor and weak. Nick cringes away from her at first, but Sally reassures him that she won’t hurt him.

Nick tells her that he did cease to exist for a moment, but then he came back, this time without even a ghost body. He could see, but had nothing to see. Sally realises, to her horror, that shredding ghosts does not kill them completely so much as send them to some awful Limbo. It’s so bad that Danny is happy to see Sally again. Danny even apologises to Sally, though not in so many words, and explains to her that he is in a form of Hell (which appears to be in a similar place as Nick’s) for people who deserve it and also for those who accidentally go through the wrong door.

Zoe rushes in and shares a sappy moment with Nick. Nick (who was begging Sally not to send him back just a moment ago) shares a look with Sally and tells Zoe she was the best thing that ever happened to him after his death, that he’s in a better place. This is a lie, but a comforting one for Zoe, who forgives Sally and thanks her, after Nick disappears.

Review: Hmm, well, I’m of two minds about this one. On the one hand, it has some nice ideas and at least two things happened that I was hoping for. On the other hand, the writing felt too convenient, even pedestrian. For example, I won’t miss Julia, who was pretty and vacant. She reminded me of nothing more than an inbred Golden Retriever – sweet and cute, but with not much going on upstairs compared to your average Heinz 57 mutt. On the other hand, I suspect I would have derived more catharsis from her end if I had cared one whit about her. Yes, her death was artistic and angsty (and not terribly realistic), but it also drove home the fact that she wasn’t all that good for Josh and, in the end, rather shallow. Witness her last words to him before she goes through her door. They are both a bit mean and terribly ironic, considering the fact that she couldn’t handle knowing enough to stand still or at least look both ways before she stepped back in horror from his partially wolfing out. If she could have handled knowing his secret, she wouldn’t be dead in the first place. Hardly a ringing endorsement for his being honest with her.

Sadly, I doubt we’re quite done with this storyline, since they introduced a nasty best friend in this episode who will almost certainly twist the knife on Josh, now that the only mediator between them is dead. Then, I hope, this storyline will go away. The whole The Folks Back Home Never Understood plot was always pretty stupid. Apparently, in this version of New England, when someone has a nervous breakdown and abruptly disappears, it occurs to none of those left behind to worry about him or think about anything but their own embarrassment and anger. Josh didn’t run off with a bridesmaid; he freaked out and dropped off the face of the planet. The general lack of compassion among his family and friends makes me think he’s well rid. At least it explained why he’s so neurotic.

The eclipse itself made no astronomical or supernatural sense in terms of wolfing out (though the ghost idea was fairly traditional for folklore). If the wolf is strongest at the full moon, a werewolf would not change during a solar eclipse. Solar eclipses can only ever occur during a new moon. Lunar eclipses occur during a full moon (I’d be curious to read a story about what happens to a werewolf during a lunar eclipse, but wouldn’t expect anything so arcane from this show). So, why would Josh start to wolf out during an eclipse? Furthermore, how did he not know there was an eclipse? Solar eclipses are unusual, and total solar eclipses are rare (What they showed was much more like a total eclipse than a partial one, the episode’s title notwithstanding), especially in well-populated areas like Boston. So, they are well publicised for at least weeks beforehand. Were Josh and Julia living under a rock? Why were people so blase about it? Why wouldn’t people in the restaurant go out to look? And finally, while totality only lasts a few minutes, the rest of the eclipse can last for hours. Why the big and sudden flame-out of the ghosts at the end?

Now, the ghost storyline about Limbo was interesting. I still couldn’t care less about Zoe, but if Nick’s little white lie lets Sally off the hook with Zoe, and makes Zoe feel better, good for him saying it. I don’t like the storyline of Zoe’s grudge against Sally, anyway, though the bit where Sally recited poetry until Zoe gave in and talked to her was amusing. I’m not sure I buy that Nick really loved Zoe as much as he said he did, since what he said about his post-shredding state was a lie. Also, he shared a look with Sally before lying to Zoe, was honest with Sally, and begged Sally to save him. What with that and Danny’s change of heart (convenient but better than the one-dimensional whackjob he was before), I do sense a Hero’s Journey in Sally’s future, though probably not before next season (unless they try to rush something next week). If those whom she shredded are not gone but just “stuck” in between, maybe they can be saved. And Sally’s looking for a little redemption.

Finally, I was totally meh about Aidan’s storyline this week. I’m not feelin’ this whole creepy, homoerotic, father-son thing going on between him and Henry, and Henry flip-flops so much between loyal and treacherous that I just can’t invest in his character at all. Even worse, Suren got thrown under the Damsel in Distress bus to facilitate this male bonding (She’s spoiled, now? What happened to those 80 years she spent in a hole?), and went crawling back to Mother. Mother then smiled in evil triumph. If she’d had a Fu Manchu mustache, she’d have twirled it. Ick. So many bad stereotypes there. Mother started well, but she’s not turned out to be a very deep villain at all. This storyline had better get some of its spice back next week.

Next Week: It’s My Party and I’ll Die If I Want To (season finale): Josh decides to kill Ray and Aidan aims high – he’s going to kill Mother.

You can watch Being Human on Syfy, either Monday nights at 9pm or on the official site.