Column: Gods and Monsters: Recap and Review: Being Human (Syfy) 3.07: One Is Silver and the Other Pagan

[spoilers ahoy]

Recap: In the resolution to the cliffhanger, Aidan is shocked to find Erin about to stake him. Taken aback by his strong resistance, Erin tries to go in for the kill. Instead, he kicks her into a bookcase, giving her a major head injury.

At the hospital, Aidan tries to explain about being poisoned and nearly staked, but Nora is having none of it, even though Josh came home right after the confrontation and saw Aidan bleeding from the eyes. Furious, she swears that she will get revenge on Aidan if Erin dies. No shocker, then, that Liam enters the hospital at night, just as Erin is waking up, and smothers her, while ranting about how she is dying for the good of the pack. I’m pretty sure hospital security is a lot better than that, not least because someone at the nurse’s station would notice her vitals going haywire and catch him at it, but whatever.

In the middle of all this, Josh’s sister shows up with their grandmother’s wedding ring, for when he proposes to Nora. Oh, and Nora’s friend Kat shows up to get some repairs on her apartment – and ends up flirting with Aidan.

Over and above the situation with Erin, Aidan is still dealing with Kenny, the Bubble Boy. A younger rival vampire, Blake, is sniffing around the kid and she’s wormed her way into his affections by offering to turn him. Furious, Aidan turfs her out, but she gets her revenge when Liam catches her by chance on the street. She blurts out that a Pureblood-killing vampire lives in the neighborhood. Liam is so shocked that he lets her go, probably because he’s putting two and two together and coming up Aidan.

Free now to interact with those from her previous life, Sally tracks down Bridget, her best friend from season one who got together with Danny after her death. Bridget has been doing…oddly since then and takes Sally’s news of resurrection with remarkable calm. She regularly attends a Wiccan circle, which she says makes her feel peaceful and in touch with the universe, or something. Sally reluctantly attends with her.

It turns out to be a seance. When the medium summons the husband of a widow in the group, two male ghosts show up, but neither one is the dead husband. It turns out they’re just there to opportunistically possess the women there, including Bridget. Sally drives them off with iron and the amulet Zoe gave her, after shocking them that she can see them.

Later, she gives Bridget the amulet, warning her that ghost possession will drive her crazy, even if she does like the “emptiness” of being displaced in her own body. Then she sends Bridget away, realizing that she doesn’t have to kill her old loved ones to screw them up. This is rammed home by her discovery at the end of the episode that her scalp is rotting off.

Review: It’s interesting to see long-gone characters return. Bridget was never a favorite of mine, and she’s as big a nincompoop as ever, but there’s more resonance between her and Sally than with Sally’s “Oh, by the way, I have a brother I didn’t mention for three seasons” last week. We already know Bridget. In this case, having Sally interact with an actual relic of her past within the show provides the necessary subtext to demonstrate how much Sally has lost. She can’t ever go back, no matter how much she’d like to do it. She’s not the same person, zombie or not.

I’m finding Aidan’s interactions with Kenny very dull. I like the idea, but the practice is a snore. I felt like fast-forwarding through all the stuff with Blake, who made little impression beyond coming off like a stroppy little shark. Not sure how she’s survived to this point and I’m not even sure we’ll see her again. I’m quite sure I don’t care.

Nora is getting on my last nerve (though yay to Josh for backing up Aidan these days). The show seems to be repeating its pattern with her last season in which she was sympathetic at the beginning and the end, and was a complete jackass in the middle (when she was running with the Pureblood twins). There is a desperate wannabe in Nora. She’s like one of those snobs who obsess over royalty and talk down their noses at commoners, despite being commoners, themselves. She wants to be important, powerful, a badass – and the wolf gives that to her. Unfortunately, it also makes her a bully and a homicidal maniac. She’s angry with Aidan for being a killer? She ate her own boyfriend!

Now, mind you, I’m not saying Aidan is any little lamb. Those dead girls aren’t following him around just for kicks. He’s got plenty of blood on his hands. But Nora is the worst kind of hypocrite, being herself an unapologetic killer. She brought an unstable new werewolf into a house where Aidan lived first, refusing to believe him against Erin when she knew for a fact that Erin had (at best) very questionable judgement and would happily blame someone else for it. Nora saw that firsthand when Josh and her brother got into a fight over Erin’s inability to say no. I can only wonder if Liam did something more than just hang with Nora when they wolfed out, something that has made her more susceptible to believing his Pureblood propaganda. Either way, she looks stupid.

It doesn’t help that Erin wasn’t the most compelling character, ever. The storyline felt rushed, with Nora and Josh (especially Nora) bonding far too quickly with this street kid. Erin wasn’t necessarily unrealistic, but the way Josh and Nora got suckered in by her was. Yes, I get that they both felt they were riding to her rescue, but she was so charm-free that I don’t think the viewers cared.

I do think Liam fell into a moral event horizon this week, not only by murdering a girl who resembled his daughter, as a pawn to find out what happened to his own spoiled brats, but by giving her a cold little speech about it being for the good of the pack while he was doing it. Connor and Brynn didn’t come by their entitlement on their own. However, I also think the effect was muted because Erin wasn’t very sympathetic or interesting to begin with. So the overall effect on me was one of thinking Liam was a real bastard for blaming her death on Aidan, while being relieved that she was finally gone. In addition, it makes Nora’s big show of anguish over a girl she barely knew, and who brought her and Josh nothing but trouble, look insincere. So, goodbye, Erin and good riddance.

Next Week: Your Body Is a Condemned Wonderland: Liam tortures Aidan. Will Josh arrive in time to save him?

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