Being Human 3.2: What You Gonna Do With Your Life?
“(Dead) Girls Just Want to Have Fun” picks up the morning after the shocking season premiere, and doesn’t even bother to take us to breakfast. Instead, we get a vengeful Papa Wolf, a vampire massacre, 3 resurrections for the price of 1, and the return of Henry the Endlessly Conflicted Son. Oh, and there’s a dead guy.
Charles Dickens, with considerable foresight, wrote about this episode of Being Human: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times…” Honestly, that couldn’t be any more accurate. Aidan survived being grounded and then nabbed for a snack by his erstwhile superiors. He even survived a pack of werewolves, which is amazing considering his defense involved slowing them down with overturned trash cans. (He was jumped by werewolves after he almost bought baby blood off the black market; Aidan, what is your life?) He even continued doing what he does best, which primarily means aggravating his son Henry by disapproving of his life choices and remaining stoic in the face of his roommates’ concern. Aidan’s back and he’s going to be in trouble, but at least he’s stumbling into good choices as well as bad ones. (By the way, don’t be ridiculous; of course Dickens wouldn’t write anything about Being Human. His mom didn’t let him watch television.)
Meanwhile, in Love in the Time of Lycanthropy, Josh and Nora are stronger and closer together than ever. They spent this episode flaunting a mutual supportiveness and affection that would have been nauseating if they hadn’t gone through so much blood and savagery to earn it. Josh took a night off (on the full moon!), laughed gently at the wolf-calls of street youths, and decided he’d love to spend his time being human shackled to the supernatural by marrying Nora. Too bad Nora found herself cornered by an older vengeful werewolf, and Josh found nothing but blood on the floor and a gaping hole in the storage unit the next day.
Tip: don’t rent a storage unit from that company. They obviously don’t have any security since they let snarling animals thrash about in their units once a month, and fail to employ daily maintenance workers that might notice blood trails and alert the police.
What about Sally? She wanted some selfish corporeal time, and really couldn’t be bothered to read the handbook on the Reanimated Dead. (Has she not seen Beetlejuice? Always read the handbook.) She raided Nora’s closet, dragged Josh and his wallet out on the town, and proceeded to ignore the witch’s only warning from the previous episode: do not interact with anyone from your previous life. It turns out the witch’s warning should have included the fine print “…or you will kill them dead.” This makes Sally sad, and still not laid.
Throughout all the frenetic supernatural activity of their lives, the three roommates still find time to take a beat and just be a family together. They find a way to cope and normalize the supernatural. There’s a reunion scene toward the beginning of this episode that perfectly encapsulates the heart of the show: Aidan exhausted and hanging on to his humanity by a thread, Josh’s heart on his sleeve and there for each of them, and Sally providing a vibrant voice that reminds them all to live. There are tears and laughter and Sally tells Aidan that he “look[s] like a serial killer from the 70s”– but, most of all, there is love.
“(Dead) Girls Just Want to Have Fun” is already moving us into darker waters. There’s a vengeance plot unfolding, and Aidan doesn’t know he’s in the crosshairs. Sally’s discovered that death is contagious. The vampires’ blood supply is tainted. Josh has discovered that being human isn’t everything that he wants– not if it means cutting out everything supernatural. There may be despair heading their way, but this family’s standing on a solid foundation.