Being Human had its swan song and now its all over but the crying

Being Human is over. I shall miss you guys so much.

I sit here late at night writing this post because I can't get the images of the series finale for SyFy's Being Human out of my head. This was a gem of a series not because it did anything ground breaking with the mythology behind werewolves, ghosts, and vampires, but because it focused so much on the characters and how their love for each other was all that mattered when they died.

Being Human in its final hour made me sob so many times. The first time came only moments into the show when Sally (by far my favorite character) made the choice to cast a spell that would claim her immortal soul, but she did it because it was the only way to keep Josh safe from an enraged Aiden. Through season after season I thought for sure that Sally would eventually get her door. She missed her door in season one when she helped Aidan, so this isn't how things are supposed to end, right? But that's exactly how it ended, and Sally did what Sally always did: she made a choice out of love, door be damned. And her goodbye was so perfect and so filled with good that it just didn't seem right that this is how this character goes out.

In monologue came the most profound explanation behind Sally's choice:

"The day they moved in was the best day. It felt like the start of something new, something good. After everything that had gone so wrong with my life, they walked in that door and they brought possibility. When you look back at your life with a person, sometimes you wonder, would we be friends if we met now? Or did the path that we went on together lead us to this place? Did every triumph and mistake along the way make us fall in love? I think that everything happens for a reason: love, life, even death. I hold onto this place for a reason, and that reason is now."

In the aftermath of Sally's sacrifice (that made Aidan human) the once mighty vampire is laid low first by sadness at losing Sally, and second by the thread of his own mortality which is quickly overtaking him. All those centuries start to catch up on Aidan, turning his hair gray, and making him move like a man in his nineties. With the specter of dying (and the fear that results from that) Aidan almost makes a choice to become a vampire again. However Josh stops him, and in that redemption I got a new respect for Aidan because he decides to make sure that Josh and Nora would go on to live happy lives by returning to the house that lay at the center of their world. He did this to burn it down in order to kill a malicious ghost that haunted it (and was murdering people because they all moved out). Josh says in monologue to a dream (one Josh and Nora seem to have shared):

"The day we moved in was the first day of my life. Before then, before them, I had no chance, I didn't think I could feel human, feel love. The little things--coffee grounds, laundry day, sleeping late, living life--thank you for every small moment of this world."

I guess Josh's words reminds me of that song, "Little Wonders" sung by Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20. Have you heard it? In any event, each of the cast central to this series gets to say something profound in this final episode. But, I think Aidan's final haunting words as he's dying in their home near Sally's death spot captures the essence of the series the best (and very poetically):

"When the end comes rushing up at you and everything that you thought was real starts to fall away, you consider the meaning of the life that you lived and you realize that the only thing that means a damn thing at the end is what you loved. And you think of who you loved, and you let it take you home."

Oh my gosh. I guess all that ever really matters to any of us who are human is the feeling of home, right? Some like to say it's where you hang your hat. But really, it's where you are loved and where your memories are forged. Home is the place that defines you. This finale was bittersweet but very satisfying. There are series that end with characters leaving an empty apartment or whatever place brought them together. This one ended with Josh and Nora as the parents of two adorable kids named Aidan and Sally. And therein is the true prize: Josh and Nora made it. They got to be happy and have a family.

Josh told Aidan's ghost right as he got his door (a thing that vampires are never supposed to be able to get), "We promise to live ridiculous lives in your honor." The chemistry of this cast made this the little series that could, and I think I'll never forget how it made me feel when all things came to an end.

SyFy's Being Human is an expert in taking a cliffhanger and resolving it as blandly as possible

Yay Being Human is back on SyFy. Above: Family Portrait of ghost, two werewolves
and a really old and powerful vampire. Do you know which is which? This series
is all about family values, only the family they have is not anything like the kind
you or I can relate to (at least I hope that's the case).

Yay, Being Human is back on SyFy. As much as I love this series, however, I have one small bone to pick: it's an expert in taking a good cliffhanger and resolving it as "meh" as possible. This is not how cliffhangers should pan out people! If you blow up a planet, the next season shouldn't be, "Now that was just a hologram. Good thing it didn't really happen..."

Allow me to explain further:

Last season, the American Being Human series ended with ghost Sally being dragged into what looked a lot like Hell by the witch Donna. This left me on the edge of my seat shaking my fist at the screen. And seriously that's where it ended. It was just as bad as season 3's ending that had Aiden buried in the ground, Sally lost in Limbo with her voice coming over the radio, and Josh in a fatal gunfight with the werewolf that made him.

I guess I should just celebrate that Sally is back. Only I wish it had been just a LITTLE harder.

I waited a whole year for the resolution, and this is what I got: Sally's consciousness basically couldn't handle the purgatory in which she got imprisoned with Donna so naturally she created a "happy place" that resembled a day spa where she could get massages and lounge by the hot pools. So there had to be some trick to escape from this horrible place, right? Well it turns out...not so much.

See, Sally is a very "powerful" ghost (as expert witch Donna has labeled her) and all she had to do to get out of said place was come to the realization that she had all this power and could leave anytime she wanted. Just like that, she found the exit and got away from Donna. And thus we are off to a whole slew of new episodes and plot lines. Sadly, Sally's dilemma is resolved in like five minutes (if it even took that long) and I'm feeling very unsatisfied.

The writers behind Being Human are far from "inventing the wheel" on taking the easy way out to what looks like a difficult situation. Author George R.R. Martin made the most infamous cliffhanger in fantasy when he wrote (in A Feast For Crows) that Arya wakes up blind.

Martin seriously did this and then made us (the patient readers of the world) wait eight fucking years for the conclusion in A Dance With Dragons! The answer (major spoiler ahead) was that it was only temporary. Meh. She gets her eyesight back in just a few pages because it's induced by this stuff she drinks in the House of Black and White in Braavos (which is training her to be an assassin).

I LOATHE this kind of cliffhanger: the kind where the stakes are so high that it seems everything in the world has now changed yet is resolved in one paragraph of text.

If you still can't relate to what I'm saying, imagine reading the following words of a beloved character: "The woman clutched her chest, fell back, and her face filled with intense pain." Only to turn the page a year later and read, "A horsefly bit her, she squashed it, and went back to drying the dishes."

What the hell? Who does this? Why are writers using these kind of cliffhangers? I'm at a loss to explain the phenomenon, but it really is starting to bother me. Could it be that they have no ideas in their heads and want to write something so that it comes across way more interesting than it actually is?

Can you think of other examples of cliffhangers that turned out to be way over-hyped and anticlimactic? Does this kind of thing bother you or am I the only one?

As a side note, I do like the whole Ladyhawke-esque thing that SyFy is doing with their version of Being Human. In Josh's storyline, the role of his human part has flipped 180-degrees with his wolf part and he is now "human" only once a month, and this single day just happens to coincide with the only day his wife must turn into a wolf. So they can only be together for 30 minutes. The heart aches with how awful this must be, which is why I must watch the entire season to see if Aidan, Sally, and Nora can find a solution for poor Josh.

Ladyhawke. I hope that you guys have seen this show.

Oh and I'm also glad that Kenny is back and isn't the horrible monstrous looking Kenny and back to being cute. I just hope he isn't a bad guy. He seemed like a really sweet person last season and maybe it's time that something went right in his life. But if I know this series, no one can stay happy for very long.

Being Human shows us the most sympathetic cannibal you will ever see

This graphic is via zombie hippie whose tumblr can be found HERE. Disturbing, right?

This season of SyFy's "Being Human" has been a real rollercoaster ride for a couple of the show's characters. Josh the werewolf is the kindest most decent man you'll ever meet who also murders other people and buries their bodies in the woods. This may be a real turn off for some, but heck, I'd be Josh's friend. He's actually a good person. It's just circumstance that requires him to bump off some fellow human beings when no one else wants to get their hands dirty. Let's not even mention the fact that a natural born werewolf has now reinfected him with lycanthropy, and the only other cool werewolf we've ever met in the series is probably dead from a vampire attack (that kind of makes me sad cause I really liked that old geezer).

Former ghost, Sally is now the coolest zombie you'll ever meet.
Sure she wants to eat the flesh off your bones, but honestly, she's
trying to go vegan and really hates that she ate a mouse.

And Sally? What to say about my poor favorite Sally. I love her so much, but she's basically the best looking zombie you'll ever meet. I mean she looks better than R did in the movie adaptation of "Warm Bodies" when "R" was almost human. Not following me? A little explanation may be in order.

See, last season they had this cliffhanger where Sally had destroyed her incorporeal form to go find her buddies (also ghosts) who were trapped in Limbo. They got out because Josh (the guy that gets stuff done) dug up her body, provided a heart from someone he murdered, and then dug up her corpse for a witch to resurrect. Damn. Now that's friendship folks. Most people just ask to borrow money every once in a while, right? I could imagine having that conversation: "Yeah um, I know we're friends and I was wondering if you could do me a favor? You can? GREAT! So...can you dig up my corpse, kill someone, and bring their heart to a witch so she can get me out of Limbo? SAWEEET! Thanks hon XOXO."

In life there are toilets and no one wants to scrub them. Josh, however
will do just that. In "Being Human" he takes care of a lot of tasks
that no one else seems to want to do. He's got to be the kindest
looking mass murderer I've ever seen.

But instead of resurrecting just Sally, the witch also brought back her buddies Nick and Stevie who happened to be hanging out with her in Limbo. And Stevie is the most sympathetic cannibal you'll ever see. Like seriously guys. And here's the deal...Nick, Stevie, and Sally don't WANT to be cannibals. They just are because there happens to be a few "tiny and unmentioned" side effects at being brought back alive by the witch. Of course, the witch didn't tell them, because (as it turns out) she's a pretty wicked witch and just wants their souls to stay young forever. And when she isn't doing that, she's like a cook at a homeless shelter, so I guess as far as her soul goes, it's all good. The woman can make some great soup (or so we've seen).

So yeah. Sally, Nick, and Stevie started ROTTING (as in full on body parts dropping off). And the only thing that would make the "rot" go away was to satisfy an indescribable hunger for flesh. Sally ate a live mouse and Nick ate his cat. When Nick tried to eat his girlfriend, she killed him with a baseball bat making him a ghost again (and we can assume that his ghost has now been consumed by the witch off-screen because that's what she does). Well Stevie went the furthest, and I think Stevie has been pretty adorable thus far these last three seasons. Just, his hunger struck and he didn't know what to do about it. So he ate his parents and then ate a United States postal worker who just wanted to deliver the mail.

This is the face of the new cannibal. Stevie ate his parents and a postal worker. Interesting eh?

I've never seen cannibalism passed off like this. Up till now, it's been pretty much one cannibal: Hannibel Lecter, and that dude is scary. Don't get me wrong, the "Being Human" way of approaching this last taboo is incredibly horrific. But it also manages to be other things. It's tragic, sad, and kind of funny. Yes, how can you not laugh when Josh and Sally find an arm in a breadbox and say, "Stevie! Come explain this?!" And Sally wins my heart over when she says offhandedly in her hipster getup and GAP skirt. "Josh, I don't know how much time I have 'cause...I really want to eat that arm." Sigh.

I have sympathy for Stevie, who asked Josh (of course) to kill him. And Josh being the man that does everything in the show, did JUST THAT in the garage of Stevie's home. Josh has gotten so jaded to killing that he's now at a point where he can kill people and still go to lunch at McDonald's afterwards to talk with you about your love life with his puppy dog eyes.

"Being Human" has gotten really dark, and I guess that's appropriate considering that it's a story about monsters who desire humanity more than anything. And yes, it's the kind of dark fiction writing that I'm really attracted to with sympathetic characters forced into incredibly unreal situations. I have to say though, I never expected a television show to address cannibalism with such bravado. I mean, my reaction wasn't "Stevie frickin' ATE his parents!" it was "Awh...poor Stevie...it must have broke his heart to eat his mom and dad like that."

Perhaps taking the horrific and giving it a new spin is what writers do these days to forge a new path in a world filled with sameness.

So the Being Human season 3 premiere was a real disappointment

The cast of the US version of "Being Human" from left
to right: Sally, Aiden, and Josh the werewolf. SyFy
shows new episodes on Monday night.

So the "Being Human" season 3 premiere (U.S. Version) THAT I HAD WAITED A YEAR to see was a real disappointment. For those of you who are fans of the show, you probably know what I'm talking about. For those of you who aren't, the season 2 finale ended with 1) a gunshot in the dark and the question: is Josh dead or did Josh kill his werewolf master 2) Aiden the vampire got buried in the ground by the Mother of vampires (a great villain) after she killed Aiden's true love (the Mother of the vampire's own daughter) in front of him and 3) Sally the ghost stuck in Limbo trying to save her ghost friends with only her voice coming over the kitchen radio asking for Josh and Aiden to help her.

How could they possibly leave me hanging like this? Season 3 has got to be amazing. I had all of these things dreamt up in my head as to where the writers could go with these great characters. Well here's what they did (SPOILER ALERT):

1) Aiden just got dug up by some person I've never seen before. The vampires all have a sickness, and it's 15 months later and they think Aiden is the cure. One vampire tells Aiden "Mother is dead." Really? This great villain is just "dead". That's like getting to the Empire Strikes Back and someone saying, "Oh that Darth guy died of a heart attack." WTF?

2) Josh shot his werewolf master (no big surprise there). The lameness started with Josh taking 15 months to even begin questioning where the hell Aiden is. Really? We're just to assume that Josh couldn't get any information on Aiden's whereabouts during this whole "disappearance" even though Josh knew Aiden was trying to leave the vampires with Saorin.

3) Sally gets resurrected by an evil witch. It's the evil witch thing that really pisses me off. It's copying the season 4 True Blood plot from two years ago where the evil witch and her coven became the big badass of the season (because True Blood ran out of villains when they got rid of Russell Edgington). Being Human had so much invested in these wonderful characters that they really didn't need to go to this whole "witch" thing. They already had a villain in Mother and they could have done that instead of just saying "she died" off screen. So now the whole Season 3 thing is going to be fixing the vampire plague and fighting the witch who is doing something with Josh's dead werewolf master that she found in the woods.

4) Oh and in order to resurrect Sally, the witch needed Josh to bring her the heart of a person he killed. Conveniently, that person was his werewolf master. Inconveniently, this deed was done 15 months ago and the dude's body was buried in the woods. Josh went out there and was able to retrieve the heart? Seriously? Over a year has passed and it hadn't decomposed to the point of just being soil and some bones. Maybe I don't know decomposition all that well, but it seems to me that a person buried in shallow earth will rot in 15 months unless the ground is frozen. Seeing as this takes place in Boston, that wasn't happening.

Both Josh and Aiden did a chat on io9 yesterday, but I was so mad at the season premiere that I didn't read it. I'm still going to watch the rest of the season, but I think the writers really dropped the ball.

Fellow blogger and writer Elise Fallson has teamed up with science fiction author Stephen Tremp who wrote Breakthrough and Opening, Carolyn Brown (author of the Protector series), and writer Mark Koopmans for a simple blogfest scheduled for January 28th. On that day, post a short snippet that you think others might find interesting about your life. You can locate the sign up on Elise's blog which is HERE.

Cindy Borgne posted a review of my book. If you'd like, you can visit it HERE.

IF YOU HAVE TWITTER, COULD YOU COPY/PASTE/TWEET THIS? Muchos gracias in advance :)

Sex in a sci-fi novel? Yes, please. George R.R. Martin shouldn't have all the fun. Review of #Oculus #Yaoi http://dreamersperch.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-review-of-oculus-by-michael-offutt.html PLS RT

Have a great Wednesday.

When music and words collide...

Have you ever listened to a song and thought that the words captured the impact and emotion of a scene that plays out in your head? Or that the song somehow captures within its tune the very essence of a character?

I thought about this when I watched the season 2 premiere of one of my FAVORITE shows this past Monday. It's called Being Human. And it's on #SyFy :)))

To explain the cast a little bit starting in the upper right corner...

The "Lady Killer" is Aidan. He's a really nice vampire who has some difficult choices to make because his desire to be a "nobody" collides with the vampire political elite who want him to be involved in just about everything that is going on in Boston.

The "Wild Man" is Josh who through no fault of his own has been infected with lycanthropy.  He's impregnated his girlfriend and spread his disease unwittingly to her (it would seem). So he's got a lot of tough choices too. Tough in the sense that the "paranormal" won't stop for an instant and allow him to be "normal" which is all that he ever wanted.

And then there's "Sally". She is my favorite character in Being Human because her story is so incredibly sad. Like tear-jerker sad. It really moved me when I discovered that the reason she's a ghost is because her good-looking and charming boyfriend/fiancee murdered her. She didn't know it either. We find out about it about the same time that she does. And boy does he show his true colors. She had so much love and was such a kind person. But just like in real life...those types of things in no way insulate a person from experiencing the worst that life has to offer. I'm not one that believes in karma. Bad things happen to good people all the time.

At the end of season one, there's a scene where Sally looks on from the door and the song by Oasis called "Don't Look Back In Anger" plays. It even  has the line "And so Sally can wait, she knows it's too late as we're walking on by...Her soul slides away, but don't look back in anger I heard you say..."

And it really is just perfect because it has her name, she's a disembodied spirit, and she's been very angry and because of that, it's trapped her on earth. It more or less seared her story into my brain so that I'd come back for season two. And I think that's just amazing and clever writing.

Have a great Wednesday :)