Being Human 3.11: Eat, Turn, Marry
“If Only I Had a Raw Brain” has us off to see the wizard, if by ‘wizard’ we mean ‘witch who is suddenly way too like Baba Yaga for comfort.’ It also has us off to the Emerald City, if by ‘Emerald City,’ we mean the closest strip club that doesn’t sell alcohol and lets underage teenagers ogle desultory dancers in clubwear. (Strip club scenes on regular television are almost always a laugh.) There’s even a death (though it ends in dust rather than a puddle of goo), lost monsters looking for the reason behind their state, and the resounding conclusion that there’s no place like home. And Syfy’s Being Human, much like the actual Wizard of Oz tales, pulls no punches in the faces of terror or the bizarre.
Sally’s getting worse, and the rate of her decay is exceeded only by the gnawing compulsion telling her that all flesh must be eaten. She spends some time trying to convince Josh and Nora that double-padlocking their pet zombie in her room is totally all the rage now. The werewolves reluctantly agree, but decide to try one last full-throttle approach to help Sally first: BURN THE WITCH! Well, shoot the witch. As Josh points out, Donna only gets Sally’s soul if she’s alive to collect it. Creepily, Donna’s taken a page out of Baba Yaga’s book and her soup kitchen grew legs. It’s no longer where it should be, and all we got out of the Trio Power Walk for Breaking Deals with Witches was Sally’s excellent “Yeah, we tried that, remember? She Vader-choked me and then I started craving puppies.”
In a last-ditch effort (and just to highlight how much vitality’s leaked out of her), Sally goes to Mortician Max to see if she can’t use his recent and unloved corpses for zombie kibble. She doesn’t even flirt a little. Not one single double entendre. Just an almost incoherent plea to eat Ms. Hanover. They do protest their love to each other — but love just ain’t enough to make Max forego his stewardship over the dead and allow Sally to nibble on those corpses in his care.
Our zombified ex-ghost ends up behind those double padlocks just as she wished. The best part of Sally’s night is having one of the worst bachelorette parties ever, with herself and Nora sitting on the floor on either side of a locked door and drinking wine coolers through penis straws. (Which they couldn’t show on film, so Meaghan Rath had to do this awkward move: wrap her hand around the entire straw and drink from her closed fist.) Aidan comes by later and shows his blinding colors of true friendship by letting Sally gnaw off a bit of his rubber-tire abs. Yes, this is an actual thing that happened on this show, and allowed Sally to regenerate enough to get through the door at Ilana’s. (Remember the exorcist from Season 1?) Ilana gives Sally a pep talk about taking the fight to Donna, and a handy Latin chant to use during the inevitable catfight for Sally’s soul. (Sadly, Ilana later gets her neck snapped by Zombie Werewolf Ray, so she won’t be giving out any more free advice.)
Aidan, meanwhile, spends his time trying to be a good man and that doesn’t often work out well for him. He’s so very sorry that a gang of vampires found our beloved ex-Hippie Guru Werewolf, and blind to the fact that informing Blake of the werewolf inoculation shot was tantamount to choosing vampires over his family. (Although, sorry Josh, but it’s also hard to rationalize allowing an entire species to die off when you have the knowledge to prevent it.) Aidan’s floundering in guilt and good intentions continues when Kenny moves up the timetable for his Turning – he’s been given the option of a bone marrow transplant, and the kid doesn’t want the sickness and slim chances at a normal life that come with it. Not when the alternative is to become a “Lord of the Night,” membership in which club stipulates that he never use that phrase again. Although Josh puts his disapproving parent face on when Aidan brings Kenny home (after all, they have the WORST track record when it comes to wayward youths), Nora gives their blessing: “We’ve so many reasons to hate what we are, but if we can use our curse to help someone, then I say we do it.”
Kenny spends the rest of the day in a whirl of knocking out his Bucket List of things he wants to experience while still human, which did not include watching Aidan stake a vampire stripper (but that happened anyway). Realizing that eternal life can still be forcibly ended meant he went into his Turning with a sober edge and eyes open. The same can’t be said for Aidan, who only later discovered that he was responsible for creating a monster– his sorta-girlfriend Kat’s ex-sleazy professor jumped him and demanded to know why Aidan turned him into a deformed vampire-thing. Aidan ended the episode in dazed horror, shaken and alone with the dead he’d made.
Josh and Nora, on the other hand, paraded about being badass compassionate bosses. They moved up their wedding date so that Sally would be able to be there as herself, and Nora asked Sally to be her Maid of Honor. They didn’t flinch from taking up arms against a witch who bargains for people’s souls. Nora arranged for Josh’s sister to be at the wedding, even though all other (biological) family is being necessarily excluded. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end and the relationship Josh was rebuilding with his sister is now one of those things. She doesn’t deal well with discovering the supernatural when she witnesses Aidan stake a vampire stripper who was trying to eat Josh, and focuses on the “Aidan is a murderer” part of the equation rather than the “stripper was a monster who was trying to kill Josh” side of things. Josh doesn’t think she’ll come around, but Josh also didn’t think he’d ever learn to make peace with the wolf. Hippie Guru Werewolf taught him differently; maybe his sister will surprise him too.
Next week: Penultimate episode! Ruined wedding! Corpse-punching! Witch fight! Zombie Werewolf Ray! …it’s gonna be a wild ride.
