Being Human Season 3 - The proper review
Apr. 10th, 2011 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roginI finished Season 3 of Being Human tonight and it really deserves a bit more attention, because wow, that was one intense dark and fascinating season.
Being Human is not perfect storywise. The quirky policewoman walks into the serial killers house with not so much as a pepper spray to defend herself, yet another world dominating vampire sect with surprisingly incompenent henchmen shows up and Leah planned Mitchell's demise on her own, for some reason having the power to let people in and out of purgatory. It's a bit clunky at points but that so doesn't matter, because the character arcs are fantastic this season.
I adore Nina from the first to the last minute and I loved how much strength Annie developed this season. Her dealings with Mitchell and the way she did not compromise even though she tried to avoid the truth as long as ghostly possible, but also never lost her compassion for Mitchell, was amazing. I'm also quite curious about next season. I can't really imagine the show without Mitchell but I find it fascinating that they are switching from the male dominated 3 person ensemble of the first season to a female dominated on in the third. Usually it's like on Angel and the women have to die of to motivate the men. Interesting.
Which brings me to Mitchell's arc, which imho was made of win. That's the way to end a character, to conclude an arc , so, so much better than any quick shockeffect death could ever be (btw. very glad Nina didn't have one of those). I think quite a few people have written about how well done the vampire/addiction metaphor is done on Being Human and I'd like to focus on one aspect of this: Guilt.
Season 3 is Mitchell's massive guilt trip over the box tunnel massacre and I love how it's done. In christian inspired morality guilt and shame are often glorified emotions. On Angel, the ability to feel guilt constitutes the soul, it's what makes him a hero. I have to say though, in my experience guilt is hardly such a motivating emotion, more a subduing one and this is something Mitchell's arc on BH puts into the spotlight.
Mitchell feels guilty all right. But his reaction is shame, the desire to cover it up. He is a hero in rescuing Annie, in taking out other murdering vampires, but these things are done out of desperation. To somehow prove that he's not all bad. Which of course he isn't in the first place, but doesn't change the fact that the bad is too big. His guilt does not drive him to "do the right thing". It drives him into secrecy, isolates him from his friends, causes him to mistreat Annie and to heap on more evil as he threatens everyone who could expose him. And of course he tries to revive Herrick fro dementia land by feeding him human blood. He's deteriorating deeper and deeper into the monster spiral, paralysed by his guilt.
It's Annie who gets him to finally take responsibility for his actions, instead of feeling guilty and it's not a cosmic need for justice that makes him want to die. It's responsibility for the future. I love this. Last season BH's critique of religion was pretty superficial and blunt, this season it's elegant and profound.
I'm horrified by the fact that Mitchell is gone now, but they could not have given him a better exit and a better arc. Brilliant stuff.
Being Human is not perfect storywise. The quirky policewoman walks into the serial killers house with not so much as a pepper spray to defend herself, yet another world dominating vampire sect with surprisingly incompenent henchmen shows up and Leah planned Mitchell's demise on her own, for some reason having the power to let people in and out of purgatory. It's a bit clunky at points but that so doesn't matter, because the character arcs are fantastic this season.
I adore Nina from the first to the last minute and I loved how much strength Annie developed this season. Her dealings with Mitchell and the way she did not compromise even though she tried to avoid the truth as long as ghostly possible, but also never lost her compassion for Mitchell, was amazing. I'm also quite curious about next season. I can't really imagine the show without Mitchell but I find it fascinating that they are switching from the male dominated 3 person ensemble of the first season to a female dominated on in the third. Usually it's like on Angel and the women have to die of to motivate the men. Interesting.
Which brings me to Mitchell's arc, which imho was made of win. That's the way to end a character, to conclude an arc , so, so much better than any quick shockeffect death could ever be (btw. very glad Nina didn't have one of those). I think quite a few people have written about how well done the vampire/addiction metaphor is done on Being Human and I'd like to focus on one aspect of this: Guilt.
Season 3 is Mitchell's massive guilt trip over the box tunnel massacre and I love how it's done. In christian inspired morality guilt and shame are often glorified emotions. On Angel, the ability to feel guilt constitutes the soul, it's what makes him a hero. I have to say though, in my experience guilt is hardly such a motivating emotion, more a subduing one and this is something Mitchell's arc on BH puts into the spotlight.
Mitchell feels guilty all right. But his reaction is shame, the desire to cover it up. He is a hero in rescuing Annie, in taking out other murdering vampires, but these things are done out of desperation. To somehow prove that he's not all bad. Which of course he isn't in the first place, but doesn't change the fact that the bad is too big. His guilt does not drive him to "do the right thing". It drives him into secrecy, isolates him from his friends, causes him to mistreat Annie and to heap on more evil as he threatens everyone who could expose him. And of course he tries to revive Herrick fro dementia land by feeding him human blood. He's deteriorating deeper and deeper into the monster spiral, paralysed by his guilt.
It's Annie who gets him to finally take responsibility for his actions, instead of feeling guilty and it's not a cosmic need for justice that makes him want to die. It's responsibility for the future. I love this. Last season BH's critique of religion was pretty superficial and blunt, this season it's elegant and profound.
I'm horrified by the fact that Mitchell is gone now, but they could not have given him a better exit and a better arc. Brilliant stuff.