Being Human Josh and Aidan

[This is a review of Being Human season 4, episode 6. There will be SPOILERS.]

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Though they want to do better, it sometimes feels like Aidan (Sam Witwer) and Josh (Sam Huntington) are bound to do worse. For the entire run of this show, vampirism has been treated like an addiction while the wolf gene has been treated like a communicable disease. Both un-kickable, both a pox on their shared house.

On last night's Being Human, the seemingly cursed dwelling of the vampire, the werewolf, and the ghost faced its latest threat - a motivated seller in the form of Sally's brother Robbie (Jesse Rath, Meaghan Rath's real life brother). But while that challenge to the status-quo (brought on by flaky Robbie's latest financial ship running-a-ground) inspired forces from within the shadows to rear their head, the main character's life-plagues did the most damage.

As has been said before in these reviews, Nora has been guilty of reaching for something approaching a normal life this season, but here, Josh seems to call her bluff, pushing hard for a move away from the house and from Aidan and Sally toward their future when Robbie tells the group that they have 30 days to vacate the premises or buy the house from Sally's family for $300k.

Being Human Josh and Nora

The wind already knocked out of Nora, she tries to promise tomorrow while Josh nervously demands today, but what she doesn't know is that his evolving willingness to get "normal" comes from his latest failure to control his wolf. Though we're spared the site of seeing Being Human's poorly rendered werewolves canoodling, a tryst is implied between Josh's wolf and Wendy's during the change. Who is Wendy? Remember Mark the alpha-wolf? She is his special lady and though the interlude happened during wolf-time, the two do wake up next to each other in the buff and Wendy seems far more comfortable with the situation than Josh is, though to be fair, Josh hasn't seemed comfortable once during Being Human's entire run.

It's interesting that, blinded by guilt and fear, Josh seeks out Aidan for romantic advice, though his decision to bring honesty into his relationship with Kat may have had something to do with that. Sitting in a bar next to the returned Suzanna (Aidan's vampire killing first wife who is also a vampire) Aidan advises Josh to keep his secret from Nora, words emanating from a place of regret over that now shattered relationship with Kat no doubt, but words that also find their way to Suzanna, who flashes back to her own awful secret that she is keeping from Aidan.

It doesn't seem likely that Suzanna is pondering a change in her strategy, though, not when she has Aidan on the ropes, starved for blood and feeling heart-sick. Aidan once again speaks of wanting a normal life, something that he knew when he was with Suzanna before his change to vampire kind. He knows that with Kat gone and his new "family" about to splinter that feels far away and so he reaches out for the closest thing to normal that he can find in the form of Suzanna, promising to live a life faithful to her bloodless code if she walks a similar but very different line, abstaining from killing vampires. Naturally, he quickly fails (too quickly?) recreating one of the first glimpses into Aidan's darker side that we saw in the show's pilot episode. That was a nice touch, but Aidan's quick backslide feels too quick in light of his promise and his general good-guy nature, making it seem as though he never intended on keeping his word to Suzanna who will surely come back with ferocity over his broken promise.

Being Human Aidan and Suzanna

While Josh and Aidan have always been undercover monsters yearning to be better, Sally started out as a victim. Over the last three seasons, though, we have seen that Sally also has the capacity to do bad things.

In this episode, though, we get more of a precursor to Sally's latest bad deed as she both learns about (and remembers) Robbie's repeated clashes with Danny (her murdery fiance) via backwards time-jumps, and discovers Robbie's dead body (he was done in by the mysterious Lil Smokey ghost) and his new ghost-self.

As is almost always the case lately, Sally will inevitably beg, borrow, and deal her way to help Robbie, going so far as to conjure Donna if the trailer for next week's episode is to be believed. Why? Because Sally has transformed her feelings about being robbed of her long life into the idea that the world owes her and everyone she loves a continued existence and, from time to time, a reboot button.

Being Human S4 Sally

The question is: doesn't that make Sally into the worst monster of the bunch even if we'd likely say that we would do the same thing if confronted with these impossible circumstances? Sure, Aidan had a relapse and Josh transformed into a wolf when confronted by Mark over the Wendy situation, but both seem to regret their actions. Where is Sally's real regret or even her pause?

As this season moves past the halfway point, consequences seem as if they will continue to play a larger role in the show's narrative as it moves forward. Is there reason to wonder whether Sally is about to get her comeuppance or face irrevocable pain with Robbie? Perhaps, but that's just one of many questions advanced or introduced in "Cheater of the Pack", such as whether Josh's accidental dalliance has irrevocably harmed his relationship with Nora? Will Mark return? Is Aidan going to binge, and what is binding Lil Smokie to the house? Hopefully the next episode, "Gallows Humor" shows us some daylight while putting this lose collection of villain types - Suzanna, Mark, Kenny, Donna, Lil Smokie - into some kind of discernible pecking order.

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Being Human returns next Monday @9PM on Syfy with "Gallows Humor"