Review: Being Human (UK) – “Eve of the War”

It’s back! It’s finally back! Being Human series 4 is here, but without half the cast from the series 3 finale! Mitchell met his “wolf-shaped bullet” and we last saw George, Nina and Annie standing up to Wyndham saying, “Looks like you’ve got a fight on your hands.” So how has that been going?

The following contains spoilers for series four, episode one of the BBC’s Being Human. You have been warned.

The episode opens 25 years in the future: London, 2037. London is a post-apocalyptic wasteland with 1984-style totalitarian posters. We follow a young man in fatigues, casually carrying a stake, as he enters and underground bunker occupied by other fatigue-wearing folk and crosses everywhere: as lighting, wall designs, earrings. The people in the bunker are listening to the last New York resistance to the vampires being overrun and a sadistically cheery vampire announces that the world now belongs to them.

In the present, Tom is working in a cafe when a brand new vampire walks in. Dewi has a thick South Wales accent and can’t shut up. It’s no wonder his mother wraps the “door sausage” (draft excluder) around her head to shut him out. Dewi’s wearing a sign that says “stake me” and still has the bite marks on his neck. He orders 3 pies and teas for himself and the two Asian-looking white-haired vampires in the car. As Dewi leaves, Tom tells the lone cafe customer he’ll be back in five minutes. He grabs a stake and sets up an ambush in the alleyway. He pulls Gary and Stefan out of the car and stakes them, then threatens Dewi with the same if he doesn’t tell him where Griffin is. Thanks to exposition, we know Griffin ordered Nina’s death two weeks ago.

Cut to George, looking like he hasn’t slept in two weeks. He’s sitting in the attic in a chair facing the door, holding a stake in one hand and a hand mirror in the other. In the room overflowing with crosses, he is guarding his nameless daughter – she’s nameless because every time he thinks of a name, he sees it written on her gravestone. He refuses to let Annie open windows for fresh air or take “Splodge”, as Annie calls her, outside for some stimulation. “Nina left. Nina died. So like I said, she doesn’t. Leave. This. Room.” Annie tries to reason with him, saying they’ve already won with him like this, but George’s only reply is a single tear rolling down his cheek.

This is NOT the George we knew. Credit: Sidereel.com

At Stoker Imports and Exports, dozens of vampires are going about their business, playing cards, lifting weights, etcetera, while the “catch of the day” screams in a cage upstairs. Our point of view for all this is Cutler, a snarky, thoroughly modern vampire who seems secure enough in his position to mock Griffin. Griffin wants to present the werewolf baby to the Old Ones as a welcome gift and Cutler replies “As long as they know a werewolf baby’s for life, not just for Christmas.” Griffin continues, elucidating their plan for a vampiric Sherman’s March, killing or converting as they go and Cutler, without looking up from his smartphone, asks if they have enough crossbows and catapults, since they seem to be going for a Medieval vibe. Cutler thinks Griffin’s plan shows “a fundamental lack of understanding of just how small the world is now.” He speaks of people raising armies on Twitter and how the vampire hierarchy, including the “Vampire Recorder” (Mark Williams), are so fixated on the past, they can’t properly take over the world as it is now. His solution: show them the alternative is something much worse.

Back at home, Tom pays George a visit but George is so lost in his grief and need to protect Splodge that he initially attacks Tom thinking he’s a vampire. Tom is blatantly trying to worm his way into Honolulu Heights by ingratiating himself with George. He’s found out where Griffin is going to be: at the docks tonight on his way to meet the Old Ones off the coast of Sierra Leone. George says it’s a trap, because tonight is the full moon. Annie steps in and wants a word with Tom. She wants Tom to stop filling George’s head with ideas that might get him killed. She’s lost so many people recently she can’t cope. The only thing good in her world is the baby and Tom once again intimates his interest in moving in. George comes downstairs and agrees with Tom’s plan and they both leave Annie to stew in the kitchen.

In a barber shop, an old man is trimming a young man’s hair as they discuss how Superman gets his hair cut. The older man holds up the mirror and shows off his work, but there’s no reflection. The “younger” man is a vampire, but their ease of conversation says these two have known each other for a long time. As he stands, the vampire meticulously arranges the scissors and comb, showing a bit of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The older man is a werewolf and nearly died during the last full moon. The vampire admits the other man will likely die tonight. But the shop and the flat upstairs are in Leo’s name, so if he dies, the vampire will have nowhere to live and the ghost they talk about will likely lose her staying power and “drift away like smoke.” The vampire says Leo and the ghost have been like his cage, keeping him safe from the world and the world safe from him.

George and Tom are preparing to “storm the Batcave” and they bring in a cat carrier for Splodge. George wants her locked up to prevent a baby werewolf from hurting anyone. Annie is vehemently opposed. They hug and Annie tells him to not get himself killed. As they walk, George tells Tom Nina had gone down to the shops because he told her to get some fresh air. Vampires in protective gear beat her to death in an alley because werewolf blood is toxic to vampires. But it turns out Dewi led them into a trap. There are no vampires there, just some dummies and a tape deck playing laughter. George wants to run back to the house to protect Splodge, but Tom stops him because the change is coming and he won’t have time to get back. They change together in a concrete bunker and Cutler gleefully takes video of them on his phone.

Elsewhere, an old-fashioned looking ghost named Pearl is strapping Leo down to his bed. His strap marks from last month still haven’t healed. He asks Pearl to say goodbye, but she is unwilling to do so. She’s in denial about how old and frail Leo is but Hal, the vampire, is under no illusions. Leo waxes romantic and talks about how they, a werewolf, a ghost and a vampire came together and, despite the odds, made it work. They lived outside humanity to protect it. Pearl, still in denial, tells him she’ll hear no more of this and there’ll be shepherd’s pie for dinner tomorrow night.

How do you change a werewolf baby? Very carefully. Credit: tv.IGN.com

With George otherwise occupied, a social worker comes to the house because Social Services has been tipped off that he’s left the baby alone in the house. She’s there with a policeman (so obviously a vampire) who’s worried about “bloody great dogs” in the place. The social worker enters Splodge’s room and they see all the crosses, then find the baby where Annie’s placed her, in the cat carrier. Annie, unseen by the social worker, promises the baby she won’t leave her but Fergus, the vampire cop, grabs Annie by the throat and warns her if she does anything, he will rip the baby’s head off and slit the social worker’s throat. She runs outside to see the social worker screaming at something on the ground as Fergus whisks the baby off to vampires waiting in a while van. The social worker grabs Annie and Annie sees Fergus did indeed slash her throat and the social worker is now a ghost who begs Annie for help. Annie promises she’ll be back and runs after the van.

In the import/export business, the Vampire Recorder has the baby. He places her on a suspended table that was once an ancient burial site, the bones having been excavated in a slab and used for decoration. At full moon, with George, Tom and Leo transforming, the baby is…sleeping. Apparently the werewolf genes canceled each other out, leaving Splodge perfectly human. The historian suddenly remembers something and races off, leaving Griffin underwhelmedly asking if anyone needs a baby.

In the aftermath of the full moon, Leo is barely alive and Pearl, still denying his failing health, thinks everything will be fine. George and Tom rush home to find Annie crying on the couch. Tom immediately promises to go and rescue the baby but before they can, Griffin is on a police megaphone outside, taunting George. He reveals the need for a present for the Old Ones and since the baby is human, he wants George because he was the one who killed Mitchell and Wyndham (though we have yet to find out how Wyndham was killed.) Once they have George, they’ll probably let the baby go, but they’ll probably skin George.

Back at the vampires’ compound, George is locked in a cage with a painted moon and a vampire sits within his line of sight with baby Splodge. Cutler shows Griffin the video of George and Tom transforming. Griffin regards it as irrelevant and Cutler as an orphaned tea boy. The historian comes up gurning with a piece of parchment…which turns out to be human skin. The vampires have 2/3 of a parchment (of human skin) that details the end of all vampires. The first two vampires, when they first drank blood, had five dreams, where all the vampire myths and legends come from. He believes Splodge is the “war child” who will kill all the vampires. Griffin decides she must be killed, and now. The Vampire Recorder, on the other hand, does everything inhumanly possible to stall for time: saying there are proper garments and knife, losing the knife (that the others see on his belt), standing on slow-moving “protocol” and muttering gibberish, schoolboy Latin and “somebodydosomethinginginging.”

Annie and Tom ambush Dewi at his house. He is quite proud of thinking on the fly about the trap but now he’s quite put out that the vampires didn’t even thank him for his efforts. Since he’s off vampires now, he willingly leads them to Stoker Import and Export. Inside, George is told they’re going to execute the baby and he somehow tricks his body into a partial change thanks to the painted moon in his cage. Annie and Tom take on the whole room of vampires as George breaks free. Cutler, a master of self preservation as an orphan would have to be, skulks off to be snarky another day. The historian takes the baby to safety as all hell breaks loose. An asymmetrically muscled George tears through lots of vampires as Tom stakes several and Dewi manages to save Tom by staking one in the back. Dewi panics because the vampires know where he lives so Tom hands him the keys to the van and tells him to take it and get away because he’s a hero. Griffin taunts George with how Nina died. George bites his wrist and clamps it down on Griffin’s mouth, poisoning him so he turns to ash. Annie, Tom and the historian approach George, who is feral and it takes seeing the baby to bring him around. The Vampire Recorder tells George of the prophecy and gives them the two pieces of parchment. He also recognizes that George is in a bad way. With the external transformations, he’s also started the internal transformations, meaning massive, systemic organ failure with no strength to change back and no healing. He tells the baby he’ll see her soon and leaves them to say goodbye to George. George makes Annie and Tom promise to protect her and names the baby Eve before dying. A Door opens and George is standing there. He tells Annie that it’s okay and it’s just the end of his story. He has to go and be with his Nina. But before he goes, he smiles and says “she’s going to save the world!” Then he turns and almost leaps through his Door to join Nina in the afterlife.

George says goodbye. Credit: beinghuman.wikia.com

In the future, the blonde woman from the resistance has been puzzling over the two pieces of human parchment. A man brings her the third piece, which cost him 18 months’ searching and 11 of his men. What it reveals is shocking. Later, we see her out of her fatigues and in a flowing dress. She tells the man she needs him to do one more thing. He comes up behind her and stabs her in the kidney and she thanks him. As he cradles her body, he sees her standing before him, with her Door opening. He asks what she’s going to do and she replies, “I’m going to kill that baby.”

After George walks through his Door and leaves them, Annie tells Tom, “So this is how it starts.”

Holy COW, where to begin?

First, in the interest of fairness and honesty, I have to admit that the first time I watched this episode, I was disappointed. I felt like it had jumped the shark. George was far and away my favorite character and, histrionics and girly screaming aside, he was the heart of the show for me. To hear he was leaving was an absolute blow and, first time through, I was angry and irritated that they would just kill him off like this.

After three viewings, I am pleased to say my attitude has changed. I am still very sorry to see George go, but now I see the rightness of it. If we’d been able to keep George, we would have had George like he was at the beginning of the episode, awash in grief and a shell of his former self. With Nina gone, his heart had been ripped out and it wouldn’t be coming back. Plus, he got to go out defending his daughter and he’s going to be rejoining Nina. The only thing that would have made his sendoff better was if Nina could have come to the door to collect him and we would have gotten to say goodbye to Nina, too. And that also begs the question of what really happened to Nina after her death? If George got a Door as a werewolf, then presumably Nina would have, too. Why did she not stick around as Annie had? Did she even go to her friends to say goodbye? Maybe, since vampires can touch ghosts (as shown with Fergus choking Annie,) Nina had to go through her Door to escape the vampires who were still clustered over her corpse? Also, since when has werewolf blood been toxic to vampires? THIS RETCON DEMANDS A REWATCH!

Lenora Crichlow is going to have her hands full taking over as the heart of the show, but I think she can do it. And Annie is really going to have her hands full, not only with a human baby who can see ghosts, but with Tom, who despite his size, is little more than a child himself, having grown up a weapon with McNair for a father. It will be good for him to have a mother figure, which is what I think Annie will have to be.

We already know by promo shots like the one up top that Hal (Damien Molony) is going to become a permanent fixture this series. It’s going to be interesting to see how this OCD vampire and his blended family (which, sadly, probably won’t be around long – poor Leo!) will merge with the residents of Honolulu Heights. If next week’s trailer is any indication, there will be much posturing and the Hal and Tom Show is quickly becoming my British friends’ favorite Sunday night diversion.

And what about Cutler and the Vampire Recorder? Since Cutler slinked off, I eagerly await the return of his snarky self. It will be interesting to see where he fits into the new vampire hierarchy once everything shakes down and you can bet the new guy in charge will be paying more attention to Cutler’s view of how to run a campaign in the modern world. On the other end of the spectrum, the Vampire Recorder (Regus, according to IMDb) promised to see the baby soon, but what is soon for a vampire so steeped in history that he’s likely pretty ancient himself? Will we see him before the series is out? Or maybe we’ll see him in 2037. Either way, he seemed pretty excited to see the vampires wiped out, which makes him very interesting to me.

And speaking of 2037, what the hell is going on there? We know the world has been overrun by vampires and few tiny pockets of resistance remain. Their chief weapons seem to be stakes, crosses and stealth. And now their secret weapon of the blonde woman (who I assumed was Eve, but now I’m not sure) who dies and goes beyond to kill the baby, which we are meant to assume is Eve, the War Child. Whether all these assumptions are correct or not is a grab bag. Toby Whithouse is a devil of a writer and plotter and no twist or turn is ever safe with him until it’s aired on the BBC. So I currently don’t know who is what in the future, but I know I’m going to enjoy finding out. I’m also curious to know how the man who stabbed the blonde woman could see her as a ghost. Is he a werewolf? A rogue vampire? Maybe even a ghost? Or perhaps his faith lets him see the supernatural. So many questions! I look forward to finding out more as the series progresses.