Being Human 3x08

[sholio]

Short post with big spoilers for end of series 3 under the cut. Also one casting spoiler for series 4 -- spoiler-spanned so you can avoid it if you want to, but series 4 spoilers are perfectly fine in the comments, so beware.

AUGH FLIST HOLD MEEEEEEEEE.

"I did it because I love you." "I know." oh god *wibbles* And they totally had me going with the last-minute reprieve of execution; I truly did not think they were going to do it, and then STABBITY. AAAAAAA

Still, if they had to kill Mitchell (and honestly, given some of the stuff from the past season and this one, I'm not 100% sorry) it was a pretty good send-off. This was an amazing episode all in all -- I started flailing when the vampires dragged George into the room with Mitchell in the cage, and I don't think I stopped the rest of the way through. AUGH I think maybe I need to watch a Highlander ep now to calm myself down. aaaaaa *flails more*

There's a post at beinghuman_fans in which series creator/showrunner Toby Whithouse talks about it and indicates what the chances are of seeing Mitchell again in series 4. Using spoiler-span text here just in case people want to remain completely unspoiled (though comments may be spoilery): Which, well, as the episode strongly suggested, he's gone for good -- he's really, truly died the final death. WAAAAAGH. But, really, he got a powerhouse send-off, and I'm not sorry about that. I think my only issue with it is that I'm guessing the vampires are going to be 100% antagonists in series 4 -- if there is a series 4 -- because they've answered the question "Can vampires change?" with a resounding "no". And Mitchell is the only vampire in the series that we've seen struggle with his worse nature, and it got the better of him in the end.

Comments

[siria]

Watching this, I have never been so sad that I don't have any fangirls in my immediate vicinity because clutching at a sofa cushion was a sad substitute for having someone to flail with. Holy crap! And then! With the! OH SHOW.

[sholio]

Augh, I KNOW! (waaahhhh, most of my BH icons, including the "squee!" icon I use all the time, were Mitchell icons. I don't really want to use them anymore ...)

This episode pushed ALL my buttons, and yet ... in the grand scheme of things, I'm still trying to work through my emotional reaction to it. I'm glad they didn't give Mitchell a redemption arc and stuck to their guns, because I do think he earned the ending that he got. But I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to be coming back for series 4. It's kind of like the way that I got gunshy about Whedon's shows, not because of the cesspit of fail that he eventually seems to have fallen into, but because he was so good at making me love his characters and then he inevitably killed them off or broke up the couples or otherwise just refused to give anyone in his 'verse a happy ending. BH is starting to feel that way to me -- for all the up moments, there are some pretty serious downs, and I'm not sure if my fangirl heart can take being repeatedly stomped on. *g*

[siria]

Hee, I can totally understand that feeling :D I think I will be coming back for S4, just because I'm so enamoured by a show which is good about following through on the emotional/story logic of the tale they're telling. I do think they're pretty good about leavening the dark moments with humour, and I don't know that any of the other characters are necessarily headed for the kind of tragedy that, say, Mitchell always seemed to be heading for.

Of course, having typed that, S4 might well break my heart. *g* Who can tell!

[sholio]

*nods* I say this NOW, but I expect I'll probably be dl'ing season 4, if nothing else so that I can talk to my flist about it!

I seem to go back and forth in my tolerance for narrative darkness. Some shows (and books, and movies) are seriously dark and I love them anyway. In some others, I have more trouble tolerating really bad, irrevocable things happening to the characters. To some extent, it's a matter of whether I'm watching for the characters or for the plot; BH started out as a "watching for the characters" show for me, but has slowly transitioned over into being more about the plot -- but I'm still pretty involved with the characters, and struggling not to be broken-hearted when their lives don't go well.

Other shows, like, say, Torchwood or Justified are pretty much all "watching for the plot" -- not that I don't like the characters, but it doesn't really depress me when bad things happen to them. (Admittedly, in Torchwood's case, this was because they killed off a couple of my favorites. *g*)