As we make our way toward the finale, the roommates are making a last ditch effort to be normal, happy, and throw dinner parties. The result? Lots of awwwwwkward.
Recap:
Josh wants to invite Julia over to his house for dinner, partially to let Julia smooth things over with with Aidan after their less-than-clean break-up. Aidan uses this opportunity to invite Suren over, so she can meet his friends and learn to love the more “mundane” parts of his life. Despite some awkwardness and the potential for everything to go absolutely awry, the dinner actually goes surprisingly smoothly (thanks to Suren and Josh bonding over Antiques Roadshow) and both girlfriends seem fairly comfortable.
Josh and Julia continue their relationship, but their public kiss happens right in front of Nora, who has returned from her disappearance. Nora claims she regrets the decisions she made, and is trying to make things right. Josh tells Nora he’s truly in love with Julia, but Julia tells Josh to think first because she doesn’t want him to break up with her when things get too deep. Meanwhile, Sally has still been seeing and hearing “Scott” the Reaper, and has been struggling to drown him out. She discovers that Janet, the woman she possessed and damaged, has been committed to the psychiatric ward of the hospital, and Sally is desperate to help her. She encounters Nora, and after sharing in each other’s guilt, Nora offers to help. Josh objects to this, thinking that it will only hurt Janet to sink her deeper into what the doctors think is a delusion, but Nora and Sally go to Janet anyway. After convincing Janet that Nora really knows Sally, they make her fully aware that Sally is a ghost and that Janet’s breakdown was caused by possession. Finally getting clarity over what was happening to her, Janet recovers and is released from the ward. That night, Scott doesn’t pop up, confirming that Sally’s quest for good has helped to drown him out.
Nora finds Josh once more, and explains that Conner was the one who kept Brynn in control, and after spending time with someone with such a large appetite, Nora’s has been filled. However, she reveals something even more shocking: she’s learned of a cure, thanks to purebred rumblings—kill the person who turned you. For Josh, he must kill Ray (who last appeared way back in season 1’s “The End of the World As We Knew It”.) Nora also tells Josh that she’d never kill him to cure herself, because she loves him too much. The next day, however, Josh kisses Julia, continuing their relationship.
Mother comes to town to evaluate Suren and Aidan—and given their performance with cleaning out the orphans, they expect freedom. But Mother tells Suren that, “A few months of quite satisfied don’t make up for eight centuries of utterly disappointed.” So, Suren must remain in Boston. Aidan is “free”—but in the sense that he’s banished, cannot interact with the vampire world, and can never see Suren again. Aidan, of course, is extremely unhappy about this, and concocts a plan to escape. He uses Henry to get in contact and meet Suren, and they two of them decide to run away together. After a tearful goodbye with Josh and Sally, Aidan and Suren leave for good—but Suren reveals she might not have the resolve she thought she did, and is already hungry for living blood. When Aidan goes out to find her food, he encounters Henry, who has betrayed him and brought other vampires to kill him.
Review:
So, it’s starting to seem like every complaint I had about this show at the beginning of the season is being addressed and solved in this back half. I suggested back in “Mama Said There’d Be Decades Like These” that an entire episode could be devoted to an awkward dinner for our favorite monsters, and while we didn’t get an entire episode, we did get more fun stuff this time (and with more interesting characters) than we did the first go round. In fact, the first twentyish minutes were actually the most consistently funny the show’s ever been. Sally’s commentary, Aidan and Josh’s constant attempts to steer the conversation, and the three’s reactions to Suren being…well…Suren, were all fun to watch.
One of the best parts of this episode is seeing just how close are leads are again; they were very upfront with each other throughout the entire hour, something we haven’t seen in a long time. Aidan’s goodbye scene was the perfect indication of this. That scene was very nicely done, emphasizing the amount of pain they were all feeling about him leaving and exemplified the love they have for each other, which up until now hadn’t really been spoken. And sure, Aidan’s going to have to come back at some point, but it’s likely that day won’t come until after this season. For now, it felt very real—the flashbacks, the Josh/Aidan hug, touching Sally’s face—yeah, was certainly sappy, but it was effective. As was his simply telling them, “I love you both.”
Josh definitely has a Betty and Veronica situation going on with Julia and Nora, and it’s kicking into maximum overdrive now. While love triangle stories can get really exasperating really quickly, I have to appreciate the execution for this one. Neither woman is really pining over Josh—in fact, both are very accepting of the situation and are willing to stand their ground. And both have some solid (and torturous) history with him that grants all three people a fairly equal amount of fault. But more importantly, neither Nora nor Julia seems like the “hateable” choice. Don’t get me wrong, it’s easy to pick a favorite, but the show’s been careful to make sure neither is a better or worse choice. Julia would certainly be better for Josh, and she’s a very smart lady, but Nora is simply a more interesting character and feels more worthy just based on that. Both actresses have chemistry with Sam Huntington too; Natalie Brown comes off a little bit wooden at times, but she nails the important moments. And of course, if you’ve read my past reviews, you know my love for Kristen Hager’s performance.
Speaking of which, Nora’s return and reveal during the Josh/Julia kiss was undeniably predictable, but that didn’t make it bad. Hager was especially strong in her last scene with Josh; she’s not being mopey, but she’s keeping it together while being in real pain and impossibly confused. The only thing she seems sure about is her supposed “cure”—which, yeah, it’s the most obvious cure for lycanthropy, but it’s the last solution you’d expect. I like that Nora points out that this isn’t a medical condition, but it’s supernatural, something Josh has been in denial about since day one. And let’s not forget, there’s certainly the possibility that it’s a total lie, part of some master plan from Brynn, who I still suspect to be something of a Big Bad by the finale.
Meaghan Rath didn’t get much substantial to do this time, but she’s still being utilized better than she was at the beginning of the season. Her bored comments throughout the awkward dinner were some of the funniest moments. And, in contrast to Nora, Sally is being mopey, but it suits her character in that case. And even at that, she’s thus far made more progress at a quicker speed at overcoming her issues, so she deserves credit for that. Also, having her interact with Nora was a nice touch. They both share a history with darkness and murder, to varying degrees, and both of them are attempting to be proactive about absolving their misdeeds, so it makes sense that they could bond so easily.
It’s been hard to really pinpoint Suren’s character—she’s fluctuated from crazy to nefarious to subdued—but I quite liked her in this outing. She’s actually a fairly normal person, just with an old-fashioned aura and way of speaking. She’s very pristine and “princess”-like, but she’s smart enough to keep up with modern customs to fit in with society. I still don’t think we have the best view of Suren that we could, but it’s at least easier to see Aidan’s attraction to her, and she’s significantly more likeable in this hour than she had been. And she likes Antiques Roadshow. What a nice touch! Of course, she did come off as a little crazy and childlike in the end, so she still isn’t completely normal. But again, it’s more believable that Aidan would try so hard to help her considering she’s actually a fun character when she isn’t hungry.
We got some interesting stuff from our guest characters, too. It was a cool twist to have Janet think she’s wising up and suspect Nora as a patient, even though that turnabout was brief. She isn’t a dumb lady, so it made sense that she’d come to that conclusion at first. And it’s nice to finally see a conclusion to that story, since it had been basically forgotten since way back in episode 5. On the vampire side, I wasn’t too happy with Deena Aziz as Mother this time around. She was fine in past episodes, but here in particular her performance seemed over-the-top.
There were some minor problems with how the characters reacted in the second half. Aidan’s lashing out in front of all the vampires after his “freedom” felt a little out of character. He’s certainly got plenty of pent up rage, but he’s always been smarter than attacking the leader of vampires in a room full of her lackeys. Also, I’m not sure I understood Josh’s mindset with Nora helping Sally. He had a point—Sally could have screwed up Janet worse, but his anger about that seemed way overboard. You could blame it on Nora’s return and the stress from that, but it felt especially forced when just a few minutes later he took back the outburst and admitted he was in the wrong, and then everyone forgot about it. That very brief argument ultimately didn’t make any impact on anything, so it felt like a forced conflict for the sake of conflict and not really necessary to the episode.
But frankly, those are justifiable nitpicks in an overall strong hour. The first half of this season was certainly uneven, but this string of recent episodes has justified many of the previous flaws by fulfilling the potential that spawned from them. We’ve been getting payoff on numerous stories set-up in the early episodes, and in this episode especially, we’re getting the hard consequences. The pieces are in place for what looks to be some intense final episodes, and if the season ends as competently as the past few episodes, it’ll be a winner.
Some stray tidbits:
- “As you grow up you realize most clichés are true.” – Aidan, actually giving one of the better and more straightforward (and shorter!) monologues the series has had.
- Henry’s hair grew back really quickly. Do vampires have Rogaine powers, too?
- “Dudish” is worthy of adding to our lexicon.
- Josh’s awkward kiss to Julia, as he tried to figure out if he should or not, was adorable.
- Yeah, it’s super sappy, but Suren’s black orchid story was actually really cute.
- “That wasn’t me, Stu stole my penis.”
- “You seem extra broody today.”
- “Something ghosty? Do I look like Patrick Swayze to you?”
