After the stellar outing last week, this episode had quite a bit to live up to. Does it? Well, not really, but it comes pretty darn close. Also, they yell “boner” a lot.
Recap:
Suren reveals she lied to the higher-up vampires and told them she and Aidan had gotten rid of the orphans. Sick of the lying and afraid of the repercussions, she puts her foot down and decides she’s going to take them all down at midnight. Aidan becomes desperate, and discovers that the orphans pay to be invited to live in one man’s home. Aidan goes there to rally them and escape to Baltimore. Meanwhile, Suren discovers the house, buys it from the owner with cash upfront, and signs the deed over to another human—meaning the vampires are no longer invited since it’s not the original inviter’s home. Aiden escapes with Henry, but locks the rest of the vampires in to burn. In fact, Aidan knew about Suren’s plan all along and planned to sacrifice all the orphans to save Henry. Unfortunately, Suren is still angry at Henry for causing her to go mad and be buried for 80 years. When Aidan brings him to her, telling her he was responsible for killing the orphans, she still decides to collect the “pound of flesh” he owes…literally, as she skins him alive.
Sally is angry that the Reaper never came for her, and reevaluates her decision. After some prodding from Aidan, she decides to “shred” (aka kill) him before he can reap her. Of course, he can’t be killed, but the rush Sally got from thinking she killed him proves that she would make a good Reaper, a loophole preventing her from having to be reaped herself. She becomes interested in the power and strength that comes with the job—something she’s never been able to feel before. Unfortunately, her first mission is to reap her high school friend Stevie. The Reaper reveals he has shredded more ghosts, and has been stalking his old high school bully, waiting for him to die, so he can shred him. As a broken ghost polluting the afterlife, he must be reaped, and after an intense debate between Stevie and Sally, the Reaper shreds him, much to Sally’s dismay.
Josh’s sister, Emily, returns after hearing about his break-up with Nora. It turns out she’s become good friends with Josh’s ex, Julia, and invites both of them to a bar, where obvious awkwardness ensues. Emily gets very drunk, and Julia and Josh take her back to Julia’s apartment, where they have progressively more and more intimate discussions. Josh ultimately admits that he’s proud of Julia, but also that he was justified in leaving her because of what happened to Nora–bringing the violence in his life into hers–all because he didn’t leave her.
Review:
After “The Ties That Bind” left everything in such a precarious place, there was a big question of where things could pick back up. Instead, this episode chose to shift the pieces into new places right at the start. While there was some great stuff after about the first quarter, the beginning felt like things were being forced into place. For example, though it’s a little nitpicky, I didn’t think Josh was in enough contact with his family to update them on his love life, considering where he left things last season. Even though I imagine he’s in more contact with his family than he was before, especially his sister, it still seems odd that he’d be apt to call her and report on his break-up. Also, while Emily being a typical “college student that loves to drink” was kind of funny last season, it’s a little annoying here. Luckily we don’t get it for long.
Another thing that felt off was Sally’s quick shift in attitude towards the Reaper. It’s understandable that she’d be frustrated at the Reaper not showing up after she’d tried to make peace, but to go from that to deciding to kill (er…”shred”) him? First of all, they know the Reaper is obviously stronger than the average ghost, considering he killed Danny very easily. And, oh yeah, he’s a freaking Reaper. For characters that are fairly genre savvy much of the time, it seemed kind of dumb for Aidan to suggest it and Sally to act like it was such a great idea.
But once we got past the set-up, the pay-off justified it. In Josh’s plotline, Julia admitted coming to Boston wasn’t a coincidence, and she specifically came to find Josh after Emily told her where she was, alleviating one of the biggest contrivances this season and one of my biggest pet peeves. So that reveal, though not particularly brilliant, made me very happy. But more importantly, it worked as a way to shine a light on Josh’s relationship with Nora. Despite being truthful with Nora and not with Julia, Julia was the one he saved, while Nora was the one he profoundly screwed up. Sam Huntington was solid in his delivery of Josh’s explosion. It was a much-needed release for Josh—we’ve seen glimpses of his more violent side this season building up, so it worked seeing him doing it in a sort of positive way…well, positive compared to beating up a guy with a 2×4. He was definitely scary, but he was being honest. I also like Julia in this appearance much more than her introduction; Natalie Brown has some chemistry with Huntington that doesn’t bode too well for Nora.
Shifting back to Sally’s storyline, as dumb of an idea as it was to have her try to kill the Reaper, I can’t argue with the consequences. The death debate always makes for juicy, emotional drama any time it’s used (which is admittedly a whole heckuva lot in TV…see the most recent The Walking Dead, in fact.) This was actually some of Sally’s best material yet. It also shed a light on all the craziness she’s been through in her storylines—from her murder, to Danny, to driving a woman insane, to trying to possess a baby—she’s had the most off-the-wall and mind-screwy adventures of the main trio, and it’s about time we realize just how much it’s affecting her. This whole season has been bringing the characters closer to their dark sides, and while it’s been of mixed results generally, I like the slow burn approach of Sally’s arc. She isn’t drifting to a dark place, but having to learn to adjust to the dark place she’s been pushed into. It also plays heavily into the big theme of her character. She died young, and never felt content or powerful or accomplished because of that. Now in the afterlife, she can. But it’s going to be a rough ride, if her scene with Stevie is any indication. That scene was fantastic–as was Meaghan Rath–and it’s interesting that it’s left ambiguous as to whether Stevie was telling the truth or not. We’re led to believe it’s justified because he admits to wanting to shred Van after he dies, but did he actually kill Boner? Speaking of which, it was hard to take the scene seriously thanks to them yelling “boner” over and over again, but I’ll give them credit for still holding the intensity together.
As usual, the vampire story is the least interesting this week character-wise (Aidan feels guilty…again!), but to its credit it’s very clever and even darker than usual. Suren’s “signing over the house” scheme was a brilliant way to kill the vampires—I’m sure in some vampire movie or book that’s been done, but at least in the mainstream I’ve never heard of it. The only thing that was odd was having Aidan have to cause all that drama for the vamps in the house before killing them. Couldn’t there have been an easier way to trick Henry into leaving if he planned to let Suren sign over the deed in the first place? It seemed like a “because the script says so” moment for him—it needed him to be there so he could witness the vampires dying and therefore feel guilty about it. I respect the drama of having him flash back to the admittedly haunting scenes of them all burning, but it was a weak way of getting there.
That’s the crux of this episode, though. The set-up was very weak, but the explorations were wonderful. We got much-needed spotlights on what Josh and Sally are both feeling, and got some creative use of vampire mythology to move Aidan’s storyline. Not the most memorable episode overall, but definitely one that will have a major impact on what’s to come.
Some stray tidbits:
- First we have a blood hooker, now an invitation landlord (someone come up with a creative name for that.) To be honest, given the places desperate people go for money, I could see these things existing if vampires were real. Clever stuff from the writers.
- I’m impressed at the show’s ability to consistently and believably bring back recurring characters that we might not have expected to see again, like Stevie and Emily.
- I don’t know what would be worse—being skinned alive, but healing afterwards, or being buried alive and awake for 80 years. As gruesome as the skinning is, at least it won’t take 80 years to heal.
- While I respect the writers trying to craft their own “Buffy speak” of sorts, having the youthful-looking Reaper saying phrases like “going dark” and “shredding” makes it all feel too…skater boy.
- “Stop talking about Boner!” – I really think a writer won a bet for how often he/she could have characters shouting the word “boner” in a single scene.
- Aidan: What did you learn about yourself?
Sally: I’m still learning.
Aidan: Me too.
