Being Human #2.10 “Dream Reaper” Recap & Review

What happens when you trap three monsters and a human in a house with an Exorcist/Evil Dead reject while everyone’s at their absolute worst?  Well, sole focus on a singular plot, for one.  Does the tension thrive for the full hour?

Recap:

Sally is comatose after her ghost mental breakdown, now trapped in a dream world where she is alive and happily married to “Scott” aka the Reaper.  Josh and Aidan try to wake her up, and convince Zoe to use her expertise to help—not telling her that Sally shredded Nick.  Zoe attempts to do a “mind-meld” on Sally to pull her out, but Sally’s Reaper persona locks down the entire house—not good, considering Josh will be turning into a werewolf in four hours and Aidan is on serious live-blood withdrawal.  Not to mention the Reaper persona starts talking, and exposes the housemates’ secrets to Zoe—mainly, that Sally shredded Nick.  Josh and Aidan are forced to reveal themselves as a werewolf and vampire, as well.  Zoe does the mind-meld more successfully this time around, but keeps getting thwarted by Sally’s doubts and the Reaper’s interference.  In the real world, Aidan’s withdrawal gets increasingly worse, and while Josh is busy seeing if he could safely change in the fridge, Aidan bites and drinks from Zoe.  Josh intercepts him, and offers Aidan his own blood.  Aidan is reluctant to drink werewolf blood at first, but finally gives in.  At first it feels wonderful…and then he starts convulsing and bleeding from everywhere.  His piercing screams of pain, coupled with Zoe’s reaffirmations, jolt Sally out of her dream state, just in time to open the doors so Josh can leave and change.  Aidan recovers from his werewolf-blood poisoning, but Zoe tells Sally she will never forgive her for shredding Nick.  Sally realizes the Reaper manifestation isn’t gone, and is still a part of her—and he’ll be around waiting for her to slip, because he’ll be the only one that can catch her.

Review:

Remember back when I complained about the show’s biggest flaw being how it packed in way too many plots at the same time?  This is an improvement.  As you can tell from the scarcer-than-usual plot recap, there was very, very little actual plot in this episode.  There was one goal—wake Sally up and end the nightmare.  But what we were lacking in action, we more than made up for in character moments and mythology exploration.  In terms of character development and interaction, this is the best we’ve had all season.

This was in vein with a bottle show setup—trap characters in a house together when they’re at very interesting places in their lives.  I’m not sure it was a bottle show budget-wise (those type of episodes are usually made to be cost-savers) but in terms of the claustrophobic tension and character development you can derive from those smaller episodes, this one had it in spades.  The ante kept getting upped, increasing the pressure everyone was under and practically forcing all three of our roommates—even comatose Sally—to be completely straight to themselves and their friends for the first time in far too long.

As I’d mentioned before, these three roommates had been slowly drifting away from one another and into darker, more self-destructive territory all season.  While this wasn’t the climax of all the story arcs, it is potentially the climax of our roommates’ friendship.  Josh has been disturbed by Aidan’s increasingly violent actions for a while now, while Aidan has in turn sensed Josh’s hypocrisy considering his actions in the Nora/Twins/Will/Julia debacle.  And then there’s poor Sally, who they’ve barely noticed and whose troubles Josh didn’t have the slightest clue about.  These guys have truly been crap friends to each other as of late, which is what made this episode—solely centered on them constantly trying to save each other—so well-done.

And despite all these goings on, there was actually more comedy interspersed than we’ve had in a very long time.  From the get-go, one of the few things this version of the series didn’t quite live up to compared to the UK version was managing to inject plenty of genuinely funny moments into the dark stuff.  So it’s nice that, even in one of the most consistently tense episodes, there was a ton of heart and well-written quips (many listed below.)

And really, that’s what made this episode so strong: the dialogue.  I have to give credit to the writer, Keto Shimizu, this time around—from what I could tell, this is his first sole writing credit on the series (he’s been a story editor all season) but he still nailed every character.  Aidan, for example, has always been a little hard to get a hold of because of how much he often unevenly shifts from sarcastic to broody, but there was a nice balance struck here.  He’s an old guy with plenty of angst, sure, but he’s also self-aware and plenty in-tune with culture. His awkward explanation for not sucking the blood of werewolves was really entertaining.  It helps that Sam Witwer has wonderful comedic timing that’s been painfully underused in so many of his roles.

Sam Huntington always does a nice “Frantic Chihuahua Josh” (which is, like, all the time) on his own, but he was written especially well here as things came to a boiling point.  He’s willing to lock himself in the fridge and have a vampire drink his blood for the sake of his friends, but keeps finding out more and more terrible things about the people he loves.  He’s got legitimate concerns about all the murders his friends commit, and hits the nail on the head with how far they’ve strayed from their original idea of “being human”—kind of a meta commentary on the show inevitably straying from its simple premise into more mythology-heavy outings.  Though luckily, ghost mythology is plenty entertaining.

Meaghan Rath had to have fun in this episode carrying such a range—from demonic and possessed, to bubbly and content, to solemn and despairing.  While I’ve often felt she’s gone over-the-top in the past, I’m realizing thanks to these past two episodes that I might be selling her short.   Maybe it was the whole actually-seeing-her-in-other-clothes thing, but there was a very stark contrast between happy Sally in the dream world and more depressed Sally in the real world that was very subtle.  It could have been thanks to good directing, but either way I hope we get to see more of Rath carrying this kind of range effectively.  I’m also really liking how well Sally’s storyline has tied up.  She’s subtly gotten the shaft story-wise all season, but it turns out being ignored was what drove her crazy.

The dream world was phenomenal.  I’m not sure if that’s more the director, Paolo Barzman (who’s directed a number of solid episodes for the show) or if that’s thanks to the cinematographer, but whoever it was—nice job.  To be honest, its strength was that it wasn’t too ambitious.  It was simple—very black, white and gray color scheme with pops of purple to accentuate it, and maybe some brighter lighting than usual.  Things that mattered stuck out, things that didn’t didn’t.  But it was extremely effective; it felt like an idealist sitcom, but just a tad more surreal.  Had this gone full-on trippy dream, it might have went overboard, but the splashes of color contrast made it feel just off-kilter enough to be dream-like.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the supporting players seriously brought their A-Game in this episode.  I honestly didn’t like Dusan Dukic as the Reaper in past episodes, but he was great here—arguably even more threatening now that we know he isn’t some random bad guy, but represents something far more sinister and inescapable.  And man, Zoe got put through the wringer even worse than our leads.  I love that she never “freaked out” like most nerdy female characters traditionally do.  She kept her cool amazingly, even when saving the person who murdered her boyfriend in a house of murderers. But given her typically aloof attitude, it made sense that she’d be the calm one.  I’m glad she ripped Sally a new one at the end—don’t get me wrong, I sympathize with Sally too, but there’s no way Zoe will let that go, and I don’t blame her.  I just hope we see Susanna Fournier back again, she’s my favorite character introduced this season and Fournier is great in the role.

The plot-light episode wasn’t necessarily devoid of twists and misdirects, either.  At first I expected the werewolf drinking stuff to be a deus ex machina to Aidan’s problem.  ”Oh!  He can drink werewolf blood, so he’ll just drink Josh’s!”  Honestly, it would be ingenious for that to work out and could provide to plenty of interesting developments down the line for how werewolf blood could affect a vampire in the long term.  But as soon as I was convinced that it would be the direction it was going, Aidan started convulsing horrifically.  And then we get the episode’s downer ending, with the revelation that Sally’s mental problems weren’t just wrapped up with one mind-meld.  The Reaper ending was very ominous, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

What’s funny is that, despite not much happening in this episode plot-wise, there’s more to write about than any other episode this season, simply because of how much character stuff is packed in here that could be analyzed.  Hopefully the show explores this format more than the “pack every separate plot ever into one episode” format it’s carried beforehand.  Because more episodes like this would only be a good thing.

Some stray tidbits:

• Great “I’m not that old!” reaction from Aidan to Josh calling him 500—even unnaturally sexy male vampires get touchy about their age!
• Another funny Aidan moment: Recognizing the Star Trek reference in mind-meld.  And even making the Vulcan gesture to go with it!  Made even funnier by the fact that Witwer himself is well-known in the Star Wars fandom, giving double meaning to his condescending tone.
• Josh referring to vampires’ refusal to drink from werewolves as “Vampire Jim Crow laws” was genius.
• Check out the eyes on Sally’s pillows that frame her when she’s on her computer in the dream.  Creepy stuff.
• As much as I still hate that cheesy deepened voice, Meaghan Rath’s movements during her Exorcist/Evil Dead moments were certainly creepy.
• I really liked Sally and Aidan talking with Aidan covered in blood.  Very well-acted moment for both of them, made surreal by all the blood.
• Still hate hate hate the term “shred”.
• I seriously did not recognize Sally in the different clothes and hair until she actually entered the house.  She’s an even more beautiful lady outside of the pajamas.
• Got to give props to the creativity of Josh and Aidan showing up as a toaster oven reflection and IMs.  Also, people still own toaster ovens?
• Bit of trivia: The last time we had a two-word title was season 1’s “Going Dutch,” also the tenth episode of a season.
• “‘Cause that is a thing…that you do…” - Josh’s reaction to Zoe putting ghosts into babies for reincarnation.
• “It’s like we’re different countries on the same continent.” – Aidan, followed by a very funny reaction from Josh.