Making the world a better place, one show at a time.

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Washington, DC, United States
I guess you would like to know a little bit about the person making all these proclamations upon good taste and horrid characters. I'm Andrea and when I was 15 I fell in love. An hour after meeting "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" I was forever altered in the way only love can, and I never questioned for one minute afterwards that television offered me an amazing chance to experience lives and moments that I could never imagine. So now, when I'm not getting distracted by my real life, I write about TV. I also read, am finishing a Master's degree in English Literature, travel, am attempting to learn vegan cooking, am the 5th of 6 children, and drive my roommate nuts by constantly cleaning our already clean apartment. Now that we're old friends, time for you to take my opinions as the be all and end all.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Being Human (US): Not Nearly As Bad As Some SyFy Shows

So I have been watching Being Human (US).  I'm enjoying it.

Do I think it's the best thing ever?  My new BSG to fill the sci-fi void in my life?  Nope and that's what I have Fringe for.  But there is a time and a place for certain shows in your life.

Monday is my ridiculously long work day.  I mean long.  I have to go in early to make sure everything is set to start the week off right, I have to stay late because the last patient is chronically running behind.  I get home around 8:30 PM, sometimes a bit earlier, sometimes a bit later and honestly I'm dead by then.  And into this mix of exhaustion, hunger, mild curiosity and dread (of the next day) Being Human has just kind of slipped into my routine. It's a show that doesn't take a great deal of effort on my part: easy plots to follow, easy awkward moments to chuckle along with, easy voice overs to remind you of the point if you happened to drift away.  In a way, that's what you need sometimes.

Even the premise is easy!  (And borrowed from a UK show by the same name.)  In an effort to live "normal" lives, a vampire named Aidan (Sam Witwer), a werewolf named Josh (Sam Huntington) and a ghost named Sally (Meaghan Rath) share the house Sally died in, renting it from her (supposedly) bereaved fiancée Danny (Gianpaolo Venuta).  Not all that hard right?  Monsters are just like us and we are just like them.  So far the dialog is a little clunky and earnest, the characters are underdeveloped, and the tone is somewhat unclear, but so be it.

A few problems does not a disaster make.  Evil overlord vampire Bishop (Mark Pellegrino) is sufficiently menacing.  Bishop is a man with a plan; he wants to take vampires out into the open, which doesn't sit well with former protégé Aidan.  They are two people with a long history and obvious disappointment: the subdued hostility of their interaction is one of the stronger elements of the show.  Josh's love interest Nora (Kristen Hager) is a prickly and skeptical person, so even though she doesn't (yet) know that Josh is a werewolf, she is a nice antidote to the dippy-girl-who-falls-in-love-with-evil-but-not-evil-creature type that permeates pop-culture currently.  The core trio has a comfortable familial dynamic that doesn't completely consist of important conversations about their particular existential difficulties; sometimes they dig at each other, sometimes they joke.

I don't know that Being Human will ever be better than it is, but I don't have a problem with that.  Sometimes things just are what they are, and what they are is good enough after a full day.

The TV Girl

1 comment:

Kathleen said...

Also one other thing. A while back Phil and I watched about 1/2 of the first Season of Friday night lights, we ended up just reading the synopsis of how the season ends, but you were right, KP. I liked the marriage between Coach Taylor and his wife, it was refreshingly positive and realistic! Do you know what we thought was hilarious was Matt's Dad, just getting out of the "Army" on an R&R from deployment without so any repercussions and no consideration of the big fat pension he'll loose. And then in an episode after so, his son tells him, "Dad you can go back to Iraq!" As if his Dad can just picks up the phone and magically re-join "Army." It was on par with "Army had a half day" for us Military folk and we thought someone could have tried a bit harder make that situation a little more realistic. But perhaps we're the only ones who noticed how ludicrous it was.