Being Human 1.13 Recap: “A Funny Thing Happened…”

“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Me Killing You”

Previously on: Nora gives Josh an out; Celine is dying, Bishop is crazy, Marcus and Rebecca are dead, Sally missed her door as Bishop tried to kill Aidan. Caught up?

Aidan is drifting in and out of consciousness on a stretcher as Sally urges him to stay awake. They’re in Josh’s Wolf Room and he’s brought Nora down, who wants to take him to surgery. Josh implores her that all Aidan needs is blood, but he can’t tell her why. She leaves, going to get them the help they want, but she doesn’t seem happy about it. “This shouldn’t have worked,” Josh’s voiceover begins. “For so many reasons… but for a little while, for this excellent moment in time, it did work, didn’t it? And I felt human. Alive.” We flashback to two years ago. Josh is working in a diner as a busman, and he passes a customer, Marcus, who can smell what he is. As Josh takes some trash out, Marcus and another vampire corner him in the alley. Josh tries to run from them but doesn’t realize they’re vampires. “This,” Marcus informs him as he punches him, “is how the world works… dogs down there… us up here… God’s creatures.” Aidan arrives and tells Marcus and nameless dude to leave. After they do, he starts to walk past Josh, but just… can’t. “It’s a long story, and most of it is unbelievable, but it’s time you knew the truth. Now that I have nothing left to lose,” Josh finishes.

Sally assures Aidan he’ll be okay, and Josh tells Sally to go to her door. Aidan doesn’t want her to miss it because of him. They touch hands, and he tells her, “Go. Maybe I’ll see you there.” Flashing back to the alley, Aidan is offering Josh a hand, which Josh shrugs off, thinking that Aidan is just “one of them.” Aidan says that he’s a nurse and offers to help get him cleaned up. After a moment of hesitation, Josh decides to trust him. “When I’m gone,” Josh finishes his voiceover, “I at least want you to know what I was. I want you to know who you are to me. Nothing else matters. Not anymore.”

Sally arrives home, but the door is gone and she rightly starts panicking. Josh sits guard over Aidan, stake in hand. Someone comes in, but it’s just Celine. She tells him to go home and rest, but he says she can’t understand the danger that Aidan’s in. She assures him that she knows how to handle Bishop and pulls out a stake. Instead of going home, Josh washes his face in a break room and Nora approaches him, wanting to know if he’s been there all night. She left once it became clear he wouldn’t tell her anything. She thinks she has a right to know what’s going on, though, if she’s taking these risks with her job and maybe even her life. He doesn’t know what to say. She coldly tells him that she’s keeping the baby, but she doesn’t feel like she has a partner in him. Which is fine, but she needs to prepare herself. He wants to be that person, but he can’t. She wants to keep being patient, but she can’t.

Aidan wakes up to see Celine. She looks at his wound and knows that Bishop came close to killing him; that’s why it’s healing so slowly. She begs him to drink her so he can heal. He won’t. He just needs time. And home.

An officer finds an abandoned car and realizes Bishop’s in it. “Looks like you caught me sleeping one off,” Bishop smirks. The officer asks what happened to his face. Bishop says he’ll need some help with that and pulls him through the window to eat him.

Josh arrives home and has visions of the good times the roommates shared there. Sally asks if Aidan’s okay. “I know, I’m here… sucks,” she replies to Josh’s shocked expression. “I sorta can’t deal with it right now, or I’m gonna start shooting people from a bell tower. On the other hand…” She shows Josh that she can touch things now but thinks it’s probably not a good thing. Celine wheels Aidan out of hospital, but Bishop sees them. Fortunately, there’s a bunch of kids in between them, and Bishop seems to still be keeping up appearances somewhat, so Celine and Aidan escape. Bishop finds Josh working and approaches him instead. “Can you deliver a simple message?” Josh denies knowing where Aidan is. All Bishop wanted was for Aidan to become a better vampire, he explains to Josh. “He and I are going to end this like the old and dignified vampires we are.” He gives Josh and time and place for Aidan to be and threatens his family if he doesn’t deliver the message: “What do you think would upset your mother more? Your heart or your brain on a platter?” The pure evil of Bishop is coming out to play now.

At home, Aidan agrees with Sally that her solidness is probably bad. Josh comes home and delivers the message. Sally reminds Aidan that he can barely walk and that he’ll die if he goes to meet Bishop. “Bishop won’t stop until he’s torn [the family] apart,” Aidan replies. Sally points out that tomorrow is the full moon, but Josh says it’s not possible; he can’t do it, so they should all just leave instead. Aidan says leave without him. “I fight. This should have happened lifetimes ago, and I am truly sorry that it had to happen during yours.”

Back to two years ago, we see Josh coming out of his interview at the hospital, which Aidan set up for him. Josh is okay with the job being below his abillities but wants to know why Aidan is doing this. Aidan explains his clean living, how he slips up, starts over, over, and over. Back in the present, Josh sits in the courtyard as Sally urges him that they have to do something. He agrees. He also thinks she’s right about the wolf. If they can get Bishop to the Wolf Room so Sally can close the door and lock them in together… JoshWolf will do what he’s meant to do: “I’m a killer.” “It almost seems too easy, doesn’t it?” Sally asks, but Josh doesn’t think so. Sally tells him that he’s super badass scary as a wolf, which bolsters his confidence some. He tells her not to tell Aidan. Not to give him weepy looks. Not to go all Sally on him.

Celine reveals to Aidan why she wasn’t there to get the train with him in the ’70s. Aidan says he should have known and apologizes. She tells him that she’s ready to die, but she wants to know that he will live before she goes. She positions her neck at his mouth, and sadly, Aidan bites into her. Josh approaches Bishop, tells him that Aidan will fight, but wants to do it here, giving him directions to the basement Wolf Room. “Good boy,” Bishop remarks as he pats Josh on the head. I really hope Josh gets to tear him apart.

At the house, Josh cooks a meal for everyone and requests that they humor him and share a meal. He suggests that they join a CSA. The lighthearted moment is slightly broken by Sally Sallying it up with her looks, which gets Josh going teary, too. Aidan asks where Josh is, trying to diffuse the tension, and he says the woods. Aidan suggests he go to Ithaca and see his family afterwards. Sally wants to know they’re coming back. “I don’t want to be here without you guys.” They assure her (falsely) they’ll come back. “And then we’ll join that farm thing, it’ll be awesome,” Aidan overcompensates. Sally has a weepy smile. They clean up, and Aidan tells Josh to go as Josh gives Aidan his Star of David one last time. “Good luck tonight.”

Nora finds a letter in one of her charts, and we realize that Josh’s voiceover is a letter to her. “The truth is, I never expected what I found with you. The possibility of a future I’d given up so long ago. But I can’t step into that future without helping my family first. Not just my parents and my sister, who I’ve hurt for too long, but my family here in Boston. They’re part of my secret, part of my survival, and I owe this to them. I don’t know if I’ll even be here after tonight, but if I am…” Nora stops reading as she sees him sneak into a corridor. Aidan arrives at the place he was told. Sally’s waiting for Josh in the Wolf Room and wants to know if she can help. Josh urges her to stick to the plan. Remind Aidan to let him out in the morning. Or carry him out. “You’re a good person,” Sally assures him, “a good friend… and Ray was wrong. You’re not a killer, you never were. Be safe.” Sally closes the door before Bishop arrives, to Josh’s dismay.

There’s still twenty minutes left, kids… get the Kleenex and another drink if you haven’t already.

Sally arrives where Aidan is. Aidan asks how Josh is. “He may never speak to me again,” Sally informs, “And I may never speak to me again for making me do this.” When Bishop arrives, he wants Sally to leave. “You took everything from me,” Bishop accuses Aidan, but the younger reminds him that he did it to himself. Josh begins to change, and Nora arrives. He tells her to get out, but starts to change and pushes her back through the door. She watches, shocked as he changes, and she starts cramping and bleeding outside the door. Her screams cause the JoshWolf to worry, peeking through the crack under the door at her. Bishop and Aidan start beating each other. “And for your weakness, you ruined my life?” Aidan asks. Bishop throws a battered, bruised, and broken Aidan off the catwalks. Sally is behind him with the stake. He hisses at her and she drops it, but it’s enough time for Aidan to garrote him with razor wire. “I told you to change. I begged you to change. It didn’t have to be this way.” “It did,” Bishop chokes out as he touches Aidan’s face gently before his head is severed.

The next morning, Nora is huddled huddled under blankets at her place with Josh. She’s lost the baby. He apologizes for not telling her sooner. She admits she wouldn’t have believed him. “You have to go through that every month?… And there’s no cure?” She asks how it happened, and he explains the story of how he and his friend were hiking and his friend was killed while he was scratched. “And just a scratch was enough?” Nora asks. He can understand if she doesn’t want to be with him, but she assures him that she does. “I felt like I was finally seeing you.” They think that maybe they’ll be okay, but there’s a lingering doubt behind both of their assurances. He says he should get back to the house but will be back later. After he leaves, Nora looks at her right arm and looks at the scratch Josh accidentally caused as he was pushing her out.

The roommates sit on the floor in their still-charred living room. “We should get cable,” Aidan suggests. Josh is upset that they planned that behind his back but congratulates Aidan on being free. Sally asks what he’s going to do, “I think I’m gonna learn krav maga,” he replies as he suggests that Sally can learn, too, and fight ghost crime. It’s her turn to say what she’s going to do. She says that she’s not going to wait anymore, she’s going to do something with her time. Get closure with her friends and family… haunt them, basically. The doorbell rings. It’s Hegeman, who thanks Aidan for the trouble he’s saved them. Aidan tries to shirk off the thanks as Hegeman informs him, “It’s time. She wants to meet you… You are the leader now… of course she wants to meet you.” Poor Aidan… he’s still not free.

Oasis’s “Don’t Look Back in Anger” plays as we see, one year ago, Aidan talking Josh into getting an apartment together as they see a body taken out of the house. Sally can wait, indeed, as she watches herself taken away from her house and the story begins again.

Due to time constraints, I don’t really get to enjoy the show once through before I start recapping it. I usually take notes as I’m watching, so I kind of have a bit of editorial distance from the show while I watch. If I hadn’t had that, I would have broken down crying at times during this episode, most likely. Even though I knew pretty much everything that was coming (only one major event deviated from the UK series), I’ve become so invested in these characters that I, too, was thinking what Sally said… I wanted assurances that the boys were coming back to us, and I really doubted it (at least on Aidan’s part) on occasion. I’m happy with the resolution of the Wolf Baby plot. Though a miscarriage was expected, it made sense that a fetus that might be part wolf would experience distress at the full moon. The Josh Wolf’s worried murmur was heartbreaking, as well. I also like what they’ve set up for next season. The introduction of The Dutch and the class system within the vampires is interesting, even moreso with the introduction of this mysterious “She.” I don’t know when Being Human is returning, but I’ll be there, watching.