In the post-Sopranos era, it’s become common practice for many shows to set off their big fireworks in the penultimate episode of the season. Being Human delivered on the fire, at least, as landlord Danny attempted to rid himself of Sally’s ghost once and for all by burning down his own rental house, but “You’re the One That I Haunt” set off a few duds as well.
For once, Sally’s storyline was actually my favorite of the episode. I was a bit premature last week in assuming that the Danny situation was resolved, because as tonight’s hour began, our friendly ghost was in full-on vengeance mode—and pretty damn creepy-looking with her veiny face and blank eyes. Still tormenting Danny, she is only able to restore herself to “normalcy” after causing him to cut his own neck shaving. I have to say, I enjoyed Sally’s brief turn to the dark side after watching her mope around all too often over the past 12 weeks. This turn of events brought out a little fire in Meagan Rath, which was fun to see—even though, of course, it couldn’t last.
Danny’s plan to douse the house with gasoline and torch it isn’t particularly well-conceived, since that sort of thing is called “arson” and is generally frowned upon by the authorities, but clearly, the guy has gone off the deep end by this point. Josh and Aidan arrive home in time to prevent the complete destruction of their home, and the latter appears all too willing to aid Sally in her revenge mission until Josh quite sensibly points out that killing Danny will most likely result in him haunting Sally. That could’ve been a nice Twilight Zone-y twist, but instead, Danny confesses to both the arson attempt and the murder of his fiancée, and presto! Sally’s door to the next world finally appears.
Due to some other developments, however, she hasn’t tried to walk through it just yet. I continue to be somewhat less than enthralled by the continuing saga of Nurse Nora’s pregnancy. Josh is still wondering whether his curse can be passed on through coitus, while Nora is still waiting for Josh to grow a pair. The revelation that she’s actually 14 weeks along rather than the seven weeks since her one and only sexual interlude with Josh suggest we may have some kind of Fringe-style accelerated pregnancy in the works—unless, of course, she’s not being truthful about her love life, and Josh isn’t the father after all. Frankly, neither of these possibilities has me on the edge of my seat.
Aidan’s showdown with Bishop is on hold for 59 minutes, while we get to enjoy more flashbacks and yet another tale of love lost among the vampires. Don’t get me wrong; I got a kick out of the Starsky and Hutch look Bishop and Aidan were rocking in the ‘70s scenes set in Montreal, where a floppy-haired Aidan romanced a French-Canadian lass, much to Bishop’s displeasure. But for the most part, these sequences only reinforced what we already knew: Bishop and Aidan have been screwing up each other’s love lives for many decades, and Aidan has been trying to get out from under Bishop’s rule for just as long. (Surely this is all fraught with homoerotic implications, but I’ll leave any further analysis of that to the experts.)
Bishop makes his only present-day appearance in startling fashion at the close of the episode, just as Sally is making her tearful goodbyes and preparing to open her door (which has materialized in the middle of the burned-out apartment). His staking of Aidan obviously isn’t fatal, as Aidan doesn’t crumble into dust, but it does set the stage for what we can only hope will be an exciting final confrontation in next week’s season finale.
Stray observations:
- “She looks like The Grudge!”
- So what happens to the house now that the owner has been caught trying to burn it down? Presumably our supernatural trio will continue living there, but surely they don’t have to keep paying Danny rent. We need legal experts to weigh in here.
- Nice callback to an early episode: The vampire assassin Aidan feared might be anyone in the hospital turned out to be the coffee shop cashier he’d seen Bishop flirting with.
- I was going to ask if you have any predictions about the season finale, but of course you do! You’ve seen the U.K. series.