Yeah, I watched the first few episodes, stopped, then came back at some point - possibly not until S2 - and it was like I was watching a different, and really cool, show. Now I want to go back and watch from the beginning.

Oftentimes it's the SF/fantasy shows that take a couple of episodes to hit their stride and from there it's real different ball of makebelieve wax. I think it often takes that long for the writers, actors and directors to get used to the concept(s) and start running with them.

It's a shame that more shows don't get enough time to make the transition.

Ultra belated. But just finished catching up on Being Human(BBCA). I really like the end of the third season. In retrospect, they were setting up Mitchell as somebody who needed to be killed from the beginning. I always thought Mitchell should die, but looking back the writers pretty clearly intended that from day one. Also his being bloody stupid was consistent. He was articulate, charming, emotionally manipulative, and had worse planning skills than either Spike or Angel. Again I'm pretty sure canonical, not the audience spotting something the writers did not know.

had worse planning skills than either Spike or Angel.

Preach it.

I don't know whether this has been linked - just a short little interview with Anna Torv from ComiCon. She seems like just such a lovely human... [link]

Capt. Awesome tells us what's awesome and not awesom at ComicCon.

(Nathan Fillion has been tweeting a number of pictures from ComicCon all day. Like this one.)

I quit watching a few eps into the third season of UK Being Human. I figured they were gonna kill Mitchell. Now what I want to know is, are they gonna bring him back? They seemed to be setting that up in the eps I saw.

I WANTED to like Mitchell like I liked Spike and Angel, but I kept being disappointed with him. Angel was repentant and really trying to be good; Spike was evil (until he wasn't) and you knew where you stood with him. Mitchell talked about wanting to be good, but he'd still slaughter a trainload of people and do anything necessary to avoid the consequences. Mitchell's repentance was mostly just the guilt of an adolescent who knows his family will be mad at him and he doesn't want to get punished. He's no Angel. He's not even a Spike.

No that was the point. He was no Angel. He nor truly repentant not done with murder for good. And they made it clear that he was not coming back. I think in a way it is comment on the whole "repentant vampire" meme. He is like a drunk who attends meeting and tries to stay away from drinking but occasionally slips and goes on a one day binge or even a weeklong binge. Only the one day binge is a murder or two and the week long binge is mass slaughter. So in the end I think the point is that it is NOT like being a drunk or a drug addict. Being addicted to murder is not comparable. With regular addiction, one path out is fail recover, fail again but fail better. In an AA meeting one of the things that happens is some will get up and say something along the lines of "I had a drink last week, but I have five days back". It is not the same if what you had was one or two murders.

Also Mitchell was a dick in other ways besides being a murderer. Which I think was another point. "He's a serial killer, but aside from that one heck of a nice guy". Umm no.

You weren't supposed to like Mitchell. He was supposed to be charming but ultimately unlikeable.

Oh and they specifically said that if vampires are staked they don't come back. And Mitchell was staked. So he did a lot of dickish things to learn how to come back and in the end was killed in a way that he won't come back.

He did have a sort of redemption. He realized that he would never stop killing and voluntarily had himself staked. But he was still a dick about it. Made George do it. Had a bullshit excuse about how he had corrupted George and George staking him would reject him and redeem George. But it was bullshit and I think intended to be read as shut. Nina called it when she said that vampires could not do anything without blood and drama and that Mitchell was incapable of quietly staking himself without fuss.

You weren't supposed to like Mitchell.

Well, good, then. It's really hard to stay with a show when I dislike one of the main characters so much.

Will there be another vampire? Is the series over? What happened with Nina's baby? I want to know, but not badly enough to watch the show. That's sad.

Also Mitchell's wish to give up killing is not just a matter of pleasing his "family". He actually turned to one of his victims back in the 60s and spared her and asked her to help him give up killing.

But he looks at killing like drinking, as a problem for him not for his victims. He feels guilty but never really takes responsibility for his own actions. He asks the woman to take responsibility for stopping him killing. And then later on when he kills 20 people in the Box Car Tunnel murders, he still looks at it like a drunken binge. He says something on the lines of "Oh that was a year ago. I'm not that person any more". And when he tries to help a teenage vampire not kill he tells him (paraphrase cause from memory) "surround yourself with good people. Their disappointment when you do wrong will put you right again." Which of course assume the occasional kill, just the "good people" keeping you from doing it too often. And of course making someone other than yourself responsible for stopping you killing. At one point Mitchell actually sets up a 12 step program for vampires - again implicitly taking for granted that there will be occasional backsliding. Though he is so bloody stupid maybe he really does not think of that.

But he really is battling against his serial killing problem. And does oppose the whole Herrick taking over the world thing. It is just that he can't stop being a serial kill and also can't really stop the whole "being a dick" thing.