Remember Annie's an emotionally and ultimately physically abused woman. Standing up effectively is going to be hard for her.

I know, and I kept reminding myself of that. But it's less satisfying dramatically to see non-stop weakness than it is to see someone fighting back. I was really satisfied in her strength at the end.

Owen not only knew how to break her down, but enjoyed it. Annie was used to it, and it didn't seem out of character, as frustrating as it was. I was going to be annoyed if it stayed that way. But that final moment when she confronted him, serene and confident, was so delicious.

Yeah, Mitchell is lovely, but not very bright...

I posted this on TwoP this weekend about my reaction to Owen and Annie (spoilery for episode 6):

I didn't like Owen's blasé attitude about being haunted by Annie precisely because it made her big moment of triumph by whispering the secret that broke him such a 180° turn. If you're so lacking in conscience or imagination that it only takes you a minute to recover from the discovery that the fiance you murdered is back to haunt you (complete with both proof of existence after death and the implication that as a murderer you're not going to like what you find there) and get back to the manipulative power games, what could possibly be revealed in a few seconds of murmured speech that would flip you out and make you run screaming through the streets?

I'd have much preferred it if instead of looking all smug and gleeful, he'd been clearly ready to wet himself all along but told Janey to pay Annie no mind in a fearful attempt to cover his tracks. And maybe worked himself up to defiance through a "you were asking for it!" rationalization to convince himself that he wouldn't be paying for his crime eventually. In THAT scenario, I could see Annie whispering something like "we all end up in Hell eventually, even the innocent" and cracking his sanity like a walnut.

Er - actually I think everything you are talking about is in five. (He ended up screaming in the streets and running to the police to confess.) I rationalize it that Ghosts have to superpower of being believed when they tell the secret, and that it is something very specific.

Not so much "everyone goes to hell" as she makes you believe that you specifically will spend eternity watching Carrot Top perform his standup routine naked.

Incidentally, a lot of ancient religions did believe in essence that everyone (or almost everyone) goes to hell. That is there is an afterlife and it is pretty damn unpleasant. Didn't one culture believe that everyone ends up in a big cave, wearing feathers and eating clay? For that matter wasn't the ancient Greek afterlife pretty bad. Elysian fields for a tiny minority (heroes, philosphers andt that was hit) Tarturus for the really awful, and for the rest, a grey afterlife as ghost hungering for blood. And didn't one of the ghosts tell Odyseus something along the lines of "better to be a live slave on Earth than a dead hero in the Elysian fields". So apparently the Greek afterlife was not great even for those who got the best suite in the house.

Eureka: Really enjoying this season. I like Tess, and I see more chemistry between her and Carter than Carter and Allison ever. I was shocked that they brought Kim back for only two episodes, only to make Henry lose her again. I'm suspecting/hoping there's something up somebody's sleeve, though. Allison made an off-hand comment in a recent episode, referring to Stark as "never giving up". It just stuck me as odd, like foreshadowing. But maybe I just really want Stark back that much. Now, the "syence": pssht. The synthetic water bothered me more than the P-branes. (They just wanted an excuse to say "peabrain".) There was something else, that Tess said, that I've actually blocked out of my memory, it was so dumb. I yelled at the screen, even though I've given up caring about the pseudo-science.

I la-la-la-handwaved my way through ALL of the syn-water explanations.

Being Human: Loving it, even though George is a huge girl most of the time with the screeching, and Annie is a sniveling self-pitying dishrag (I know, she's an abused woman; I get it, it just annoys me), and Mitchell is seriously fucked up despite that he seems the sanest one on the show and can't decide if he really wants to be an amoral vampire or a good quasi-human. (Mitchell is also very good-looking, which is not swaying my opinions at all.) I think this is the first time I've ever enjoyed a show that has no characters that I like particularly much.

Why did that other ghost fall in love with Annie? She didn't seem like his type. She didn't like anything he liked, and didn't seem to like him much either.

I think Mitchell felt guilty and responsible for the kid's death, even though he absolutely wasn't, and I think he was rolling his guilt over Lauren into a big dung ball of Guilt and trying to save *somebody* instead of destroying everyone he touched, and I think at the end he realized that his intent to save the boy had ultimately doomed both him and his mother. So, being Mitchell, he walked away and hated himself some more. I don't think Mitchell hates himself for being a vampire; he likes that; I think he hates himself for ruining the lives of innocent people. There's got to be a story there, of why Mitchell is so fucked up.

The child-abuse storyline didn't bother me, considering there wasn't any child abuse actually happening. Did it occur to no one that possibly this screeching drunken woman was lying? The readiness of people to treat other people like shit without any evidence whatsoever is bothersome, but if that's all it took to make a hundred-year-old vampire decide the human species are monsters, seems he might have been looking for an excuse to go back to killing them. Mitchell might be a nice guy for a vampire, but he is not a nice guy.

Torchwood: Haven't watched. Probably won't. The commercials on BBC now seem to indicate that Torchwood is coming back, with Gwen. No one else is in evidence, so far.

With ZenkItty on Mitchell. Also I would add that he makes Angel seem bright by comparison. He thought they could turn everyone into vampires, and not leave any humans around to feed on? He really thought that was the plan? Not as annoyed by Annie. She seems to be overcoming her emotional problems, which is a really hard thing to do. And I don't blame her for them. Because it is actually pretty easy for normal person to be lured into an abusive relationship. get broken down by abuse, and have huge emotional damage to overcome.

BTW I wonder if I'm missing some nuance here. Are varying accents of George, Mitchell, Annie and Nina class signifiers? Are they from differing classes?