Being Human: Maid of Dishonor

 
Episode 312: “Always a Bridesmaid, Never Alive”

THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD!

[Photos: Phillipe Bosse/Syfy]

This week feels like Christmas Eve. I’m so excited about the Being Human season finale next week, but I know that hour of ecstasy will soon end and will be followed by months of nail-bitten waiting. I’m not good at waiting. Waiting reeks. Waiting is for the virtuous, and I, my friends, am a woman of little virtue. Please forgive any terseness in this week’s write-up, I’m typing with curled fists!

For my first grownup comment of the article, may I observe how awesome the special effects/makeup team are with this show? I mean, truly beyond incredible. Sally’s rapidly decaying body is convincingly grody, yet she still manages to be beautiful, delightful Sally. Love the dichotomy.

Josh and Nora awake on their wedding day, sad but understanding about Emily’s probable absence from the ceremony, grateful for their best friends in the world. Downstairs in the living room, Aidan has set up a Jewish wedding canopy and is cooking breakfast for his two favorite lycanthropes. Kat shows up with champagne and bridesmaid dress in hand, and inquires in whispers to Nora as to whether Aidan knows she was invited. It seems that Aidan left Kat slumbering in their lover’s bed, ere she awoke, with nary a word to follow. Fortunately, Nora has joined the Aidan alliance, and urges Kat to let Aidan explain.

Aidan pulls the same crap that all women have heard at some point: it’s not you, it’s me; things got real and fast; I freaked out. Blah blah. But then he says the magic words that make everything all better: will you be my date to my best friend’s wedding? Kat’s not one to allow the unspoken create mismatched expectations, so she agrees as long as he understands that this maneuver accelerates the relationship further.

While Aidan and Kat swap make-up smooches on the couch, Nora checks on Sally, who has dramatically worsened. Nora makes her excuses to Kat, and the four roommates huddle in Sally’s room to strategize. They agree that Sally can’t trick her way out of Donna’s door. Considering that the door is a portal to Donna rather than the great beyond, Aidan offers to accompany Sally and help her defeat Donna. Josh initially holds back from joining their mission based on his promise to Nora that he’d always choose her, but Nora encourages him to join his friends. I knew that promise would come back later, but I always thought it would bite him in the butt. Instead, it illustrates the dramatic one eighty that Nora has made. I gotta stop assuming the worst of people. Oh wait, this is Being Human.

Nora brings Sally a number of outfits to try on; after all, if she’s going to be haunting the old place again, she might as well look good doing it. Such a fun scene, until Sally gets wobbly and declares it’s time. Even on her deathbed, she maintains her whacky humor, asking Aidan to hold her “skeletal meat hook of a hand,” and telling the guys that she had a blast with them before she quietly expires.  Of course, in this world, it ain’t no thing; moments later, her ghost appears bedside, and she’s fine.

Knowing Donna’s door is imminent, Aidan declares the need to arm themselves before he punches a hole through the chest wall of Sally’s dead body. I wish we hadn’t seen that in the previews, because that would have been an OMG moment, otherwise. Aidan reasons that the heart is the most powerful essence of a person that can be used in blood magic, so he pulls out and packs up Sally’s dead heart. Together, Aidan, Sally and Josh cross the threshold of Donna’s door.

Josh and Aidan both have momentary hallucinations before phasing into Donna’s empty soup kitchen with Sally. Ray lurks in the shadows and confronts Josh. Aidan and Sally move on. Ray and Josh talk briefly, and the expressions on Ray’s face are creeptastic. Eventually the two tussle, before Ray changes into a werewolf at will, something only pureblood weres are able to do without a full moon. Fortunately for Josh, Donna keeps machetes lying about. Josh lops off Ray’s head with relative ease and skill. Hmm.

The showdown with Donna transpires similarly. Lots of talking reveal that Donna exists on the energy of souls (you probably guessed that already), Donna is a few hundred years old, and her true visage is not terribly attractive, thanks to Ilana’s Latin incantation. Aidan tosses Sally’s heart into a fire, Donna goes up in flames, but she quickly transfers the fire to Sally. Sally quickly tells the boys goodbye, and she poofs into a cloud of ash.

Donna inhales the Sally cloud, and then…remember that scene from The Matrix where Neo dives into Agent Smith, and then cracks him open from the inside? Something very similar happens here. Donna screams, light pours out through cracks in her body, and our three roomies suddenly are at home, in Sally’s room. Hmm.

The three original roommates plus Nora celebrate their good fortune on the front stoop of their brownstone, when what to our wondering eyes should appear, but Emily in a dress. When told the wedding is off for the moment, she does her Emily thing, bosses all concerned into submission, and the wedding proceeds after all. While waiting for the bridal party, the two brothers-in-curses acknowledge that their experiment in living as humans has its reward, however momentary. The women descend the stairs where Sally first died, creating a lovely new memory associated with that awful stairwell. Josh and Nora exchange vows and depart for their honeymoon.

Emily puts out the flame on the candelabra, turns away, and Sally sees the flames spring back to life. She appears distressed; did she do that? The camera takes us down to Aidan’s room, where we see Kenny still sleeping on the bed. Poor baby, he looks like he got beat by the ugly stick. Aidan’s spit is definitely off; no botrytis here, unfortunately.

Final detail: Josh and Nora appear to have consummated their new union, when Nora notes the fire has died down and goes outside to fetch more wood. “Hello Nora, best wishes to the bride,” says Liam…duh duh duh! Screen fades to black.

Questions for this week: Why did Josh dream of his wolf and Aidan of his child before popping into Donna’s kitchen? Where did Josh learn to handle a knife with such alacrity? Am I the only one who thinks those fights with Ray and Donna went down way too easy for our heroes? Are Ray and Donna gone for good? Or can they too become spirits with a whole new set of weapons? Why are the vampires made by Aidan changing so strangely? Is it because Aidan was infected with the virus? Or because he was inoculated with werewolf blood? And most important of all, why can’t Being Human have more episodes a season?!

See you guys next week for the last Being Human recap of 2013!

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[Official Show Site on Syfy]  [Previous Recap: “If Only I Had Raw Brain”]