Vampire or Werewolf: Did Kenny have a choice?

Spoilers for the season 3 finale of Being Human.

I wonder if Kenny could have become a werewolf instead of a vampire. Going by the werewolves in Being Human, we know that they:

• have heightened senses right before the full moon (Josh and Nora)
• become physically stronger over time (Ray)
• might age differently from normal humans (Pete and Liam)

We don't know if becoming a werewolf would have negated Kenny's Bubble Boy syndrome, but I would have liked to see the characters consider that option. If Kenny would have become a werewolf, he would have still aged, he wouldn't need blood to survive, and as long as he didn't get mixed up in supernatural trouble, he could have lived a mostly-normal life.

And maybe he wouldn't have become a vampire abomination.

Pilot Study: Being Human (U.S.)

I noticed that the storytelling and degree of detail varies in pilot episodes of shows, so informally, I've been watching pilot episodes and keeping track of everything we find out in that episode. (Sometimes I also watch and take notes on episode 2 to see what the pilot episode set up and how it's resolved.) These "Pilot Study" posts come from my notes.

(x)

Being Human (U.S.) - "There Goes the Neighborhood: Part 1"
Original air date: January 17, 2011
"There Goes the Neighborhood: Part 2" aired on January 24, 2011.

Opening

Aidan narrating:

We're all hiding something, aren't we? From the moment we wake, look in that mirror, all we do is spin our little lies. Suck in that gut, colour that hair, twist off that wedding ring. Any why not? What's the penalty? What are the consequences, really? "I'm only human," you say, and all is forgiven. But what if some cruel twist of fate makes you something else, something other? Who forgives you then? Every human spends a night or two on the dark side and regrets it. But what if you only exist on the dark side? We just want the same things that you do: a chance at life, at love. We're not so different in that way. And so we try and sometimes fail. But when you're something other, a monster, the consequences are worse. Much worse. You wake up from your nightmares. We don't. [x]

We see Josh go into the woods. It's a full moon, and he changes into a wolf. Aidan and Rebecca are on a date. Aidan vamps out and kills her.

Characters

- Josh: werewolf, hospital orderly, has a sister (Emily)
- Aidan: vampire, nurse (works in same hospital as Josh), out on a date with Rebecca
- Sally: ghost, had a fiancée Danny (who becomes Josh's and Aidan's landlord)

Setting

Modern day, Boston

Plot

Rebecca is missing. Will the police trace her back to Aidan?
---Resolved: Bishop turns her into a vampire (leads into episode 2)
How and where can Josh transform in a controlled environment?
---Resolved: Hospital basement, but Emily locks herself in there with him! (leads into episode 2)
Is Sally supposed to move on?
Should Josh and Aidan try to have a normal life?
---The first step is renting an apartment together (the apartment where Sally and Danny lived). This question is not resolved in this episode because having a normal life is an on-going goal.

Questions

How did Sally die? (we find out in episode 2)
How did Josh become a werewolf? (answered in episode 2)
How did Aidan become a vampire? (answered in episode 2)
How did Josh and Aidan meet? And how did they find out each other's secret?
When/why did Aidan decide to stop feeding on people?

Predators and Prey in Being Human

I like that Being Human keeps playing with stereotypes for werewolves, ghosts (well, now re-animated corpses), and vampires. Sometimes the usually-accepted supernatural rules apply to Josh, Sally, and Aidan, but sometimes the writers flip those rules upside down. "Of Mice and Wolfmen" (3.09) is a great example of this rule playing.

Spoilers for the episode below.

Josh

The main reason Josh doesn't want to be a werewolf is because he is afraid he will hurt someone. That was true the first time around, and it's true again this season. He constantly worries about what he might do, and he copes by coming up with ways to distract the wolf (chicken on a rope) or contain the wolf (the storage cell). In this episode, Pete shows up and shows Josh how to connect with his wolf through meditation. It isn't a way to control the wolf and it's certainly not a cure, but Pete seems at peace with his situation. So Josh adds meditation to his coping mechanisms. Wolves are natural predators, but Josh doesn't want to hurt anyone, and it seems like neither does Pete. Pete goes against his (supernatural) nature by accepting that he is a werewolf and not using his condition violently, and Josh is working towards that same acceptance.

Sally

Sally figures out that she can eat live creatures to restore her body. She freaks out, but Nick rationalizes it: normal people eat meat all the time. But Sally sees it quickly escalating to consuming people, not just animals, and she decides her survival isn't worth killing people. She chooses to constantly fight her hunger. The predator-prey relationship falls apart, and it's progress for Sally's character too. Last season, she shredded ghosts when she thought it meant her survival, but now we see that Sally would rather die than hurt people.

Aidan

Aidan recovers from the flu virus, and the group realizes that it's because he drank werewolf blood. Werewolf blood acts as a vaccine for vampires, and Aidan knows that werewolves would be in danger if other vampires found out. But Aidan tells Blake about it anyway. Aidan the Friend says that Nora and Josh are off limits, but Aidan the Vampire is tired of weakened vampires running away from werewolves. He revives the predator-prey relationship between vampires and werewolves.

Josh and Sally go against their predator natures, but Aidan doesn't. In the larger picture, vampires usually hunt werewolves, but when the flu virus killed most vampires, roles switched. Werewolves hunted down and killed the weakened vampires. Aidan's discovery about werewolf blood switched the roles back: now vampires hunt werewolves again, but this time for blood.

Being Human: Twisted déjà vu in wonderland

Being Human is at a point where the show could feel stagnant. We've known the characters for two years and the writers have thrown them in situations that go from bad to worse. But instead, the writers changed the circumstances and opened up new stories to explore.

The writers' willingness to change the characters continues to be my favorite aspect of Being Human. This week's episode threw a few twists at Josh, Sally, and Aidan. Spoilers below for episode 3.08 "Your Body Is a Condemned Wonderland."


"Wonderland" gave us a taste of reset television without actually resetting any of the characters.

Josh started the series as a werewolf, cured himself, and now he is a werewolf again. In the coming episodes, we'll see round two of how he deals with being a werewolf. His life fell apart the first time. Now he knows about the supernatural world and he had a system down for what to do on full moons. Things will probably be different this time around, but we don't know how yet.

By the end of "Wonderland," Sally and Aidan switch roles. Sally realizes that when she's hungry all the time, it's for raw meat. The preview for next week shows her eating a mouse, so she'll figure out that she has to eat live creatures to restore her body. It's a level up from vampire survival. Sally is now the one who has to destroy life in order to survive.

Liam injected Aidan with the flu virus, and now Aidan is this close to death. So far in the show, vampires have come back as hallucinations but not as ghosts, so death is probably the end of Aidan. He said he has "so much to make up for," and he's probably worried about dying before he can make amends for all the people he has killed.

The writers reset the characters, but each character has his or her own twist that will lead to new stories for at least the rest of this season.

Running scenarios in Being Human

I recently got into the U.S. version of Being Human and my favorite aspect of the series is the pacing. It's fast enough that I'm never bored but slow enough to let me run scenarios.

I have enough time to come up with a few guesses for what is going to happen next. The fun part is, I'm rarely right. Everything that happens makes sense within the story but I still get surprised because I can't account for every plot twist or new bit of information.

I like that the pacing in Being Human lets me think about the story while I'm watching the episode. It's the type of audience participation that happens easily in novels but is difficult to reproduce on television.