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Being Human: Ghost Town

Annie: Oh okay, so I'm contemplating resolving my death so that I can move on to the next dimension and you're worrying about getting your leg over?

I did not like this episode. I was really hoping that I would, but I just found it really hard to agree with half of the things Annie did. Maybe it's because I don't like Owen. I don't know.

I usually adore Annie, but from the first scene in the kitchen, where she is crying over a parsley sauce maker, I just wanted to slap her and tell her to get over it. However, Mitchell and George had a far more logical idea: Get Annie out of the house to meet some more ghosts. I still think Annie needs a good slapping, however.

I did like Gilbert and his 'Gilbert Fun'. He's permanently stuck in the 80s, thinks fun is a 'bourgeois' concept and doesn't seem to care about how people see him. I think he's a much more suitable match for Annie, than Owen. I can't remember, but was it explained how Gilbert died? I wish he had stayed for another episode. Maybe one day. I don't know how he managed to deal with Annie's incessant moping over Owen. Gilbert was the only part of Annie's storyline that I liked in this episode.

I guess now with the revelation that Owen was the reason behind Annie's death, we're going to have to put up with more Owen. Great. If they give me more Mitchell and Lauren, I guess I can tolerate Annie and Owen. Barely.

Apparently, Herrick was the mastermind behind Lauren's vampire-porn movie, so that Mitchell would want Lauren and ultimately come back into the fold. Lauren switches her tune a couple of times. First she did it willingly for Mitchell, the next, she was forced to do it by Herrick. Lauren is so devious and manipulative, I find it hard to believe her. Mitchell does, though. Lauren seemed all too willing to get into the car with Seth at the end for me to believe she was that serious about changing and going dry. I guess we'll see. I don't think that video is going to disappear any time soon.

I got horribly distracted whenever I tried to write this review. I ate a mango for breakfast, I took my dog for a walk and I actually did the washing up. I guess it's because I couldn't find all that much to like in it. I liked George and Nina (although watching the scene with Wolf!George and Nina was a bit awkward with my dad in the room) and the Lauren / Mitchell storyline is getting interesting (Who else thought of Angel and Darla with that bathroom scene? The BBC doesn't hold much back when it comes to how graphic a scene is..) I just couldn't get emotionally invested with Annie's swanning about after Owen. It was a great revelation that Annie remembered that it was in fact Owen that killed her, but I didn't even like that enough to stay seated for long.

I'm hoping for better episodes in the future.

Bites and Pieces:
  • George's remark about "smashing the granny" when the music stops. Oh, George. Nina must really like you.
  • I really, really, really do not like Owen.
  • Boiled ham with parsley sauce doesn't sound that enticing.
  • Loved the scene between George and Mitchell on the couch. Hence the picture.
  • I couldn't tell what book Gilbert was reading in the park. Any ideas?
  • More shirtless Mitchell, please.

Quotes:

Mitchell: Owen's moved on with his life. You need to do the same.
Annie: I'm dead!

Mitchell: I never know with you if it's Jewish guilt or werewolf guilt.
George: They're pretty much the same thing.

George: And where have you been young lady?.
Annie: I met up with Gilbert. We went to the cemetery.
Mitchell: He knows how to show a girl a good time.

George: I'm not eating raw meat like an animal because a ghost is ovulating!

Mitchell: George, get your lead.
Annie: I'd like to be like his guardian angel and stop anything bad from happening to him.
Gilbert: Can you stop him from listening to Michael Buble?

George: I had sex with Nina last night and it was bloody marvellous!
Mitchell: [Takes George to one side] Annie was killed by Owen.
George: [Sighs] Five minutes. Could I not have had five minutes with the biggest news?

One out of four Moeli graters.

Morgan India.

(P.S. I'm heading up to the Northern Territory [YAY! Wolf Creek!] on the 7th of December and I'm going to be taking my laptop with me, so I will be able to continue writing BH reviews on the slow days.)

7 comments:

  1. Good review, Morgan. You make an excellent point that Annie constantly bleating about Owen's perfection was annoying. Actually, that was probably intentional so that discovering he killed her would be more of a shock.

    I liked this one better than you did. I thought Gilbert was a lot of fun. I loved the passageway to eternity as an old battered doorway that appeared out of nowhere. And this episode got Dan and me talking about what we would do if we were like Annie. Travel the world for free. Visit every place we'd ever wanted to see.

    And I just noticed the wallpaper with the garden gnomes on it.

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  2. "I'm hoping for better episodes in the future"

    You're going to get them. I consider the next 3 eps to be amongst the best TV ever made. That said, I quite liked this episode so I might have a skewed sense of quality. It's undoubtedly the weakest of S1, but that just speaks for the quality of the other eps.

    I think when it comes to Annie you have to see her place in the group dynamic: they're a family who's parents are either absent or useless. Annie's the little sister, Mitchell's the oldest, experienced brother who raises/protects the other two and George is the nerdy, middle kid. It kinda makes Annie's behaviour a bit more sympathetic.

    I loved the scene in this episode where Gilbert takes Annie to her grave, I think that makes her grow up a bit and see her situation more clearly. That, coupled with the Owen revelation, sets the scene for a more powerful Annie. It's also a very sad scene and both of them play it very well.

    Also liked Gilbert going through the door into what's next. Gilbert was a great character and I'm glad they gave him so much time. That's something BH does a lot, gives supporting characters a lot of backstory and something to do, makes them so much more real.

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  3. I don't think anyone is SUPPOSED to like Owen.
    And I think Annie is a classic case of an abused woman, her confidence and spirit so broken that she has started to believe the abuse is HER fault, and that if she will be the perfect, obedient little woman, he will not get angry and everyone will be happy. Come on, even after her death she was so in denial she had (subconsciously) chosen to forget how she actually died.
    It's horrible but also very realistic, sadly enough

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  4. It's funny - this was the first ep that actually made me start watching again. I was a little obsessed with the original pilot episode, and was so disappointed when they re-cast and rewrote for the commissioned series that I basically sulked through the first two episodes of season one. It took about ten minutes of Gilbert to change my mind about the whole thing (and break my heart a little). It's also quite surprising how the Owen plot winds up becoming one of the main strengths of this series in the end, as irritatingly as it starts off...

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  5. the book is "Human, All Too Human" by friedrich nietzsche

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  6. @douxreviews,I had thought same thing bout Gilbert- I wanted him in more episodes too! I really liked his 'out of style'

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