Being Human, S4 E02 — Being Human 1955

Being Human 1955

So, it’s time to really meet Hal.

In Leo’s barber shop in Southend-On-Sea, Leo is downstairs listening to Louis Armstrong. A disembodied voice overtakes the music, urging him to journey west where he will find a man like him and a woman like Pearl, guarding the Chosen One, a child which will save him . . . save us all. Now, I don’t know if we’re supposed to understand that it’s grown-up Eve’s voice, but it is.

Meanwhile, in Barry, life has calmed a bit for Tom and Annie. Well, sort of. Tom, it would seem, is still gettin’ stakey with it (you’re so welcome for that I can’t even tell you, dear reader), which goes directly against Annie’s House Rules. As you can imagine, the Rules are pretty straightforward, and they include No Killing Vampires. Annie has convinced herself that everything that the vamps have said about Eve is true — she’s the savior of them all. Tom’s not so sure. He thinks the little baby is just a little baby.

Oh, do put your back into it, Pearl!

The other trio manage to get themselves run out of gas on their way into Barry, due to Hal’s seeming OCD over never stopping at a petrol station on the left hand side of the road, but they manage to make it to Honolulu Heights okay. Tom is out the door the moment he sees Hal, grabbing a stake from Annie’s hanging flower basket and threatening him with it. The show feels very, very familiar to its roots here thanks mainly to Annie, who gasps indignantly over Tom’s gall at hiding things in her shrubbery. Annie is all too happy to let them in the moment she hears that they’re here to see the savior, and so begins the extremely awkward process of them all circling each other. Annie and Pearl have a bit of a ghost-off. Tom and Hal make unhappy faces at each other. While Leo is explaining what he heard and how he needs more time he starts to cough and hack, unable to breathe, and the lights go all wonky. Annie explains that it must be Eve, saying yes to the idea of saving Leo. Sooner or later everyone but Tom has come around on this whole savior child thing — Pearl claims she knew all along that this wasn’t just humoring Leo, and Hal has seen the human skin parchment thingie and is convinced because he knows of the legend. He, like Regus, sounds a little too-breathless over the idea of Eve someday killing all vampires. Annie decides to have a ceremony, to let Eve’s powers heal Leo. That sounds like a great idea, Annie

But first, it’s over to Stoker Imports & Exports. Cutler is holding, hilariously, a focus group made up of homeless people. He shows them the video that he took of George and Tom’s transformation, when Fergus walks in on them. He has a “War Council” with him, made up of three rather bored-looking extras. While they argue over whether or not the Old Ones will make Fergus or Cutler Griffin’s successor, Fergus’ War Council eats Cutler’s focus group. Whoopsie.

Annie’s ceremony is certainly… going. At the end, Leo collapses, and there go the lights again. It doesn’t seem to have worked. Later, Leo urges Pearl to start to accept the fact that she will have to learn to live without him, while downstairs Hal is working on setting up a long spiral of dominoes. Annie stumbles upon him, and we learn that he never knocks them down, only sets them up piece by piece and then takes them down again piece by piece. It was something that Leo had tasked him with when they met, to teach him that if he could fight small urges (to knock them down), then he could learn to fight the big ones. Foreshadowy!

Annie invites Leo and Pearl to live there with she and Tom, after Leo passes and they are left alone. Yup, just like that. Hal’s aghast at the idea, but Pearl seems to consider it. To add to the great ideas in this episode, Leo has given Tom a newspaper cut out of an ad for a ring, and instructs him to take Hal with him into town to go get it. This gives Leo and Pearl time to give Annie the “Hal rundown”, or ways to help keep him dry (as he’s been these past 55 years): try to keep him away from people, small dogs, budgies, and blood. Oh, and Kia-Ora. I have no idea.

You won't like him when he's angry.

The trip out to the shop for Tom and Hal goes exactly as you’d think — disastrous. Tom sees a wolf head trophy on the wall of the shop and gets into it with the shopkeep, who Hal has to talk down when he pulls a gun on Tom in retaliation. This is actually a really great scene, and if you haven’t seen the episode and for some reason are reading this instead, I urge you to go watch — if only for this. In the end, they leave unscathed, and with ring in hand.