I know a couple of people mentioned "Being Human". Anyone watching it other
than them and me? I enjoy the show. It's light at times, but then very serious
at times, even scary and creepy. Only the Brits can strike that balance in
scifi so well. I like the characters--i'll even forgive the eleventy millionth
rendition of the young, hunky, angst-filled vampire. I find the whole society
of vamps who look out for each other interesting ("don't mind me brother; you
just keep doing your orderly duties and let me sip a little blood from the
patient in the bed. What? You won't let me feed off a patient? You want to be
an outcast?!") The young ghost who can hold objects but can't be seen by many
is interesting. The actress is good as a bright spirit (no pun intended) whose
natural ebullience is tempered by the fact that she's a mostly insubstantial
shade who can't yet crossover. Among all the curses suffered by the roomies,
I'd think being a ghost would be the worst. At least the guys can enjoy some
measure of life--at least even the vamp can hold a woman, and in this show, he
even eats regular food every now and then.
But what got me most recently is a show dealing with the young nebbish dude
who's a werewolf. The show starts off with him transforming, and a voiceover
speaks of the pain of the transformation. It states that, since the werewolf
frame is smaller than a human, the organs all have to shrink: the heart must
reduce in size, which is painful, as do the liver and the kidneys. As the
organs are rearranging themselves, bones break and reform, hormones are
flooding into the system. At the height of the change, the narrator says in a
eerily clinical tone, the organ restructuring is so bad that the organs
literally shut down as they're reformed--the lycanthrope is effectively dying.
But, he can't die, as adrenaline is pumped into the body in huge amounts,
constantly keeping him alive, and of course the animal savagery starts kicking
into gear. it's like a series of deaths-and-resurrections, all painful because
none of the regular pain-killing hormones are working. I'm not quite accurate
with my description, but the gist was I never ever thought of a werewolf change
in those terms, and it was quite disturbing.
kudo's for that.
