Being Human (USA) season 3 episode 1 review: It’s A Shame About Ray

Being Human (USA) returns for season three with a grave-digging extravaganza. Here's Kaci's impressed review...

This review contains spoilers.

3.1 It’s a Shame About Ray

If there is one word for the season three premiere of Being Human (USA), it is “disturbing,” and I mean that in the best possible way. I feel like the creative team broke out the big guns this season and decided to stop playing around with us. After the drop in quality during season two, I find myself overwhelmed with how awesome this show is. It’s like I forgot and the writers were determined to remind me. 

I don’t read spoilers for this show, so I was immediately surprised by the fact that rather than pick up in the woods where we last left our favourite werewolves, we’ve jumped forward a year and a half — and one of our werewolves…well, isn’t. 

Ad – content continues below

In a twist, Josh killed Ray to save Nora, and ended up saving himself. He’s no longer a wolf, but apparently the rumours were wrong: it didn’t cure anyone he’d sired as promised, and Nora is still a wolf. I feel like I should be more heartbroken about that than I am, but Nora never really hated being a wolf the way Josh did. Plus, she honestly doesn’t seem that torn up about it, so I’m not going to get hung up on it, either. 

So our intrepid nurses (that’s right! Josh is no longer an orderly!) have spent the last year and a half trying to find Sally and Aidan, mostly through the use of fake psychics who seem to want nothing more than to sell Josh candles and tea. But when the psychic who once tried to exorcise Sally refuses the job, they find themselves meeting with a witch and here’s where that disturbing part comes in, because she says they have to have the heart of someone they’ve killed. And because my brain just works this way, I spent the next few minutes that I should’ve been watching them dig Ray’s body out of the earth instead trying to figure out what the rate of decay is and if there’d even still be anything left of his heart after a year and a half. Luckily, someone in the prop department really loves their job, it seems, because we get a rather graphic visual of what exact state Ray’s heart was in. “Messy,” the witch calls it. I, meanwhile, have no words. 

And then, because this show hadn’t thrown enough twists at me yet, the witch reveals that they’re not doing this by halves — if they’re bringing Sally back, then they are bringing Sally back, as in back to life in her own body. Cue a second grave-digging montage! Apparently Boston cemetery guards will let anyone in for any purpose at the going rate of $200. Good to know.

All the parts of their incantation thus acquired, Josh has a minor panic attack over what exactly his life has become, and you really can’t blame the guy because between this and just being a werewolf, turning into an animal once a month suddenly seems like an acceptable alternative. Too late, though, because the spell succeeds. Mostly. 

Mostly, because back in limbo, our three favorite ghosts are trapped in an endless loop of suffering — Nick relives his death by drowning, Stevie is forced to watch his family live their lives without him while he hangs from a tree outside the window, and Sally collects the boys and then tries in vain to get Josh or Aidan to welcome her home. So when the door finally opens as a result of Josh and Nora’s intervention, Sally insists that the boys go through first before finally going through herself. What happens next is a little unclear — Sally keeps saying, “Stevie. Nick. Here,” which Josh and Nora interpret as meaning that the two boys just woke up in their own graves, but that doesn’t quite mesh with what the witch said about the salve she made from Ray’s heart being needed to revive Sally’s body. Are Stevie and Nick now trapped in Sally’s body with her? Because I have to tell you, there is so much potential in the three of them sharing one body that I’m a little overwhelmed by how excited I am to see how that plays out. 

Meanwhile, Aidan’s storyline is a bit less compelling. Apparently during the eighteen months he was underground, a nasty strain of flu went around the Boston population. The humans vaccinated and drugged it out of their systems, but it left their blood poisonous to vampires, and the population is slowly dying. An entrepreneur (I use this term loosely) named Mickey somehow finds Aidan’s grave and digs him up, as his blood is rumored to be “pure” and able to cure the sick vampires. (Side note: that mask that Mickey put on Aidan’s face to keep Aidan from biting him…straight out of Saw, yes or yes?) 

Ad – content continues below

Aidan is eventually rescued (again, I use this term loosely) by Atlee, who intends to take him to the Amish so that they can all feed from him and be healed. Aidan, having apparently gone mad from his confinement, hallucinates Sally, Josh, and eventually Bishop (proving once again that Mark Pellegrino instantly elevates anything he’s in just by his mere presence), the latter of whom encourages Aidan to fight for his freedom. He’s too weak, though, and his attempt to attack Atlee just leads to Atlee deciding to feed on him then and there. 

Only it turns out that his blood isn’t the cure they were promised and Atlee turns to dust right there at the wheel, leaving Aidan to crash into a pole and be flung from the vehicle. As he lays there, he hallucinates Josh and Sally realizing that he’s dying and he vows that he won’t, but he’s drained and lost with apparently no means of communication and no one safe to feed on to heal himself, so your guess is as good as mine as to how he’s going to get out of this one. 

I honestly didn’t realize how much I’d missed this show until it came back; it feels like there’s — pardon the pun, given Sally’s current condition — been new life breathed into it and I’m suddenly excited about these characters and their storylines in a way that season two just wouldn’t allow me to be. 

I loved the premiere of season three and the many twists it threw at me. What’d you think?

Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.