Being Human (USA) season 4 episode 9 review: Too Far, Fast Forward

Kaci is frustrated by one of Being Human's remaining episodes having no consequences...

This review contains spoilers.

4.9 Too Far, Fast Forward

In this week’s episode of Being Human, the points are made up and the plots don’t matter. 

Before I begin to recap this episode, I have to begin with my only criticism because it’s a big one. One of the first things you learn in screenwriting class is that every word you commit to the page should matter. The things you put your characters through (and, by proxy, your audience), should… well, stick. You can’t kill off a character because you need to create drama this week and then buy it all back next week because you don’t want to actually deal with the consequences of that character being dead. And if you do buy it back, you better do it for a very good reason and you have to go places with it. There has to be a con for every pro — like when Sally got her body back, there were major cons to that arc. Her development wasn’t erased, coming back to life was just another part of it.

Ad – content continues below

This is why, ultimately, I’m so bothered by this episode and last week’s in retrospect. Having Sally travel back to the past and unintentionally destroy everything that was good in their lives could’ve been a really interesting way to end the series, except the writers didn’t really commit. They bought it all back and it wasn’t even challenging to do so — a quick spell from Donna and Sally’s back home again. The only lasting effects of what happened is that Sally remembers her relationship with Aidan and saw Aidan killing Josh in the future. All of that development and drama, and it’s almost for nothing. The lasting effect it had does not, in my opinion, justify nearly wasting two entire episodes out of your only remaining six. If the show had been renewed, I might be a little less harsh on this (although I’d still be annoyed; like I said, first rule of screenwriting is to never buy it all back), but sadly that’s not the case. 

Did I like last week’s episode? Yeah. Heck, did I like this week’s episode, until I found out it was all for nothing? Also yeah. Right up until I found out that almost none of it mattered. 

So okay. We’re going to go through a very quick rundown of the plot so that we can talk about the stuff that’s actually relevant. 

Aidan gets swept back up with Bishop after Sally’s death, and starts to return to his darker personality. After killing Ray, he tells Josh he’s letting him live because he knows that will cause Josh to suffer more and that he never wants to see him again. 

One year later, Josh is running a pie shop and raise your hand if his whole “I’m a werewolf and therefore must isolate myself with pies” thing made you think of Ned from Pushing Daisies. I guess that makes Sally Being Human‘s Chuck, because she’s the dead girl hanging around the pie shop. 

The virus hits Boston just like in the original, but this time Bishop is there to sell clean blood. Business is booming, but after an argument between him and Aidan, Aidan goes rogue and uses Josh and Sally showing up to offer him Josh’s blood as an excuse to kill Bishop and take over Boston. 

Ad – content continues below

Josh visits Nora, who is addicted to painkillers due to how unhappy her life is, at the hospital, where she reveals she’s getting divorced from her “serial cheater” (ouch) of a husband. Josh looks her right in the eye and implores her to take care of herself because, “No matter what, you are so, so awesome.” It’s okay if you shed a tear at this part. I did, too. 

Donna and Sally finally make contact and Donna agrees to send Sally back to the original timeline if the boys also agree. Josh is desperate for a life where he gets to be married to Nora and so quickly agrees. Aidan is more reluctant, but also consents once Sally promises to try to make him remember that he loves her. 

Donna sends Sally back to the original timeline, but not before she gets a very brief glimpse at the original timeline’s future — wherein Aidan snaps and murders Josh right before her eyes. So the question now is…will Sally learn her lesson about meddling and trying to change the future by not telling the boys? Or will she be unable to stop herself and try to warn them? 

If she actually did learn from this experience and doesn’t try to control future events…you know what? I will actually retract everything I’ve just said about this arc not mattering, since nothing else has worked to get her to stop meddling. If this is what it took, then okay. But other than that, I can’t see any way that any of this matters since it’s been undone and no one but Sally remembers it. 

I liked the episode right up until the ending. Now it just feels like a waste of precious episodes in this, our final season.

Read Kaci’s review of the previous episode, Rewind, Rewind, here.

Ad – content continues below