Review: Being Human 3.8: The Wolf-Shaped Bullet

Herrick helps Mitchell to escape.

I am firm, now, in my belief that Toby Whithouse's abilities lie more in characterisation than in plot. This finale was running on an emotional high, but the intense, exciting plot offered by the rest of the series failed to materialise. The Wolf-Shaped Bullet's tangled mess of a plot leaves a lot to be desired, and leaves the series in a place where there's little chance of returning.
     As expected, Herrick kills everyone at the police station and then takes Mitchell away to the Werewolf-cage with George in tow, and in an attempt to punish them both he tells George about Nina's fate so that he starts trying to kill Mitchell. A vengeful Tom MacNair turns up and the distraction allows Mitchell to escape with Herrick. Nina, meanwhile, survives in hospital as Annie takes a trip to Purgatory and visits Lia. After Lia tries to explain her murderous motives, Annie brings her down a peg and gets her to end her rampage; it turns out that there never was a "prophecy," and that Mitchell's been running on his own paranoia.

Lia brings Annie back to Purgatory.

     After Herrick tries to escape with Mitchell to South America, Mitchell stakes him once and for all, walking back to the house where the other three are waiting. Edgar Wyndam (Lee Ingleby, who played Sam's father in Life On Mars) clears up the beurocracy and then visits the house, where Mitchell has begged George to stake him. Edgar is a vampire lord who wants to keep the four as his pets; Nina's baby is the first of its kind, Annie is possibly the most powerful ghost ever, and he wants Mitchell as his personal attack dog. Rather than make him kill again, George stabs Mitchell and he dies. 
     It's interesting to note that the series' "prophecy" and the related paraphinalia have all been the machinations of Lia's own personal vendetta. It puts a better and more familiar face on Mitchell's personality - ruthless, fickle and determined to survive no matter the odds. It was ripe, then, for Mitchell to go. The series' unpredictability means that there was some excellent tension during that final scene, and it wasn't obvious which way it would go. 
     The question, then, is whether the strong emotive presence in the episode makes up for the cop-out nature of its plot. And the answer to that, for the most part, is yes - the emotional content of the episode acts as its backbone and without that powerful context most of the episode wouldn't work properly. It was just a shame that the resolution to this series-long plot fell into such a shambles on paper.
     The Wolf-Shaped Bullet was a fickle episode that while being negatively affected by the imperfect resolutions to last week's cliffhanger still showed us each character's emotional cores and gave us a tear-inducing farewell for Mitchell.


Thanks.
(Next time... Becoming Human).