Sticks and Rope

LOL Employee of the Month. Can't we imagine Hal being desperate for that gold star?

This is the ep that has that thing in it...it's in the trailer so not exactly a spoiler...beginning with 'f' and very very messy! .... i can't wait to see that.

OK so I watched the trailer and can't see the thing beginning with f!!!:(
Although each episode now will have different meaning after the sad news I'm so excited for tomorrow !!!

Last night was the first time that my husband watched being human.  Ever!

Up until last week I'd never watched it when he was at home, and last week he disappeared off somewhere when it started.  He obviously enjoyed it - 'it's a bit shaun of the dead isn't it?' - but then he asked me 'which one' I'm going to see on stage.  (we do live in the same house, honestly!).  When I told him, he said 'I can see him going places'!  This, believe me, is very high praise indeed from my husband. 

 

So last night was a bit of a novel experience.....watching being human with somebody else!  A bit darker than last weeks wasn't it?  Although I still laughed a lot.  I thought Oliver was great; particularly enjoyed the manservant allusion.  Biggest 'oh Hal' moment has to be 'You are sediment, you are detritus, you are regret and disgust'.

Predictably the storyline is moving on apace....they do only have 6 eps after all.....and I was totally in the moment when I watched it last night.  In the cold light of day, though, I cannot help but mourn the fact that the time constraints will obvouisly restrict the amount of time devoted to the more domestic scenes.  Looks like Hal's routines have been ditched - which is a shame.....

-- Edited by fifi on Tuesday 12th of February 2013 01:22:18 AM

I need to watch it again to form more of an opinion but yes, I felt the tone was darker, the scenes with Alex and the sticks and ropes guys were creepy as hell and Captain Hatch is getting more disgusting by the minute and his net of evil influence spreading wider and wider the way he manipulated Hal and Tom..I wonder why they cannot sense that he is not human? So sad about Patsy, yes I think we can assume it is a goodbye

I felt it was no coincidence that in the food fight Hal covered Tom in blood coloured jam, it added a sense of chill to the whole thing, even though it was funny.

It was Halarious Hal trying to slump down in the chair - "I have a dancer's back"

There was a reminder glimpse of who Hal once was in that moment where he sends Crumb away from the hotel. Overall, despite the epic comedy, I am feeling a ramping up of tension and despair, or as if, hope is hanging on my it's fingernails!

Very much enjoyed the episode, the food fight was epic but far too short. 

Kudos to Michael for having that much jam smeared in his face, Damien has big hands and he took a big scoop out of that pot. 

Also did you see the size of the smile on Hal's face right before Patsy stopped it? It was massive (and beautiful, that boy doesn't smile nearly enough)

I thought Oliver was terrific and Alex's interaction with him was wonderful all the way through, from seeing through his episodes of 'illness' when he wasn't getting his own way, to the party (Hal's 'yay' was chucklesome) and her manic exhaustion and face plant on the kitchen table was funny and also familiar (to me...mum of two, been there...done that...) 

The Men with Sticks and Ropes scene was truly eerie and very well done. 

Captain Hatch continues to menace though Crumb continues to annoy. Very much so. I wish they'd just stake him and get on with it. He went from being sympathetic (killing his sister and niece when he didn't want to but blood lust won out) and Hal's rejection of him to cartoonish and over the top (though on second thoughts, his appearance at the hotel to see Hal showed just how over the top he was as in dangerous, he came across as a real threat then) He was interesting in fits and starts but mostly tremendously annoying. So far am not a fan of Crumb but we're only two episodes in, that opinion may change. 

I like the little of Crumb we're getting but, yeah, he could be so much more - the victim who gets the super powers. But the show's not about him and there's only six episodes, so ...

Hal was forced to do away with his routine, rather than enforce it, and he seemed to be getting used to it. He got the slouching in his chair down. Perhaps, if allowed to be himself instead of having to adapt to an harassing boss, he would have responded differently, more responsibly, towards Crumb, rather than chucking a blood soaked crazy vampire back onto the streets! But I loved the pained look on his face when forced to mess up his biros.

I'll miss Patsy now. In episode one I found her too full on, but her horrendous behaviour amused me in this one. And if you need someone to deliver a bunch of mainly unnecessary exposition, thank goodness they had Phil Davis to deliver it.

Oliver was great fun. Nice to see a child actor who can deliver. The kid's got fine comedy chops. Tom was so frickin adorable and Alex was funny, especially with her music! I'm looking forward to seeing an evening of culture over at Honolulu nights. Hal wont be able to take Alex's smooth sounds of the seventies anymore (Midnight at the Oasis, Quando Quando Quando), he'll shove her off the stool and knock out the Rach 3.

It certainly is the fabulous Julian, Morrigan. So looking forward to it.

I thought Alex’s scenes with her brothers were quite heart-breaking. That she promised her brother she would take him to the fair and never got to do it makes me feel really sad for her because I have a kind of personal experience which is very similar. The day my little brother died (he was ten) was a Sunday. We’d watched the football together in my room that day (the first time I had let him do so and only on the promise he’d go down at half time and get us sweets) and at the end of it he said “Can we do it again next week?” I promised that if he was good we would. It’s just one of those things that stick with you. Promises of nice things that can never be.
I’m not sure I liked this episode quite as much as the previous week’s but it was still brilliant. There’s an ugliness to this season which makes it feel ominous and it feels like it’s going to have quite a climactic end. I like that. If this is the last then it should be the best. The biggest. The most memorable.
I found Hal’s little ‘thing’ with Tom very endearing and it proved a fair bit about his character. He doesn’t want to be seen as the best. He doesn’t really care about that. I suppose it’s just another stress and anxiety, really. It was only that Tom put him up to the challenge that he engaged with it but even then, even in the middle of it, he could have taken it or left it. I suppose that says a fair bit about his character. He’s not particularly interested in accolades. I can imagine if he’d been going through one of his bad phases being ‘the best’ and the one in charge might indeed have been something he would have fought for the death for but this guise of Hal is a little more mellow than that. I liked what he said about Tom when he was standing up for him. It was right. He was right.
What I will say about this particular season is that I’m finding myself remarkably vexed by some of the secondary characters. I couldn’t stand Patsy (her character and behaviour might have been excusable had she actually been under the influence of something but it appears she was simply a drooling idiot with no people skills and I wanted to punch her) and I am getting more and more and more irritated by Crumb. I just really don’t like him. Yes, he’s meant to be over the top but there’s a fine line and he seems to have very much crossed it. It’s cringeworthy. Maybe that’s just me. I liked the kid. Oliver. He was sweet. His story was sad. I felt bad for him being used the way that he was and I used to have particularly disturbing thoughts when I was little of things talking to me through radios. This was because my cousin told me that ghosts live in radios.
I’m enjoying Hatch and Rook. I see Rook as a ticking timebomb and I’m still finding it hard to believe he’s actually human and Hatch, well, we’ve all known elderly gentlemen like that haven’t we? He’s the Harry Enfield Grumpy Old Man with too much much to say and too little care. When he grabbed Oliver’s arm and told him to get Alex back to the house, it was a truly jarring moment. But they say the devil is very much a manipulator and he is that. Quiet words in ears causing all kinds of devastation. Brilliant.
Not sure how I feel about the Men with Sticks and Ropes. Eerie, yes, but I think it would have been better if we’d a) been left with them in our imaginations (there’s nothing more scary than the blanks that are filled in by the mind) or b) they had been silent. Because when they started talking the scariness was probably lessened by about 50% for me.
So for me this was a good, if mixed episode. I have high hopes for the rest of this final season and, now that Patsy’s gone I might actually enjoy the Hotel scenes.
On a side note, I’ve been doing a bit of calculating. Was Hal 23 when he was turned? Damien said recently he was 519 which would indicate he was born in 1494. He was turned at or around the time of the Battle of Orsha in 1517 which would indeed make him 23. So really he was only a couple of years older than Tom. Funny how different he must have been as a young man than Tom is now.

wow, really enjoyed just reading through everyones' thoughts on the last episode, I love how there is so much in this show and each episode is crammed (no pun intended) to brimming with different layers, tones and that's just Hal!

@fifi: "Biggest 'oh Hal' moment has to be 'You are sediment, you are detritus, you are regret and disgust'."
After *ahem* several re-watches now, this is the moment my mind keep returning to. it takes very skilled writing and portrayal to create empathy and sympathy in an audience for a character who is at times actually quite despicable - this moment was not a flashback it is Hal in BH present day, and it has taken me a number of watches s to actually fall through the layers of Hal to the realisation this is actually really disturbing, it reminded me of the scene with Fergus in series 4 ep 3, yet in that one we sympathise as it was part of Hal's past from whcih he is escaping.....but Crumb is part of Hal's present, saying Hal was a victim of circumstance does not somehow fully fit, even that he was a victim if his condition and its' consequences?

@Morrigan I like the Crumb character, i think i said before that it reminds me of the clown archetype- both comedic and gawky, as well as maniacal and somehow macabre. there is something chilling about that. and he is entirely unique, this is like too. the scenes with him and Hal mentioned above was amazing, on both sides.

@rubyrosettared yes, eerie is the perfect word for the men with sticks and ropes scenes....also that bit with the tap dripping Alex's name....amazing and filmic too I thought.

@UJ i'll miss Patsy too, maybe she'll return as a ghost to haunt the hotel and new manager?


@Rougesang I am so deeply sorry to hear about your little brother, this episode must have taken on new levels of meaning for you i really hope it was more healing than painful :(

@Kayla Oliver was played (brilliantly!) by Benjamin Greaves-Neal, his line about Alex's 'Madrigal singing' being 'subpar at best' was one of my faves of the episode!



oh and in case anyone missed it..we have a new topic for episode 3 'Pie and Prejudice' the one with Julian barratt...and there is a clip in there too here! (I am talking to myself in there at the moment so more people are most welcome! )

*gasp*

 

*mind goes into whitenoise of denial mode*