well said, TJ, Hal is a very cleverly written character, and the depth with which I engage with him is down to the level of performance Damien brings. being emotionally invested in a character make it hard not to be invested in a certain direction of their character arc, maybe we resist the urge to judge his actions because of that..and because it is so hard to know which is the bottom layer of Hal - perhaps also because a clearly defined this or that 'good Hal' / 'bad Hal' duality doesn't actually exist, and there seems to be an escalating blurring of that boundary in this series. Bleh that is all words, i know what I am trying to say, but perhaps not succeeding with this collection of words. but they are all i have at my disposal at this moment.

The more I watch this episode (!) the more convinced I am that is really two eps squeezed into one.  I really wonder if it was concieved as two eps. 

It seems to me that the Lady Mary story could easliy have been stretched out to a full ep; Mary and Alex let loose in the city as ghosts could've virtually made and entire episode by itself.  And maybe a bit of flashback?! - a bit more detail about Hal and Mary's relationship - there are 250 years to play with after all.  To start with I found it hard to believe that Hal would've still visited her in the 40s/50s from what we know of him then, but maybe he was entertained by the fact that she was in love with him.  The 'staking' scene followed by Alex and Mary sitting on the swings definately had a episode ending feel to it. 

I was expecting this to be very much a Tom/werewolf episode.  I thought Michael Soccha was just fantastic in this ep.....the whole 'in the woods' scene was simply heartwrenching.  As was the scene in ep one at HH after Alex found out what happened to her body.  And I still can't believe how much I laughed when he was fighting with the stake.....my heart was in my mouth - how could I have been laughing so much? Michael Soccha deserves to have an episode focussing on Tom.....I feel he's been a bit neglected.  Lets face it.....even this storyline ended up being dominated by Hal.  (that's not just because of my obsession, is it?)

I have watched the last 15 mins of this episode over and over and over.  I will concede that by mixing the two stories, and effectively having two climatic endings and two comedowns it makes this 15 minutes possibly the most gripping/funny/heartwrenching/nailbiting 15 minutes that I have ever seen on TV. 

I am unbelievably excited by the prospect of the rest of this series.  But it almost makes it worse that there are only going to be 3 more new episodes of being human.......ever........