I suppose if the end of the series is thematically tied to leaving the house, it makes sense for an semi-avatar of the house itself to be the “final boss”.  In many ways, that’s exactly what this felt like; one of those really odd boss battles at the end of a Japanese RPG.  Not necessarily a bad thing, since the seeds were planted in the season premiere, but it did seem a slightly odd choice.

 

If the previous episode was all about Josh getting to a good place (finally), then this episode was about testing those waters.  Not just in terms of Josh, of course, but in terms of Nora and her trust in Josh’s new sense of stability.  It was also a huge step forward for Sally, who turned out to be the first one able to see things for what they were.  It culminates, as one would expect, with Aidan at a crossroads.  Will he give in to his darkest impulses and kill Josh, or will Sally be able to stop him?

 

Along the way we get one of the more time-honored tropes of the genre: one’s inner struggle personified in some kind of altered state of perception.  Each character faces someone from their past, a vision fueled by Ramona, who is a demonically-charged personification of the house.  And one can understand, to a point, her rage; Beatrice’s story about Ramona is creepy, to say the least.  But aside from a nicely half-naked Kat, there weren’t too many surprises with the visitations.  It’s always nice to see Emily, though, even if she’s awfully brutal as depicted!

 

As nice as the idea of a Sally/Aidan relationship might be, at this point, the writers have had them enumerate all of the reasons why it wouldn’t work.  It’s just another moment of emotional torture in the episode, because it is part of what drives Aidan down the road of murderous despair.  One would think that of all shows, Being Human would have some way around it, but they have already established some fairly hard rules and they are apparently sticking with them.

 

On the other hand, one could interpret this latest set of revelations as somewhat affirming, in the sense that the deck has been stacked against the housemates since the very beginning.  We just didn’t realize how bad the baseline situation was until now.  How much has Ramona been fostering in the house, in terms of upping the body count?  I doubt the writers will come right out and explore it, but it is a consequence that ties the entire series together in a neat little package.

 

Whatever the case, there’s a lot left to handle in the final episode, but we can all rest somewhat easy in the knowledge that the writers went into the fourth season with more than enough warning to drive towards an actual finale.  The past several episodes are more than enough evidence of that.  Now it’s just a matter of sticking the landing.