Why The Bloody Face?

The cast of "Being Human"

When Being Human first started last year, I had downloaded the first episode to my iPod to watch.

Then I never got around to watching it.

This past week I caught part of a marathon of episodes before the second season started and realized I'd missed a chance to get on board from the start. So I've been getting caught up on Season 1 so that I can start watching the Season 2 episodes on my DVR.

Now, in episode 3 of season 1, there's a story that has Aidan, the vampire, being discovered by the child of one of his past victims. The child, now an adult and a policeman in Boston, saw the man who killed his father and has obsessed over it ever since. And when he sees Aidan, the man who killed his father, the man snaps.

At one point Aidan and the man face off in an alley and Aidan gets impaled on a piece of rebar sticking out of some concrete. And to heal, Aidan takes some blood pints and, in an extremely messy way, eats them.

That's the question: why are vampires such sloppy eaters? Why is it in movies and on television that a vampire can't seem to eat without getting it on his face, his shirt, all over his hands?

And, afterward, do writers really think that some soap and water is all that's needed to clean up? Just walk over to the sink in the mens room, grab a paper towel and some soap, and you're good to go? No smell of iron and copper?

You might say, "Well, when you bite into someone's throat, the blood's going to spurt out. So there's no way to avoid the blood spray getting on your face or clothes."

Sure you can! The vampires always have their mouths over the bite. So to get blood spray, they'd have to bite and then back off. Seems pretty wasteful to me, letting the only sustenance you can consume go to waste like that.

In the case I just saw, Aidan was feeding from pint bags of blood. So there's no arterial spray to get it all over his face. Instead he was just being as sloppy as a 2 year old with a bowl of ice cream. And then to just backhandedly wipe it away and go to the sink is just silly.

Yeah, I know, it's a visual cue to tell us that vampires have a savage aspect to their beings. But it's silly.

It's also a case of going over the top. It used to be a vampire would have a trickle of blood from the corner of his or her mouth. Then it was both corners. Then it was blood under the chin. Now it's escalated to practically showering in the blood spray.

I remember in "30 Days Of Night" (which I reviewed back in episode 8) how the vampires seemed to take a bite and then let the rest of the blood go off like a NASCAR winner with a bottle of champagne.

Writers need to dial it back a bit, because the biggest power a vampire has is their ability to be discrete. To blend in with the crowd since, unlike other monsters, they look the most human.

And anybody who's had blood all over them like that is going to SMELL.

And you're not going to blend in if you smell like an abattoir. So, given that alone, I would expect the vampires to be much neater about their consumption. No waste. No smell. Nothing to clean up (since you really can't get blood out of anything). If you live for centuries, you ought to learn to be a little more careful about things like that.