It’s pretty clear that the season is building to a big finale, and this episode is setting up a lot of the pins that will be knocked down along the way. As usual, no matter how good things seem to be getting for the cast of

Kenny is done being a prisoner for life, and even though there is a medical solution on the table, he pressures Aidan into siring him as a vampire instead. Why anyone would want to be stuck in perpetual teenage years, I don’t know; finding a way to survive at least a few more years would have been better, all things being equal. But Kenny has lived his life in a literal bubble, so freedom can’t happen soon enough.

Aidan brings Kenny around, after a day of making sure he’s exposed to every possible germ on the planet, and Josh is not pleased. Pete’s death and the vampires’ rampant push to get as much werewolf blood as possible has rekindled the vampire/werewolf feud within the household to a certain degree. However, having been there and done that, Nora sees it differently: if Aidan can use his curse to make things better for Kenny, why not? It’s basically the supernatural equivalent to making lemonade out of life’s lemons.

Josh and Nora are getting married, and so Josh wisely goes along with what Nora wants. Which includes letting his sister Emily take him out to a strip club for his bachelor party. Since she’s into the ladies (and not hard on the eyes herself), this is a welcome turn of events. Well, at least until the stripper vampire girl decides to snack on Josh, and Aidan has to intervene right in front of Emily.

Up to this point, Emily has been the incredibly cool little sister, so there was a lot of reason to expect her to accept Josh and his actual situation. So her outright rejection of his decision to live in that world with Nora is extremely disappointing. That she can’t see the parallels between her homosexuality and his werewolf status is disheartening; in both cases, it’s a choice between rejecting one’s nature and trying to conform or finding a place where one is accepted. (It should be a lot easier than that, but there we are.)

I get the feeling that Emily’s reaction is meant to be an exploration of elements of certain communities that have little patience for other minorities, or even a bit of disdain for those who don’t immediately and fully embrace their natures. Emily seems to have had it relatively easy with coming out and knowing herself, comparatively speaking, so perhaps she just doesn’t understand how one can possess self-hatred or resentment for one’s situation, even while finding a measure of acceptance within it. But this doesn’t quite ring true for the character, nor does her odd leap to interpreting Josh’s justifications as comparing homosexuality to homicidal tendencies.

On the other hand, Josh does seem a lot more comfortable with killing (or at least wounding) than he was back when the series began. He’s ready to face down the witch for Sally’s sake with gun in hand, though how that’s supposed to work when the witch has already shown how foolish that is, I don’t know. But the witch is also playing a familiar game, and Josh and Sally are a bit stunned to discover that they are several steps behind already.

Aidan tries to help Sally carry on as they try to find a solution, which involves letting her eat part of his stomach to tide her over. It’s too bad that Max didn’t go along with her suggestion, because that actually would have been better. And really, this is where Max draws the line? He’s in love with a zombie! But it does weaken Aidan for his fight with Kat’s ex, who is now a vampire with issues. And since Aidan didn’t mean to sire him, that leads to the obvious question: are the rules different now? Or is Aidan sleep-siring? Either way, not a good turn of events.

The witch is nowhere to be found, but in a twist that would have been a lot more shocking if it hadn’t been spoiled way back at the start of the season, when Syfy showed what would be coming this season, Ray is roaming around as her enforcer. The witch has done her homework, and that means Sally may have trouble beating her, even if she manages to resolve her issues and hit the other side at full strength.

Overall, it was a strong lead-up episode, but my annoyance with how Emily and her reaction to the truth about Josh was handled took something away from the final score. I’m hoping this will be the sort of situation where she leaves for a bit to think it all over, and then comes back for the wedding after all. Of course, since Liam is still lingering out there, somewhere, something tells me the wedding is not going to end well.

John Keegan is Editor-in-Chief for Critical Myth, a partner site of SciFi Vision.