This Week In TV Year II (Week 6) Part 1

Illness has struck with the force of Hawkmonkey's fearsome mace, and both Canyon and I are punctuating our gravelly, barely audible conversations with noseblowing and low-decibel groaning. As a result, this week's post has gone horribly awry, so I'm pushing this out with proper proofing or editing or even thinking before it gets any later than it already is (and I've still got more to moan about tomorrow). Apologies for any inconvenience. Blame bacteria!

Highlight of the Week:

Mad Men (or Magnificent Men, as I'm thinking it should be re-titled) might have been especially strong and startlingly different than usual this week, but despite that brilliance, it doesn't take the top spot this week because...


WILSON'S BAAAAAAAACK!!! And yes, I'm aware it was only a matter of time before our favourite oncologist got over his fury at House, but to have it happen in such a wholly satisfying stand-out episode was a double pleasure. Though their relationship had seemed to be broken forever, the showrunners came up with an elegant solution, by showing the rift between them is not borne of Wilson's anger over House's involvement in Amber's death, but is rooted in Wilson's own insecurity. His reflexive need to run away from things before they can run out on him is what finally pushed him into falling out with House, at the same time that it has been the foundation of their friendship (House will never leave, and thus represents the only sanctuary Wilson has from that fear).


It wasn't all about Wilson coming to terms with his demons. Personal growth for House doesn't necessarily mean fixing his bitchy attitude, and this week saw him coming to terms with his bitterness over his genetic lineage by realising that it makes no difference in the end. He is who he is no matter what his DNA says, a rare instance of nurture winning out over nature in a medical show like this. Either that or House's final epiphany, "My dad is dead," is just him being finally hit by the news he got at the start of the episode. Either way, it was a beautifully realised moment, making me wonder if his superb eulogy was partially genuine too (I keep forgetting how great Hugh Laurie is).


Of course, parenthood was at the heart of the unusually compelling Disease of the Week thread too. An adopted Chinese woman with addiction problems and abandonment issues seeks out her original parents, who deny she exists. Encountering a magnet, a rash of unpleasant symptoms threaten her life in classic House stylee, and eventually we find out that an attempt on her life by her father while still a baby is responsible for her illness. In a straight-from-the-headlines plot twist, her brain was pierced by needles, which were moved by the magnet, causing a cascade of symptoms through her body. Though using the over-familiar Chinese one-baby rule as a plot device pissed me off at first, at least this was based on a real and very depressing case.


Thematically the show was so tightly bound that it could very well have seemed contrived, but with the focus aimed at House and Wilson's hugely entertaining bickering those connections between the A, B and C plots didn't come together until the final act, though I appreciate that could be a subjective thing, especially as I was so happy to see my favourite sparring duo together that I wasn't in the mood for splitting hairs.


I even forgave Kutner's announcement that the needles in the patient's head were pressing on her "addiction centres", as, even though this is total horseshit in medical terms, it mirrored the solution to House and Wilson's relationship problems. Now that Wilson recognises what has been causing his destructive tendencies, the grief needle has been removed and we can get back to normal. It's the best present the show could give me.

Baffling Turn of Events of the Week:

A couple of years ago, David Milch's perplexing John From Cincinnati diverted my attention for a few weeks, just as I once went crazy for Sudoku and Limines for Xbox 360. Trying to unravel the meaning of it almost made up for the utter tedium of it all, as characters paced around rooms (to denote boredom), spoke cod-Shakespearian (to denote eccentricity, which I actually enjoyed a lot), and screeched at dolphin frequencies (to denote furious anger, which I most certainly did not enjoy). In the middle of all this laboured weirdness, John (aka Surf Jesus) delivered his Sermon from the Mount, 21st Century Style, which was the one scene in the whole sorry exercise that I loved unreservedly.



I didn't watch further (the axe had pretty much fallen by the time I got around to it, so I knew it was pointless to keep watching), but I was impressed by how much it changed the direction of the show, dropping a moment of such batshit oddity into the proceedings that it now lives on in my memory as a completely different thing than it would have if I'd stopped watching just before it happened. This week, Mad Men did something similar, and it is taking me some time to assimilate it.


One of the few criticisms the show has received, along with "the pace is too slow," (which is bullshit), and "the symbolism is too obvious," (which strikes me as occasionally accurate) is that there is very little plot momentum. As the show's stock in trade is incremental character revelation, I don't see that as a problem, and in the moments where plot does move forward, even small things (like Roger leaving Mona) are like explosions. This episode did big plot and small character work, but the character work was utterly unlike anything yet experienced on the show, and the plot stuff has the potential to completely change the template of the show. In other words, it was a headfuck.


What initially seemed to be an opportunity to show Don and Pete in a new environment, and what I had thought would be a "road trip" plot along the same lines as this week's House, became a baffling journey into super-liberal European-style hedonism, with Don the Reluctant Square cast into a world of sex, booze, and loucheness that had nothing to do with the world of sex, booze, and loucheness that he already occupies.

I will admit that I totally misunderstood what was going on at first, but I get the feeling that was the point. After Don and Pete are shown a presentation on MIRV warheads and imminent nuclear destruction - which, incidentally, is not a good thing to show someone in the midst of a decade-long existential crisis - Don is approached by a dandyish European Viscount doing the European Viscount version of "My mate fancies you!" (The difference between this version of that chat-up line and the more common version is that in this version it's his daughter with the crush. Those Europeans!)


Of course, when Don sees who fancies him, he is instantly entranced. Joy, who could only have been more obviously named if she was called "A Balm For Your Troubled Soul, Don Draper", drives him into a confused frenzy of lust, hope, and confusion, and despite his sadness over Betty kicking him out of the house, he follows her to a swish pad across town, where he promptly drinks something unusual, faints, and wakes up on a couch, surrounded by weirdos, with one sinister looking chap on the verge of sticking a needle in his arm.


I mean, who wouldn't think something was up? Don, of course, doesn't realise he looks like a handsome film version of a spy, and is not aware of the filmic conventions of that genre. Getting abducted and drugged is par for the course for a spy, and with Cold War technology and paranoia entering the plot, it was hard not to suspect something was up.

Of course, Don was actually just hanging out with some decadent Eurotoffs, getting laid, and feeling all funny when a copy of The Sound and the Fury gets waved at him (remember my theory that culture is Don's Kryptonite). That he looks like Matt Helm or one of the Men from U.N.C.L.E., or that the dinner scene reminded me of the moment in On Her Majesty's Secret Service where an undercover James Bond has dinner in Blofeld's mountaintop hideaway, is neither here nor there. Luckily Don didn't end up hunted by assassins and forced to watch his wife get killed on their honeymoon, but sadly he did become more lost than he already was.


It's fair to say that since embodying the American Dream, and realising that it doesn't solve the problems he has been battling his whole life, the beatnik, cultural, European lifestyle has been appealing to him. He has been involved with a hipster poet (Midge), a Jewish entrepreneur (Rachel), and a brassy managerial sassmouth (Bobbie), and seemed most intrigued by the first two mistresses (actual or potential). They hinted at a world outside the one he finds himself trapped in, and Bobbie was just someone he shtupped out of habit, all the while feeling unfulfilled because she offered him nothing but empty sex.


As a result, being offered a good time by the alluring and unfamiliar Joy was exactly what he had been hoping for, and for the first time this season actually seemed momentarily happy. It was only after seeing a young boy made miserable by the actions of his father that Don realised not just that he had a obligation to his own children, and not just that he had once been the lonely child in a screwy family, but that if he had, in the past, lived the same life as his benefactors/captors, he probably would have been in the same boat anyway.


With the European dream dashed, he phones someone and identifies himself as Dick Whitman (which deserves a ZOMG for being so unexpected), and seems to be on the way to meet them soon. I had a hunch it would be Midge, having realised he was happiest living the hipster life with her (plus knowing she could score some weed for him), but if he's calling himself Dick Whitman, it's probable it's not someone we've seen before. With all other options exhausted, all he has is the past.

Overly Delayed Plot Resolution of the Week:

I love FNL's Smash Williams, and have been rooting for him to succeed in his mission to buy his mother a house since episode one, but I'm about done with that plot now. In the past, Smash has been hotheaded and cocky, with only the occasional impediment to his success getting thrown into his path. Now that he only has a few season three episodes before disappearing for good, we've had three episodes of him having second thoughts about pursuing a football career only to be brought around by someone else.


Don't get me wrong, each time this has happened it's been dramatised with the usual high FNLian standards, but even so, "I can't do it," "Yes you can," "No I can't," "Yes you can," ad infinitum gets boring way before I actually gets infinitum. Next week might see him get his wish, finally, which will suit me down to the ground. At least then I can relax about him and devote proper fretting energy to Matt Saracen and his doomed QB1 position.

Discovery of the Week:

It is actually possible to kill a man in the middle of Central Park in daylight and then drag him back to your top-floor warehouse/penthouse/loft apartment without anyone noticing.

It's also possible to kill your next door neighbour and never be interrogated by the police even though you have already beaten him up hours before right in front of his wife.

Really, if the Heroes showrunners aren't going to give a shit, why should the viewers?

Good Haircut of the Week:

Many internet people who watch Mad Men are offended that Kurt the European Homosexual is a hairdresser, thinking it an oddly stereotypical thing for the show to do, though really it is based around taking our assumptions about the 60s, applying them to well-drawn characters and showing why we have these assumptions. Even though we too thought it a bit obvious to make Kurt a hair stylist genius...


...it's great that Peggy looks so good now.


And she's going to see Bob Dylan too. Perhaps she will be the first Sterling Cooper employee to tune in, turn on, and drop out (Don's weirdness and sudden vanishing act to go find his outer Joy doesn't count).

Bad Haircut of the Week:

The godawful do foisted on Elina in America's Next Top Model in the recent makeover episode is a goddamn disgrace, worse than all of the previous too-tight weaves, bleach armageddons, or baldness experiments.


For once, the tears were well deserved.


Still, I may not like Elina much (her delusional, shallow crush on the awful, hypocritical Clark is the dealbreaker), but she's done some great work with this mop ever since, straightening it so that she doesn't look like a clown, and "owning it", as Tyra would say.

Overused Plot Device of the Week:

In three shows this week, main characters had visions of people from their past. In Mad Men Don was so disconjunctified by Betty's decision to kick him out of Casa de Draper that he's seeing her everywhere.


Of course, for we internet heathens who have committed the heinous act of blasphemy that is thinking that January Jones is not the most glorious and magical actress in the land, less Betty is not a bad thing, so the cameo was fine by us. How will her fans cope? Aiming yet more snotty abuse at the unbelievers who don't understand wot gud akting iz, I'll wager.


In Heroes, we finally found out the secret behind the appearances of Linderman, as shown above. Though, by now, we're watching Heroes for the unintentional comedy, it does crack out the odd surprise, and bringing back Parkman's dad was a big one.


It also put right one of the biggest problems of the second season, i.e. the huge build-up of The Boogeyman as the worst villain ever just for him to turn up in one episode and then vanish as if he'd never existed. Having him show up again and be responsible for one of this season's most interesting mysteries almost makes me think the showrunners know what they are doing. Almost.

Fringe featured the most bizarre hallucination moment of all. Olivia (aka Vanatron) is haunted by visions of her dead/undead lover John Scott, who keeps popping up to tell her he loves her as well as giving her clues to this week's Pattern mystery.


As we are unclear as to his actual status, what with him being in the hands of the possibly death-vanquishingly powerful MASSive Dynamic, this episode played with our expectations throughout, until Dr. Walter Bishop revealed that a piece of John Scott's consciousness had broken off inside Olivia's psyche during their mindmeld in episode one, and that his consciousness was communicating with her independently of the actual John Scott, who really is dead. Though he might not be. And Walter could be lying. We don't know anything, and cannot assume anything either. Five episodes in and this show is already a total mindfuck. That's some good going.

Nerd Joke of the Week:

"I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton. I was sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet Earth." - Sen. Barack Obama at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner earlier this week.


Thanks to Captain Snarky for posting that picture in another internet venue. It made the germs forget to make me feel like whipped shit for two minutes.

Previously on Angel Actor of the Week:

Snarky Sheriff Costello, who put House and Wilson through the wringer this week, was played by Jack Conley.


We Buffy fans who stuck with Angel, which became the equal of its magnificent parent but failed to win over everyone (the haters!), should remember Sahjhan, the demon who plotted against Angel in the third season, and combined pure evil with sarcastic wise-assery. Conley did a great job in that, and a great job this week as well.

Previously on Lost Actor of the Week:

Okay, Brett Cullen has been around for a while, with memorable appearances in Ugly Betty, West Wing, Friday Night Lights, and the lamentable Ghost Rider, but he'll always be Goodwin to me. Moral ambiguity is everywhere on the show, but Goodwin, the Tailie-murdering romantic, was one of the most compelling examples. I'm always glad to see Cullen around, and this week he was in full evil mode in The Mentalist.

With Gregory Itzin turning up as well, not to mention Xander Berkeley last week and Zeljko Ivanek in the pilot, the weakness of the secondary cast is beginning to worry us. Nothing against any of the actors (and hey, one of them is called Tim Kang, and reminding me of Kang the Conqueror is always a good thing), but we're worrying that the characters have interchangeable personalities and the actors are not distinct enough to be anything other than redshirts, especially when character actors as outstanding as these are being cast.

Previously on 24 Actor of the Week:

As mentioned above, The Mentalist gained 1000 cool points this week by featuring a potentially recurring role for Gregory Itzin, formerly Evil President Charles Logan on 24.


We adore him (and his TV-wife Jean Smart), and having him show up here as a bureaucratic ass-covering foil for our unorthodox and playful hero would signal an uptick in the potential of a show that is, despite its success and renewal, is still not clicking right. Part of it is the cast. We're ready for Robin Tunney (as grouchy cop Teresa Lisbon) to depart the show in the same way that Kim Delaney vanished from CSI: Miami with barely any excuse. Generating no chemistry with Simon Baker is one thing, but the bitchface...

...is wearing on our patience. There needs to be a point to this character soon, because right now, all she is is a drain on the show's energy, which leaps back up whenever The Mentalist gets to mentalising his foes. More Itzin would help, and if he is going to be the pencil-pusher who stands in our hero's way, making Lisbon the ally of The Mentalist would go a long way to making her tolerable. I mean hey, this advice is offered for free, showrunners.

Mistake of the Week:

Broyles (aka Lance "Intensity" Reddick) calls on the Fringe team to investigate the case of a lift driving itself into the ground, killing eight people inside. The only problem with that is...

...there were only five people in the lift, and one of them, Joseph MEEEEEgar (as named by the ever-awesome Dr. Walter Bishop) survived using his powers of bioelectricity to levitate (which violates every law of physics, but whatever). Perhaps there is a reason for this that has yet to be explained, because otherwise, this is a bizarre error for a show that has spent so long getting the background details right.

Worrying Visual of the Week:


After Don calls the mysterious person and utters his real name, he writes an address on the last page of Joy's copy of The Sound and the Fury, rips it out, and then reclines in the opposite position to that of the title card chap, with the added symbolic value of Don being semi-nekkid instead of being dressed to the nines.


All very clever, but the news that Matthew Weiner is still not signed up to helm the third season (which was only this week greenlit) raises concerns that we are in the same boat as Joy; besotted with Don, and doomed to lose him and not know what happens at the end of the story. Was Weiner warning us? I'm so upset I'm adding awful alliteration (and assonance) to this post. I know AMC are developing other shows, a continuation of the life of Harry Caul from The Conversation (and scripted by Christopher McQuarrie) and an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, both of which make me swoon with nerd joy, but I'd hate to think they are responsible for Weiner's urge to seek development deals elsewhere.

And on that potentially troubling bombshell, so ends part one of yet another way too long post. More as soon as disease lets me.

The Power Of Hellboy Compels Me (To Praise Him)

I come not to bury Hellboy II: The Golden Army, but to praise it, and it comes as an enormous surprise. Don't get me wrong, I like Guillermo Del Toro's movies a lot, and think he is a stand-up tip-top A-1 kinda chap, with the nerdery and the vision and the amusing personality. I would like to have a beer with him and shoot the shit about pressing nerd issues. However, and this is a piddling thing to be bringing up but it has to be said, as much as I've liked his movies in the past, I've never loved one. Not even my personal favourite Del Toro movie Blade II, even though it featured Dr. Wesley T. Snipes hanging out with Donnie Muthafukken Yen and fighting a superpowered and evil version of that chap from Bros.


Of course, I appreciate his imagination and attention to detail, and love his committal to fantastical cinema, but especially with his English language films, I've always been unable to fully embrace them. I've agonised over it, as everyone fell over themselves to praise Pan's Labyrinth, which I thought was very good but not great (on the other hand, Canyon loved it to pieces). My suspicion is that his pacing, which can be bordering on lethargic, is the key to my resistance. Slow pacing is fine, but it still has to have a proper ebb and flow, and his movies often stop when they should start, and bolt forward when the audience is ready for a rest. It's not a total dealbreaker, but it does bug me.

With the world in his pocket following Pan's success, it was a pleasant surprise to see he was willing to use that cache to resurrect his Hellboy sequel project, that had languished for so long that I figured it was pointless to wait for it. Mind you, it would have been an even more pleasant surprise had Del Toro used that clout to get his At The Mountains Of Madness project up and running. Though there are some interesting film adaptations of Lovecraft's work (especially the wondrous From Beyond), right now the best visualisation of squirming Lovecraftian gods is in Hellboy itself, hinting that Del Toro has a better grasp on what constitutes a squamous, undying monstrosity from beyond space and time than the makers of The Dunwich Horror, a filmic nightmare I endured recently that reduced the sickening and vast terror of the multitude of unholy Old Gods to a bunch of rubber snakes filmed in negative and waved at the actors. I guess Del Toro is more attached to working on Mike Mignola's creations than those of a despicable sexist, racist Luddite fucking prick asshole of a person (who wrote a bunch of entertaining and influential novels, but still).


(Quick note: it seems The Dunwich Horror, featuring a hatstand performance from Dean Stockwell aiming the full force of his Aleister-Crowley-esque lechery at Sandra Dee, was co-written by Curtis Hanson. I am aware that this might only be interesting to me, especially as who on earth has seen The Dunwich Horror? And who else would own up to it? Wicked Les Baxter soundtrack, though.)

It's been said many a time that Hellboy represents Del Toro's most personal movies, which I always thought to be a bit rich seeing as how Mike Mignola created the character, but his passion for the character (of which the effort to bring the sequel to the screen is proof enough) certainly seems genuine. That still meant that I was not excited about The Golden Army. The first movie was busy but lifeless, filled with pleasing moments that amounted to not that much. It was a movie I wanted to love but just couldn't, though I did like the casting of Ron Perlman as the titular character, and some of the imagery was stunning. At the time, prior to my realisation that Del Toro's movies didn't affect me as much as they seemed to affect others, I figured it was just that I wasn't a fan of the comic, and had trouble warming to the character, whom I just could not picture as a living thing in my head. Is he humourless? Is he tough? Compassionate? Though Mignola's art is rightly lauded, the stories lay dead on the page in front of me. (I know, heresy, right?)


Perlman's incarnation of Hellboy as a cocky and insecure teenager in a large demon body was good enough for me to finally understand where Mignola was coming from, meaning I now read the comics with Perlman's voice in my head in much the same way as I read Batman comics with Kevin Conroy's voice in mind. Nevertheless, the appeal of the character eludes me. He's big and strong, sappy and impulsive, and will probably destroy the world one day. That's all fine, but though numerous other characters with those traits entertain me, Hellboy still strikes me as the germ of a good idea that has not yet been fully fleshed out.

To make things worse, the first movie was saddled with the distracting casting of David Hyde-Pierce as the voice of Abe Sapien ("Why does that fishman sound like Niles Crane?"), Rupert Evans as the deeply unlikeable Myers, and Selma Blair as Liz Sherman (her monotone grates on my ears). Even Jeffrey Tambor's inclusion as the officious Manning and a lovably sincere performance by John Hurt wasn't enough to make the difference. Just like the comics, the movie refused to come alive. I've seen it a number of times, and I never have the good time I am hoping for.


It was a slew of good reviews, and an early preview screening cleverly scheduled by Universal to generate word of mouth, that prompted me to try the sequel out, though I will say that even if I'm not as crazy about Del Toro's movies, I don't think there will ever be a time when I decide against seeing them at some point. As usual, though, I had reservations. Uninspiring jokes fall flat throughout, dialogue sounds like first-draft fill-ins instead of polished lines, the pace is stop-start (and, disastrously, grinds to an almost total halt one scene away from the big reveal of the Golden Army), too many events are packed in, and the transparent first act set-up of the final showdown doesn't mitigate the fact that the heroes "triumph" because of a deus ex machina-like get-out clause that is desperately overused in fantasy and sci-fi cinema. The best that can be said of that is that, as Hellboy II is about the death of myth by modernity, hewing so closely to a tried-and-true folk tale plot is understandable, but that didn't stop a groan from escaping my lips as it was introduced.


What's worse, there are some horribly difficult choices made by the characters in the final act, and the last scene, with the BPRD coming to a decision about their future, may be intended as a response to the aftermath of their choices, but it's not enough to balance out the consequences of their actions. Considering how overstuffed and stretched-out the movie is, it's ironic that the final scene, which really needed time to breathe, is suddenly over almost as quickly as it started, crashing into one of the ugliest end-credit crawls I've seen in a long time. It was like being woken up with a bucket of hot water in the face. Plus, the amount of editing wipes used was only exceeded by the amount of times Luke Goss, as Prince Nuada, swishes his big extendy-spear around like a big show-off. Yes yes, he's very good with his big stick thingy, but we don't need to see him flashing it about in ever scene. He can't even pull it out of his belt without adding some flourish or other. Stupid cocky elf-prince thing.


And yet, and yet... This might be the first Del Toro movie I love. I'm not sure yet. I need to see it again, partly to test out the hypothesis, and partly to see what the movie is like without one of the worst audiences ever assembled. If the crowd I saw The Dark Knight with was one of the best ever, this was the polar opposite, with noisy assholes, eardrum-splitting amounts of snack bag rustling, the presence of a woman wearing all the bangles in the free world walking in and out (thus generating a sound like the concept of jewellery having a fight with itself), and, best of all, the thoughtless slimecreep sitting in front of me whose phone rang four separate times about an hour into the movie and who offered to knock my face off when I poked him and told him to just, please, pretty please, just shut the fuck up goddamnit!!! Luckily he left before the end of the film, so I didn't have to have a bigass ruck. I may not be the streetfighting kung fu panda/human hybrid I imagine myself to be at times, but I can kick balls like a motherfucker.

Why did I love it even though it frustrated me continually? It's pretty simple. The slapstick tone of the movie, though not actually backed up by many functioning jokes, is endearing, and with Doug Jones doing an excellent job voicing Abe, Selma Blair offscreen for the majority of the movie, and Myers exiled to Antarctica (hah!), the good-natured chemistry between the non-human freaks wins out. Even better, though I am no fan of Family Guy, Seth McFarlane's work as ectoplasmic tight-ass Johann Krauss charmed my socks off. His inclusion provides many of the film's highpoints. Sadly Jeffrey Tambor doesn't get much to do, and what little he does is not that amusing, but it's enough just to have him around. Whenever the movie relaxes its grip on you, or a joke falls flat, the enthusiasm of the cast and the jovial air will win you back. At least, until things get more serious.


It's been noted that the tone shifts a lot, and that can't be denied, but the darkening of the film, at the end of a huge setpiece next to the Brooklyn Bridge, doesn't overwhelm the rest of the movie, serving instead to depress Hellboy enough to make him reckless enough to battle Prince Nuada without realising he is outmatched, setting in motion the final act. That crisis of conscience also sets up a terrific scene between Hellboy and Abe, drunkenly singing along to Can't Smile Without You. Sure, having tough hero characters crooning a Manilow song is nothing new (see also: Angel and his love of Mandy), but it still works beautifully. With this movie, you're never far away from a light moment that will leave a smile on your face, even if it never makes you laugh all that much. And yes, I'm aware that is the most faint-praise comment either, but I mean it sincerely. If you see the movie, you might see where I'm coming from.

The thing that definitively tipped me over into affection for the film, however, was what the astonishing design, from the costumes and sets to the menagerie of incredible creatures. Yes, this is what Del Toro does best, but what Hellboy II represents is Del Toro doing what he does best about 500 times more than he usually does. I cannot believe how much there is going on in the movie, with almost every scene filled with jaw-dropping detail, all of it rendered with such love and care that it is impossible not to be drawn in. Even better, the use of physical effects and practical make-up means the world is much more appealing than the thin 2D CGI worlds we usually see. Now, I love CGI and am excited to see it used properly, but the physical effects on display here (enhanced by some elegant CGI, of course) are utterly magnificent. You can tell those scenes have been crafted with pure love from everyone involved. I especially liked the faux-stop motion sequence in the opening fairy tale, which must have been CGI but looked hand-made. It's an aesthetically perfect sequence.


The rightly lauded Troll Market sequence is where I stopped being annoyed and began to fall in love with the movie. The cascade of fantastical imagery is overwhelming. When I buy the DVD (yes, it's a certainty), I'm hoping there will be a five hour documentary about the making of that scene. There are so many astonishing creature designs, flashing past the camera faster than the eye can comprehend, that I need to spend time picking out every detail. There is so much going on, much of it on set (as far as I can tell), that I cannot begin to figure out how the crew could have made it work, and that's before we get onto the subject of the $85m budget. How did Del Toro manage this wealth of imagery on that (relatively low) budget? Every other film I've seen this year, many of which are far more expensive, look pitiful next to this. Only The Fall (directed by... TARSEM!!!) stands a chance of being more ravishing, but I will have to wait until 3rd October to catch that (yes, it finally has a UK release date). I'm hoping that, next year, Hellboy II sweeps the technical Oscars. I certainly think it has Visual Effects, Make-Up, and Production Design sewn up.


Speaking of CGI, the best scene in the film comes right after the Troll Market sequence, with Hellboy battling a huge and beautifully realised forest god under the Brooklyn Bridge. I had spent the majority of the Troll Market scene trying to figure out how it would be possible for me to adequately express how breathtakingly beautiful and surprising the film had suddenly become, knowing that words could never hope to sum it up. It was just as Hellboy and his team leave the market that a shorthand way to describe it came to me; it's like a live-action Miyazaki movie. Seems I'm not the first person to make that leap; A. O. Scott said much the same thing here. The bizarre fairytale logic of Del Toro and Mignola's world was reminiscent of the unique but seemingly familiar rules that govern the worlds of Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke, though sadly Hellboy II's rather formulaic plot seems all the more disappointing considering the peculiar turns Miyazaki's movies take (at least to this Western mind).


That was okay, though. The forest god design evoked the forest spirit Daidarabocchi from Mononoke (just as the Tooth Fairies reminded me of a hostile version of Miyazaki's design for the Kodami tree spirits), and the battle between this enormous ethereal yet deadly green monster and Hellboy is already entertaining before the misguided and murderous Prince Nuada pricks our hero's conscience, playing off his fear of rejection by humanity, and his seemingly unstoppable loneliness. For the first time in the movie, Hellboy's actions have real weight. It's at that point that the movie becomes about his growing understanding of his untenable situation, torn between two worlds that don't welcome him. It's only fitting that he spends the next few scenes trying to get drunk, not realising that he is soon to find out that not fitting in is the least of his problems, if the beautifully realised Angel of Death is to be believed.


Hellboy II's wondrousness is so great that I'm strongly considering reappraising the comic and maybe even getting the second animated Hellboy DVD (even though the first was merely okay). It has made me hesitantly excited about The Hobbit, which I thought would be a flawed prequel to one of my favourite movie trilogies ever. As I said earlier, Del Toro's scripts are never as good as his visual flights of fancy, and so I'm hoping the two movies will be scripted by the killer team of Jackson, Walsh and Boyens, which would increase its chances of being super-awesome. In the meantime, if you're in the US, you should have seen this by now. If you're outside the US, the movie is being released internationally at a snail's pace. As soon as it lands on your shores, go see it immediately. Even if the narrative leaves you cold, and that exasperating pace jolts you back and forth like a bus with a faulty engine, those stunning visuals will make your eyes vibrate with joy. Hopefully the international box office is sufficient to get a third movie greenlit. I never thought I would want another Hellboy movie, but this flawed yet thrilling installment has changed my mind on that. When it is released properly, I look forward to watching it again, hopefully this time without the threat of violence from phone-wielding assholes.

Another Apology Re: Torchwood

In previous posts on this thread, we may have given the impression that what had once been seemingly beyond salvaging had become a potentially interesting show. Titles such as "I Can't Believe It's Not Torchwood", "Martha Makes Everything Better", and "I May Not Like The Taste Of Humble Pie But I'll Happily Eat It" may have given the impression that what once had been the canker sore on the lip of British TV drama had become a soilbed from which challenging and intelligent sci-fi might one day spring.

We now realise that those flawed but interesting moments were an aberration, not a newly established status quo, and the usual standards of the show would be restored as soon as an opening was found. Future post titles such as "If In Doubt, Having A Character Wave A Gun About Will Fill A Minute Of Screentime", "Dear God, Will Someone Inject Some Dignity Into This Debacle?", and "Does Anyone On This Show Understand The Concept Of Plagiarism?" will hopefully restore normality to this blog. Thank you for your patience. (Again, apologies to Private Eye.)


I'm in two minds about this. It was great seeing the show stretch a little during the Martha Trilogy, but it wasn't really enough for it to become "appointment TV" (oh how I hate that phrase), so I felt like the TV village idiot had been rehabilitated Flowers-For-Algernon-style, and I had no one to laugh at and throw rocks at anymore (though we do intend to start watching CSI: Miami again pretty soon). Last week's "terrestrial" episode, Something Borrowed, was a return to previous shoddy form, giving Meat a run for its money, and brazenly referring to its own unoriginality in its title. Well, I reckon Something Stolen and Ineptly Rehashed would be closer to the mark, but you get my point.


Any seriousness of purpose the show might have built up over the patchy but promising Martha Trilogy was stripped away, replaced with knuckle-chewingly inane comedy, staggering contrivance, a total dismissal of all logic, replacement of human motivation with plot-furthering stupidity, poorly executed Evil Dead homages, and inept action moments. I can't decide which is worse: Meat, this, or the season opener with James Marsters and his big fat paycheck.

What was so poor about it? Perhaps it was because it was a Gwen-centric episode. I'm really not crazy about the character at all, and couldn't give two shits for her relationship with Jack. I also find it odd that she is suddenly cast as the comedy relief in the show, being sidelined almost entirely during the ostensibly more dramatic episodes of the Martha Trilogy. Maybe it's a temporary thing, or just because this was the comedy episode of the season, but her line-readings and gestures were very very peculiar in this, as broad as you can possibly imagine.


Comedy episodes of most dramatic shows are to be avoided, unless of course the show has a strong comedic element already (Buffy, Angel, and Firefly did this better than most). Even a very dramatic show can pull it off. Lost did it with Expose and, arguably, Tricia Tanaka Is Dead, despite the oft-humourless tone of the show. By comparison, Torchwood is obviously under the impression that it's already very funny, but the odd comedic line is either childish, obvious, or poorly delivered, and sometimes all three at once, so imagine the pain caused by an episode that concentrates solely on this kind of broad silliness. I know appreciation of what is funny or not is subjective, but how anyone could find this ineptly staged juvenile nonsense a joy to watch is a mystery to me.

So, in a effort to ensure that the overall internet opinion about this show doesn't skew exclusively towards the positive, I present The Ten Worst Things About Something Borrowed, by Admiral Neck, aged 5 1/4.

10. The Pointless Editing In The First Scene.

After flashing back to Jack's bizarre reaction to Gwen's engagement from the season opener, we cut to a depressing Cardiff nightclub and two depressingly loud and obnoxious women in cowboy hats greeting Gwen with a depressing song about her having anal sex. Yay, hen nights! Is there anything more entertaining than drunk women talking about sex at the top of their lungs and then cackling? Still, I bet there's a stripper.


This then cuts to Gwen chasing a shapeshifting alien, which is exciting! And then back to the hen night, where a stripper arrives! And then back to the exciting chase! And then back to the hen night! And then... You get the picture.


Firstly, as Rhys points out later, Jack's an asshole for sending her out to kill aliens on the night before her wedding. Second, Gwen has friends? When did this happen? Third, while chasing the alien she gets bitten by it, which is the inciting incident. (I can imagine it was referred to as that during script meetings.) This fact is subtly revealed when one of Gwen's gobby friends asks her what the time is, and Gwen suddenly unveils the biggest pre-wedding bandage you've ever seen.


What's that on her arm, the viewer thinks. I wonder how she got that! Like this.


Look at the size of those space gnashers! Jack shows up to save Gwen (so he was obviously available for alien hunting, which once more begs the question as to why Gwen was getting into danger), and his reaction to this enormous wound is, "Owen should take a look at that." You think?


He obviously doesn't check it very closely, as she ends up getting pregnant from it. Stupid dead doctor. Anyway, though there are several things about this dire opening that annoyed me, it's the editing that irked me the most. Is it a suspense scene? No, because we keep seeing Gwen alive and relatively healthy during that scene. Is the storytelling device useful for teasing us with hints about Gwen's night and then paying it off with reveals? No, because we don't have to wait very long to find out. Is it used to generate the funny? Next question. Is it just another way of showing the contrast between Gwen's social life, which is the same as most lairy boozed-up people of her age, and her secret life chasing aliens and getting knocked up by them. Almost certainly, but we spent the entire first season doing this, and getting Rhys involved in Torchwood's affairs should have drawn a veil over that (geddit?). Instead, we're still banging away at that point. When I realised the show was slipping back into its bad habits I started to hear warning bells about the loss of momentum from the Martha Trilogy. Time elapsed: 3 minutes 15 seconds.

9. Alien Impregnation? Really?


For an start, it's a cliched idea. Even a show I loved, Angel, featured Cordelia getting knocked up twice by demons (okay, so the second time was a way to get around her real-life pregnancy, and it did bring about the excellent season four arc with Jasmine, but still). Even the relatively tame Star Trek: The Nextest Generation had Troy get pregnantised by a glowing light; a Hallmark Card way to have a character raped.

Just on a personal level, stories about women being impregnated by aliens don't really appeal to me much, mostly because it reduces the woman to a reproductive system that is vulnerable to invasion, and it's icky and tasteless and kind of insulting. Admittedly it can be done well (Alien 3 handled it with the appropriate seriousness), but most often it's done really really badly (I'm thinking Species II here; a despicable film, and poorly made to boot). I get the "appeal" of the concept, and my love of Cronenberg should give you an idea of my stance on body horror (short version; yay!), but done wrong these stories treat something very serious in an exploitative and distasteful way. It makes me feel very uncomfortable.

So imagine how I feel when it's played for laughs. For fuck's sake, Gwen has an alien egg in her belly! Only when the team realise childbirth involves her evisceration do they take it seriously. No amount of over-the-top pickle-chomping and high-larious wedding-day tantrum-throwing will disguise the fact that Gwen's body has been invaded.


She's gorging herself on phallic objects! My sides are splitting! Because I am the host for an alien foetus, obviously.

8. Gwen's Desperation About Getting Married Blinding Her To The Consequences Of Such A Decision.

So, Gwen is the host for the egg of a shapeshifting alien. It's the day of the wedding. Jack is concerned for her health, obviously, as he doesn't know what the alien gestation is like (useless former Time Agent!), and both he and Owen strongly suggest she postpone the wedding while they figure things out. But Gwen really wants to get married anyway. So they let her.


It's very generous of everyone to let Gwen do what she wants, and certainly it's a tradition that the wedding day, while special for everyone, is even more special for the bride, but there's a line to be drawn there. Right across her enormous pregnant belly. Why would anyone in the world think that this was a good idea? Jack and Owen and Rhys all know this is a bad idea, but she blunders on anyway, using yelling and weird acting tics do her arguing for her.



What's worse is we tried to give the show the benefit of the doubt, and entertained the idea that this could be explained away as possible brainwashing by the alien in her body, that in its culture the birth demands some kind of ceremony, and it was making Gwen desire a wedding so that it could be born properly. The alternative was that Gwen is a halfwit. Sadly, she really is. She's just a girl that wants her wedding day and won't even postpone for a couple of days to sort out the whole possibly-deadly-egg-in-the-belly thing. Even worse, later on Tosh tells her she made the right decision, which means the guys are pragmatic about the whole impregnation thing, but the women are all about the pretty dresses and the wonder of the wedding day princess thing. Those dames sure do love a good wedding!


Seems like the writer, Phil Ford (more on him later) was aware that he was making Gwen do stupid things, as Gwen suddenly realises (after telling her parents that she is pregnant and then realising they're excited about a grandchild that will never exist) that perhaps she is doing the wrong thing, but bringing attention to it doesn't get rid of the fact that the episode was written to show a wedding framed within the format of Torchwood, using the alien pregnancy as a heavy-handed way to metaphorically dramatise the effect of Gwen's wedding ceremony on our characters, and to get to that point it was necessary to remove all semblance of logical human behaviour from the show. It's contrivance, pure and simple, and is utterly unforgivable. By now I realised the show was back to its usual dreadful state, and the scene that convinced me, featuring Gwen's overjoyed parents and her sudden realisation that she's made a mistake, is only eleven minutes into the episode, and the worst is yet to come.

7. Comedy Relief!

Gwen and Rhys' friends are clumsily introduced (though I think I remember Rhys referring to Mervyn or Banana Boat in a previous episode. I should remember, as I usually hang on his every word), mostly to fill the cast out a bit, but also to provide laughs in this most amusing of comedy episodes.


All of them are lecherous jerks, which means they'll probably be joining the Torchwood team very soon. It was all very depressing for the actors, especially Jonathan Lewis Owen, who plays Banana Boat as a cross between Prince William, a Welsh chav, and a lobotomised sex-addict.


He had to bumble through some awful dialogue, which wasn't his fault, but I so dearly wanted him to die horribly. Sorry Jonathan Lewis Owen! I'm sure you're a lovely chap in real life. However, he kept chatting up Tosh (of all people), and even managed to molest her while trapped inside a web of bin bags weaved by the alien. Here are the bin bags...


...and here is Banana Boat's face as his genitals are crushed by Tosh in annoyance over his lechery and loudness.


Sadly, he was not to be killed in a terrible fashion. Instead it was the turn of Mervyn, the other lecherous wanker, who leered at the alien...


...and then got his genitals chomped off by her during what he thought was going to be a sexxy sex act.


So, men are mindless sex-obsessed beered-up pigs, and women want to get married despite alien inpregnation, the heartbreak of their parents, and terrible danger. They will also happily damage the gonads of any man in range. And gay men?


They buy wedding dresses. I can bet the Stonewall Awards judges will be thrilled.

(Yes yes, this is all played for laughs, and if I was going to be really generous I would say it could be an un-PC spoof of the show's usual admirably PC stance, but I think they were just going for easy gags. Let's not go overestimating the intelligence of anyone involved in making Torchwood, okay?)

6. Tosh.

In Mad Men, Betty Draper memorably (and anvilliciously) asked a pertinent question about her husband; "Who is Don Draper?" (The answer to which is, "Don Draper is Dick Whitman!") Well, I ask, who is Tosh? And should I care? (The answer to which is, "no".) Early on in the episode she stalks Owen again, in an attempt to get him to attend the wedding. She keeps on that it isn't a date, but obviously she thinks it is, what with her continual simpering and annoying passive-aggressiveness.


Five minutes later, she's beating up Banana Boat and mouthing tough guy dialogue.


Oh my God! It's like McKee says! Reveal the true character through action and not dialogue! So she's a tough guy at heart, really. Except she's all jittery and sentimental when she's talking to Gwen about the wedding.


So what is Tosh? Whatever the scene needs at any given point. She's just a cipher, and as such means nothing. That's a criticism of Tosh and the lack of show bible that I've already gone on about in the past, and not a criticism of Naoki Mori. Rumour has it she's being written out at the end of the season. Hopefully in future she'll get a chance to bring to life a coherent character instead of this nebulous gap where a recognisable human should be.

5. What To Do With Dead Owen.

Having turned Owen into the only character other than Jack that's not just a boring human who's obsessed with sex, the show ran riot with the concept for two episodes (one of which was okay, the other was less so but still littered with interesting moments). Now? Well, it was a Gwen episode, so there wasn't really anything for him to do. Other than wear badges for no apparent reason.


I can understand it. I don't really have a problem with it, and the rumour about Tosh leaving extends to him too. A shame, as Burn Gorman has been growing on us, and we won't get to experience his gun machismo. It's often the episode highlight.



I really have to find a way to get his Countrycide effort on here. It was the funniest thing on TV in 2007 that didn't include Alec Baldwin or Tracy Morgan.

4. Worst. Shapechanging Carnivorous Alien Antagonist. Ever.

Annoying enough that Cap'n Jack's alien expertise is so incomplete that he doesn't immediately realise the nature of the creature they're up against despite having been alive for hundreds or dozens or however many years he's been around, thus putting Gwen and her family in danger (yet more obnoxious contrivance). It's up to Owen and his badges to figure out that it is a Nostrovite, which will kill Gwen to get hold of the egg.


Even worse was that the first shapeshifter they go up against is easily killed by a bullet and the second one becomes enraged with an alien babycraziness that makes it almost invincible, which is the sort of empty and contrived expositional nonsense used to justify plot developments that I often refer to as Reason X ("If we're going to save the President's daughter we have to disguise ourselves as nuns because [Reason X]!"). It's like a MacGuffin, but even more contrived.


Worst of all is just how crap the alien is, convenient invulnerability notwithstanding. It's killed one person and trapped two others in its non-biodegradable web, so does it change shape in order to ensure it will not be caught? Nope. It stands around with the same face, making no effort to find the woman carrying its child, and when confronted by human intervention in the shape of Tosh, it does this. Also, note that even though Jack and Tosh are equipped with normal guns, for some reason they sound like the old toy gun I had as a kid that had four different laser sound settings.



It then gives itself away by turning into someone at the wedding, i.e. Rhys' mother, played by Nerys Hughes, abandoning all her dignity to run around with fake gnashers and bad fingers. It would be a good ploy, to become someone that the host of its egg knows so it can get closer to her. Sadly, it doesn't go after Gwen, choosing instead to mingle and chat with Gwen's mother, though Jack and co. assume it would go after Gwen. Because that makes sense. Instead, it just sets up this case of mistaken identity, which might be the worst ninety seconds of TV this year.



"Come to Mama!" That, my friends, is Nostrovite for EPIC FAIL!

3. Jack And Gwen, Sitting In A Tree...

I used a hammer on my head to try to unremember the first season of Torchwood, so I might be wrong here, but did Jack and Gwen spend as much time drooling over each other as they do in the second season?


It seems to be the emotional core of the show, this love story between the human and the immortal ::coughCordyandAngelcough::, and it's worked in other shows, so why not here? Well, because they have no chemistry, and Jack's got a cavalier attitude to relationships anyway which undermines his sudden sadness here, and Gwen is now happily betraying her husband while pretending to be loyal which makes her seem less like a sympathetic and tortured heroine and more like a bit of a cow, and Jack is frigging immortal and should have higher standards. For God's sake, he was in love with the Doctor! He's the ideal man for him, because they are equally galactic. You're telling me Jack's been around the cosmos and he's getting depressed because a Suzi Quatro lookalike is getting married to this guy?


No accounting for taste, I guess. Still, that's a failure of the series in general, but in this episode she barely acknowledges her lovepain for Jack until defending her decision to get married with an egg in her belly, where she says something along the lines of, "I'm marrying Rhys because he will have me and no one else will. No one. Right? No one at all. Eh Jack? No one at all." Rhys is standing there the whole time and misses the coded signals and thinks she's saying nice things about him, which proves what a dope he is. Even stupider, this entire scene, where Gwen seems to forget that speech about loving Rhys with barely any prompting, which leads to this hair-eating insanity.



Best thing I can say about it is that it gives John Barrowman his best acting opportunities, as shown by his inner turmoil here.


One day you're going to be a big head in a jar, but it's a long time to be sulking over Gwen. Oh Captain Jack! When will you be fun again?

2. Cliche, Plagiarism, and Laziness.

I've already pointed out that alien impregnation has been done before, and alien shapechangers or chameleons are staples of sci-fi, so if you're willing to be generous to the show (and I know a lot of people are), you could say it's unfair to criticise the show for using these popular plots. Okay. I'll grudgingly give you that. But can I please rail against the wedding sequence in the middle of the episode, where Jack, Ianto and Owen race to the wedding to save Gwen from the Nostrovite and Jack bursts in two seconds after the vicar asks if anyone has any objection to the marriage going ahead? Can I? Please? Because that shit is just unacceptable.


If only there was a Wikipedia page listing all the times that plot development has been used, though I wonder if there is enough server space in the world. Pretty much every soap wedding features this moment, as well as every crappy romantic comedy made between 1980 and 1999, at the very least. It's like littering. Just because everyone does it every so often doesn't make it right. (For the record, I don't litter. Not even that one time when I hid the polybag down the side of a Tube seat. That was someone else entirely.)


Even worse than that, the show plagiarises itself! A few weeks back, in Reset, Owen has to use a nifty gadget called a Singularity Scalpel to burn away the insects infesting Martha's body, though he is not entirely sure how to use the machine. After a couple of near misses that blow up things around him, he succeeds in destroying the lifeform without blowing out her spine. This week, because his one hand is knackered (a consequence of his continuing status as a dead person), he can't operate the scalpel, and has to hand it over to Rhys. The set up is acceptable, and it's a nice reference to Owen's new shortcomings, so I have no trouble with that. What does annoy me is that this means Rhys has to go through exactly the same thing Owen did just three episodes previously, with the panic and near-misses. Does BBC Wales think we have amnesia?


Just to make things even more annoying, during the dance scene at the end, Jack cuts in on Gwen and Rhys' dance just so he can have a moment alone with her, which is yet another convention of this kind of plot, and then Ianto shows up to cut in as well, but he doesn't ask for Gwen's hand. He wants to dance with his boyfriend! It's not the most amazing moment ever, but it's easily the episode highlight, and a pleasing twist on that cliche.


So they can do it if they try. One of the best things about Buffy and Angel is that it would set up the potentially cliched plot early on, and then subvert it at least once if not more during the episode. It amazed me that they could keep doing that on a weekly basis. If the Torchwood showrunners are going to steal anything from Mutant Enemy, why can't they steal that philosophy? It would instantly improve the show 1000%.

2.5. Ripping Off The Evil Dead.


Connected to that complaint, another pop culture legend stolen by the show came toward the end, with Rhys preparing to attack the shapeshifter, disguised as his mother, with a chainsaw, prior to it being blown up by Jack and his big gun, leading to black blood goop flying everywhere. Sounds like The Evil Dead? Jack agrees.



It definitely seems that this episode was meant to be a homage to that hyper-real Sam Raimi style of horror comedy, as well as the big silly sci-fi B-movies I grew up with, and I'll bet Phil Ford is a fan of such and figured this was his chance to pay homage to that with over-the-top action, sex jokes, violence and exploding bodies. Of course, that's all well and good in practice, but 1) pointing it out in dialogue is a failure of nerve, and 2) the show might have the confidence to think it can pull something like this off, but it doesn't have the ability.


It's the kind of amateurish stuff teenagers dream of filming, and I know when I was young I imagined myself as a West Midlands Peter Jackson, making horror movies with lots of aliens exploding and men standing around posing with big guns, because that's what happened in all of my favourite films. There are so many of these plagiaristic films made on shoestring budgets littering the sci-fi/horror sections of HMV's DVD shelves that we really really don't need any more, especially if they have nothing new to offer. This certainly didn't. And that gun looks stupid. And even if it didn't look stupid, no one on this show looks cool with guns.


Torchwood showrunners, watch Planet Terror to see how it's done. I may have parted ways with Robert Rodriguez in recent years, but that was a massive return to form, and exactly the kind of crazy horror blow-out Torchwood thought it was for one whole week. The gulf in quality between the two is vast, and it's not a consequence of the BBC show having a smaller budget. It's the lack of imagination that dooms the show, not the lack of pounds.

1. The Retcon Finale.

At the end of the episode, much to Jack's displeasure, Gwen finally gets to have her happy moment with Rhys, alien egg disintegrated and everything back to a semblance of normality. The families watch with joyous faces as Gwen and Rhys share their vows, and Canyon and I assumed Jack had gone around to everyone with Retcon pills and erased their memories of the terrible day. BTW, I know the Retcon pills are a dreadful ripoff of the Neuraliser from Men In Black, but boldly calling them Retcon pills made me very happy as a comic nerd, reminding me of Dan Slott's boldly named Retroactive Cannon (AKA Ret-Can) from She-Hulk.


We then cut to everyone having the dance and meal afterwards, and everything seems hunkydory, until suddenly the assembled guests start falling asleep. Turns out Jack has administered the retcon pills after the wedding ceremony, and not before.


So what they're saying is that once the Nostrovite was defeated and Gwen returned to non-pregnant normality, the guests just accepted this turn of events, and went about celebrating the wedding. Even though they had been terrorised by a shapechanging alien threatening to kill the mother of the bride. Even though several of the guests had been running around with guns. Even though the best man's dismembered corpse was lying in pieces in a room upstairs!!!

To make things worse, Jack's use of the retcon pills robs everyone of their memories of the wedding. Perhaps there is a way for them to talk to the guests and make them think they saw it, as shown in Men In Black when J and K interrogate people post-neuralisation, but still, why not do it before the ceremony so that they can still have the full memory of the wedding and forget the gunfights and shootings and aliens and half-eaten best men for fuck's sake!?!?!? There is no reason other than monumental stupidity on the part of the writer, director and showrunner. How can this be considered logical or defensible? How is this not insulting the intelligence of the viewers? I call super-colossal-gigantic BULLSHIT on the whole thing.

The thing that makes me most angry, though, is that this was written by Phil Ford, who was pretty much solely responsible for the scripts on the recent excellent revamp of Captain Scarlet, which was the most interesting and intelligent early-teen-targeted show on TV until ITV predictably got cold feet and cancelled it. Those scripts were tight and serious and sometimes shocking. I thoroughly recommend it to everyone.


I'll grant that this episode was obviously conceived as a way to comment on real life using the trappings of sci-fi in the same way that Buffy and Angel used horror conventions to do the same thing, and as such Something Borrowed was chock-full of metaphors for marriage-as-horror-nightmare, but they were either crashingly obvious (mother-in-law jokes), half-baked (could the shapeshifter have represented the way your friends change their opinion of you once you get into a relationship? Or am I giving the show too much credit?), or severely malfunctioning (the impregnation could have represented the second thoughts she was having about marrying Rhys because of her love for Jack, but why dramatise that as subtext when it comes up as text over and over again towards the end of the episode?). That said, even if it did work, that contrivance at the end with the retcon pill kills the episode deader than dead. It's just unforgivable.


So, once more, any fans wandering in here will ask why I'm still watching. Well, the next episode, already screened on BBC Three, is written by P.J. Hammond, who I've gone on about before. The preview looked peculiar, which is what we want and what he does very very well (if you get a chance, watch his wholly original sci-fi/horror series Sapphire and Steel to see him at full quirky strength). I have high hopes for it. But the next three episodes? All written by Chris Chibnall? Let's just say I'm looking forward to them for different reasons. Look away if you don't want to see the spoilers from the BBC Press Office.

When a local teenager disappears, Gwen is drawn into an investigation that reveals a darker side of Torchwood, as Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies's award-winning drama continues. Hundreds of people have disappeared without trace, but Jack is obstructing attempts to find them. The answer seems to lie in the rift – literally – and as Gwen follows the trail, she makes a shocking discovery.

That sounds intriguing, I have to say, but Chibnall will find a way to screw it up. Making it another Gwen-centric episode is already a bad start. As for the next episode...

A booby-trapped building explodes and knocks the team unconscious, as Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies's award-winning drama continues. As each team member's life flashes before their eyes, viewers learn how each of them was recruited to Torchwood: Captain Jack was initiated into a shocked Victorian Torchwood in 1899; Toshiko went on a daring mission to trade alien technology for her mother's life; Ianto wooed Jack with coffee and a flair for alien-catching; and Owen had a medical revelation that changed how he saw the world.

...::coughOutofGasfromFireflycough:: Also, Ianto woos Jack with coffee? I can't wait for that! I wonder if he will mention his girlfriend Lisa, who got cybermanned in the first season. I seem to recall him mourning her for the majority of that season. If she doesn't get even namechecked, I will certainly poke fun of it here. Oh boy, a special treat for the finale!

Captain John Hart returns to have his revenge on Torchwood in the concluding episode of Doctor Who writer Russell Davies's award-winning drama. Taking Captain Jack prisoner, he sends him back in time for a long overdue reunion. Without their leader, Torchwood are faced with a city flooded with Weevils, on the brink of destruction. But who is Captain John really working for? Can anyone trust him? And how great a price must Torchwood pay to save the city?

Weevils everywhere! James Marsters! A great price to be paid that might feature the removal of two major characters if the rumours I heard are true! Don't forget, it's on tomorrow night and Good Friday. Set your PVRs, Torchwood fans!