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Torchwood 1x08
- I must say, I think that this episode has a hilarious name - They Keep Killing Suzie - but I didn't put it in the subject line for spoilery reasons.
- I will reiterate that the couple-on-bed-with-bloody-writing-on-wall-above was snatched directly from a Wire in the Blood episode. So much blood never seems quite real to me - so bright, so prop-like; it's nothing at all to do with the fictional context, just the immense distance of something like that from my own experience.
- Owen makes snapping on a RUBBER GLOVE look sarcastic. Oh, Owen <33
- 'He's got retcon in his blood' is possibly the best line I've ever heard. I loved it when Jack casually threw in the word when describing the effects of the amnesia pill in the first episode.
- Jack just said 'not the right time for a seance, thank you very much' to Gwen and the meta-fan inside me is gleeing like mad. They HAVE to be going somewhere with the Gwen-Gwyneth thing - the Cardiff rift, the name, the fact that Gwen keeps getting these lines delivered to her - what's the matter, Gwen, you seeing ghosts? in the very first episode, and more since then. It's very Bad Wolf. I am keeping my fingers tightly crossed that it's heading somewhere good.
- Gwen: YOU ARE ALL MORONS LACKING A SOCIAL CONSCIENCE. I WILL GLARE AND POUND MY TINY FISTS UNTIL SOMETHING GETS DONE. (And it works! Hurrah for Gwen!)
- 'The Risen Mitten' HAHAHAHAH OH IANTO. This is the first evidence we've seen since 'Cyberwoman' that his sly sense of humour is still in existence, and I'm glad of it.
- OHHHH FUCK. SWEENEY. MIR. PEOPLE. Round about...7:30. Find the shot where Gwen gasps and throws her head back. Got it? Okay, now look at the seance scene in 'The Unquiet Dead', at the moment when the Gelf first appear. Ncisddasjanmzsa. Dude. And she's a natural with the glove. Of course.
- More snark from Ianto. Two good lines and I'm loving this guy again.
- I hadn't really found Owen physically attractive before this episode, but he is working that pale blue shirt and black necklace, and refraining from pulling faces that make him look like a chimpanzee. Whoo.
- THE RISEN MITTEN AND THE LIFE KNIFE. HAHAHA. I bet you anything the writers - there were two, for this episode - just got pissed and came up with progressively more stupid names and then decided, whilst rolling on the ground in tears of laughter, to make Ianto say them in the episode.
- Fuck, this scene with Suzie is so well-written. Everything about it rings very true. And didn't I kill you, too? And Owen going to help Gwen up. And IANTO IS STILL COUNTING. Omg. This show has finally hit its stride.
- ...weirdest. Interrogation scene. Ever. Indira Varma's makeup is so, so creepy.
- Poor Tosh. She is totally unable to deal with this.
- Jack: TELL US WHAT YOU KNOW!!!! Suzie: I want to nap. Being alive with a HOLE in my BRAINS is exhausting. Hang on, did she say the Wolf Bar? RUSSELL. OY. WE NEED TO CHAT.
- Gwen has the right idea. Stop creeping us out, Suzie. OH. SUZIE. Of course she wasn't going to say nothing and let Gwen die, she's a decent person, she's just...obsessive and mildly insane.
- Heeeee with the ten-second reaction to the word 'Torchwood'. It reminds me of that Black Books episode where Manny gets a pain in his head whenever his mobile is about to go off so Bernard keeps hitting redial. Or the Blackadder episode where the actors have to do the crazy ritual to ward off bad luck every time anyone mentions 'Macbeth', so Edmund keeps dropping it into the conversation.
- ....HOW IS SHE DRINKING? SHE SHOT A HOLE. IN HER THROAT. WHAT.
- She and Gwen are SUDDENLY BUDDIES. Awww. It's like that scene in 'School Reunion' where Rose and Sarah Jane finally click and the next moment they're giggling away like BFFs.
- WHAAAAT. Does everyone in this show want to sleep with Owen?
- 'You brought her back to life. All the way. Because you wanted it so much, okay?' <--- UH, HI, PARTING OF THE WAYS. NICE TO SEE YOU AGAIN.
- Now that's interesting. Draining the life. And there's always a price. (Oh, Jack. First the price was Nine - though he couldn't know that - and now it's Gwen.)
- ROAD TRIP. Omg. This episode just keeps getting better and better. Because that's who Gwen IS, that's what she does, she wants Suzie to see her father again.
- LOCKDOWN. Ahaha. That exchange between Jack and Ianto was hilarious. I still don't feel the slash vibe, but I do like their conversations. And whoaaaawtf creepy eye contact from Suzie. So WHO shut down the computers?
- OMG. WHAT. WHAT. TROJAN HORSE. EMILY DICKENSON. AAAAAHHHH. My god. The suicide in episode one was...okay, so, I suspect that most of this is (ironically enough) retconned, but it's still very, very clever. Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. This show loves its poets, doesn't it?
- So whyyyy isn't Gwen feeling sick? Or weak?
- HAHA Jack doesn't want to admit to the normal non-special-alien-catching police they they got locked in. THAT is the closest I've seen him to being the Captain Jack Harkness of Doctor Who. We're locked in IT'S NOT FUNNY. We need a book of poetry IT'S NOT FUNNY. Oh, man. Someone mention bananas and my life will be complete. And all the police are STANDING AROUND THE PHONE LAUGHING. This is fucking fantastic. Torchwood DO walk around the town like they own it, with their flashy sunglasses and big black SUV, and it's so...Doctor Who-ish...to make the joke be on them for once. To consider that the people who need the ego boost in this episode are the everyday people who they tread on - like Gwen was, before the job ate her alive.
- Oh, Suzie is going to come down on Gwen's silly wafty gran-and-white-light fantasy with a bang, isn't she? Uh. Well. That was one of the better random existentialist conversations I've seen on TV before Suzie started being creepifying about things moving in the darkness.
- Okay, Tosh, the ISBN thing was a ridiculous stretch. RIDICULOUS.
- Gwen kind of gets horribly injured or hurt or almost killed an awful lot, doesn't she? Shot in the head. Slowly. Christ.
- MILDLY INSANE? LET ME RETRACT. COMPLETELY PSYCHOTIC. But the horrible, horrible fact of the matter is that I understand her motives. She set this all up before she even KNEW about the darkness beyond - clearly Pilgrim didn't do much to sway her pre-existing existentialist mindset - and she just wants to live. And she's psychotic, of course, so the ends justify the means to her mind.
- 'She's so much better than me' - when all Tosh and Owen could say was how good at everything Suzie was. Psychotic and deeply insecure. Winning combination, that one.
- 'Not one bit.' YES. Captain Jack Harkness, ladies and gents.
- AND YET SHE LIVES. Shot in the head and she's alive. Niiiice.
- I must say, Owen sounds remarkably debonair about the fact that his not!girlfriend is, um, dead.
- .................whoever chose this music should be shot. Slowly. Oh, fuck.
- Okay, outright bawling averted by the fact that this has become an OTPish song and all we're getting is shots of Gwen and Jack. What? Nobody ships Gwen and Jack any more. That's just silly.
- Everyone ships Jack/Ianto. And for...good reason, apparently. This is every single fanfic that's been written COMING TO LIFE IN CANON *braces self for impact*. Unless Ianto's talking about, like, speed chess. Or something. (Stopwatches in a sexual context? Really? Whatever, writers. Whatever. Stop hanging around LJ communities and reading poorly punctuated porn, it's bad for you.)
- Gloves come in pairs! Very astute, Ianto. And very fitting with the NOBODY DIES thing that RTD loves so much. Suzie is the Dalek race of this series. NEVER ACTUALLY DEAD. Interesting when you think about the stark existentialism put forward here; maybe I'm reading too much into it, but a fear of the concept of death due to the belief that there's nothing after it would certainly lend itself to a pathological unwillingness to ever surrender anything to that darkness, even a character.
- And next week, on Torchwood: Gwen sees more ghosts! Is anyone sensing...a pattern?
(WTF Jack/Ianto. I mean, I couldn't care less, really, I'm glad Jack has not actually become celibate, and it seems like the kind of casual thing that I like seeing pop up in canon. But from a fandom perspective, I think my apathy is probably going to be an unpopular view.)
In conclusion: I'm not sure. It seemed amazing all the way through, but I'm very annoyed that they retconned Suzie into a psychopath. I liked Suzie. Definitely the best-written episode yet, though: the script was mostly flawless, the show gained some self-awareness and the ability to mock the sometime-ineptitude of the team as a whole, Jack Harkness was JACK HARKNESS, Ianto got his awesome back, and someone finally said O Captain My Captain.
I'm happy.
~
Two bonus things, courtesy of
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torch_wood: that bloody song, and quite a good stopwatch fic.
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Oh, I left out the hyphen in the HTML. Fixed now! Sorry about that.
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And. POETS. <33333
And. Stopwatch. STOPWATCH. And. This episode clinched it: Ianto is far and away my favorite. And. Thing. I haven't slept. :D!
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I thought you would like it. *BEAMS*
*is still twitching at parts of it, and still loves it*
I'm not sure it was the best--no. It was the best written. Countrycide's acting pleased me a bit more, but they had one less "central" char, since that's what Suzie was to me, not the villain o' the week. The writing I'd say was equally strong. But I also liked the writing of the one with the fairies.
...So I like the ones with cannibalism and poets. Good to know.
I really am troubled that she could drink and, well, FUNCTION with holes in her. *says it and twitches*
But just yes to everything in this post. And the episode.
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It just...made for slight twitching.
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Also: We're locked in IT'S NOT FUNNY. We need a book of poetry IT'S NOT FUNNY.
Yes. *cackling* Poor dears.