"I wish it were me. Then you could shoot me and I could sleep." "I'd like that very much, sir."
I had fully intended to make this post last Saturday, but I was visiting my parents last weekend for the long weekend, and I didn't really absorb the episode as much as I do when I watch them by myself and am able to flail and be ridiculous, and pause it if necessary, and yell things at the screen (almost always necessary). I've been busy since I got back, doing overtime at work (yay, extra money), so I didn't get a chance to re-watch until tonight.
At any rate, my thoughts, let me show you them:
Episode 4x09: The Gathering
This is a very transitional episode, from the characters to its place in the narrative. Jilly has transitioned from being Oswald's PR person to being part of the family, as it were. Rex has transitioned back to being CIA. Esther is now fully Torchwood. The episode as a whole is transitioning into the endgame of the series, transitioning from the more normal world into a world that has been feeling the effects of the Miracle for months, and transitioning all of the characters into the place they will need to be for the end. Moving everyone to the UK, even Oswald, and then moving them to their respective antipodes.
I think this is one of those episodes I'll have even more to say about once I see how it fits into the entire story. Yes, I'm that nerd who's going to make a post about the series as a whole, once it's over and I have a chance to rewatch. While stuff definitely happens in this episode, most of it feels like one long instance of set up, for whatever is going to happen tomorrow(!). But there were a bunch of individual things I did like.
Apparently the Miracle has forced some cutbacks at the BBC, as RTD has gotten a job as a newsreader. All joking aside, this is a great opening scene; it tells you in as little time as possible what the world is like now. Gwen is crashing cars through the front of buildings a la Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, and then stealing medicine to play Robin Hood for her neighbors. Or, well, Robin Hood if he charged the poor for the money he was going to give them.
And when she comes home with the "pizza" from Jubilee Pizza (loved seeing those boxes again!) we see that Gwen and her family are being watched. By who and for what reason we don't know, but the guy clearly can't be the sharpest tool in the shed if he doesn't realize that Jubilee Pizza is not good enough to warrant travelling all the way to Cardiff for takeout.
But then again, he has been retconned at least once before this episode, so who knows what his brain's looking like at this point. I love the scene where Gwen and Jack confront him. Gwen all "have you seen my keys", and Jack all "I will shoot you if you don't drink this bottle of water; hydration is important, you know". So great. And the whole "you've drunk it before", thing is utterly creepy. I think you forget how disturbing the idea of Retcon actually is, until you see it from the other side. I wonder if Jack ever told Esther that he used it on her?
Maybe it's one of the things that happened during the two months they spent together that we don't get to see. I like the idea of this jump in time, since they kind of need it when they're telling such a large-scale story, so that we can see the larger effects of the Miracle, but we lose out on a bunch of character stuff in that gap, the most obvious of those losses being the progression of the relationship between Jack and Esther from 4x08 to this episode. I love everything about their scenes together, and how they've clearly grown a lot closer to one another. I want all of the fic about Jack and Esther and what they were doing this whole time. Love them so much!
And Esther! She is so much more confident and competent, and it's really fantastic to see. A far cry from how she fell apart when she was driving Jack away from the mansion after being shot. Now she has herself together and is making excellent contributions to the team. Stop making me worry that we're going to lose her, writers! I really really want to keep her around.
I continue to love Rex, even though I know he's probably going to die in the next episode. I like the way he ties the CIA storyline into the Torchwood stuff, though, of course, I'd rather he be with the rest of Team Torchwood. He is better dressed when he's working for the CIA, though. That shade of purple is a very good look for him.
Rex is so cocky (as usual), with his "this is me you're talking to", but not without reason. A sixty year old murder weapon and DNA is pretty impressive. Too bad he trusted Charlotte to order the DNA test. Oh, Charlotte, I've liked you from your first appearance ("it's not Touch-wood, it's Torchwood"); why did you have to be one of the bad guys?! :(
I love the phone conversation towards the end of the episode with Rex at the CIA and the rest of Torchwood in Wales! It's going to be so sad if/when any of them dies, because I love their chemistry as a group. So snarky and bantery! :D
Shapiro continues to have the best lines. I can't say that I trust that he's 100% on the level, but I'm enjoying watching John de Lancie chew the hell out of the scenery. Again, I mourn the fact that they didn't introduce him sooner, because he should've been in way more episodes.
My last, random, CIA-storyline-related thought is that I really really want to read that pulp story, "The Devil Within". It would've been a great episode tie-in.
All of the scenes with the Cooper family are heartbreaking. Poor Mary and Gwen having to take care of Geraint and hide him like Ann Frank behind a panel in the cellar and live in constant fear. You can tell that they're both holding on to the hope that he'll get better with everything they've got, and the sad thing is that if the Miracle had never happened he would have died months ago. Now, instead of him dying from his heart attack, and them being able to mourn and move on, they're all suffering. On the one hand, having to turn him over to be sent to the ovens is awful, but on the other hand the suffering will finally end. I don't think it would have been easy at all to hand a parent over like that, but I also wouldn't want to have to linger horribly like that, causing my family so much pain. I'm impressed with how this storyline turned out. It's really adding some realism to what is a pretty ridiculous concept.
The policeman, whoever he is, is creepy. Why would anyone agree to do the job he has to do? Either his bosses threatened to fire him, someone has blackmail material on him, or he's just a terrible human being. I'm going to go with option three. He reminds me of the bad guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark whose face gets melted off. Mostly physically, but also with the same aura of creeperness. What a monster (ugh, "not as warm as he's going to be"?!). Poor Gwen and Mary. "I'm sorry for your loss" has never sounded so phony.
(As a side note, the Coopers totally live on the same street Donna's family lived on in "Turn Left"! Way to reuse a location, show. :D)
When Oswald finally shows up, he gets to be even creepier with a baby than the last time he had a scene with one. Tasting the food off of Anwen's face? *shudder* I don't blame Gwen for wanting to beat him to death with that pot (love that she dried it first!). I wanted to smack him around a bunch for going the whole "I'm going to build some dramatic tension with everything I say, even when it turns out to not be a big deal" route. I appreciated that Torchwood was all lolno when he mentioned having Jilly's laptop. They stole those files ages ago, dude. And Esther after the Harry Bosco reveal was utterly fantastic. Both the writing and the acting in that scene made what could have been a really boring exposition dump interesting and intriguing. And the payoff with the Chinese guy who said the Blessing saved his life was really well done.
It's so cute how Oswald refers to Jilly as his "assistant". She was never his assistant. First she was his agent, but once he started working for PhiCorp, she was more like his handler. Yet another instance of Oswald thinking he's more important than he is. He thinks his information for Jack is so important that no one can touch him, and it doesn't turn out to be that big of a deal. It's helpful, yes, but not the big revelation he was hoping for. He also calls himself the most recognizable face in the world, which I can't imagine is true. What he did was horrible, and the fact that he survived lethal injection was amazing at the time, but people are so over the whole "didn't die" thing, and Oswald's fifteen minutes of fame have been over for ages. If he was in America, it would be a different story, I think, but I wouldn't be surprised if not many people outside the country recognized him.
I appreciated the exchange between him and Gwen where she tells him about her work as a policewoman and having worked with pedophiles before. Because Gwen gets it, gets what Oswald is all about. She understands him far better than Jack ever did, and she won't underestimate him (hopefully).
I do wonder why Jack listened to him when he said Jack shouldn't turn him in because then the police would start to wonder who Jack is. Why would the police care who Jack is? No one cares who Jack is. Or, I mean he's not wanted for murder at any rate.
I have to say that with Oswald's addition to the scenes with the Torchwood team, I'm finally interested in his story again. I'm really interested to see what his part in the end game will be, and how he'll react to the Blessing. I've been assuming he'll die once things are put right, simply because of the way he was reacting after his lethal injection, but he seems to have gotten a bit better (or is better at hiding it, at least), so that alone may not kill him. I'm predicting that he won't make it through tomorrow's episode, though, however his end eventually comes about.
And Jilly's got a one-way ticket to Shanghai. Why do I think that means she won't make it out of this alive, either? The Families need her to "write history", which presumably involves the Harry Bosco-ing she's doing, but what else does it mean? And the Blessing tells her that she's "right" about something, but what? I'm hoping that her storyline resolves itself well, because there are a lot of questions. Chief among them is where does she get all of those fantastic coats, and do they make them in my size?
Finally I'll touch briefly onEarth's vagina the Blessing. Seriously the most bizarre-looking thing, ever. And we still have no clue what it is, only that it makes you uncomfortable once you get close to it, and that the Families think that that's "the Blessing's attempt to communicate." I don't think I would want to communicate with something that makes me feel like that, I'm just saying. Or something that either kills people (according to both Frances Fisher and the random glasses-wearing representative of the Families that Jilly meets when she arrives in Shanghai), or saves their lives (according to the Chinese guy in the video Jilly mistranslated). We already saw it cause someone's death (the Asian guy in 4x06), so whose life will we see it save? Please say it's Jack's, because if he ends this series dead, I will not be pleased (to say the least).
But shit's about to get real now, with all of the major players either in Buenos Aires or Shanghai. Both Jack and Rex are having more trouble with their injuries since they arrived, and Jack's blood is literally drawn to the Blessing, both the blood inside his body in Shanghai, and that in the blood bags in Buenos Aires. What is going on?!
I have no idea, and I cannot wait to find out! I can't believe it's already almost here!
At any rate, my thoughts, let me show you them:
Episode 4x09: The Gathering
This is a very transitional episode, from the characters to its place in the narrative. Jilly has transitioned from being Oswald's PR person to being part of the family, as it were. Rex has transitioned back to being CIA. Esther is now fully Torchwood. The episode as a whole is transitioning into the endgame of the series, transitioning from the more normal world into a world that has been feeling the effects of the Miracle for months, and transitioning all of the characters into the place they will need to be for the end. Moving everyone to the UK, even Oswald, and then moving them to their respective antipodes.
I think this is one of those episodes I'll have even more to say about once I see how it fits into the entire story. Yes, I'm that nerd who's going to make a post about the series as a whole, once it's over and I have a chance to rewatch. While stuff definitely happens in this episode, most of it feels like one long instance of set up, for whatever is going to happen tomorrow(!). But there were a bunch of individual things I did like.
Apparently the Miracle has forced some cutbacks at the BBC, as RTD has gotten a job as a newsreader. All joking aside, this is a great opening scene; it tells you in as little time as possible what the world is like now. Gwen is crashing cars through the front of buildings a la Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, and then stealing medicine to play Robin Hood for her neighbors. Or, well, Robin Hood if he charged the poor for the money he was going to give them.
And when she comes home with the "pizza" from Jubilee Pizza (loved seeing those boxes again!) we see that Gwen and her family are being watched. By who and for what reason we don't know, but the guy clearly can't be the sharpest tool in the shed if he doesn't realize that Jubilee Pizza is not good enough to warrant travelling all the way to Cardiff for takeout.
But then again, he has been retconned at least once before this episode, so who knows what his brain's looking like at this point. I love the scene where Gwen and Jack confront him. Gwen all "have you seen my keys", and Jack all "I will shoot you if you don't drink this bottle of water; hydration is important, you know". So great. And the whole "you've drunk it before", thing is utterly creepy. I think you forget how disturbing the idea of Retcon actually is, until you see it from the other side. I wonder if Jack ever told Esther that he used it on her?
Maybe it's one of the things that happened during the two months they spent together that we don't get to see. I like the idea of this jump in time, since they kind of need it when they're telling such a large-scale story, so that we can see the larger effects of the Miracle, but we lose out on a bunch of character stuff in that gap, the most obvious of those losses being the progression of the relationship between Jack and Esther from 4x08 to this episode. I love everything about their scenes together, and how they've clearly grown a lot closer to one another. I want all of the fic about Jack and Esther and what they were doing this whole time. Love them so much!
And Esther! She is so much more confident and competent, and it's really fantastic to see. A far cry from how she fell apart when she was driving Jack away from the mansion after being shot. Now she has herself together and is making excellent contributions to the team. Stop making me worry that we're going to lose her, writers! I really really want to keep her around.
I continue to love Rex, even though I know he's probably going to die in the next episode. I like the way he ties the CIA storyline into the Torchwood stuff, though, of course, I'd rather he be with the rest of Team Torchwood. He is better dressed when he's working for the CIA, though. That shade of purple is a very good look for him.
Rex is so cocky (as usual), with his "this is me you're talking to", but not without reason. A sixty year old murder weapon and DNA is pretty impressive. Too bad he trusted Charlotte to order the DNA test. Oh, Charlotte, I've liked you from your first appearance ("it's not Touch-wood, it's Torchwood"); why did you have to be one of the bad guys?! :(
I love the phone conversation towards the end of the episode with Rex at the CIA and the rest of Torchwood in Wales! It's going to be so sad if/when any of them dies, because I love their chemistry as a group. So snarky and bantery! :D
Shapiro continues to have the best lines. I can't say that I trust that he's 100% on the level, but I'm enjoying watching John de Lancie chew the hell out of the scenery. Again, I mourn the fact that they didn't introduce him sooner, because he should've been in way more episodes.
My last, random, CIA-storyline-related thought is that I really really want to read that pulp story, "The Devil Within". It would've been a great episode tie-in.
All of the scenes with the Cooper family are heartbreaking. Poor Mary and Gwen having to take care of Geraint and hide him like Ann Frank behind a panel in the cellar and live in constant fear. You can tell that they're both holding on to the hope that he'll get better with everything they've got, and the sad thing is that if the Miracle had never happened he would have died months ago. Now, instead of him dying from his heart attack, and them being able to mourn and move on, they're all suffering. On the one hand, having to turn him over to be sent to the ovens is awful, but on the other hand the suffering will finally end. I don't think it would have been easy at all to hand a parent over like that, but I also wouldn't want to have to linger horribly like that, causing my family so much pain. I'm impressed with how this storyline turned out. It's really adding some realism to what is a pretty ridiculous concept.
The policeman, whoever he is, is creepy. Why would anyone agree to do the job he has to do? Either his bosses threatened to fire him, someone has blackmail material on him, or he's just a terrible human being. I'm going to go with option three. He reminds me of the bad guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark whose face gets melted off. Mostly physically, but also with the same aura of creeperness. What a monster (ugh, "not as warm as he's going to be"?!). Poor Gwen and Mary. "I'm sorry for your loss" has never sounded so phony.
(As a side note, the Coopers totally live on the same street Donna's family lived on in "Turn Left"! Way to reuse a location, show. :D)
When Oswald finally shows up, he gets to be even creepier with a baby than the last time he had a scene with one. Tasting the food off of Anwen's face? *shudder* I don't blame Gwen for wanting to beat him to death with that pot (love that she dried it first!). I wanted to smack him around a bunch for going the whole "I'm going to build some dramatic tension with everything I say, even when it turns out to not be a big deal" route. I appreciated that Torchwood was all lolno when he mentioned having Jilly's laptop. They stole those files ages ago, dude. And Esther after the Harry Bosco reveal was utterly fantastic. Both the writing and the acting in that scene made what could have been a really boring exposition dump interesting and intriguing. And the payoff with the Chinese guy who said the Blessing saved his life was really well done.
It's so cute how Oswald refers to Jilly as his "assistant". She was never his assistant. First she was his agent, but once he started working for PhiCorp, she was more like his handler. Yet another instance of Oswald thinking he's more important than he is. He thinks his information for Jack is so important that no one can touch him, and it doesn't turn out to be that big of a deal. It's helpful, yes, but not the big revelation he was hoping for. He also calls himself the most recognizable face in the world, which I can't imagine is true. What he did was horrible, and the fact that he survived lethal injection was amazing at the time, but people are so over the whole "didn't die" thing, and Oswald's fifteen minutes of fame have been over for ages. If he was in America, it would be a different story, I think, but I wouldn't be surprised if not many people outside the country recognized him.
I appreciated the exchange between him and Gwen where she tells him about her work as a policewoman and having worked with pedophiles before. Because Gwen gets it, gets what Oswald is all about. She understands him far better than Jack ever did, and she won't underestimate him (hopefully).
I do wonder why Jack listened to him when he said Jack shouldn't turn him in because then the police would start to wonder who Jack is. Why would the police care who Jack is? No one cares who Jack is. Or, I mean he's not wanted for murder at any rate.
I have to say that with Oswald's addition to the scenes with the Torchwood team, I'm finally interested in his story again. I'm really interested to see what his part in the end game will be, and how he'll react to the Blessing. I've been assuming he'll die once things are put right, simply because of the way he was reacting after his lethal injection, but he seems to have gotten a bit better (or is better at hiding it, at least), so that alone may not kill him. I'm predicting that he won't make it through tomorrow's episode, though, however his end eventually comes about.
And Jilly's got a one-way ticket to Shanghai. Why do I think that means she won't make it out of this alive, either? The Families need her to "write history", which presumably involves the Harry Bosco-ing she's doing, but what else does it mean? And the Blessing tells her that she's "right" about something, but what? I'm hoping that her storyline resolves itself well, because there are a lot of questions. Chief among them is where does she get all of those fantastic coats, and do they make them in my size?
Finally I'll touch briefly on
But shit's about to get real now, with all of the major players either in Buenos Aires or Shanghai. Both Jack and Rex are having more trouble with their injuries since they arrived, and Jack's blood is literally drawn to the Blessing, both the blood inside his body in Shanghai, and that in the blood bags in Buenos Aires. What is going on?!
I have no idea, and I cannot wait to find out! I can't believe it's already almost here!