Far too much meta on Torchwood
So, I am finally caught up on Torchwood. That did not hurt the way I thought it would. In fact, I didn't mind it too much.
A Day in the Death
Quite good, if over the top. Yay for preserving the secrecy of Torchwood, though, Owen. You clearly deserve that security clearance.
Something Borrowed
I can't really imagine how Gwen could have been more of an idiot in this episode. Sudden inexplicable overnight pregnancy they know nothing about? Yes, I'm sure Owen is speaking with a wealth of statistical knowledge of similar cases when he says you'll be fine if you don't treat it immediately. Except not. Even setting aside the phenomenal stupidity of not seeking treatment, she really didn't realize it might be problematic to show up in front of everyone she knows nine months pregnant, then not be pregnant the next day-and have no baby? This didn't occur to her? I'm also annoyed at Rhys (again!) for being a doormat who isn't bothered at all by the death of his best man and the fact that, if Gwen had not been an idiot about the alien pregnancy thing, he wouldn't have died. That was entirely preventable, and the fact that that alien attacked his friends was entirely Gwen's fault. My god.
I'm not so annoyed by the Jack/Gwen because I think they've adequately shown that a) Jack hits on anything, and b) Gwen thinks it's true love. Not Jack. Jack here is his usual flirtatious self. He'd sleep with her, sure, but he'd sleep with an android. Gwen's the one who has leapt to Harlequin novel conclusions about the tall, dark stranger that rocked her world and will show her the meaning of love. The fact that she'd pick up with him in an instant if he responded in kind doesn't bother me because Jack never will. Anyone waiting for a declaration of fidelity and devotion from Captain Jack will wait a loooong time.
From Out of the Rain
This episode simply didn't make any sense. At all. What are these Night Travellers? Aliens? Fairies? How come they can magically be captured on film? Did the physical them remain after they were filmed with the film just as an echo? If those clowns are part of the Night Travellers, then why the heck does Jack say he knows them and then say he never found the Night Travellers? How can the woman be the mermaid if she's the one who disappeared from the frame where there's a mermaid in a tank? What is it with her and water? Do they dehydrate people or do they steal their breath? Who were the random frozen people in the shed that disappeared at the end? Do they make people disappear or do they steal their breath? We only see them stealing breath, yet all the news reports are about disappearances. The fuck? And if Jack is capturing them back on film, then exposing it (don't even get me started on the broken logic of that-by that point in the episode, I'd given up), then by all rights the little silver flask should also vanish, since he got it on film and then exposed it. Also, that boy they saved? Mental institution for the rest of his life.
Other than the fact that nothing in the episode made any sense at all, it wasn't that bad. I mean, it looked kind of cool, the concept was okay, and none of the characters pissed me off, so I have to count this as a good episode of Torchwood. Which should really tell you something about Torchwood.
Adrift
This episode has a very similar message to "Sleeper," but didn't piss me off in the same way. Why? Because in this one, Gwen learns. She actually realizes by the end that following her bleeding heart isn't always a good idea. They express this, as usual, in as over the top terms as possible, but I'm used to that by now. The problem with the episode, plot wise, is that it completely depends on certain characters (Jack) not saying what they know when there's no real reason for them not to. (Kind of like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books). This is just plain lazy writing. However, I could believe Jack was holding this up as a lesson for her.
Now I'd just like to take another moment to talk about how much I hate Gwen's relationship with Rhys. In this episode, again, Gwen uses sex to control him and keep him from bringing up a topic she doesn't want to discuss. Even at the end of the episode, when she is contrite and says the evening is all about him-do you notice what happens? It's all about her. Again. The relationship is clearly one where Gwen takes and Rhys gives. She manipulates and uses him and gives only enough crumbs to keep him around. As someone I was talking to pointed out-this relationship happens in real life all the time, and if both parties are aware of and accepting of this dynamic, there's nothing wrong with it. I concede that, but I still have a hard time swallowing it in the context of Gwen being portrayed as the moral center of the show.
Look at it this way-if the genders were reversed (yes, I know this sort of reasoning is reductive), if Rhys were the wife and we constantly saw her cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, being left waiting up while her husband is at work, having her plans ruined by her husband's inattention, being ameliorated through sex and having her opinions dismissed-it would be incredibly misogynistic. Especially if you add that the husband cheats on her with a co-worker because she doesn't understand him and tells people repeatedly that he's only marrying her because she'll put up with him, he doesn't really love her, and the sex isn't very good. I can't imagine anyone defending a male character portrayed in such a way as the "heart" of the show or the moral compass.
I wrote about this with "Sleepers," but what bothers me over and over with Gwen is her lack of emotional maturity. She rejects the cold pragmatism of Jack, which, fine. Perfectly reasonable. But she's constantly in denial about the consequences. She never faces reality as it is. She keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Empathy in television shows is usually a shorthand for goodness-an empathetic character is automatically a good person and better than a cold character. But Gwen's empathy is misleading. It's actually the opposite. She feels for other people and wants to make them happy because that makes her happy. But she's never understood that you can't always make a person happy and sometimes making them happy in the moment is the worst thing for them. Her caring for other people is selfish because it is always ultimately about making herself feel better, not about doing the best thing for them. As she didn't do the best thing for the agent in "Sleeper," as she didn't do the best thing for the characters here, and as she is not doing the best thing for Rhys.
But of course there's (semi) naked Jack/Ianto in this episode, which makes even a Gwen-centric episode worth it. This is more evidence of why Gwen/Jack is a no-go on the show (or is evidence of the inconsistency of the writing, one or the other). Jack asks her to join. In all seriousness. She laughs it off. She doesn't even look tempted. Even though "Something Borrowed" clearly showed her interest in him as a romantic partner, she doesn't seem willing just to have casual sex with him.
Fragments
Way to show restraint, guys! Jesus. What I loved about this episode was Ianto's section. We've gotten Ianto's emo history before, so here they used it brilliantly, and subtly, without referring to it at all. (And the less said about "Cyberwoman" the better. Worst. Episode. Ever.) Without that history, it's light-hearted fun. With it, it's a show of Ianto's desperation to save Lisa. It isn't bringing down the pterodactyl that wins Jack over-Jack clearly hires Ianto because he wants to sleep with him. And Ianto knows that, and presses that advantage, and is horribly guilt-ridden and conflicted about it.
This episode also shows some important things about Jack's leadership abilities: he doesn't have any. He's only in charge because everyone else is dead. It makes perfect sense for Torchwood to have kept him as a toy soldier for over a century-you'd expect that he'd've been able to gain command at some point in there based on seniority alone, but no. They kept him in check until things went catastrophically wrong. Then Jack shows his brilliant recruiting technique-that is, snatching up extremely emotionally damaged people. Ianto's the most stable person he hired, and Ianto cops to only wanting to join because he's too traumatized from Canary Wharf to do anything else. And why didn't Jack retcon Owen immediately? This just backs up my theory that Jack is the worst leader ever-he's arbitrary in his decisions, demands absolute unthinking loyalty and runs Torchwood like a cult.
Exit Wounds
John Hart really worked for me in this episode, mostly because of Marsters' performance. I was completely ready to believe that Jack's spurned lover has become a megalomaniac because that is how shallow characterization usually is on Torchwood. But when he said "I love you," I wondered what was up since he sounded like he meant it.
Gray, however, was a colossal failure. The actor had no talent and his dialogue was on par with a twelve-year-old author on fanfiction.net. "When you awaken afresh…" Who says that? The writers again tried to evoke a strong image with completely generic descriptions. Why is Gray twisted? He was tortured. And surrounded by corpses. That's it! They just keep repeating it. Well, he was surrounded by corpses! I found him surrounded by corpses! Come on, people. You don't horrify me by telling me it was bad, you horrify me by giving a few vivid details that make me feel it. This kind of writing is akin to trying to make a sex scene hot by saying, "then she had seven orgasms." It's the same problem I had with Ianto's description of his murders in "Adam." Completely generic, and therefore completely boring. So a big boo on Gray.
I'm just going to ignore the fact that if you were buried alive for two millennia you'd be seriously fucked in the head when you were dug out-the writers have never paid attention to the continuity of Jack's characterization before. Why would they start now?
I admit to being intentionally spoiled for the deaths. If I hadn't, I probably would have been surprised, if only because they've shot multiple characters in the gut before with them only showing mild discomfort immediately afterward. I also see this as the perfect set up for Owen to come back as a radioactive ghost, since we have no idea how the power that reanimated him works.
Here's the thing the Torchwood writers don't seem to realize: always delivering an unhappy ending is just as predictable and simplistic as always delivering a happy ending. They are trying to be "adult" and "real" and show that in life things don't always work out-but showing that they always don't work out is its own brand of reductionism.
Newsflash: people can be cynical, self-destructive assholes without having a TRAGIC PAST. People can be workaholics with no social life without having been in Gitmo. Whenever the opportunity arises on this show to be angsty, they don't use any nuance. They beat the point to death with a sledge hammer. This show makes Supernatural, my emo horror show, look like a model of restraint and subtlety. And here's the thing-I am an angst bunny. I love angst to death. But Torchwood is so consistently over the top that it's not angsty anymore, it's boring. You can't keep going to the well and expecting to always elicit an emotional response.
What gets me is that in all the behind the scenes features, they talk about being adult and complex. This show is not complex. At all. Complexity requires both good and bad. It requires that things not always follow the same narrative track. It always requires continuity and consistent characterization.
In Torchwood Confidential for "Exit Wounds," both Burn (Owen) and Naoki (Tosh) talk about how you don't want to be over the top with a death scene. Naoki says it's better to have it be sudden, boom!, then over. Burn says, "you don't want a twelve-minute long syrupy scene." Hello??? That's exactly what it was. There were things I liked about the sequence, but Tosh was dying for at least twelve minutes. Yeah, it's more emotional if it's unexpected and over quickly, but that's not actually what Torchwood did. No, Torchwood couldn't help indulging in an extended scene with confessions and reminiscences and blah blah blah.
I can't help comparing it to certain scenes from Joss Whedon shows (I'm trying to be vague and unspoilery here!). Sometimes it has felt like Joss physically reached through the screen and slapped me in the face. Joss knows how to make things emotionally hit you like a punch, and he does it by not indulging in the impulses that Torchwood does. In fact, he makes fun of that sort of indulgence. Repeatedly.
As gryphonrose pointed out, Torchwood deserves some sort of prize for most improved show from the first to the second series. I'm beginning to see hints at a show I could genuinely enjoy. But only hints. It improved a lot, but that doesn't mean it's actually good now. Maybe if it sticks around for enough seasons eventually it will be.
A Day in the Death
Quite good, if over the top. Yay for preserving the secrecy of Torchwood, though, Owen. You clearly deserve that security clearance.
Something Borrowed
I can't really imagine how Gwen could have been more of an idiot in this episode. Sudden inexplicable overnight pregnancy they know nothing about? Yes, I'm sure Owen is speaking with a wealth of statistical knowledge of similar cases when he says you'll be fine if you don't treat it immediately. Except not. Even setting aside the phenomenal stupidity of not seeking treatment, she really didn't realize it might be problematic to show up in front of everyone she knows nine months pregnant, then not be pregnant the next day-and have no baby? This didn't occur to her? I'm also annoyed at Rhys (again!) for being a doormat who isn't bothered at all by the death of his best man and the fact that, if Gwen had not been an idiot about the alien pregnancy thing, he wouldn't have died. That was entirely preventable, and the fact that that alien attacked his friends was entirely Gwen's fault. My god.
I'm not so annoyed by the Jack/Gwen because I think they've adequately shown that a) Jack hits on anything, and b) Gwen thinks it's true love. Not Jack. Jack here is his usual flirtatious self. He'd sleep with her, sure, but he'd sleep with an android. Gwen's the one who has leapt to Harlequin novel conclusions about the tall, dark stranger that rocked her world and will show her the meaning of love. The fact that she'd pick up with him in an instant if he responded in kind doesn't bother me because Jack never will. Anyone waiting for a declaration of fidelity and devotion from Captain Jack will wait a loooong time.
From Out of the Rain
This episode simply didn't make any sense. At all. What are these Night Travellers? Aliens? Fairies? How come they can magically be captured on film? Did the physical them remain after they were filmed with the film just as an echo? If those clowns are part of the Night Travellers, then why the heck does Jack say he knows them and then say he never found the Night Travellers? How can the woman be the mermaid if she's the one who disappeared from the frame where there's a mermaid in a tank? What is it with her and water? Do they dehydrate people or do they steal their breath? Who were the random frozen people in the shed that disappeared at the end? Do they make people disappear or do they steal their breath? We only see them stealing breath, yet all the news reports are about disappearances. The fuck? And if Jack is capturing them back on film, then exposing it (don't even get me started on the broken logic of that-by that point in the episode, I'd given up), then by all rights the little silver flask should also vanish, since he got it on film and then exposed it. Also, that boy they saved? Mental institution for the rest of his life.
Other than the fact that nothing in the episode made any sense at all, it wasn't that bad. I mean, it looked kind of cool, the concept was okay, and none of the characters pissed me off, so I have to count this as a good episode of Torchwood. Which should really tell you something about Torchwood.
Adrift
This episode has a very similar message to "Sleeper," but didn't piss me off in the same way. Why? Because in this one, Gwen learns. She actually realizes by the end that following her bleeding heart isn't always a good idea. They express this, as usual, in as over the top terms as possible, but I'm used to that by now. The problem with the episode, plot wise, is that it completely depends on certain characters (Jack) not saying what they know when there's no real reason for them not to. (Kind of like Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books). This is just plain lazy writing. However, I could believe Jack was holding this up as a lesson for her.
Now I'd just like to take another moment to talk about how much I hate Gwen's relationship with Rhys. In this episode, again, Gwen uses sex to control him and keep him from bringing up a topic she doesn't want to discuss. Even at the end of the episode, when she is contrite and says the evening is all about him-do you notice what happens? It's all about her. Again. The relationship is clearly one where Gwen takes and Rhys gives. She manipulates and uses him and gives only enough crumbs to keep him around. As someone I was talking to pointed out-this relationship happens in real life all the time, and if both parties are aware of and accepting of this dynamic, there's nothing wrong with it. I concede that, but I still have a hard time swallowing it in the context of Gwen being portrayed as the moral center of the show.
Look at it this way-if the genders were reversed (yes, I know this sort of reasoning is reductive), if Rhys were the wife and we constantly saw her cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, being left waiting up while her husband is at work, having her plans ruined by her husband's inattention, being ameliorated through sex and having her opinions dismissed-it would be incredibly misogynistic. Especially if you add that the husband cheats on her with a co-worker because she doesn't understand him and tells people repeatedly that he's only marrying her because she'll put up with him, he doesn't really love her, and the sex isn't very good. I can't imagine anyone defending a male character portrayed in such a way as the "heart" of the show or the moral compass.
I wrote about this with "Sleepers," but what bothers me over and over with Gwen is her lack of emotional maturity. She rejects the cold pragmatism of Jack, which, fine. Perfectly reasonable. But she's constantly in denial about the consequences. She never faces reality as it is. She keeps making the same mistakes over and over. Empathy in television shows is usually a shorthand for goodness-an empathetic character is automatically a good person and better than a cold character. But Gwen's empathy is misleading. It's actually the opposite. She feels for other people and wants to make them happy because that makes her happy. But she's never understood that you can't always make a person happy and sometimes making them happy in the moment is the worst thing for them. Her caring for other people is selfish because it is always ultimately about making herself feel better, not about doing the best thing for them. As she didn't do the best thing for the agent in "Sleeper," as she didn't do the best thing for the characters here, and as she is not doing the best thing for Rhys.
But of course there's (semi) naked Jack/Ianto in this episode, which makes even a Gwen-centric episode worth it. This is more evidence of why Gwen/Jack is a no-go on the show (or is evidence of the inconsistency of the writing, one or the other). Jack asks her to join. In all seriousness. She laughs it off. She doesn't even look tempted. Even though "Something Borrowed" clearly showed her interest in him as a romantic partner, she doesn't seem willing just to have casual sex with him.
Fragments
Way to show restraint, guys! Jesus. What I loved about this episode was Ianto's section. We've gotten Ianto's emo history before, so here they used it brilliantly, and subtly, without referring to it at all. (And the less said about "Cyberwoman" the better. Worst. Episode. Ever.) Without that history, it's light-hearted fun. With it, it's a show of Ianto's desperation to save Lisa. It isn't bringing down the pterodactyl that wins Jack over-Jack clearly hires Ianto because he wants to sleep with him. And Ianto knows that, and presses that advantage, and is horribly guilt-ridden and conflicted about it.
This episode also shows some important things about Jack's leadership abilities: he doesn't have any. He's only in charge because everyone else is dead. It makes perfect sense for Torchwood to have kept him as a toy soldier for over a century-you'd expect that he'd've been able to gain command at some point in there based on seniority alone, but no. They kept him in check until things went catastrophically wrong. Then Jack shows his brilliant recruiting technique-that is, snatching up extremely emotionally damaged people. Ianto's the most stable person he hired, and Ianto cops to only wanting to join because he's too traumatized from Canary Wharf to do anything else. And why didn't Jack retcon Owen immediately? This just backs up my theory that Jack is the worst leader ever-he's arbitrary in his decisions, demands absolute unthinking loyalty and runs Torchwood like a cult.
Exit Wounds
John Hart really worked for me in this episode, mostly because of Marsters' performance. I was completely ready to believe that Jack's spurned lover has become a megalomaniac because that is how shallow characterization usually is on Torchwood. But when he said "I love you," I wondered what was up since he sounded like he meant it.
Gray, however, was a colossal failure. The actor had no talent and his dialogue was on par with a twelve-year-old author on fanfiction.net. "When you awaken afresh…" Who says that? The writers again tried to evoke a strong image with completely generic descriptions. Why is Gray twisted? He was tortured. And surrounded by corpses. That's it! They just keep repeating it. Well, he was surrounded by corpses! I found him surrounded by corpses! Come on, people. You don't horrify me by telling me it was bad, you horrify me by giving a few vivid details that make me feel it. This kind of writing is akin to trying to make a sex scene hot by saying, "then she had seven orgasms." It's the same problem I had with Ianto's description of his murders in "Adam." Completely generic, and therefore completely boring. So a big boo on Gray.
I'm just going to ignore the fact that if you were buried alive for two millennia you'd be seriously fucked in the head when you were dug out-the writers have never paid attention to the continuity of Jack's characterization before. Why would they start now?
I admit to being intentionally spoiled for the deaths. If I hadn't, I probably would have been surprised, if only because they've shot multiple characters in the gut before with them only showing mild discomfort immediately afterward. I also see this as the perfect set up for Owen to come back as a radioactive ghost, since we have no idea how the power that reanimated him works.
Here's the thing the Torchwood writers don't seem to realize: always delivering an unhappy ending is just as predictable and simplistic as always delivering a happy ending. They are trying to be "adult" and "real" and show that in life things don't always work out-but showing that they always don't work out is its own brand of reductionism.
Newsflash: people can be cynical, self-destructive assholes without having a TRAGIC PAST. People can be workaholics with no social life without having been in Gitmo. Whenever the opportunity arises on this show to be angsty, they don't use any nuance. They beat the point to death with a sledge hammer. This show makes Supernatural, my emo horror show, look like a model of restraint and subtlety. And here's the thing-I am an angst bunny. I love angst to death. But Torchwood is so consistently over the top that it's not angsty anymore, it's boring. You can't keep going to the well and expecting to always elicit an emotional response.
What gets me is that in all the behind the scenes features, they talk about being adult and complex. This show is not complex. At all. Complexity requires both good and bad. It requires that things not always follow the same narrative track. It always requires continuity and consistent characterization.
In Torchwood Confidential for "Exit Wounds," both Burn (Owen) and Naoki (Tosh) talk about how you don't want to be over the top with a death scene. Naoki says it's better to have it be sudden, boom!, then over. Burn says, "you don't want a twelve-minute long syrupy scene." Hello??? That's exactly what it was. There were things I liked about the sequence, but Tosh was dying for at least twelve minutes. Yeah, it's more emotional if it's unexpected and over quickly, but that's not actually what Torchwood did. No, Torchwood couldn't help indulging in an extended scene with confessions and reminiscences and blah blah blah.
I can't help comparing it to certain scenes from Joss Whedon shows (I'm trying to be vague and unspoilery here!). Sometimes it has felt like Joss physically reached through the screen and slapped me in the face. Joss knows how to make things emotionally hit you like a punch, and he does it by not indulging in the impulses that Torchwood does. In fact, he makes fun of that sort of indulgence. Repeatedly.
As gryphonrose pointed out, Torchwood deserves some sort of prize for most improved show from the first to the second series. I'm beginning to see hints at a show I could genuinely enjoy. But only hints. It improved a lot, but that doesn't mean it's actually good now. Maybe if it sticks around for enough seasons eventually it will be.