Primeval 4.5 - Oh, I suppose I'd Better Say Something....
The icon pretty much sums up what I felt about this one. Indeed, I found it very difficult to be bothered commenting here, though I had a fair amount to say about it on the livewatch over on primeval_denial
Oh, lord, this was a boring and very silly plot, though with one or two nice touches (such as when the landlord decided to switch the pint and the half pint of beer (very, very badly drawn) because it was plain which one of Abby and Connor had the balls.) I have never, incidentally, been in an English pub where the landlord acted like that, and I have been in lots of small village locals where they don't see tourists too often. In every case I have been welcomed. And I'm damned sure that Irish landlords don't try to turn away custom, either, though, despite the red diesel plot strand and the slipping accents, this was plainly set in England.
Indeed, the most fun to be had in this episode was spotting the bloopers. One or two of them are possible to explain away (maybe Abby and Connor did snatch up their earpieces as well as their guns because we didn't see the detail) but most were not. And the ARC is seriously undertstaffed. Is Becker the only soldier left, so there is no backup? What happens when people go on holiday? Amusing as it was to see Lester doing Jess's job (and not that badly, considering) what happens when she is at lunch? Look, I learned to work switchboard at one stage because the regular operator, you know, had breaks! That was in a firm of architects, not something vital.
Then there was Matt. Now, I could accept Cutter being occasionally stupid in Season 1, because he wasn't actually on staff - there wasn't a staff, not really - and he wasn't supposed to have a "military background", and, anyhow, there were no rules to break. But Matt is the sort of bloke who I detest both in real life and in fiction, relying on charm to get away with stupidity that puts other people's lives and jobs at risk.
In fact, this episode had all the signs of being a filler (a filler! in a seven part series!) with lumbering yokels who wouldn't have lasted five minutes in real agriculture (or as a landlord, for that matter), with some hilarious FX (that shot in the river where it was coming for the angler - and the half eaten fish, oh, gawd) and a Gothic sub-plot that wasn't half as suspenseful as it ought to have been because Matt was so stupid and I don't know Emily well enough to care. Burton was around to be put in his place by Lester, and to make Connor an offer he really should have refused. (Incidentally, what happened to the Connor who was fascinated by dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts, and was studying under Cutter, and wasn't an electronic genius...?)
Lester was wonderful, but, as far as I am concerned, that is the only good thing about this entire episode. Definitely the worst episode of the series so far.