Weevils wobble but they don't fall down (review for 1.11, Combat)
For starters, I've never seen Fight Club so I don't go into whether they "should have made a reference" or not.
I think I love Noel Clarke. Only a recovering Tin Dog could realize that every single person in the cast is important.
Owen is going down the drain, fast. His relationship with Diane, the intensity that terrified him in a way that no alien could, has left him so broken that even he doesn't understand it in any conscious sense. He wants to drink himself into oblivion, but even that's not enough. He wants to shut himself off from everyone at Torchwood.
He gets calls from Jack and won't answer - who on the team would dare let Jack's call go to voice mail? Insulting Tosh ("well, there's a first time for everything") is too de rigeur for him. He has to burn every bridge, meaning that he has to be cruel to Gwen as well. She's the only one who could have forgiven his childish outbursts, possibly because she was right when she told Tosh that she could no longer take the moral high ground.
We're shown Owen's descent into Hell while Gwen only dabbles her toes in Hell's fiery pits. Is Rhys too horrible to her in the opening scene? "Sit the fuck down" is over the top, but we're supposed to see Rhys descending just as Gwen and Owen are doing, only through no fault of his own. He has valid points about Gwen being absent, about Gwen failing to give him even this one evening she'd promised. Here comes this guy, this guy who's younger, handsomer, COOLER than Rhys could ever be, and with a handshake he's just going to take Gwen away for an evening she'll never tell him about? I think Gwen got off easy; if I were Rhys, I'd have packed Gwen's clothes in trash bags and left them in her parking space.
Did Gwen give him the Retcon to protect herself, or to protect him? She, unlike Owen, does have somthing to lose. Her "out of time" partner, this jolly, loving bloke who seems to have let the 90's happen to other people but not him - he is as innocent a victim as the poor Weevils. Sure, she could lose his affection if he remembered what she said about Owen - but he would lose the last vestige of innocence he retains about her and I don't think she's cruel enough to do that to him.
Owen, on the other hand, is only beginning to discover the layers of cruelty, of malcontent energy, that he possesses. Go beneath the veneer, the smooth skin and well-kept hair, and Owen is a volcano. He sneers at Mark and baits him. The only thing that scares him is the Weevil, and that is his mysterious last link to compassion. He doesn't hesitate to tear into the people who work with him, but let Mark punch the alien and THAT makes him flinch. In the end, when he's in the cage, the Weevil connects with him in some elemental way. Owen is asking for release, something the Weevil can understand, and he almost gets his wish.
The hospital scene that follows is heartbreaking. Owen can't even manage to be funny any more. He can't look Jack in the eye except to ask if he is always right. He wanted to die - which Jack can certainly understand and MIGHT have been able to talk to him about, had Owen shown that anything was left inside himself that could be reached.
He's more Weevil than human, now.
Many, many kudos to the makeup department in this episode for all their wound work but also to how they "did" Owen. He's usually got on a heavy layer of makeup, but for this episode they let the pockmarks show and gave him just a little baggage under the eyes. Diane looked good for "a bird going on 90," but Owen, in his early thirties, aged a decade in just a week. He looked miserable, just bad enough to be able to function but not so bad that it would be a cliche.
And if he ever came up behind Gwen again, shirt off and soul laid bare, it wouldn't be with that perfectly ivory skin. He has a wound over his heart now to match the wound inside.
Now, this last one may just be my imagination, but did you see extra mascara under his left eye? Reminded me of Alex in Clockwork Orange. But that's probably just me, projecting.
I think I see where this storyline is leading. If I'm right, it will break my heart - and to think that I LOATHED Owen in the first episode.