Crass, Snarky, and Scathing: An Episode by Episode Review of Gwen Cooper
Crass, Snarky, and Scathing: An Episode by Episode Review of Gwen Cooper
Now featuring even less Analytical Value!
Disclaimer: I claim no objectivity what so ever.
Other Disclaimer: I speak both English and Sarcasm fluently. I switch between the two regularly, especially when I’m talking about Gwen Cooper.
Everything Changes
Let’s begin on her introduction. Gwen snoops around a crime scene that’s been taken from her superiors -yes, her superiors, contrary to some fans’ belief, Gwen was not in charge of that crime scene, she was just guarding it- control by a Special Ops team. As someone who grew up in post-9/11 America, that generally strikes me as a bad idea. During this scene I had a flashback to a track meet at the Baltimore Amory, where we had to walk past soldiers with M-16s to get in the door and the coaches stressed that only the ground floor and the balcony were open to us and if we were caught somewhere we weren’t supposed to be, those soldiers with M-16s would be escorting us out in handcuffs. Where they would be escorting us too was never specified. So if someone with higher security clearance than me told me to clear out, I would have. She then runs like hell after being spotted, a bad idea since they could clearly see her uniform and would have easily tracked her down, but I let that slide since it’s a perfectly understandable gut reaction( i.e. I’d have done the exact same thing).
Then Gwen returns home to her loving boyfriend, lies to him for no apparent reason about working the murder scene. She quickly becomes obsessed with Torchwood and its enigmatic leader. Her desire to solve any mysteries presented to her is a good quality for a cop when confronted with a crime. Not so much when confronted with secret organizations like Torchwood. Some would say this is part of their recruitment strategy. Meaning they encourage people to commit treason as part of their recruitment plan? Jack, we need to have a talk, and I think I know why your team keeps mutinying and leaking sensitive intel to people on the street.
That said, if anyone else had been running Torchwood other than Jack, there’s a good chance she’d have been detained when they realized she could resist retcon rather than given a job. Even if she was given a job, there would have been a much longer vetting period before a job was offered. But hey, what do common sense and SOP matter when you supposedly have great sexual chemistry with the boss?
Day One
Next up, Gwen’s life after she joins Torchwood. On her first day, she releases an alien sex gas that kills at least twenty people and isn’t even get reprimanded for it because she offered herself to save the gas’s host. I’m sure that makes all the dead people feel so much better.
Ghost Machine
In the third episode, she completely fails to remember any basic knife safety and causes the death of a paranoid, mentally unstable old man. Apparently nobody cares because he murdered a girl forty years ago and Gwen feels terrible about it. Plus, she all but gave the boss a lap dance when he was showing her how to properly handle a gun. Too bad he didn’t show her how to properly handle a knife.
Cyberwoman
Her misadventures continue into the next episode where the proclaimed ‘carer with her beating heart’ proves just as clueless to the suffering of Ianto Jones as the rest of her co-workers, even when he’s standing in front of them, shaking from terror and stress. But he was smiling a sick, terrified grin so anyone could have missed that. Then of course, high on the adrenaline she makes out with the medic…in a mortuary drawer. Classy woman, ain’t she?
She’s also failed to read the manual, as she still has no clue about Torchwood Operating procedure.
Small Worlds
Ah, the emergence of smug bitch!Gwen. Jack, for some reason takes her along to visit Estelle Cole, the Cardiff fairy enthusiast. Gwen spends most of Estelle’s presentation expressing her disbelief in a rather rude fashion. Gee, she lives a conspiracy theory, complete with aliens, a boss who can’t die, and a pet Pteranodon, but can’t believe in evil fairies? The evil fairies take offense to this and trash her apartment. She proceeds to bitch Jack out about it. It’s not his fault he offered you a job, Gwen. He’d just been shot in the head and watched his second in command commit suicide. He clearly wasn’t thinking straight.
When Jack saves all their asses from an ignoble death by floristry, Gwen decides he’s a monster for not saving the kid who didn’t want to be saved. The other two agree with her because this episode is supposed demonstrate Gwen’s moral leadership of the team. Yeah… Ianto, I think you need check the Archives to see if any of the alien mind control devices have gone missing.
Countrycide
Once again, Gwen messes up, gets hurt, and challenges the boss’s authority in front of the team. This time she tops it off by shagging the medic. It’s under the guise of needing someone to talk to but the whole scene leading up to it consists of Gwen complaining about Torchwood ruining her life. No sweetheart, that’s you doing that. Unlike with Tosh, there was no ‘work with us or else’ ultimatum so I’m pretty sure you could have turned Jack down.
Greeks Bearing Gifts
Gwen is continuing her affair with the medic, Owen. Unfortunately for the sensitive Tosh, who is in love with Owen, neither of these sex charged, overgrown teenagers are very subtle or have the sensitivity God gave granite. Thus, after Gwen and Owen’s childish game ruins the hard work of Tosh, the beautiful genius takes solace in alcohol and she is promptly seduced by a hot alien chick who gives her a gift that allows her to overhear Owen and Gwen insulting her style of dress and her supposed performance in bed. Oh Owen and Gwen, you’ll never be as hot as Jack and Ianto. Insulting Tosh won’t make up for your own inadequacies.
They Keep Killing Suzie
Suzie returns to finish what she started in Everything Changes. The murder of Gwen Cooper. She fails yet again.
Random Shoes
Gwen gets stalked by the ghost of an alien enthusiast. That is all.
Out of Time
Owen cheats on Gwen with an Amelia Earhart rip-off and Gwen bonds with a wholesome young woman from the 50’s. I like this kid, as she mages to make Gwen feel like shit for cheating on Rhys. Her dialogue also allows us to infer that Rhys sucks in bed. Uh-huh. Sure.
Combat
Gwen and Owen break up. Yay! Tosh, the catty little thing that she is, lets slip that Owen slept with Diane the Amelia Earhart rip-off. Gwen is enraged. How could anyone cheat on the perfection that is Gwen? In the mean time Gwen decides to confess her affair to Rhys. The catch? She’s already dosed him with retcon. Now if my SO told me they’d cheated on me and they admitted they’d also just drugged me, I’d think they’d lost their mind and were trying to kill me and would beat the shit out of them before the drug finished it’s work of knocking me unconscious. But that would look too much like domestic violence and the Gwackers already insist that Rhys is abusive because of the scene at the beginning of this episode where he ripped her a new one for being a bitch and trying to runoff with Jack midway through their dinner date. Anyway Rhys passes out before granting Gwen that forgiveness she wanted. How dare he! Thus Gwen goes off to sob in self pity at the Hub.
Captain Jack Harkness
Gwen doesn’t seem to do much other than get ordered around by Owen and Ianto. She really should know better than to trust creepy old men.
The End of Days
Gwen gets manipulated by Bilis Manger along with the rest of the team. She then tasers Rhys and locks him up, making him a sitting duck when Bilis decides Gwen needs that final push to co-lead a mutiny. Of course she doesn’t like Jack pointing out the flaws in her reasoning, and punches him. Then Owen shoots him before they realize they need retinal scans from the whole team to open the Rift . “Oh shit,” Gwen hisses.
They get one off Jack’s corpse and all is hunky-dory. Until the Hub starts to collapse. I think Ianto and Tosh forgot to mention that little failsafe to their leaders. Oops.
Jack revives, gropes Ianto one last time, and makes Gwen drive him out to fight the unholy horror they unleashed by opening the Rift. After Jack dies, seemingly for the last time, Gwen sobs over his corpse for awhile. Then she decides to hog the only chair in the morgue so that the three people who served with him longer can’t say their own private goodbyes. Finally giving up, she gives Jack’s three day old body a kiss, smack on the lips. Eww.
Of course Jack then wakes up and thanks her for it. Then he gets dressed and runs off to makeout with Ianto. Finally Jack runs off with the Doctor, being a total prick and leaving Gwen in charge.
Heavens help us.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Apparently in the absence of Jack, Gwen was promoted to commander. And here I thought affirmative action had been discontinued. She hasn’t forgiven Jack for running off and leaving the team, despite the fact that he forgave her for helping Owen carryout a mutiny and punching him when he reminded her about her affair with Owen, totally taking the wind out of her ‘destroying the world is worth it because it’ll bring Rhys back and I love him!’ argument. She gets back at him by flaunting her engagement ring in his face. She promptly regrets it when he congratulates her instead of going down on one knee and begging her to be his. As revenge for this slight, she countermands him in front of not only the team, but the villain of the week as well. She then ignores Jack’s advice and gets herself poisoned by the villain of the week and spends a good chunk of the rest of the episode dying in a steel container. She’s saved at the last minute and then taken hostage about five minutes later.
Selflessly, or maybe just because she found out that Jack and Ianto are going steady and decided life wasn’t worth living anymore, she decides to throw herself and villain of the week into the Rift to save Cardiff. As no heroic sacrifice would be complete without a ‘tell my wife I love her’ moment, she turns to Ianto and say “Tell Jack I l-” only to have her heroic sacrifice cutoff as Owen and Jack arrive to save the day. Yeah, somehow I doubt she was going to say, “Tell Jack I love Rhys”. You know, Rhys, the guy whose ring she’s wearing. The guy, who probably waited up all night for her to come home after he worked a full day, probably came home and cleaned their flat, did the laundry, and made her dinner… Yeah, if she seriously doesn’t want him, I’ll take him.
Sleeper
Gwen bonds with alien sleeper agent and bitches Jack out when said sleeper agent commits suicide by cop. She also makes reference to Jack’s manners in bed, which she is then forced to admit she has no first hand knowledge of.
To the Last Man
Thankfully this is mostly a Tosh episode, so Gwen gets to make a comment about Tommy being a frozen soldier from WWI and make a stupid remark to Ianto about cheering up about the fact he’s not going to live to see twenty-seven thirty-five. She also asked Jack if there was another frozen soldier boy for her to play with since Tosh called dibs on Tommy. Plan ‘Make Jack Jealous’ is back in action, apparently.
Meat
The good news is Gwen’s taste in men-that little affair with Owen not withstanding- seems to be superb. Rhys proves to be clever enough to figure out Gwen’s job isn’t just ‘paperwork’ and that she has the hots for her boss after following her around for about two hours. The bad news is that she’s turned up the heat on ‘Operation Get Jack’. Gwen attempts to make sultry, come hither eyes at Jack as she manages a rather hot kiss with Rhys. Jack replies with a look that clearly says, “Why are you still looking at me like that? I’ve told you, Ianto and I have much better chemistry than you and me. Besides, do you know the things Ianto can do with a length of rope?” That is of course my completely unbiased opinion on the matter. Objectivity? What’s that?
She gets a reality check when they send Rhys undercover as a driver for the baddie and he’s taken hostage along with Ianto. After supposedly leading Torchwood and acting as second in command to Jack (affirmative action strikes again) you’d think that she’d have learned how to recognize a bluff when she saw one. But no, when the bad guy waves a gun at Rhys’s head she falls for it hook, line, and sinker. Abandoning her hiding place she exposes herself to the line of fire, much to Jack’s annoyance. His boyfriend is in trouble too, but you don’t see him freaking out, now do you?
Anyway, after Rhys is done taking a bullet for Gwen and getting patched up by her ex-lover, Jack orders him retconned. Gwen objects, in a way that will usually end in a termination of employment but Jack seems to be feeling nostalgic for the gun scene in Ghost Machine, so he lets it slide.
Adam
Gwen returns from vacation to find a creepy redhead has brainwashed the team in her absence. She’s then is promptly brainwashed herself. She spends the rest of the episode being mostly useless and flirting with Jack even more than usual. When she gets home from work we discover why she was more flirtatious. She’s forgotten Rhys exists. How that varies from any other episode, I’m not really sure but what the hell, I’ll suspend my disbelief.
Poor Rhys spends a good half an hour held at gunpoint by the unworthy object of his affection until Jack and the team arrive expecting a crazed stalker, and instead find the long suffering Rhys who accuses Jack of retconning Gwen to forget him. Sweetheart, it doesn’t take retcon to do that.
She spends most of the rest of the episode talking about how the memories are there, but the feelings aren’t. In other words, she’s back to normal.
Meanwhile, Ianto is mind raped and Jack’s love for Ianto saves the day. Aww, how sweet.
Reset
Gwen’s still not reading her memos. She has no idea what UNIT is, much less that they’re expecting a visitor. She’d also jealous of Martha’s connection to Jack, assuming that Jack slept with her. She’s then forced again to admit she has no claim on Jack.
Dead Man Walking
Gwen cries about her ex-lover biting it in the last episode and then hugs him when it looks like he’s going to die again.
A Day in Death
Gwen does nothing important whatsoever.
Something Borrowed
Gwen gets knocked up by an alien guy, and no, it’s not the result of one of her questionable liaisons but because she was working the night before her wedding. Real bright Gwen. Anyway, instead of doing to smart thing and listening to Jack, Owen, and Rhys about postponing the wedding, Gwen insists on going through with it while looking like she’s late into her third trimester. Thus her parents get excited, thinking their going to become grandparents and Gwen realizes that they’re going to be heartbroken when she tells them she ‘lost’ it. Oh, and the baby’s momma is coming to rip it’s offspring from Gwen’s belly and probably eat the wedding attendees. Great job, Gwen.
Oh, also the alien baby mama is a shape shifter, and Gwen knows this. Then when Jack randomly, after supporting her relationship with Rhys 120%, starts flirting with her what does she do? Almost makes out with him… On her wedding day.
She does manage a crowning moment of awesome when her mom is being held hostage, but then has to run for her life when it’s time for the baby to get ripped out of her. After the baby and baby momma are neutralized she flirts with Jack again until he reminds her that it was Rhys who saved her life this time around and is her fiancé.
The dance at the end is mostly Jack’s fault, as by this point even I have to admit he’s giving her mixed messages. Thankfully Ianto swoops in before either of them can do something too stupid.
From Out of the Rain
Gwen and Owen go to the movies with Ianto and talk through the whole thing. She also makes catty remarks about Ianto and Jack sleeping together.
Adrift
Gwen gets drawn into an investigation of a missing boy by her old pal PC Andy. She then gets Tosh to work out discovers that the Rift not only drops things off, but takes things away. Then she gets on her high horse insisting that Torchwood do something about it. “What?” Jack asks.
“Provide counseling,” Gwen answers. “We’re not bloody grief counselors,” Owen points out.
After losing her argument, Jack tells her to shut it down. She refuses. Later she storms into the Hub after hours, only to walk in on Jack and Ianto in the middle of something that is not kid friendly viewing. She is briefly embarrassed, but switches quickly to bitchy, declaring she’s not letting the case go. Jack tells her to drop it and goes back to playing with Ianto.
Through Ianto’s intervention, and PC Andy’s help in identifying basic 21st century technology, Gwen discovers an island of people taken and returned by the Rift. She immediately accuses the staff of mistreating the Rift victims. Jack shows up and tells her the story of how he set up the island facility to help the Rift victims and that Gwen’s missing kid is a deformed old man now. Gwen wants to bring the boy’s mother in. Jack says no. Gwen does it anyway.
Thus the woman is destroyed seeing what has become of her son and the episode ends with Gwen sobbing to Rhys who finally snapped earlier this episode and kicked out onto the couch.
Fragments
Gwen is late to work because apparently a sex marathon with Rhys wore her out. So much for Rhys being bad in bed. Anyway, she drags Rhys along when she finally gets Ianto’s message that she needs to get to work now!
Exit Wounds
Gwen takes command while Jack’s kidnapped and orders around the Cardiff police. Affirmative action and Gwen’s informed hotness mean that the people she was serving coffee just a year ago now listen to her every edict. What the hell is wrong with these people?! Ianto taking command I can see. His coffee is the sweetest ambrosia of the gods. Gwen’s coffee probably tasted like tar mixed swap mud.
Anyway she and the others get held hostage in the vaults, possibly the only reason they don’ get killed along with Tosh. She also seems to be hugging on Jack a lot. Come on Gwen, let Ianto have a moment alone with his man.
Children of Earth
Surprisingly, it seems the horrible deaths of two of her teammates made Gwen grow up and become semi-competent. Only two moments bothered me. One, Gwen contemplates abortion because the world sucks and she’s only pregnant because the Rift screwed with her birth control. The last part sounds like a copout to me. I think she just forgot that taking antibiotics will cancel out the pill and doesn’t want to own up to it. There’s no shame in birth control failing, after all, failed birth control methods can account for the existence of at least two of my cousins, my younger sister, and my mother. But of course there can’t be a strong woman who isn’t pro-choice. Only meek little housewives are pro-life.*sigh*
Second issue, the “stay for me”. Ok Gwen, I get that the world went to hell six months back, but we know you and Jack would have eventually had a thing thing if Ianto had died in Cyberwoman, which with Ianto dead only four episodes into series one (foreshadowing two season before the fact, damnit I should have picked up on that) most fans would have accepted it. But Ianto survived his and Lisa’s acrimonious breakup and went on to have one of the most popular relationships in modern sci-fi. Now that he’s dead, the fan’s need some time to mourn him properly. This means you can’t make a move on his man for at least three seasons and even then we’re gonna break out the Gwen effigies for the pyre.
The second half of the second issue. YOU’RE PREGNANT WITH RHYS’S CHILD, AND ASKING JACK TO STAY FOR YOU!!!! Even if it was just for emotional support- which your husband, as an honorary member of Torchwood, could provide-the subtext between you and Jack makes that whole scene inappropriate. If you hadn’t spent the past two seasons mooning over Jack I could buy that you just didn’t want to lose yet another friend, but all those badly executed sultry-eyed stares give this scene a tint that I can’t unsee. That tint makes you
look even worse with your husband is standing behind you and his child is playing kickball with your kidneys- or whatever babies in the womb do when they get bored of their mother’s hormonal antics.
Closing Notes: Yeah, I feel better after that. And the doctors have me on the good drugs (been sick). Yay. Feel free to discuss you feelings in the comments.