End of Days: A Humorous Review with No Real Analytical Value Whatsoever
End of Days: A Humorous Review with No Real Analytical Value Whatsoever
Disclaimer: As the title should indicate, this review is written purely to vent my own frustrations. It makes no attempt at in-depth, unbiased analysis regarding this episode or the within characters’ actions or motives. I’m posting it online, not to piss anyone off, but so that like minded people can my share in my humor. If you are strongly disposed toward the character of Gwen Cooper or the Gwack Ship, I suggest you do not read this review.
***
The episode opens with a flashback.
“I’m Bilis, the manager.”
Now tell me that old guy wasn’t creepy.
We also get a flash of Ianto shooting Owen. Shoot him again!
Then we cut to some scenery porn of Cardiff followed by Gwen lounging in bed with an unconscious Rhys. She better not of drugged him again, or I swear I’ll come through that screen and smack her.
But no, it turns out that Rhys isn’t unconscious, just playing possum. So what could have turned out to be another sign of Gwen’s mental instability turns out to be a cute scene meant to show us how Gwen has finally come to appreciate Rhys. I’d believe that if I hadn’t already seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Meat.
At least Gwen seems to have temporarily rediscovered her lust for Rhys, if only to make her actions later in the episode to seem less insane and more reasonable. They fail. And I’ve honestly seen worse asses than Kai Owens.
Unfortunately for the couple’s libido but fortunately for the audience, Gwen gets a call from Jack telling her to turn on the news. Apparently there was a good reason for not opening the Rift, as by doing it in Captain Jack Harkness, Owen screwed up the world. UFO’s, time travelers, and pot shots at organized religion. Note to the writers, I’m a practicing Catholic. I will not abandon my faith simply because you view it as an acceptable target. Now shut up and get back to the plot. I wouldn’t mind if you used this episode push the gay agenda though. Unfortunately you won’t.
Moving on.
Or not as Jack rants about Ianto’s bible reading. “Thanks Ianto, I could do without the superstition. You people love any story that denies the randomness of existence.”
Come on people, I’m not using this review to rant about my religious belief, so why do you writers insist on using Jack to rant about yours?
Thankfully, the writers have Jack remember his job before I turn off the TV in annoyance. He begins ranting about how everyone of Great Importance wants to know if the world is falling apart because of anything Torchwood did.
“Well is it?” Gwen asks, trying to look sultry while playing with a pen.
No Gwen, the fact that time and space began falling apart right after Owen fiddled with the Rift is purely coincidence. Tosh proves my point with a handy map showing the cracks in time and where they originate from. Coincidentally, the origin point is right smack dab center of the Rift in Cardiff. Which if the deleted scenes from this episode are to be believed, means the Hub, which is located at the center of the Rift.
“Shit,” Gwen gasps, in a rare instance of actually doing her job as the audience surrogate and summing up their reaction.
Jack then turns on Owen, blaming everything on him. In Jack’s defense, it kinda is all Owen’s fault, but Jack’s just generally being an ass this episode and completely failing at doing his job or, you know, leading.
Owen shoots (foreshadowing) back that he saved Jack and Tosh by fiddling with the Rift, though he had other intentions when it came to opening the Rift. Namely a certain Amelia Earhart ripoff who shall not be named. But otherwise Owen gives some pretty sound advice, declaring that they should actually do something other than sitting around and pointing fingers. I have a nice joke involving a drinking game about how often the current administration mentions the previous administration, but I’ll let it slide in deference to my more liberal readers and my own vow to try to leave politics out of my writings.
Instead of taking the advice of the only member of his team who has yet to commit treason, Jack growls something about containment and phase one. He doesn’t tell them what phase two is but it’s heavily implied that it won’t end well for the people who’ve fallen through time.
He then sends Owen and Tosh off to the hospital to see just why the mortality rate just spiked.
After they’re gone, Gwen rounds on Jack, demanding to know if he had to pick on Owen like that in front of everyone. Gee, Gwen, way to make Jack seem like a middle school bully.
I paused the video at the wrong moment.
“All of your staff have feelings, Jack. Even Owen,” Gwen insists.
“Well you would know,” Jack replies.
Is Jack supposed to be jealous? Come on writers, if you want to push an agenda you have my full permission to pursue the gay one. But no, you’re playing up Gwack and all it’s nastiness.
Wait, is that a look of shock on Gwen’s face. She didn’t know that Jack knew about her sleeping with Owen? This scene is now pure gold, as now someone is finally calling Gwen, if briefly, on her shit. Yay!
Okay upon running the scene through my mind at work, I’ve come up with a theory. Jack’s not jealous, he’s disappointed. Gwen is his talisman. He chose her to be his moral and emotional touchstone, to guide him back to the light from that dark miserable hell that is his life. And she totally bombed at it. Her affair screwed up her position as the heart as she was putting herself and her libido before everything else.
Back to what’s happening on screen, trying and failing to salvage something of her dignity, Gwen argues that Owen saved him, and asks if Jack would rather be stuck in WWII. He probably would if it meant getting away from the rampant stupidity and character derailment that this episode brings about.
Meanwhile, they’re distracted by the only sane man in Cardiff at the moment- as Ianto’s affected by the brutal character derailment and Rhys can’t be sane if he’s really in love with Gwen- PC Andy. Apparently he has a roman soldier he doesn’t know what to do with so he decides to unload at the paper work on Gwen. Oh, yeah, he hands over the soldier too.
So, does that mean there’s no Roman Soldier Guy/Andy prison smut out there? Because if there is, I’d like to read it.
And if they don’t want to recruit Andy, why are they telling him everything? Seriously, shouldn’t they have curbed their unnecessary retcon usage after They Keep Killing Suzie?
At the hospital, Owen’s freaking out as he’s discovered the cause of the mortality spike. A woman from the 14th century carrying the bubonic plague. Shit.
The good news is that Owen finally realizes how much he’s screwed up. And gee, it only took Cardiff being infected by the Black Death. The better news is that the plague can likely be passed off as a biological attack carried out by terrorist, possibly of the extremist variety, so Torchwood doesn’t need to Retcon the entire British Isles… again.
And has everyone forgotten about secrecy? Why is Owen telling this guy that people are dropping through time? I don’t care if it’s the end of the world or not, they’re going to look really stupid when this blows over and everyone remembers all those top secret things they blabbed.
While chasing after Owen, hopefully to wring his neck, Tosh is stopped in her tracks by a hallucination of her mother. Her mom tells her that if there’s no other choice she must do IT. Hopefully not with Gwen… bad pun. But she really does tell her to do some non-specified thing. Then Owen pops back up being an ass.
Why is she in love with him again? She must wonder herself sometimes.
Back with Jack and Gwen, the heart of Torchwood suggests they use the rift manipulator to get everyone displaced by them screwing with the Rift the first time around back home. Jack says no. N. O.
He also says it’s impossible, since they would need to take control of time itself. The Doctor probably wouldn’t like that at all.
“Have I ever let you down?” Jack asks.
Gwen gives him her little girl grin and promptly wanders off to do nothing apparent. She is immediately distracted from her favorite wedding fantasy featuring Jack as the groom, and Ianto as the bitter, sobbing wedding guest that everyone ignores, by none other than Bilis.
“I’m sorry,” he says without moving his lips. “I’m so sorry.”
Isn’t that the Doctor’s line?
Back at the Hub… Lisa’s back in hallucination form…uh-oh. If there’s one person who can convince Ianto to do something stupid it’s Lisa… Or Jack. No, I’m not still bitter about Day Four. Luckily Ianto has the sense to realize this isn’t really Lisa. Unfortunately, she plays on Ianto’s better nature by telling him thousands will die unless he opens the Rift. Well, at least now we know what IT is. Thank God they didn’t try and promise he would get Lisa back if he did the colossally stupid and open the Rift. That would be a little too much.
Upstairs, more stuff happens and Jack fires Owen. Yay! Now fire Gwen too and you’ll make my day complete. What I love about this scene is that absolutely none of them trust Jack right now, and pretty much all of them agree with Owen, but none of them are going to risk their jobs by openly going against Jack.
Owen hands over his gun, laments his imminent retconning. I say bullshit, once everything blows over all will be forgiven. After all Jack views Owen as the son he never had.
As Owen turns to leave, he stops and says to Gwen “I would say thanks for the memories…”
That little affair gets thrown in her face every five seconds in this epi. I love it.
Small time skip, and Jack and Gwen are at Bilis’s shop, questioning him. Bilis waxes philosophical and plants the first seeds of rebellion in Gwen’s obviously simple mind. She has to be simple not to realize how easily Bilis is manipulating her.
He shows Gwen a hallucination of Rhys, dead, conveniently forgetting to mention that he’s the one to kill the poor man. Thus, shit begins to happen.
Gwen acts unstable, tases Rhys, and takes him to the Hub to be stuck in a cell. Owen drowned his sorrow in a bar, gets a hallucination of the Amelia Earhart rip-off telling him to open the rift so she can come back to him, and heads back to the Hub to, presumably, open the Rift.
Meanwhile, Gwen really is staring intently at an unconscious Rhys. He awakens quickly, and suspects once again that Gwen may have lost her mind. And, once again, she’s acting like it.
Later in the main area of the Hub, Tosh questions how Bilis was able to show Gwen a vision of Dead!Rhys. This scene makes clear that Ianto and Tosh haven’t shared their hallucinations with the rest of the class yet. Not that I blame them, Jack doesn’t seem very understanding this episode.
The problem I have with this scene is that Tosh and Ianto now know that Bilis is capable of, and that he is more than likely responsible for their hallucinations, yet go along with Gwen and Owen’s madness later on anyway. This is Tosh and Ianto, the smart ones.
“Not gonna happen,” Jack says about Rhys’s impending doom.
Then the alarm goes off. They have a security breech.
“Nobody panic,” Jack orders.
“RHYS!” Gwen yells, panicking.
Did anyone else find that as funny as I did?
Meanwhile, Rhys gets out of his cell and is promptly murdered by Bilis.
Jack and Gwen find Rhys’s body and Gwen freaks the hell out. God, John Barrowman does not sell this scene. Surprisingly, Eve Myles does though.
Time skip, Rhys’s body is now in autopsy and Jack is cleaning Gwen’s blood stained hands. Biblical reference. Jesus once washed the feet of all of his apostles. I can’t remember why, but considering Jack’s messianic complex, there’s probably a connection.
Ianto offers to take care of things, like telling the family in such, but Gwen refuses on the grounds that he’d probably just retcon them. Which he wouldn’t have to do if Rhys hadn’t been brought to the Hub in the first place.
Tosh offers her condolences, which Gwen refuses. “You never even met him.”
Sure they did. Remember two hours ago when you made them carry his unconscious body into the Hub? They got to know him real well then.
“This is what happens here. We all end up alone,” Gwen says. “Not me. No way.”
What make you so special, other than being the creator’s pet?
Whine all you want about being calling Gwen unstable, this scene proves my point.
Then Owen shows up to make things worse by… being Owen. He tries to hug Gwen to make her feel better. Apparently psycho Gwen is more perceptive than regular Gwen because she realizes how inappropriate it would be for Owen to comfort her over Rhys’s dead body… Or she’s just psycho and lashing out at everyone. It all depends on how much credit you want to give her.
“I’m gonna finish this,” Owen says. “I’m opening the Rift.”
Yeah, somehow I’m thinking that he’s thinking more of the woman who left his ass than Gwen and her suffering. And I’m all for that.
Owen takes off, followed shortly by…Ianto? What the hell? Ianto can’t stand Owen most of the time, why would he be following after him?
“Make sure you stop him,” Jack orders our beloved Teaboy.
That’s a good explanation for why Ianto’s following Owen. Let’s go with-
“No.”
Damnit Ianto. I love you but for once listen to Jack. Remember that deleted scene earlier where Jack told you and Tosh that opening the Rift would destroy the Hub? Remember that, and think of Myfanwy. Where’s she gonna live with the Hub gone?
What? Ianto loves Myfanwy… I think.
So the whole team runs off to open the Rift, leaving Jack in autopsy with Rhys’s dead body…Not going there. After all, there’s enough necrophilia in this episode.
“It’s a trap… This is what Bilis wants,” Jack insists.
Owen, pretending to be wise rather than simply horny, asks “What are you afraid of, Jack?”
Maybe destroying the world just so you can get the woman who LEFT YOU back? Or destroying the world just so Gwen can get her free maid service back? At least Tosh and Ianto think it’ll save the world. Bilis didn’t have to promise them anything else. So even when being massively stupid, Tosh and Ianto are still better people than Owen and Gwen.
Where did Ianto learn all the secret passwords from? Does Jack talk in his sleep?
Jack pulls his gun on them…not that one.
Shocked, Tosh asks, “What are you doing?” My god, for the first time in the run of this show I just wanted to hit Tosh. What is he doing? What the hell are you doing? Opening the Rift = Bad Things.
Now Jack gives his chilling monologue. “You're a united front now, Toshiko, the poor girl who'll screw any passing alien that gives her a pendant. Owen, so strong he gets in a cage with a Weevil, desperate to be mauled. Ianto, hiding his cyber-girlfriend in the basement. Your three comrades here pumped bullets into her, remember?”
Gwen can’t stand that she’s not getting any attention from Jack, and thus reminds everyone, “I’ve got to get Rhys back!”
Jack, having none of this bullshit, retorts with this magnificent rejoinder, “Yeah, 'cause you're so in love with Rhys that you spend half your time in Owen's bed.”
Not pleased at once again having her affair thrown in her face, for the third time in one episode no less, Gwen punches Jack. Are we sure the writers like Gwen? Because they seem to be bashing Gwen enough without my help.
Jack drops his gun, and Owen grabs it and turns it on Jack. Kinky.
Jack tells Owen he doesn’t have the balls to be leader, which Owen doesn’t. Owen responds by shooting him three times.
Ianto freaks the hell out. Poor Ianto. Now would be a great time to go on a roaring rampage of revenge. Preferably against Owen, but I’ll settle for Gwen. Instead he goes into heroic bsod.
They start the end of the world as Jack comes back to life. Fun.
I also notice that as they’re fleeing the Hub, Jack sends Ianto ahead to escape while allowing Gwen to keep holding onto him when he’s the least likely to make it out of the Hub in time. Make of that what you will.
After they all make it out okay and are randomly stumbling down the streets of Cardiff, Gwen assure Jack that now that the Rift is open everything is going to be fine. Then Bilis pops in to say “Oh, by the way, I lied.” Not really, but that’s the gist of it.
Abbadon shows up and I love the look on Gwen’s face when she realizes she’s been had.
Now everybody is on board with following Jack’s orders and he has only one. “Get me to an open space.” Thus he takes the only expendable member of his team and runs off to an open field on the other side of a body of water I am not going to identify as Cardiff Bay, since I don’t know if it is or not.
How does Abbadon hear Jack yelling from miles away? I really want to know.
You know how it goes, Abbadon over eats and dies. Jack dies too, seemingly for the last time.
Gwen rushes home to check on Rhys, get’s him hot and bothered with a steamy kiss and then runs off to hang out with Jack’s corpse. She must really love Rhys after all. I’ll never doubt her again.
Now the much debated part. Gwen hogging the only seat in the morgue so no one else could say their private goodbyes. She announces she’s going to sit with Jack while fondling his hair while Ianto is standing right behind her. Contrary to what I’ve seen claimed, Ianto wasn’t giving up on Jack. He might have sat with Jack until hell froze over, but he never got a chance. So it’s not that didn’t have Gwen’s faith in Jack, it’s just that he wasn’t as pushy.
And Gwen has a disturbing habit of feeling up Jack’s corpse under the guise of smoothing his hospital gown.
Meanwhile, Ianto is forced to sob out his loneliness into Jack’s coat.
Finally, after three days, Jack wakes up, conveniently after Gwen indulges her necrophilia kink by swapping spit with a three days dead Jack. I’ve said it once, but it bears saying again…Ew.
First order of business for the newly resurrected Jack, replace the taste of Gwen’s three day old morning breath -since she obviously didn’t bathe or brush her teeth in that time-with the sweet taste of Ianto. Yay!
Thus, all is forgiven.
Come on Jack you should have them work for it a little more. Yes, even Ianto deserved a little bit of a cold shoulder.
Now that things are back to normal, Gwen’s sitting on Jack’s desk in an attempted sexy pose. Since they all saw people they loved in those hallucinations they had, Gwen wants to know who Jack saw. How much you want to bet she’s hoping he’ll say her?
Her hopes are dashed when Jack says he saw nothing. But she’s not willing to give up just yet. She wants to know what would have convinced him to open the Rift.
“The right kind of doctor.”
Who promptly arrives on the Plass for Jack to run off with.
Thus ends season one, leaving us with a few questions. Will Jack come back? How will Torchwood hold together in his absence? Where the hell is Rhys? Shouldn’t he be worried that his girlfriend hasn’t been home in three days and completely fails to call to let him know she’s all right?
Only one of these questions will be answered in Season Two of Torchwood. Which one? I’ll give you a hint… Jack comes back.
RN: ConCrit loved.