Torchwood Ep 2.02
I really enjoyed the story on this one, it was dark and murky and all with a lovely moral quagmire at it’s core.
The actress that played Beth was awesome and she and Mike were utterly adorable together, which really made me feel the tragedy and also her pain when she inadvertently killed him later.
And I love Owen getting Gwen to stay at the hospital when Jack told him to… he and I are still on a roll. I’ve seen a lot of comments about how people miss snarky Owen and I would agree that they could probably give him a few more snappy lines (as they’ve done with Ianto), but I really don’t miss the cruelty he would sometimes display in S1 and in this case, I am very happy to wank that Diane and the situation with Bilis really affected him and that having Jack gone forced him to decide he wanted to get along with the team.
And OMG I liked Gwen for the entire ep!!! I KNOW!!! But she was actually what I think she was intended to be in the beginning, but without all the preachy-ness or judgmental-ness or super-saccharine-sweetness and for once I could appreciate her compassion for Beth and she was certainly right about Beth’s intentions in the end, but she wasn’t shown to be right overall so much as she was shown to merely convey a different point of view. But in the end, I think if they had followed Gwen’s compassionate tack rather than Jack’s pragmatic one, they would have all been toast from the massive nuclear explosion.
But she and Jack were really effective with the good cop/bad cop ploy with Beth initially and I really liked the way JB played that. Whoever was directing the first season I think really had the actors overplay a lot of the emotional/dramatic scenes, but so far this season there is a much more reigned in approach and I think it really highlights the drama instead of overshadowing it.
Also I really enjoyed that lovely moment between Gwen and Ianto, when he offered her his arm after they put Beth away after freezing her (See??? So long as Gwen isn’t pining after Jack or acting like an ass, I actually like her). It really showed how the team had become a team while Jack was a way. And per the writer of the ep (James Moran), that was something put in by the actors themselves, as was Jack growling at Ianto when Ianto was kidding him about being so terrifying during the interrogation. Just two really great character bits that I loved to pieces.
And Ianto, even though he didn’t have much to do with the plot, he was much needed dark humor relief for the heavy material. I loved nearly all his quips, but especially the two places where he was teasing Jack (the interrogation scene) and when he was - in his way - cautioning Jack that the mind probe was not something to be taken lightly.
One last thing I noticed too is that Ianto disappeared right after they had to shoot Beth and I’m still wondering where he went to and if he was thinking of Lisa. I am really, really enjoying this season so far.