Ten Statements About....TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY Episode Eight 'End Of The Road' (2011)

Oh, if only John Delancie took over the entire show the way
he takes over this episode....

"Go get me a sandwich. Tomato and swiss on sourdough. Let's see how well you cope with that...and then you can find me a prostitute."

1) So lemme get this straight--we build up Angelo, do everything but say outright, 'hey, he's a key component in the mystery of the vampir--EXECUTIVES! I mean executives causing Miracle Day', and then in the first five minutes Nana Visitor's Olivia tells us that no, he has nothing to do with this, he just wants to keep Jack SAFE? And you went through all the trouble of kidnapping Gwen's family and all to do this?

I am still shocked that Jane Espenson didn't get up and call shenanigans on Russell T. Davies for the blatant bait-and-switching. But then, I'm still shocked Espenson and John Shiban didn't walk out by this point out of sheer frustration.

2) God...did Nana Visitor have a bet with Lauren Ambrose as to who could give the most annoying performance in this season? Because her sing-song sarcasm is making me want to choke a former-Star-Trek-guest-star....

Either Nana Visitor is stunned at the awfulness of this script, or
she's been hypnotized by the shiny buttons on Jack's coat.

3) I just paused this episode at the 7:21 mark...and I have to wonder how incredibly stupid the Torchwood gang is to not make the obvious connection to Oswald Danes after hearing that one of the three families that 'purchased' the secret of Jack's Ressurection was the Danes family. I mean, I'm with Alyssa of the Big Red Podcast in considering Torchwood the most incompetent agency in the world, but even they can't fail to realize one of those names is identical to the pedophile lunatic they spent two, three episodes chasing around!

4) Okay, I've now found the second character in this whole misbegotten season I like--I like John Delancie's turn as Shapiro. Delancie has enormous amounts of fun in the driver's seat, and I even laughed at his line about Jack's dress styles. He provides a much needed dose of energy to a show that's been lacking it even with all its running around screaming about how exciting it is.

5) Davies has spent almost ninety minutes of screen time trying to convince us that Jack's love of Angelo is as deep as his love for Ianto was...and I simply don't buy it. There's a sense of artificiality to this thread in the story (well, greater artificially than most Torchwood plot threads)...and evoking Ianto's name in his farewell to the aged Angelo only throws that artificiality into much sharper relief.

6) The sight of Bill Pullman doing that rigor-mortis smasmo-dance will haunt me in my dreams for weeks. And I know his ordering Lauren Ambrose to find him a redheaded woman is supposed to come off as creepy...but it's just silly, and continues to expose how amazingly, stupidly inept this storyline is at its core.

"So you've found a way to make the audience even more
weirded out--AND I get to dance all herky-jerky?  HOT DOG!"

7) So now Jilly has a mini-me in Constance Wu's Shawnie Yamaguchi? Good Lord, this is the storyline that just. Won't. Stop. Sucking. I just hope Shawnie reveals herself as CIA soon and puts bullets into the head of everyone involved in this whole ick-making plot thread.

No, wait, scratch that. Should've known she'd get killed because keeping Shawnie around made too much sense.

8) You know what I really like about Sharpio? In less than an episode, he's gotten more done than the Torchwood crew did in seven...and he's also the apparently the only person who is able to get into Jack's face and get him to actually do something constructive as opposed to bulling around everywhere.

9) Why is Russell T. Davies convinced he can still build sympathy for Oswald Danes after having everyone act all disgusted and disapproving around him for seven episodes. I honestly think that he expects the audience to feel bad that the prostitute is rejecting him and hinting that there's 'Category Zero' in store for him. Surely somebody must have expressed some trepidation at this scene when they were at read-throughs or something....

10) I'm sorry...but having Esther Drummond break down crying about how she doesn't know where she's going doesn't make much of a cliffhanger because, quite frankly, I just wish she'd crash into a tree and end this already.

Overall...the bright spot of John Delancie's Shapiro nonwithstanding, it's more of the stupidity and lack of attention to logic that's been this season's trademarked. But at least this episode is 'The End of The Road,' right? So there's no more...

What? Two more? Damnation...

(and incidentally, the last episode is called 'The Blood Line'...because it's about vampi--EXECUTIVES! I mean executives...)

Ten Statements About....TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY Episode Five 'The Categories Of Life' (2011)

I don't know which is more horrific--the fact that Dr. Juarez is
about to be burned alive, or that she has to spend so much time
with this dumb racist James Carvell lookalike...

"Whatever you're doing to fight this miracle, count me in. They just took control of life and death."

1) Look, I trust Jane Espenson as a writer--besides the many good episodes she contributed to Buffy, she co-created and wrote material for a show I rather liked called Point Pleasant. I trust John Shiban, who wrote some exceptional episodes of The X-Files. Did no one listen to what Russell T. Davies had in store for this bloated ten hour mess and say, 'Russell, you need to rethink some of these ideas. Okay, most of these ideas.'

Okay, all of these ideas."

2) I thought Gwen and Captain Jack were listed as of Episode Two as, at the very least, Persons Of Interest, and would have their photos pasted all over airports by The Mysterious Agents Of The Mysterious Vampi--CORPORATION! I Mean Corporation That Pulls The Strings Of The Miracle. And yet Gwen just waltzes back into Wales to have comedy flirty time with Rhys?

3) At this point, I think we really need to drop the 'Jack teases Rex with intimations he might be gay' thing. It was old about two episodes ago.

Lord knows I understand, Mr. Barrowman...I want to lie down
and die after watching this episode...

4) Okay, we get this big scene where Dr. Juarez says she wants in on Torchwood, she gets kinda, sorta inducted into the crew...and then, when she wants to flounce off and 'investigate' at the facility Rex went undercover to investigate, she starts saying she's not Torchwood. Is anyone reading these scripts for continuity? We're talking about contradictory information separated by less than ten minutes here!

5) My GOD, did they just pull a variation on 'Oh, you're a WOMAN Doctor' thing with Dr. Juarez and the Overflow Camp administrator followed by a Nazi joke? I'd expect that of Davies, who always displayed no sense of how humans interact in the real world, but Espenson?

Oh, wait. Look at statement one. Never mind.

6) You know what one of the major differences is between this and 'Children of Men'--besides of course this one sucking and the other one being the best thing Russell T. Davies was ever attached to? This one keeps forcing humor in at the most inopportune times...and every gag about Hillary Duff and bit of flirty-flirty between Juarez and Rex, or Esther and Jack, stops the flow of the story dead. Not only that, it dissipates the tension built up in the story prior....resulting in a show that has to keep re-earning its thriller status by rebuilding the thrills that made that tension in the first place.

7) I have this very weird sense that Davies is using the whole Overflow Camp angle to address all the panic some Americans had over 'death panels' when Obama tried to pass nationalized health care. While there is a proud tradition of writers using science fiction to address modern concerns in this country, Davies' ham-fistedness, tendency toward broad villains and inability to plot coherently may very well make him the last person I want trying to make any political statements.

"..and I promise you you'll be able to murder children and make
a killing in the real estate with no money down..."

8) So Oswald Danes has gone from child murderer to, what? The world's greatest inspirational speaker? Huh?

9) So now you're doing a whole Concentration Camp riff, Davies? Really?

10) At least Arlene Tur is now finally free of this thing, even though I'd categorize her end as overkill in the extreme.

Overall...I'm just dumbfounded at how this show seems to be getting worse and worse with each successive episode. My theory that Davies intentionally set out to create a season so dire to dare everyone to watch it remains intact. And thinking we're only halfway through this bloated turd makes my blood run cold.

Ten Statements About....TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY Episode Two 'Rendition' (2011)

"Alright...if we inject Russell T. Davies, he might end up
being a decent writer."

"Everything mortal becomes immortal, so everything immortal becomes mortal. See? I can be useful."

1) Well...as I feared, Mekhi Phifer's job is to be a one dimensional, colossal dick, and they're going to give Kai 'The Jason Segal of Wales' Owen a pass out of the show. But on the other hand, Dichen Lachman (okay, Dichen Lachman once again hiding her natural sexy Aussie accent, but...).

2) Oh, my god...don't tell me that we've got to sit through eight more weeks of the typical Russell T. Davies sophomoric sexually-based humor. I thought we were done with that circa 'Children of Earth.'

3) Is there a reason why Wayne Knight is in this..of course, it doesn't help that he's playing a smarmy jerk in his interactions with Esther in such a way that I expect Kramer to slide into CIA HQ at any moment. And the way he pulls the same dithering anxious faces throughout his brief time, you don't buy him as this Guy Who's Pulling The Strings.

4) You know what I love about the way Eve Myles and John Barrowman work together? The way they've worked out this excellent timing with their body language so that by watching them interact you can get a whole other level of understanding about what's going on. Between these two, a shift in a chair or a very quick, faint smile speaks volumes more than what they're bickering about.

To my surprise, this is my favorite character in this story.

5) I suspect we won't be seeing Arlene Tur's Dr. Juarez for very long--which is a pity, because she is, along with Esther, the only new character worth a damn in this story. I just wish the story didn't portray her as The Doctor With All The Answers at times.

6) Poor, poor Bill Pullman, who is doing his damndest to give the role of Oswald Danes far more depth than it needs, or Davies intended him to have. He's so out of place, trying to give a realistic performance in what is amounting to be a really poor comic book...worse, a comic book written by Brian 'If My HBO Went Out, I'd Have Nothing To Write' Azzarello for the Bill Jemas era 'decompressed' Marvel...

　

7) ..and then to add insult to injury, they saddle him with Lauren Ambrose trying to channel her inner Diane Keaton as a comedy relief public relations specialist? Who's proposing Danes capitalize on his crime in direct opposition to the laws in New York State that expressed forbid felons from doing so? DID ANYONE THINK THIS STORYLINE THROUGH?

8) Davies does know that when your whole story revolves around the human race suddenly losing the capacity for death, it's kind of hard for us to feel suspense over the idea that someone is trying to kill Esther, right? Right?

"Alright...you need to sit down and find that accent of
yours and put it back on...you're annoying everyone."

9) My God, they're actually expecting us to be sympathetic toward Rex...well, they're expecting a lot, because right now--even after he saves Jack's life--I still want to punch him in the face repeatedly with a cestus.

And sadly, he is far from the only character I want to do this to.

10) So basically, when you boil this episode down to its core...it's an hour on an airplane running around looking for ammonia. There's a definite whiff of this being a running in place exercise designed to get the show up to its ten week commitment.

Overall....the things I do for you people....this is going to be a very, very awful story.