Torchwood: Out of Time

The baristas at Barnes & Noble were exceptionally nasty today, so now I’m annoyed and need to rip into something. Too bad it has to be Torchwood, but after last week’s episode, Torchwood has it coming.

How can this show go from awesome to lame and back to awesome so often? I’m getting dizzy from its lack of consistency.

Last week, we got an annoying voice over (is there any other kind?) from a dead kid obsessed with an alien eye given to him by a teacher. Not only did we get all of his affection for the eye, we got his idiot friends yapping about what a loser the kid was, we got the kid’s self-loathing about his dad leaving, and we got Gwen bloody Cooper trying to do detective work.

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You know, I thought the age of the rude barista would have passed by now with the likes of heavy black eyeliner, Chanel Vamp lipstick knock-offs, and Doc Martens. Now their makeup isn’t as bad, but they’re just as irritatingly pretentious.

Stop sneering at me and make me a toasted marshmallow mocha and make it skinny! No, I don’t want whip. No, I’m not a member of whatever faux discount thing this store has.

I do, however, have very low blood sugar and caffeine withdrawals right now.

Where was I? Oh yeah. That episode, “Random Shoes”, sucked. Note to Torchwood people: don’t take the focus off the Torchwood crew. Nothing else is as interesting as they are, and that includes reassuring all nerdy British children that it’s not their fault if daddy leaves mommy.

This week’s episode was much better even though nothing really happened. A small passenger airplane took off in 1953, stumbled through a time rift and wound up in 2007. Torchwood had to reintegrate them into society and, along the way, different crew members became attached.

Captain Jack Hot Pants connected with the man of the group, John, but not in the Ianto and his stopwatch sort of way. Like John, Jack is a man out of his time, not totally comfortable with his present and hesitant about forging relationships with the people around him.

John, unable to move past the fact that his wife was dead and his now elderly son suffered from Alzheimer’s chose not to go on and committed suicide with Jack holding his hand.

Gwen got close to Emma who, at 18 years old, hadn’t really become her own person. Had she stayed in 1953, she probably never would have – Emma’s reaction when she learned she could never go back was, “I have to find a husband.”

Emma was the only one who successfully integrated, taking off for London to work as a shopgirl. I think she saw that she had opportunities and options in 2007 that she never would have had in 1953.

Owen was completely disarmed by Diane, the lady pilot, and fell in love, only to have her fly off in search of another adventure.

That whole episode could have been just about the misplaced passengers trying to fit in and coming to the same conclusions, but without addressing how it all affected the Torchwood crew, it wouldn’t have worked as well.

Torchwood seems to be switching from good to lousy every other week. Since this week’s episode was good, I’m expecting next week’s to be bad.

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