Sunday 7 August 2011

TV Snark - Torchwood Miracle Day Episode Four


Welcome to the fourth episode, grab a cup of tea and read about all the stuff that happened.

We begin with Esther Drummond paying a visit to her crazy sister. Her sister has boarded up her house and refuses to let Esther in. There's a lot of crying and emotions and ACTING. I think you could make up a drinking game based on how many times Esther cries over the series. Esther is worried about her sister's children and thinks they may be in danger so she calls social services. I'm sure that will go well. Little does Esther know, a mysterious man in sunglasses has followed her and he works for the EVIL CONSPIRACY. The conspiracy uses a rotating triangle as its evil symbol, it reminds me of Chocky.


For the record, I used to be scared of those opening titles. Freaky stuff.

The Torchwood team arrive in Venice Beach, California. I hope they become lifeguards. Oh yeah, Torchwood DROVE to California from Washington DC. That would take, how long? A few days, almost a week? It must have been a great team bonding exercise as the crew get out of the car and are still talking to each other.

Meanwhile, Dr Juarez (along with the think tank) is taken to an abandoned hospital. It's going to be reopened as a facility to dump undying patients. I guess that would make it a hospice but a bad one because it's to hide unsightly dying people from everyone else. Let's call it a Wellness Camp.

The Torchwood team rent an apartment by the sea that looks perfectly fine and has a fairground unicorn in it. I don't know why it's there, it's from a carousel. It's one of those things I noticed and couldn't concentrate on anything else. I wonder what it's there for? How did it get there? Well, if the padding in this episode is anything to go by, maybe there'll be a special fairground unicorn episode.



Sorry, I got distracted there. It's revealed that the man who followed Esther to her sister's house has now followed Torchwood to LA. There's also a throwaway line about Jilly Kitzinger being freelance and not actually employed by PhiCorp so there's an out for her character, which will probably lead to her being recruited by Torchwood. Gwen also phones Rhys and tells him to collect her dad from hospital as she doesn't want him to stay somewhere safe and receive medical care.

We then cut to Oswald Danes who is hanging around in his hotel room like Alan Partridge in his Travel Tavern room. He even has Jilly show up as his PA like Alan's Lynn.


Jilly makes it clear that she doesn't like working with Danes as he's a child murderer (further reinforcing her redeemable qualities). Danes learns that there's a rival evangelist on the scene, Ellis Hartley Monroe. She thinks "Dead is Dead" and believes that people who should have died should stop being treated as living beings. Monroe thinks the 'dead' should be gathered up and placed someplace they can wait to die. That's a horrible position to take but still, she's not a paedophile.

We then have DRAMA as Rex visits his deadbeat dad. Rex steals some painkillers from him and then there's lots of shouting and DRAMA. If you've seen 30 Rock then it's just like Tracy Jordan's sad film about the ghetto.


The Torchwood team then plan a break-in of PhiCorp's LA office. The team plan to sneak in and steal some of PhiCorp's computers and replace them with their own so they won't know they're stolen (apart from when they try and use them and they don't work).

Jack and Gwen need to grab some biometrics from one of the PhiCorp employees, Nicholas Frumpkin. Jack and Gwen go to the park disguised as an American couple (complete with Gwen's bad US accent) and take a photo and voice grab of Frumpkin. It's like Sneakers but not good.

Back at the plague pit (or reopened hospital for the terminally undying), things are generally awful. There are old people and babies in there! And there's nothing apparently wrong with them! The horror! Monroe arrives and begins to talk to the assembled media about stinky undying people. Danes arrives too and decides to upstage Monroe by striding into the hospital and deciding to side himself with the undying. Danes gives an uplifting speech to the terminally stupid people in hospital who then decide to let Danes hug a baby. Uh oh. Danes says the baby will live forever and ever and ever and EVER. Yeah, that's creepy.

Monroe leaves in a strop and steps into her limo where she is promptly drugged unconscious by the EVIL CONSPIRACY. In LA the man who followed Esther and Torchwood there attacks Nicholas Frumpkin for his biometrics and takes one of his eyes. Because he's evil.

The Torchwood team go on their mission to PhiCorp but before they begin Esther calls social services and finds out that her sister's children have been taken into care. She's shocked that her sister has been sent to a psychiatric ward too. Well Esther, that's what happens when you report someone for being a mentalist.

Gwen and Jack enter the building, Gwen enters as a sales training business woman and Jack enters as a paper shredder delivery guy. Esther is crying during the mission, take a shot. Jack sets off the fire alarm so that everyone has to leave the building, they then break into the super secret server room using the biometric data they stole.

Rex is bored as he's not allowed to go on the mission. He fills his time by asking Esther what's wrong with her eyes as they're leaking. Esther reveals that her sister was sectioned and Rex gets even more frustrated with everyone around him being incompetent. Rex realises that Esther could have been followed, and indeed they have as the mysterious man arrives and beats and restrains Jack and Gwen. Rex now has to run up several flights of stairs to rescue them, which is a tough task for a man with a perforated heart.

Luckily for Rex the mysterious man likes to talk and blabs for a long time. He wants to find out something from Jack's mysterious past ("What did you give them so long ago?"). Jack refuses to tell him and just as the mysterious man is about to shoot Gwen and tell Jack the name of the EVIL CONSPIRACY, Rex bursts through the door and shoots the guy in the throat. Jack and Gwen are not grateful for the rescue.

Meanwhile Monroe is dropped into a car crusher by the EVIL CONSPIRACY (wasting a perfectly good vehicle in the process). It seems there's not enough room in the media for Monroe in the face of Danes' creepy platform of tolerance.

Back in LA Gwen gets a call from Rhys and finds out that her dad has been taken away by the government and placed in an Overflow Camp. Rhys is in trouble with the missus now.



NEXT EPISODE: Gwen's home movies! Yes, just like in the last series.

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