Torchwood Episode 2×09 – “Something Borrowed”
Episode grade: D
Previously, on Torchwood: Gwen agreed to marry Rhys because quote “No one else will have me”. They play that scene back to us at the start, because I guess they want to be sure we remember that this wedding is a terrible, terrible idea. I really didn’t need the reminder, but thanks anyway!
A subtitle tells us it’s Friday night. We’re in a nightclub with garish disco lights flashing everywhere and Scissors Sisters playing. A bunch of women in uniform red T-shirts and fluffy pink cowboy hats dance around drunkenly. “It’s the service she’s meant to be late for, not her hen do!” one of them announces. Gwen arrives soon after this, and they all sing some dirty version of “Here Comes The Bride” including a line about ‘taking it up the aisle’. Yep. Gwen excuses her lateness with work-related shit, of course.
…And we jump back to two hours earlier, to see Gwen heading into a public toilet with her gun out. Owen radios to warn her to be careful, because “this thing eats people.” Gwen kicks in the doors of some empty cubicles, and then a plump bearded chap walks out of one of them and looks freaked by her gun. She apologises and tells him the go on his way, but he decides instead to bare his sharp, pointy teeth and red eyes and lunge at her. Well, that was a really dumb move on both of their parts. Gwen fires a few shots, and Teeth flees, and comes out onto the street looking like a totally different person. Gwen radios to tell Jack that they’re dealing with a shapeshifter here, and that whatever he looks like now, he’s leaving a trail of black blood as he goes. She chases.
At the hen party, Gwen asks if there’s any food tonight, or if they’re all planning to subsist on alcohol alone. While eating a bag of crisps. Not the shapest knife in the drawer, that one. Then there’s a stripper dressed as a policeman, who just says “Gwen Cooper, you’re nicked,” and immediately rips off his shirt and trousers. Now, I’m no expert on the subject, but isn’t a strip show supposed to have some element of ‘show’ to it? Not just “Here’s what I look like in a thong, that’ll be fifty quid, thanks”?
Two hours earlier, Teeth leaps out of a bush and tackles Gwen to the ground, and she struggles to fight him off.
Hen night. In the bathroom, two of Gwen’s friends agree that Gwen is gorgeous, and Rhys is lucky to have her. They ask Gwen what she’s done to her arm, which has a huge freakin’ bandage wrapped around it.
Two hours ago, Teeth bites her arm. Gwen pushes him off and holds her arm, crying in pain, and Jack appears to pump him full of lead.
“It’s just a scratch,” Gwen says. That is some seriously hefty bandaging for “just a scratch”.
April 9, 2009 at 10:30 am
I think that it is a very interesting and amusing article. Practically all its main points are true.