Torchwood, season 2

[rm]

Adam

Probably my least favorite episode from season 2 so far.

I hated the Adam character from the very first. He totally had the team chemistry screwed up and wow, the James Spader factor was so not doing it for me.

Overall, I found this episode really problematic. I thought the writing was largely very weak (oh god, the dialogue was so awful in places and I felt like Barrowman was struggling with the clunky speeches) eventhough there were lots of small things in the episode I was moved by.

I loved seeing where Jack was from. It's always nightmarish to portray the future and any portrayal is always going to fall into one of a number of cliches. This was no different, but it was low key enough that I was able to enjoy the emotion of it -- I liked the buildings in the distance and I liked the score for this part of the show.

This was also the first time I felt like we got to see Burn Gorman give an interesting performance, and I really enjoyed his nerd!Owen.

Tosh is hot. Tosh keeps getting a raw deal as the nerd girl. I am unhappy with this.

Okay, Ianto strangling the second girl? Hot. I hate to say that, but I have a breath control thing, and other than the murder part, the look on his face, HOT. Damn.

Ianto's confession and Jack trying to sort that out? Awesome. One of the things I consistently love on this show is people going all alpha to calm folks down and doing it right and having it work. Jack was great with Ianto here, and great with the team (as cheesy as that scene was) when he was trying to get them back to their original memories. As much as I disliked Barrowman's acting on the crappy speeches in the first half of the episode, I enjoyed him massively here, but then he has the knack for pitching his voice just right to make "It will be okay" a statement of absolute certitude and command. It made me sad for what people are so incapable of in real life. This is the intersection of my twisty life and brain with fiction in its most awkward way, but I was moved, in spite of it all.

Ianto, poor Ianto. The "you." Ah. Lovely. Lovely lovely. Also, interesting shot -- everyone else slumps down on the table, but he passes out still leaning back, looking for Jack.

Where does Ianto live? Why was his diary at the hub? What the fuck? And seriously, if his diary's been floating around the hub do you really expect me to believe Jack hasn't read it before then? Also is Ianto just a guy who keeps a diary or is this a habit he got into after joining Torchwood out of some fear of retcon (babe, if they fire you and retcon you, they're gonna burn your diary too if Jack doesn't keep it as a morbid memento/trophy).

Bah.

Comments

[electricalgwen.livejournal.com]

I also thought nerd!Owen was really endearing. Owen in general mostly annoyed me first season, but this season I became inordinately fond of him. He's so geeky, and overly intense and needy, and just a little bit scrawny. <3

I didn't notice the difference in Ianto's posture! Thanks for pointing that out. But I expect Ianto hides his diary extremely well. And if Jack's read it, Ianto probably knows that he has.

[rm.livejournal.com]

The diary has some interesting fic possibilities -- including someone writing the actual diary (which is hugely tempting to me, as a lot of my fanfic projects involve creatng relevant artifacts of the world). Also, reading the diary may be something that Ianto lets Jack do, because it's not like they are good at verbal communication as far as we can tell.

It does strike me as if at the end of Adam, Jack isn't surprised by the diary, so I feel like the existence of the thing has been previously acknowledged between them.