Torchwood: Dead Man Walking

Jack: "Forever's overrated."
Owen: "Not from where I'm sitting."

It's a shame that Owen had to die for me to start liking him.

Owen's new and strange condition is a smart, interesting plot twist, similar to Jack's immortality but darker, and a lot less fun. For a sensualist like Owen, a life with no creature comforts has to be a horrible sort of living hell. How will he handle it? Does he have the discipline to keep working at Torchwood with nothing to look forward to, no way of knowing how long his strange existence will last? It would try the temperament of a saint, and Owen is (huge understatement) no saint.

Obviously, in Suzie-related retrospect, Jack shouldn't have used the glove. It was Jack's fault that twelve people died in that hospital, and Owen is pretty much permanently screwed. The little girl told him not to do it. (She was Faith from 500 years ago when the reaper got through before, wasn't she? They didn't say, but they seemed to be pointing in that direction and didn't quite get there.)

The reaper stuff and the weevil messiah didn't work quite as well as the Undead Owen stuff. When the Glove started scuttling around like Thing on the Addams Family, I started to lose it, and I must admit I laughed out loud when it leaped at Martha's face. And Owen literally wrestling with Death was such over the top symbolism.

But the rest of the episode was very strong, and I still enjoyed it a lot. Is Owen going to be forced to continue living, like Jack? That thing about embalming him while he was conscious was exceedingly creepy.

Poor Tosh.

Bits and pieces:

-- Owen is only 27. Was only 27. Is permanently 27?

-- The young woman who tried to pick up Owen in the bar was dressed like an angel. So was every other woman in the bar. Like I said, over the top symbolism. Along with resurrecting Owen with something Jack found in a church.

-- I specifically liked the shots of half of Owen's face and half empty space, a deliberate visual call-back to "They Keep Killing Suzie."

-- I don't usually nitpick, but I could see the pulse in Burn Gorman's throat throbbing during the autopsy scene in the opener.

-- How could they track the number of victims in that huge hospital with people running about for the exits, especially with some of them hidden under beds? That felt way too contrived, and I just didn't believe it.

-- What did weevils have to do with a reaper? How did Jack get out of St. Mary's without getting chomped? (Okay, bloody shirt, maybe he did get chomped.) I have officially had enough weevils to last me a lifetime. Enough, already.

-- Jack told Owen that he doesn't bother to invent impressive stuff about his past any more. I doubt that somehow.

Quotes:

Jack: "Look! I'm not using the glove!"
Owen: "But I'm still here."
Ianto: "Here we go again."

Owen: "Is it still necrophilia if I'm conscious?"
Loved that one.

Owen: "I'm a headless chicken. I just haven't stopped running around yet."

Jack: "That is the single most disgusting thing I have ever seen." A new take on projective vomiting. Gag.

Owen: "I'm going to miss farting. And sex."
Jack: "Sex more than farting, I hope."

Jack: "'Only in suffering do we recognize beauty.'"
Owen: "Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! Who said that?"
Jack: "Proust."
Owen: "You've read Proust?"
Jack: "Yeah. Well, no. We dated for awhile. He was really immature."
I've read Proust. In the original French, even. I hated Proust.

Tosh: "Are we seriously going to act on something she's googled?"

Owen: "I can't sleep. I can't drink. And I can't shag. And they are three of my favorite things." Well, and farting.

Ianto: "I have searched for the phrase 'I shall walk the Earth and my hunger will know no bounds,' but I keep getting redirected to Weight Watchers."

Three stars,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

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