Torchwood Episode 201 Recap: “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”

Before she knows it, Spike creeps up behind her, making her jump in the air like she’s been goosed by a Weevil. Spike says he doesn’t blame her for being so untrusting, given who her boss is, but the lady doth protest that she trusts him fine. Spike insists they don’t know Jack.

They open another container and find the Duracell battery. While Gwen leans down to pick it up, Spike slams her into the wall and plants a slobbery kiss on her. She pushes him off, then collapses on the ground in a quivering heap. He must be one hell of a kisser. Just imagine if he’d used tongue.

Gesturing at his lips, Spike explains to Gwen that he kissed her with “Paralyzing Lip Gloss,” which has rendered her completely immobile; it will also shut down her major organs within two hours.

I’m wondering why, if he spread this stuff all over his lips, he’s not succumbing to the same symptoms. But I find that when these kinds of logical, realistic thoughts crop up while watching this show, it’s best to just cover my ears, go “lalalalalalalala,” and hop on one foot until they go away.

Spike locks her in the container, and throws her cell phone far away. We get an overhead shot of all the containers that makes it look like she’s locked up next to the Ark of the Covenant.

Across town, Owen and Tosh are searching a crowded warehouse for another Duracell battery. Between his quaint Welsh colloquialisms and her techno-babbling, I can’t follow most of this scene.

The gist of it, I think, is that they decide to date each other, further evidence that this show is the Grey’s Anatomy of sci-fi, where we have to go through every possible coupling of main characters, no matter how preposterous or irritating. Tosh and Owen are this season’s “Gizzie.”

Owen finds the Duracell, and then Spike storms in. He head butts Tosh, demands Owen hand over the Duracell, and then storms back out. Oh, he also shoots Owen.

Meanwhile, Jack and Ianto are busily searching the Cardiff branch of Dunder-Mifflin looking for the third Duracell, a project that Jack is a little too enthusiastic about …

Jack: Oh, yeah. Loving that officey feel. I always get excited by these places. To me, they’re exotic. Office romances … photocopying your butt. Well, maybe not your butt. Although as long as we’re here, why don’t we …

But Ianto is having none of it, clearly pissed at Jack over past disses. Jack tries to get Ianto to warm back up to him by saying that the whole time he was gone, he kept thinking about asking him to dinner and a movie.

It’s all very sweet and sexy and basically everything I want for Jack in a romantic storyline. Which makes it even more infuriating that they keep dredging up all that Gwen nonsense, when Ianto is vastly more appealing. I mean, just look at him! He’s got a stylish pink shirt and purple striped tie, while Gwen is running around in a shlumpy oversized T-shirt with terrifying Liza Minnelli clown faces all over it. Anyway, Ianto wonders if this would be a date …

Jack: Interested?
Ianto: As long as it’s not in an office. Some fetishes should be kept to yourself.

Personally, I don’t know if a guy with a thing for cyberwomen should get so uppity about other people’s fetishes, especially as vanilla as this one.