Torchwood Episode 210 Recap: “From Out of the Rain”

Hospital. Jack and Ianto talk with a nurse, who’s accompanying the sucked-dry bodies of the parents and two kids from the car scene earlier. For no reason in particular, Jack says, “They came from out of the rain,” and Nurse Exposition announces she recognizes those words from a patient she once knew at Providence Park Psychiatric Hospital. Ianto intriguingly says he knows of it, and I’m hoping that with all these allusions to Ianto’s past we’ve been getting, we’re building up to some Ianto backstory episode that’s more compelling than Jack’s childhood on Tatooine.

Nurse Exposition says she particularly remembers this patient, Christina, because she was “a strange one,” who used to run away and hide whenever any kind of entertainment came on. I’d say that in a psychiatric hospital, that behavior would count as pretty tame and totally unremarkable. But for expository reasons, it’s crucial that Nurse Exposition remember this patient so she can pass on the next clue for Ianto and Jack that Christina claimed entertainers were trying to “steal her last breath.”

This is such sloppy storytelling it makes me absolutely crazy. There are so many more believable ways Jack and Ianto could have tracked down this earlier witness than some random nurse overhearing Jack and happening to remember all these important details. That sound you hear is my head crashing into the keyboard as I type this.

Psychiatric Hospital. Ianto and Jack wheel an old woman through the grounds who sounds just like Maggie Smith and looks just like Sophia from The Golden Girls. Like all crazy people on TV and in movies, everything she says is astonishingly insightful and uncannily accurate. For example, she tells Jack that his eyes are too old for his face. He wonders if that’s a bad thing, and she says, “Yes. It means you don’t belong. It means you’re from nowhere.” There’s an awkward pause, and it looks to me like Jack’s thinking, “Honey, my eyes might be old, but your hair’s a fright! Get thee to a hair salon.”

Christina tells them she remembers the travelers coming out of the rain when she was a child of five. She particularly remembers Dru and Pirelli, and how he tried to get her to join them. He said his name was “The Ghostmaker,” and then tried to steal her breath in a flask. Christina ran away, but several people went missing that night, including her parents.

Meanwhile, at the town pool, Dru approaches a nearby shed, opens it, and sneaks a peek at the “ghosts” of the sucked-dry victims. This scene takes one line to describe and about four hours to unfold.

Back at the TW Bored Room, Gwen presents records she found of village disappearances decades ago, mentioning that they were accompanied by old wives tales about children having to hold their breath while the traveling show passes by. Say what you will about her policing/leadership abilities, but her Google skills are getting sharper by the week.

Owen’s been busy too, having found a newspaper clipping of a man claiming he could bring his wife back from the dead if he found a flask containing her last breath. From this, Jack deduces the flask is how Pirelli makes his ghosts, and that by getting the flask back, they can save the victims. Why he’s so certain about this is one of about 4,000 things that mystify and irritate me about this episode.

Logan’s warehouse flat/editing room. Logan sees his door has been forced open, and slowly enters his flat, where film has been strewn all over. Hearing water from the bathroom, he enters and finds Dru lying in an overflowing tub. When he gets closer, she suddenly sits up and reaches for him.

He must have been traumatized as a child by the movie Splash because he runs from the room screaming. You’d think most boys would be thrilled to find a half-naked “living mermaid” in the tub; straight boys would think they might get lucky, and gay ones would want to talk mermaid fashion, like is it in fact possible to make a bra from two clamshells.

After Logan leaves, Pirelli tells Dru they have the missing film and can now bring the others over.