Torchwood Episode 211 Recap: “Adrift”

I really liked this actress and the matter-of-fact, understated way she played these scenes, which IMO, made the character much more believable and sympathetic. It would be all-too-easy with a character like this to be overly histrionic and over-emote everything like a “for your consideration” best actress clip, particularly given some of the borderline-campy lines she’s forced to deliver.

For example, she sniffs her son’s bedroom pillow and talks about how the smell reminds her of him. She also tells Gwen that she’s taken to writing in his diary and imagining what it’s like to be him, and how creepy is that? It’s really a wonder how likeable this actress is, because as written this character is like a Fatal Attraction version of a mom. And I think the apple doesn’t fall far from the creepy tree, because what kind of 15-year-old boy not only keeps a diary but puts a skull and crossbones on the cover?

Nikki mentions that she’s starting a support group and asks if Gwen would like to come. And Gwen, for someone we’re constantly told is all heart and caring and helping people, gives the most feeble, phony claim of “I’ll try.” Then she dashes off.

Gwen and Rhys’ flat. A.k.a. Chez “Gwys.” Now that they’re married, I think it’s time to make “Gwys” official terminology. I like it because it conjures images of the musical Grease as performed by Elmer Fudd.

Gwen rushes in, apologizes to Rhys for being late, leaps across the room to get to a bottle of wine, and starts guzzling it. I think it’s nice that if she’s going to handle marital strife by resorting to alcoholism at least she’s being up front about it, unlike in that Meg Ryan movie where she’s downing vodka from her water bottle during yoga class.

Rhys is annoyed at her for: a) being three hours late; b) blowing off an important talk about babies; and, most seriously, c) not making him dinner. Gwen, clearly already tipsy from the wine, babbles some nonsense and then tells him that Andy still fancies her. Rhys’ reaction — awesomely — is to laugh in her face and call Andy a “poor sod.” I so love Rhys.

Then Gwen makes my skin crawl by putting on this husky voice and getting all “I’m a very sexy lady,” and she unzips her jacket provocatively, which would be much sexier if the jacket weren’t Members Only circa 1984. But it does the trick for Rhys because he’s all “oh ho ho ho,” and they’re off laughing to the bedroom.

Cut to Gwys bedroom antics inexplicably involving toast. Ewww. Why are straight people on TV always so disgusting? Thankfully, before they can move on to whatever they’re planning to do with the jam and margarine, Tosh phones in. She seems to have been working all night at the Hub, while Gwen has been rolling around for hours in bed with Rhys; in other words, they’ve both been busy performing jobs.

Tosh tells Gwen she’s found some new data she’ll want to see right away. The thanks she gets for this is Gwen sighing, “Oh, I’ll be right there,” like it’s a big inconvenience for her, when she’s the one who stuck Tosh with this thankless assignment in the first place. Then she grabs Rhys’ toast and dashes off.

The Hub. Tosh shows Gwen one of those computer screens they always have that vaguely look serious and scientific and are totally meaningless and incomprehensible. This one’s got phallic-like spikes on it that Tosh says show rift activity, pointing at one in particular that’s gone flaccid, something she calls a “negative rift spike” that occurred at the time of Jonah’s disappearance.

Then Tosh says, “We’ve always assumed” that these negative spikes were “residual rift flares, like an aftershock.” Actually she says “we’ve always” several times in this scene, and I had to watch it three times before I realized she was saying “we’ve always” and not “Weevils,” which had me all confused about why she was yammering on so much about Weevils, and when did Weevils get so smart that they’d developed all these theories about the rift.

Tosh: Weevils [sic] believed that things can only come through the rift one way. What if we’re wrong? What if the rift doesn’t just leave stuff behind? What if it also takes?

Gwen asks, “Who else have you told about this?” but she gives the line this “Wow! The Electro!” level of intensity that had me convinced she was going to kill Tosh to keep her secret safe.

Tosh says she didn’t tell anyone because she can’t be sure it isn’t an anomaly unless she can cross-reference flaccid rift activity with dates when other people vanished. Gwen asks her to keep it to herself for now, then pats her shoulder and calls her a sweetheart, oozing condescension like a gropey boss to his tight-sweater-wearing floozie of a secretary.