Torchwood Episode 211 Recap: “Adrift”

Cut to Rhys serving up a lovely picnic lunch to Gwen, who’s still sulking. She tells Rhys to stop “twittering,” and he gets annoyed about how she never wants to have the baby talk.

Gwen barks that there’s never going to be a baby, since, other than the occasional Nostrovite-sired monstrosity, she can’t possibly get pregnant and have children with the demands of her job. Which is something it might have been nice to discuss before they went ahead and got married. As someone who’s been in a committed relationship for 14 years but legally not able to marry, it makes me absolutely crazy to hear about idiotic straight folk jumping into marriages they clearly haven’t thought through.

So Rhys charmingly tells Gwen that sometimes he hates her. And then he lectures her on how her job is all about protecting people’s right to go about living their lives, and that if she thinks her work crap is more important than their own lives then they’re not going to last long together. Great. They’ve been married a week and they’re already contemplating divorce.

Gwen tries to apologize, saying something’s come up at work. And Rhys cuts her off saying, “You’ve got a problem at work, you sort it at work.” As much as I’d like to side with him on this, that’s pretty unfair. Part of being a partner is listening to the other person bitching about their job. The good part is that you get to bitch about yours right back at them and they have to listen and pretend to care. It’s nice.

The Hub. Gwen lets herself in, and the entrance strangely has this big metal gate up over it, like it’s a Quickie Mart in a particularly crime-ridden neighborhood.

Gwen walks through the Hub calling for Jack, and walks right in on the scene that everybody’s already had ruined for them through countless spoiler postings. Showing more restraint and will power than I do about most things, I’d managed to keep myself from watching the YouTube clip of this scene before now, so it was still a pleasant sight for me to see Gwen interruptus a shirtless Jack and Ianto on the verge of coitus.

Of course, I’d have been happier if we got to see them closer to the full monty than having office furniture, lighting, and plants discretely hiding their nether regions. And it might have been nice to see them in bed together the way we always seem to see Rhys and Gwen. But at this point, I’ll take any man-on-man action I can get in primetime that doesn’t involve Jimmy Kimmel.

Based on what I’d heard about this scene beforehand, I’d been expecting a kind of Torchwood replay of the movie Making Love, with Gwen in the wifely role of Kate Jackson, a woman so shocked by her husband’s gaiety she has to smash a perfectly good platter in frustration. Which always surprised me because I thought if anything she should take pride in the fact her husband’s capable of bagging a hottie like Harry Hamlin.

Gwen, on the other hand, handles this moment pretty decently, apologizing and hightailing it out of the room. She chuckles to herself, and I wonder if her laughter at the sight of a naked Jack and Ianto confirms what her harpy friends had claimed about Rhys’ rather impressive male endowment.

Ianto comes out pulling on his clothes, and she apologizes to him, saying she wouldn’t have come in if she’d known. Ianto, clearly embarrassed, blurts out, “It doesn’t matter.” I really like how the show has been hinting at a kind of friendship building between Ianto and Gwen. It’s what I’d like to think would have happened between Kate Jackson and Harry Hamlin if they’d ever gotten around to filming Making Love II: Sloppy Seconds. I also take their lack of animosity as a sign of just how officially over Gwack is.

Another sign is that Jack seems pretty pissed at her for having ruined his chances for Ianto nookie, which is evident in his tone and demeanor when he comes out belting up his pants (a-ha!) …

Jack: There’s always room for one more. We could have used you an hour ago for naked hide and seek.
Ianto: He cheats. He always cheats.

I don’t know which notion sparked the dirtier fantasies in my mind — imagining just what sorts of things they’re hiding and seeking while naked, or the various ways Jack might be cheating at it.