We open with a long sequence of close-up shots of the Torchmobile, with all this frantic opening and closing of doors, and the car is so focused upon that I start to worry that this show is getting into the product placement game as shamelessly as Top Chef. Like Jack’s going to start saying things like, “Tosh, I’m currently in Weevil pursuit via Newport Road. In my roomy, fuel-efficient Ford Escape Hybrid.”

The four non-Gwen Hubbies get out of the SUV with their gear and walk purposely toward one of Cardiff’s many convenient-for-dramatic-purposes abandoned buildings, looking like some low-budget TV remake of Ghostbusters.

Ianto calls Gwen and leaves a message telling her they’re investigating signs of non-human life and she should get there when she can. I’m guessing they do this kind of thing all the time, “forgetting” to let her know about some new mission until they’re already on it, so they can start their work without having someone nagging them about the aliens’ feelings.

They enter the building and split up, with Jack and Tosh doing the Mr. & Mrs. Smith sexy back-to-back gun-pointing maneuver, and the boys doing the “I’m the alpha male! No I am!” each-going-off-in-his-own-direction thing.

As the four move into different parts of the building to investigate, they realize that it’s too quiet for the aliens to be doing the kinds of things aliens typically do, usually involving slime and/or larvae. That’s because the aliens here aren’t aliens at all but explosive devices, which they all happen upon at the same time.

Seeing the ticking bomb, Owen says, “Snap!” and someone should really have told him that the only person on TV allowed to say that is Joy on My Name Is Earl. And until Owen starts rocking blonde pigtails tied with carnations and ribbons and a belly-baring cut-off T, no “snap” for him.

The devices are relentlessly counting down, and I assume that like in every movie and TV show where anyone other than an expendable extra comes upon a ticking time bomb it will stop at exactly 01 seconds and everyone will let out a big sigh of relief and mop their brows.

So I’m pretty surprised when the counting just continues to 00 and we see the building go BLAMMO! For a second, it makes me wonder if maybe Torchwood is going to clean house the way they did on House, so that next season Jack will have an all-new team, providing us with a whole new range of character inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies to blog and bitch about.

But I remember that nobody can die because this is the much-teased back-story episode (for everybody except for Gwen, since this whole series is her friggin’ back-story) I’ve been eagerly anticipating.

But before we can get to the good back-story part, we first have to get yet another glimpse of Gwen and Rhys in bed, because it just wouldn’t be an episode of Torchwood these days if we didn’t get a reminder of their industrious sex life. From the foot-to-head position they’re lying in, it looks like they’ve spent the night engaged in an act that’s also the favorite number of the main characters in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

Gwen’s phone is beeping with messages from Ianto, and she curses about having slept late, so we can add to her ever-growing list of stellar qualities “habitual tardiness” and “lethargic to the point of comatose.” Seriously, at this point are they even trying to have us like her?