Quick Take: Torchwood, "Miracle Day: Escape to L.A."
What's behind the curtain?
Review: Torchwood, "Miracle Day: Escape to L.A."
(S0404) What is PhyCore, really? Who’s at the top of this omnipresent company? To whom do they report? Where does the science behind the Miracle come from? How did it get to present day earth? All of these questions were raised more forcefully than ever in the fourth of this season's ten installments of Torchwood and despite one hell of a ride, not one question was answered.
In place of answers, we were treated to yet another micro-adventure with Jack, Gwen, Rex, and Esther at its center, some well-acted, but poorly-placed family drama, and the sense that every hand in Oz is pointing us directly at the curtain, but not letting us see what’s on the other side. That same curtain permeates every aspect of the plot, more this week than ever before, with Oswald and Jilly, still on the east coast, themselves questioning whom they serve and to what ultimate future their actions are leading them.
The show’s portrayal of the media serves as a perfect metaphor for our experience as viewers, our attention all too easily distracted by the extravagant surface drama, the real machinery of society beyond the curtain, unobserved and unobstructed. While all the attention is on Oswald Danes and his brief rival, Senator Monroe, PhyCore’s proceeds as planned, the undead being horded in Overflow Camps for who-knows-what, PhyCore's rivals being eliminated one-by-one.
A lot of criticism directed at the show this season revolves around a singular argument that nothing’s happening. And you know, in a sense they’re right. Our heroes are racing all over the place for scraps of knowledge, living in hovels to hide from the seemingly endless series of bounty hunters, while the utterly impersonal public changes its opinion of a rapist, a miracle, and the position of humanity in the cosmos. To a viewer used to stories with beginnings, middles, and ends, this art-imitates-life crap must seem utterly dull.
But that the writers have managed to build a world for us, so interesting that to focus any less on it would be a disappointment and so complex that every episode can explore a different aspect of the unfolding drama without repetition... that’s truly amazing. The ability to weave so many different plot threads may seem too ethereal for our week-to-week viewing, but I imagine on second viewing, in a single afternoon divided by minutes rather than days, the consistency and integrity of the show will prove to be much greater than a lot of shows that seem to have better weekly episodes. If you remember, Children of Earth aired in five consecutive nights. If this season were presented differently, you can bet there would be far less “nothing happened” criticism and far more of the excitement most of us feel after each of these episodes.
I’d like to end this week’s review with the cryptic words of our mysterious villains. If there’s anything that will give us a clue of what’s behind the curtain, this is it:
We are everywhere.
We are always.
We are no one.
And soon the families will rise.
