Hey, Scavenger Thing

Torchwood Episode 1x01 - "Everything Changes"

Episode Grade: A-


Oh look, hexagons again. In a T shape. Cast names appear one at a time, one beneath the other, in the exact same font as Lost's total lack of opening credits. And the theme tune, obviously, cannot even remotely compare to that of its parent program.

And lo, it is begun. Aerial view of Cardiff at night. Zoom down to some dead guy. Forensics-y people mill around. A little further away, non-forensic-y police people also mill around, drinking coffee. Focus to one of them in particular, and screw it, I'm not going to pretend not to know anyone's names this time; this is P.C. Gwen Cooper, and she'll be playing the part of Rose this evening, essentially. She shares some idle chit-chat with another cop for a while, which would probably be pretty uninteresting, but this show's just started, so I can still be going "Ooh, the Welsh accents!" and it doesn't really matter what they're saying yet. Give it time. Anyway, they bring a halt to this palaver when some sort of hoo-hah appears to be beginning among the forensics guys. They've been sent orders from on high! To pull back! And grant special access! But to whom? Why, Torchwood, of course. And here they come now, with their black van and black leather jackets and general black theme. "Who's Torchwood?" Gwen asks a random forensincs guy; "Special ops or something." Gwen's worried that they'll contaminate the body or somesuch, forensics guy, after stealing Gwen's coffee, complains that there's no procedure any more and tests out this adult timeslot thang by dropping in a "fucking disgrace", which wasn't really all that gratuitous, I guess. More on that theme later. Gwen looks confused at Torchwood for a while, then goes running up some stairs to spy on them from above.

Now, there could be some people watching who never saw Captain Jack on Doctor Who, so let's get him in a speech as quick as possible to add them to the ranks of gushing fangirls. It's raining and Jack can taste the estrogen on it from all the contraceptives people flush into the water supply. You can taste the estrogen on me any time, Jack, cry the fangirls. Giggle. He also drops in an "I love this planet" to tell/remind us he's not from around here. And a "Still, at least I won't get pregnant. Never doing that again." as if there weren't enough of those fanfics already. Swoon. What a guy! Now, that that's over with, the less important members of the cast might get to speak, so allow me to introduce them. There's Suzie, wearing the Glove of Myneghon, we'll see a lot more about that later. There's Owen, who has an annoying Mockney accent, and is an annoying dick. And there's Toshiko, who... well, I've watched both of these episodes, and frankly I don't have a clue. So, Suzie's having a little trouble getting the glove to work, Owen is complaining because he's a dick, Tosh is doing and saying nothing, because that's her thing. Suzie gets the glove working, and rests the dead guy's head on it, while the lights they've set up around him flare up, and the soundtrack plays the Lost cliffhanger noise. There's a jolt, and the dead guy wakes up, breathing heavily, babbling incoherently. Tosh tells him they only have two minutes, it's important that he listens, and that he's dead. She tries to find out whether he saw who stabbed him, but he's a little hung up on the whole dead thing. Eventually she gets it out of him that he didn't see anything, what with having been stabbed from behind, and then she can't think of what else to ask, so clearly she's no hardened expert at this. Jack takes over, introduces himself, and asks what the guy saw when he died. He gets a little intense about it, obviously thinking of his own death experience, but all dead John can tell him is "I saw nothing, oh my God, there's nothing!" Jack looks saddened by this. Owen complains some more, "I said it was stupid telling him he was dead." Knowing what the actual point of this thing was, I can't see that that matters, so shut up, Owen. Jack points out that the last guy wasted the whole two minutes screaming for an ambulance when they told him he was injured. "Maybe there's no right way of doing it," he says, then shouts up to Gwen "What do you think?" She jumps back, startled, and runs.

Sweep around more aerial views of night time Cardiff in scene transition, and, like much of the show, it's all very Angel. Gwen arrives home. Her boyfriend, Rhys, who is of the sweet but dull type that will undoubtedly end up either dying or leaving her by the end of the season, probably very soon after finding out about all the alien stuff. Just you wait. She's surprised to find him still up, and they have a highly inconsequential conversation, then she goes up to bed. Ooh, Welsh accents. It's losing its charm already. Gwen lies in bed, eyes open. Because Captain Jack is so hot he CAUSES INSOMNIA! Probably.

Next day. You know, I've written 15 recaps thus far, not including this one. I wonder how many paragraphs I've started with "next day"? I'll bet it's a lot. I'm not going to stop, you understand, just making an observation. Gwen arrives at work, asks a colleague to do a search on "Captain Jack Harkness" for her. See, she's totally forgotten the other three were there! That's how hot Captain Jack is. Of course, it might be because none of them mentioned their names at any point, but I doubt it. Colleague complains that she's already swamped, there a proper channels, blah de blah, but she'll do it anyway. Gwen thanks her and goes upstairs.

Where Detective Chief Inspector I Don't Really Know All That Much About The Inner Workings Of The Police Department So I Pretty Much Just Assigned This Guy The Title Of Detective Chief Inspector At Random is reporting what they know of the local serial killer so far; three murdered, all with a blade approx. eight inches long, three inches deep, and that's the only link between the victims. Someone mentions that the two women were stabbed from the front, but John Tucker was stabbed from behind, and asks what this tells them about the murderer, Dectective Chief Inspector I'm Not Typing Out That Ridiculously Long Name Again, I Mean Come On replies "That he's a coward." Because he only stabs women from the front? Wuh-huh?

Gwen gets out of her patrol car, asks her partner what Torchwood is. He parrots "Dunno. Special Ops." Gwen asks what that actually means, he goes on a rant about how they're probably DNA specialists, because everything is about DNA these days, "like that CSI bollocks", blah blah Welsh nationalism yadda yadda. They enter a pub where a bar brawl is in full swing, "We Are The Pipettes" playing loudly on the jukebox, following the "crazy loud pop music as horrible things happen is always genius" rule, though this isn't that horrible, and the music's not playing that loudly, so it's a mild example. In the ensuing scuffle, Gwen gets pushed pack and hits her head on a pillar.

Hospital. Gwen gets her head stitched up, and on leaving the room, spots a black coat running up the stairs, so, of course, there's a long scene of her in pursuit. Nice to see they're sticking to their roots a little. When she eventually reaches the top, there's no black coat to be seen, and a covered doorway with yellow and black tape telling no one to go through is the only exit. Sounds like a case for Jonathan Creek if ever there was one. Gwen finds a porter wandering, and asks him what is the dealio with the sealed doorway, only she doesn't ask it in such a profoundly stupid manner. He's surprised she doesn't know, given her police uniform; he figured they put it there. He just came in this morning and discovered it sealed off, no one told him what for.

So, Gwen decides to investigate matters herself. It's pretty evident that she's never heard the one about feline curiosity. She wanders into the sealed area and calls "Hello?" And out creeps... well, it looks a whole lot like a Buffy vampire, but a really old one, like The Master, or Kakistos or a Turok-Han. So, I'm going to call him Noodles. Don't ask. Gwen asks if he saw a tall man come through in "one of those big sort of military coats". Noodles just stares at her and growls a little, so Gwen gets all "this is official business", so answer the damn question, PUNK. Noodles continues to stare and growl, and is looking about to jump on Gwen when the porter comes through the doorway. He walks the full length of the hallway without once taking a breath, babbling far too quickly for me to take any of it in, but I don't think it's important. He reaches Gwen and takes in Noodles, and starts going off on how great his 'mask' is, when he gets to "just like real teeth, look at that!", Noodles goes for the jugular. Dude's like crazy quick, yo. Also, he's a much messier eater than any of those civilised Buffy vampires, there's blood going everywhere! Man, I'd hate to be the guy who had to clean that up. Wait, he just got eaten. Wait, that really doesn't do anything to change my point. The Torchwood guys suddenly come bursting out of the woodwork (not literally), Captain Jack rushes Gwen out of there while the others deal with Noodles.

Gwen follows his lead with gusto, running downstairs, then she slowmos her way out of the hospital looking suspiciously at all the patients and doctors, then clutches her knees outside and catches her breath. She spots Torchwood's black van speeding away, which was remarkably quick of them, and gets into her patrol car to go in pursuit, leaving her partner to stand on the pavement clutching his sandwich and shouting "Oi!" Long range aerial view of the car chase, and Gwen reports the Torchwood van's number plate back to base, where her colleague's done a search on Captain Jack Harkness; the only one on record is American, and disappeared off the face of the Earth in 1941. So that couldn't possibly be the guy! Torchwood van parks outside the Cardiff... Centre Of... Big Shiny Building. So, I don't know things. Sue me. Gwen does likewise, and shouts at them to stop. She's momentarily distracted by a security guy telling her she can't park there. She irritantly dismisses him with a "Police", he is hilariously all "I can see that, you still can't park there", and this brief loss of concentration is enough for Torchwood to slip out of her grasp, they've totally vanished. She gets back into her car, dejected, and her mood doesn't improve when she gets a call to tell her that the number plate she gave them does not, in fact, exist. Neither does it do so when her annoyed partner gets into the passenger seat and tells her "I have walked. I have bloody walked."

Outside the Big Shiny Building again, Gwen's trying to explain to her partner about Torchwood's disappearing act, that's getting nowhere, so she moves onto the porter that got attacked by Noodles, but apparently all hospital staff are totally present and correct, so that's not getting her much either. Partner pretty much just thinks she's going crazy, and offers to drive her home. Security camera watches them walk to the car.

Gwen arrives home, where Rhys is cooking dinner for her. Isn't he sweet! This relationship has no chance, dude. Sorry about that. Gwen apologises to him, because she has to work tonight. He protests "You should be off sick!" I assume because of the head stitches, not the going crazy. But anyway, he forgives her.

And then it turns out it was all a cunning ruse; she's not working at all, she's trying to find Torchwood! She goes back to the Big Shiny Building, where the security camera spies on her again as she watches a pizza guy riding by on his motorbike, which gives her an idea. She goes to the pizza place and asks the guy if anyone has ordered pizza in the name of "Captain Jack Harkness". Now, honestly, what kind of tosspot is going to tell people their rank when ORDERING PIZZA, Gwen? But there's no results for "J. Harkness", or just "Harkness" either, so Gwen decides to give up on this lead. Only, just as she's leaving, she decides she might as well try "Torchwood" too, and it turns out they're regular customers.

And so she walks back to the Big Shiny Building, carrying a couple of pizzas. She's greeted by a friendly chap in a suit, who would be Ianto, the stay on base guy, and thus far he's had even less screen presence than Tosh. She tells him the pizza is for a "Mr. Harkness" , he smirks a little when she looks away, and presses a button that reveals a secret passage in the wall. And, with some hesitation, she walks in, through the long tunnel with the flickering lights, and into Torchwood HQ. There's a big electrical gate, lots of flashing lights, and a hand in a jar. Which, I'll get into it in the recap of the next episode, since that's when it's more than just a background thing, but man, I don't know why it took me so long to figure out what was up with that. Suzie's doing some welding, and she's got a couple of computer screens behind her with blue stuff going on. Captain Jack walks forbodingly along the walkway above, down the stairs, and sits down at his desk, paying no attention to Gwen. Owen and Toshiko look at their screens and do the same. Gwen, looking extremely apprehensive, starts to walk slowly towards Jack, at which point Tosh can no longer contain her laughter, and Owen soon joins her. "I'm sorry!" he cries, "I can't do this! I'm rubbish, I give up!" Tosh claims that he started her off. Owen wonders at the fact that she brought pizza, Jack tells him "Come on! She was gonna say 'here's your pizza', and then I was gonna say 'how much?' and she says ooh, whatever '20 quid', and I say 'I don't have any money'... I was working on a punchline, hadn't quite got there, but it would have been funny." It's all pretty hilarious.
Gwen's like "I think I'd better go," Jack tells her there well beyond that, Gwen is surprised to learn they've been watching her whole journey here, Jack adds "before we go any further, who the hell orders pizza under the name of 'Torchwood'?" Hah! Owen embarrassedly owns up to it. Gwen asks about the porter that Noodles attacked, Jack tells her he's dead. Gwen is confused; "there's no one gone missing", Tosh explains how they changed around work schedules and planted a flase witness and the like so no one will suspect the truth when his body gets pulled out at the docks a few days later. Gwen's a little hung up on this whole covering up murder business, Tosh shrugs "It's my job". Gwen asks about John Tucker, the dead guy she saw them talking to the other night, Jack smiles and asks what exactly it is she saw. "You revived him." Jack tells her no. "You resuscitated him." No. "You brought him back to life." Bingo! That is some serious hair-splitting. You should try out this recapping gig, Captain Jack. Gwen asks what Torchwood actually is, Jack just tells her "This is Torchwood", and gestures around the room. Gwen's hit by some sudden paranoia, and reminds him that she's police, so "you can't do anything". Like, say, alter work schedules, plant false witnesses, have your body turn up at the docks a few days later? Right. Jack's slightly amused, and decides to take her to see Noodles. Gwen, once again, has much trepidation so she just stands there until Suzie tells her to follow Jack.

As she does so, she tries to get a better answer out of him than "This is Torchwood", but is rather distracted when she notices a pterodactyl swooping around high above. And, yes, it did sing. In a manner of speaking. Jack continues to be evasive, and leads her to the glass cage, where Noodles is skulking around, and also sporting a pretty nifty leather jacket. Dude's got style. Jack exposits some about Noodles and his species; they call them Weevils, there's a couple of hundred of them living in the sewers, but every so often one of them goes rogue, comes to the surface and starts attacking humans. And apparently the Hellmou... sorry, Rift is exerting its infleunce, because that's starting to happen more often. He also tells her it's alien, and gives a stool to sit on and some staring time to let this sink in.

Back in the main room, Jack introduces Gwen to everyone, but we've got that done already, so I'll skip it. GWen still rather overwhelmed by it all, so, right now, she's really not doing too well in the test. Which, of course, has been going on since the start of the episode. Don't worry, she'll get there eventually. Right now, she's back to the paranoia, because she shouldn't know this, it's classified ("Way beyond classified," Jack helpfully corrects. Whatever that means.), so clearly they're going to do something horrible to her. So, turns out the horrible thing that's going to happen to her is... Jack taking her out for drinks. Now, I'm no squealing fangirl, but that's not very horrible at all, really, is it? But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Gwen comments that she's getting tired of following Jack, he let's out some of his flair that's been amazingly restrained thus far; "No you're not. And you never will." Squee and all that, I suppose. They step onto a paving slab, which lifts them up to the street outside and slots in leaving no sign of anything suspicious. Gwen wonders how come people don't see it there, Jack explains about its Somebody Else's Problem field. He calls it a "perception filter", but it's the exact same thing. Gwen asks how it works; Jack doesn't know, just that it does, though he can hazard a good technobabble. Gwen also points out that when the lift's coming up, "there's a bloody big hole in the floor", so don't people fall in? Jack rolls his eyes, "That is so Welsh. I show you something fantastic, you find fault." Gwen gives a funny little outraged look at him, then back at the lift, and Jack moves on to the next leg of the journey.

Which would be the drinks I mentioned earlier. Gwen's chugging her beer at a rather rapid speed, maybe to try to help her take all this in, maybe just because she's Welsh. She's about to go off on more questioning, but Jack interrupts her to complain about how people still can't accept the truth of extraterrestrial life; apparently Doomsday and The Christmas Invasion are being written off as mass hallucinations caused by hallucinogenic drugs in the water supply. That's... incredibly ridiculous, but hey, I watched Buffy for years. You learn to live with this stuff. Speaking of, Jack and Gwen have an extremely Whedonesque conversation here:

Gwen: So, you catch aliens?
Jack: Yes.
Gwen: You catch aliens for a living.
Jack: Yes, we do.
Gwen: You're an alien catcher.
Jack: Yes, I am.
Gwen: Caught any good aliens?

The topic of conversation, as it so often does, turns to Captain Jack Harkness himself; Gwen tells him she did a search, and the only Captain Jack Harkness on record disappeared in 1941. Jack gets all cute with a "Well, that couldn't be me. ...Could it?" Gwen doesn't know what to say to this, so Jack fills up the impending awkward silence with some exposition; "We don't just catch aliens, we scavenge the stuff they leave behind, find ways to use it, arming the human race for the future. The 21st century is when it all changes." And, furthermore, Torchwood stays separate from the governement, because if this stuff fell into the wrong hands, it could be used for evil! Gwen's worried about how she can be sure that Torchwood aren't the wrong hands themselves, Jack tells her that all alien technology stays on the base, no one can take anything outside.

Cue, of course, a montage of Torchwood members at home, with alien technology they've taken off the base; Tosh has what appears to be a belt buckle for a Transformer, Owen has some kind of glowy perfume, Suzie has the Glove.

Gwen asks how the hell exactly Torchwood ended up in Cardiff; they're Torchwood 3, Torchwood 1 was the one in London, destroyed on Doomsday, Torchwood 2 is a strange man in an office in Glasgow. Oh, and there's the Rift, of course. Gwen tries to get more personal dirt on Jack; "Where are you from?", he just tells her "Oh, lots of places" which means nothing at all, of course. Gwen suggests that she could be Torchwood's liason with the police, Jack corrects her misconception; they weren't talking to John Tucker to solve the crime, they were testing the Glove. "We need murder victims, simple as that. The Glove only works on the recently deceased, and the more violent the trauma, the stronger the resurrection." That is some pretty excellent foreshadowing, really. Kudos. Gwen's a little angry that he doesn't care about how useful this could be to the police, Jack decides it's high time to bring up an old topic of conversation; drugs in the water supply. Like, say, the amnesia pills he slipped in her drink? "With a touch of denial, and a dash of retcon." Ha, retcon. Cute. When she wakes up in the morning, Gwen will have forgotten everything. Gwen, get youself some caffeine, stat! But man, Jack prepared for that too; there's sedative mixed in there too. So, everything up to here was practice. The test begins now.

We'll take a look at how she does in a second, but first, let's get back to the other Torchwood guys for some extremely cursory character development. Owen's at a bar, sees a girl who takes his fancy, offers to buy her a drink. She tells him she's good, thanks, and is reasonably clear with the message that she's not interested... until he sprays his alien perfume on himself, and suddenly she's all over him, with the making out and "You're coming home with me, you are. Right now!" So, Owen's cursory character development is that he's a date rapist, basically. I really do not like the way this is played for laughs.

Back with Gwen she's scored points early on by not giving up that easily; she dashes home and goes straight to her computer to start typing up the Cliff's notes version of her day. "Captain Jack Harkness in charge, commander? NB THIS IS TORCHWOOD 3" and so on.

At her house, Tosh runs Optimus Prime's belt buckle along the spine of her copy of A Tale Of Two Cities, and brings it over to her laptop, where it scans every page of the book onto the screen almost instantly. That seems like a device with extremely limited actual use.

In her kitchen, Suzie uses the Glove to bring a fly back to life, and stares in... fear? Wonder? A mix of the two? PERHAPS.

Gwen keyboard babbles some more, but she's having trouble keeping her eyes open, and she's starting to make typos.

In the street, the girl's boyfriend has caught up with her running off with Owen, and is rather angry, obviously. To resolve the situation, Owen uses his magic perfume on the boyfriend and makes out with him too. See, HoYay! That makes everything OK! Fuck off.

Back to Gwen's diary, "TORCHWOOD READ THISA!!! they mad eyou amnesia". She adds one final "TORCHWOOD REMEMBER IT CAPTAIN JACK" but then, over in Torchwood HQ, Ianto quite easily hacks into her system and deletes the whole semi-coherent thing. And Gwen gives into the sedative and falls asleep.

Next day (There's another!). Jack's standing on top of a huge builing that's shaped like the Mitsubishi logo. Who knows how he got up there, or what he's doing. But, you know, it looks cool. That's good enough for me.

Rhys brings Gwen a mug of tea where she's fallen asleep at her keyboard and asks if she was out drinking last night. Gwen blinks a few times and vaguely says "No... What time is it?" Rhys chastises her gently because she told him she was working last night. Gwen tells him she was working, he asks why she fell asleep there then, she confusedly tells him she was typing. Rhys asks who she was out with, "Diane?" And here comes the dash of retcon, Gwen shrugs "Must have been, yeah."

At work, the colleague she tasked with looking up Captain Jack, who may or may not be the aforementioned Diane, asks Gwen if she had any luck tracking him down. Gwen doesn't know what she's talking about, MaybeDiane rolls her eyes at her for wasting her time. And at this point I notice that there's only about ten minutes left in the episode and so far it's been pretty much entirely setup, and yet I don't have a problem with that. It's good setup.

In the office, Gwen sees a picture of the murder weapon the forensics guys have worked out and drawn up; it's a kind of shark tooth shaped blade with two little fins sticking out the side of it. Gwen looks as if she's seen it before, but she can't work out where. Probably because that's exactly what's happening.

Outside while her partner babbles on and on about something drowned out by the music, Gwen tries to work out where she's seen the knife before, but no dice.

At home, same thing with Rhys, only now she gets a flash of sparks flying, like, say, from someone welding something, perhaps.

In bed, she's again having trouble sleeping, and she sees a flash of the actual blade this time, so she goes downstairs to draw it on the back of an envelope. I have no clue how that is supposed to help anything, but anyway, in doing this, she notices that she's written "Remember" on a leaflet for the Big Shiny Building (AKA Wales Millenium Centre, apparently), because Ianto's hacking can't erase everything. This little backup plan earns her more points in the test, of course. Gwen stares at this and then decides to go pay a visit to the Big Shiny Wales Millenium Centre. 8 minutes to go! Here comes the payoff.

WMC. Someone's standing in the shadows. Gwen approaches catiously, the figure steps out. It's Suzie. She tells Gwen she was right that they ought to liase with the police, but she was the only one who bothered, then she pulls out the shark tooth blade. It's pretty kick-ass, really. Gwen's all 'oh crap' and starts "I'm arresting you for... how do I know you?" Suzie exposits a little that one specific image can throw off the amnesia, "if you're clever. He said you were good." She kind of looks on the verge of tears here, as she tells Gwen the blade is no good, "you'll put up a fight", so she roots around in her bag for something else, and absent-mindedly apologises when it takes her a while to find it, which is pretty funny, when you think about it. Gwen, trained police officer, lest we forget, just stands there gawping as Suzie pulls a gun on her. She frantically tells Suzie to put the gun down, as Suzie's ranting about how Gwen's the only one in public who could make the link. "Torchwood will find out by morning, but I'll be gone by then. What am I going to do? I love this job, I really do!" And once you take this job, you can't just go back to normal life. I'll turn to my man Jarvis on this one; We were brought up on the space race/Now you expect us to clen toilets/When you've seen how big the world is/How can you make do with this?. It's the Companion's lament. But Suzie doesn't get to go there; she went too far in, she forgot to be human. I get the feeling that's going to be something of a theme in this season. For Gwen and the slower viewers, Suzie lays it out in simple terms, but it's not so expositive as to really annoy. Using the glove to talk to the dead guy wasn't about talking to the dead guy, it was about using the glove, Gwen and Jack had that conversation earlier. But one step further than even Jack went, if you get better with the glove by using it more, and you need a fresh murder to use it, what do you do? And, speaking of Jack, he's been quietly flying up on his imperceptible lift while Suzie's been ranting. And she does rant a lot, it's well acted, I'm not complaining or anything, but man, does she go on.

Anyway, while the others are all "swanning about", she's been really working. "And that's why the [SEP field] isn't going to work on me!" she cries, and turns and shoots Jack straight in the forehead. Well, that's going to hurt in the morning. Gwen is pretty shocked, seeing as how her memory of it all is still extremely hazy, so she's just seen a guy she recognise but can't place appear out of nowhere and get killed. That's going to affect you. Suzie turns the gun on Gwen, tells her she's sorry, but she has to do this. Only Jack gets up again, bullet hole in his head healing up like he's a Texas cheerleader, and he tells Suzie to put down the gun. Suzie realises there's no getting away from it, so she puts the gun to her chin and shoots herself in the head. Gwen just does not know what the fuck. She cries, still rather in shock, and haltingly tells Captain Jack "I remember."

Torchwood Hub. Ianto locks the shark tooth blade and the Glove in a safe. Owen and Tosh wordlessly hand in their stolen goods. Jack zips up the body bag and slides Suzie into the wall, walks away through the lonely halls.

On top of the building, Gwen mentions that Jack didn't tell Owen and Tosh about his unbreakable cheerleader act. "You didn't tell them either. You followed my lead. Keep doing that, you might just get through this." So yeah, she's passed the test. "I can't die," Jack tells her. Gwen gives that a hilariously exhausted "OK." Jack is very much not joking. He angstily explains how he was killed, and then brought back to life, "And ever since then, I can't die. One day I'll find a doctor, the right sort of doctor ((I'm going to assume you don't need any help with that one)), and maybe he can explain it, but until then..." He tells Gwen it'd freak people out a little, so it's probably best to stay quiet about it, she pointedly says "It doesn't matter, you'll only wipe my memory again." Jack asks why he'd do that, Gwen's like "Why wouldn't you?" Jack tells her Torchwood has a job going spare, which sort of implies they wouldn't if Suzie was still around which... either he knew about her thing from the start, in which case, why did he not do something about it sooner, or he is kind of lying, because clearly he's been trying to bring Gwen in since the start of the episode. But anyway, she accepts the offer, and we zoom away to a big Cardiff aerial view, and a pterodactyl soars across the screen, because that's cool, I guess. All in all, a pretty excellent way to begin.

My One Big Eyeball #4

Yeah, I'm doing away with the whole "PREVIOUSLY/NOW/WHAT IT THINK OF IT ALL" nonsense and just cramming in a big block of text. OK!


Battlestar Galactica 3x05 - Collaborators
Episode grade: A-

So, this episode certainly bears extremely strong similarities to season one's Litmus, one of the two actual bad episodes of this show thus far, but fortunately it's very well done this time round.

Heroic and joyful rescue last week, even tempered as it was with Kara and Tigh's losses obviously meant we had to go extremely bleak this time. Condoned by exceedingly teporary President Tom Zarek, Tigh, Tyrol, Anders and three other Resistance mentalists are carrying out "trials" and executions of Cylon collaborators. Bye, Jammer! Anders, who has remained remarkably sane, particular in comparison to the others, can't keep on with it, so they draft in Kara, who has gone remarkably insane, even in comparison to the others, to take his place. Felix Gaeta is next on their list of collaborators, and he almost dies due to awesomely refusing to try to defend himself, since that would condone their farcical trials, but is saved when Kara goes full on crazy ranting at him, leading the others to the revelation that Gaeta was their leak inside Baltar's administration, which, as Jacob has pointed out, is kind of stupid that they didn't already know, since Baltar's administration appeared to consist entirely of Felix Gaeta, but it's not hard to get past.

Speaking of Baltar, he's chilling out in a bathrobe on a Cylon Basestar, and continuing to go utterly crazy. He's maybe even beating Kara, but then, he had a two season head start.

But everything turns out OK in the end when Roslin is re-elected president (at least, I assume there was an election?) and issues a full pardon to everyone in the entire fleet (sucks to be you, Gaius!). What happened on New Caprica stays on New Caprica. And it's not like anyone will carry on prosecuting supposed offenders because there's no way they can instantly heal all the horrible shit that went on for the last year and a half, because there;s just no possible instant fix and that was kind of the point of the episode, right?


Desperate Housewives 3x05 - Nice She Ain't
Episode grade: B+

Susan tries her darnedest to get Mike to remember, but it just ain't working, so she kidnaps him from the hospital. This gets a slight glimmer of recognition when she trips over the curb, but after an awesome showdown with Edie, she's still definitely on the losing side here. Evil!

Biggest plus-point of this season so far; Andrew's return. Not only is he hilarious in and of himself, somehow he makes Bree and Orson work in spite of him being a raving psychotic. Bree, very much excellently back to her old self, puts an end to Danielle's relationship with her history teacher, despite some blackmail from Danielle, by blackmailing the guy into breaking up with her himself, or she'll get him fired. And then Danielle sticks the nail in the coffin by getting him fired anyway.

Crazy Nora's back into Lynette's storyline, and she's starting to make her inevitable moves on Tom. Tom's big dream is to open a pizza place, which Lynette is, of course, not too thrilled about. Nora seizes this opportunity to, in her obnoxious way, encourage Lynette to be harsh on Tom's plans, then telling Tom she's totally behind him and Lynette is a stupid meanie face. And tom is totally buying it, the fool. Also, Kayla acts ridiculously young for a supposed 11 year old, but considering she was raised by THAT, it's kind of understandable, no?

And finally, Carlos still believes that Gabby's totally still in love with him, really, and she has a hard time persuading him otherwise. First of all, she tries pretending to sleep with an old rival of his, but this just strengthens his conviction when he discovers she's faking the whole thing. So she tries again with a different guy, only for real this time, which seems to actually convince him that she really is over him. Just in time for her to start having doubts herself! Oh, Desperate Housewives. Oh, so very much.


Heroes 1x05 - Hiros
Episode grade: A-

"Save the cheerleader, save the world". That's Future!Hiro's message to Peter, and the general catchphrase of the show, which I still love so very much. Future!Hiro also tells Peter to go see Isaac, so he does, and manages to finish off one of Isaac's painting's for him without taking any heroin at all. Imagine that.

Speaking of the cheerleader, she wakes up in hospital, tells her creepy dad about the whole rape thing, so he rather leniently gets his creepy silent assisstant to totally erase Rapey the Quarterback's memory to the point where he doesn't even know his own name. Oooh.

In other cliffhanger resolution news, Mr. Bennett and his silent assisstant took Nathan, not Niki, but Nathan escapes them by flying away, fast enough to create a sonic boom. So. Freaking Cool. He touches down outside a restaurant where present Hiro's eating WAFFLES! alone, after parting ways with Ando following an argument. Hiro, speaking better English than it seemed like he could before, (because Future!Hiro's around, or bad writng? You decide!) tells Nathan about what he saw in his trip to the future. Nathan finds him as adorable as the rest of us, especially when he mentions seeing Nathan win the election by a landslide, so he gives him a lift back into Vegas.

Back in Vegas, Nathan runs into Niki again, and she tells him about the blackmail thing, and he awesomely uses this knowledge to get himself a raise from two to four million from Linderman. Niki goes home, discovers that her jailbird husband D.L. has flown away, then Ando shows up at her house, and she deals with him very sweetly. Ando finds his way back to Hiro and they have a nice reunion. Hiro tries once again to phone Isaac to warn him about his imminent brain removal, and this time, Peter's there, so after hearing Hiro's name, he mirrors last week's ending with a "My name is Peter Petrelli. I have a message for you." Excellent.


Lost 3x04 - Every Man For Himself
Episode grade: C-

In flashbacks that barely register on my radar screen, Sawyer's in prison, and cons some guy to earn his freedom. Because, in case you hadn't noticed, he's a conman! Oh, and he has a daughter with whatever her name was that he conned back in The Long Con's flashbacks. And he gives her his share of the money he cons to buy his freedom. Con!

On Other island, which apparently is actually another island off the coast of Craphole Island, Sawyer's in prison, and doesn't do jack. He also doesn't do Jack, which I'm sure some people are endlessly disappointed by. Well, the chick that Sun shot is back, and Jack is unable to save her. But he might be able to save Benry from CANCER! Oh, and Sawyer continues trying to escape the zoo, so Benry puts a bomb in him that will explode if he goes under 50 miles per hour. I'm barely even joking. Pickett, lowliest of the named Others, gets mad about dead Other chick, since she's his wife, so the power of contrivance compels him to beat the crap out of Sawyer unless Kate will say she loves him (Sawyer, not Pickett). WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK, LOST. Oh, and the ceiling bars in the cages are spaced far enough apart that Kate can climb out, so she does, but Sawyer's worried about his pacemaker bomb, so he refuses to go with her. He manages to fit in the episode title about a billion times, but Kate's a few behind and tells him "Live Together, Die Alone" and climbs back into her fucking cage. And then Benry takes Sawyer up a mountain to a) show him that he's on a different island, b) get into an Of Mice And Men quoting contest and c) tell him he doesn't really have a bomb in him. Sawyer has every opportunity to push him off a cliff but doesn't because... I got nothing. I may have got some of that in the wrong order or something, but this episode was immensly retarded, so I don't care.

Meanwhile, back on Craphole island, Desmond can still see the future. We learn nothing whatsoever from any of these scenes.

Sunday Shuffle #9: Bumber On-time/Late Double Edition Combo!!

I SWEAR! ... Unless my internet connection dies again. Man, I should have seen that coming.

Well, to make up for the fact that I didn't do one at all this week, this one is actually on Sunday, and twice as long. And a little bit more! Somehow I counted wrong and did 23 instead of 20. I could pretend that was a further bonus, and not me being stupid, but I'm stupid.

Interpol - The New

I've never really got into Turn On The Bright Lights very much, and I much prefer Antics which, as I understand, is fairly unusual. But while the album as a whole doesn't do that much for me, there are a couple of songs on Turn On The Bright Lights that are definitely the highlights of their career, and this would be one of those. It's big. It's really big.

Suede - Electricity

So, some Suede songs are extremely formulaic, to the point where they may well have been created by robots. This one appears to have been created by a robot that had never actually heard a Suede song, but knew from the other robots what the basic components of a Suede song should be.

Brand New - untitled 9

So, having heard the single and how incredibly better it is than its demo version (#8, by the way), I'm even more incredibly excited about the album, because I already loved most of these demos a whole lot, and if they can improve all of them as much, or, in many case, not even use them because they have better songs to use? That's got to be a pretty amazing album, right?

Relaxed Muscle - Rod Of Iron

Easily my favourite of the three songs on The Heavy E.P.. I guess it's the most Pulp-like, maybe. None of them are very much at all, but anyway, this one has THE FUNK, and it is good.

The Magnetic Fields - No One Will Ever Love You

Heh.
"My mother used to say 'no one will ever love you until you learn to love yourself.'"
"My mother used to say 'no one will ever love you.'"
Yeah, that's from Scrubs, not this song, it just reminded me of it.
There is actually a 69 Love Songs song every week, isn't there? I guess 69 is quite a lot to choose from. And goddamn, but so many of them are so good! How did he do that?

Haven - Change Direction

Oh, Haven, you're just not very interesting, are you?

U2 - Gone

And, you know what, most of the time, neither are you, U2. This is no excpeption. C'mon, give me something notable already!

I Am Kloot - Proof

Well, alrighty, this has the awesome 'do nothing but stare at Chris Ecclestone for three minutes' video! I love that. The song is pretty excellent too. Dude's got a good voice, for sure.

Tim Booth - Bone

This dude doesn't actually have that great a voice, but he makes up for it by writing some really, really awesome songs. Though not really quite so much as a solo artist as with James, but a fall from that high up still leaves you pretty high.

Modest Mouse - The Good Times Are Killing Me

I love the falsetto that gets unleashed on syllables totally at random in this.

Charlotte Hatherley - Summer

She's just like Ash with the pop-rock brilliance, only she can actually sing! Woah oh-woah uh-oh!

Super Furry Animals - The Roman Road

"The Roman Road/It's a little pit stop on the road to Rome". I'm kind of confused, you know. And wow, the feedback at the end goes on a while.

Girls Aloud - Long Hot Summer

Was this really released as a single? Somehow I don't even slightly remember it. That's kind of odd. Well, anyway, it really doesn't blow me away. They've done much better, for sure.

Tom Vek - If I Had Changed My Mind

Yeah, this really isn't one of his best, either. It's got the funk, of course, but it really doesn't have anything else at all. There's not even a vague attempt at actually singing some kind of coherent tune, which would probably help.

Halo - Here I Am

Haha, Halo. They'd started a few years later, they'd have been HUGE, no doubt about it. Oh, but this is a ballad. That's no fun. No fun at all.

Doves - M62 Song

"MOOOONSHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE! Waiting for a luvdatnevah comes." GODDAMN RIGHT.

Turin Brakes - Reach Out

Folksy! It's rather repetitive and it does go on a bit though.

Lowgold - If People Were Vinyl

"If people were vinyl, then you'd be a hit." Well, the whole concept of this song may just be stupid enough to go back round to awesome again. I'm not really sure.

Suede - The 2 Of Us

Now, this is more like it. No robots here, nosiree. Robots could never produce anything this absurdly grandiose. This is certainly an example of something that goes easily far enough into stupid to come back to awesome again. "You're outside making permanent love to the nuclear age". That's what Suede lyrics should be. You hear me, Suede robots?

Sigur Rós - Avalon

Yeah, it's just Staralfur, slowed down. That's so weird!

Placebo - Slave To The Wage

Oh, I love this. This is one of their best, for sure. "I'm sick and tired of Maggie's farm/She's a bitch with broken arms" So fun!

System Of A Down - Sugar

But not as fun as this, that's for sure. You know what, this easily beats Chop Suey!. Really. It's got so very many moments of bipolar awesomitude. "My baby lashes out at me and I just FUCKING kick her in the OOOH, BABY!"

Deathmole - Pavement Were A Bunch Of Lazy Wankers

And, hey, the fun continues. Well, with the name, at least. It's fairly calm instrumentalist stuff, so, more relaxing than fun to listen to, but that's cool too, y'know.

Christians Ruin Everything!

Yeah, uh, I still exist. Really! So, pretty heavy workload this week, plus internet connection acting up Wednesday & Thursday has led to some things being rather later than I'd anticipated. It's not an entirely valid excuse, but it's something. Net result: There's going to be, like, four posts today. I SWEAR.

Hex Episode 1x05 - "The Release"

Episode Grade: B+


This was a very hard one to grade, because the difference in quality between the first half and second half is uniformly wildly different. Seriously, there's a cutoff point almost exactly half way through the episode, after which everything that is awesome in the episode happens. So, if I was grading the two halves as separate episodes I'd give C+ and A+, which averages out to a B+. Anyway, let's get on with it.

Previously: Cassie went Sassie and screwed a) Azazeal, and b) her life. Thelma met another lesbian ghost, who, as it turns out, is actually called Peggy and not Pippi, and I should pay more attention to the end credits, I guess. Speaking of credits, here are the opening ones. Yeah, I'm missing KimVo and her lame segues. Shut up.

Return to find Thelma feeding peanuts or something to Peggy, who comments that she'd never be allowed to do such things in her time, and continues way past the boundary line of TMI (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean (yes, I realise that I am the one who just wrote it)) by telling Thelma that she often wished she was an Egyptian slave, "not one of the sweaty pyramid building types, a lowly servant girl to a high-priestess." Thelma runs with this, commanding her to "get down on your knees and scrub my floor". Clearly all the showering just wasn't enough pandering for someone's liking. Peggy steers the conversation back to actual plot relevance by declaring that she's been thinking that maybe, just possibly, fucking history is fucking repeating itself, and they're experiencing the same thing as the Egyptians. So, do we suspect that there may be some connection between Ben and Glory? She points out that she and Thelma are "living proof" that Azazeal has upset the natural order. Because they are dead, and yet they still walk around merrily breaking into vending machines and interrupting backseat shenanigans. So, "living proof" is not exactly the most logical choice of words there. Thelma asks what is going to happen then, Peggy doesn't know, "but it all seems to centre on the child that Herath was to bear". So I guess thanking them for that subtlety last week was a little premature. "Theoretically, if your little friend is no longer possessed, then the world should have been restored to its natural state." Thelma optimistically suggests that maybe it has, but Peggy points out that if that were the case, she and Thelma wouldn't still be there. At this point, they get bored of the anvil throwing and settle down for some makeouts.

Outside, the camera finds the back of Azazeal's head very interesting. Me, not so much. He's standing under the Hanging Tree again, and watching the school. Oh, and crying his emo tears as well. There there.

Bathroom. Cassie's throwing up. Thelma asks what's up, Cassie thinks she has food poisoning or something, but I'm actually OK with her not figuring it out. Cut to Cassie lying in bed, Thelma asking if she has any other symptoms. Nope. Thelma suggests talking to Jenny about it, Cassie thinks Jenny would freak out, seeing as she's a hypochondriac. Thelma tells her to just get some rest, Cassie asks if she'll stay with her so they can smile at each other and be all sweet. Awwww.

Which is then interrupted by cutting to Cassie throwing up some more. I really don't think we needed to see that twice. But, hurrah, Thelma's stopped pretending like it isn't blatantly obvious what is going on; "At least it'll only last for the first few months." Cassie's all "NO FUCKING WAY", Thelma tells her there's one way to be sure.

In her room, Cassie paces up and down, babbling and in denial. "What about the backache?" Thelma asks, "Tingling breasts?" Cassie indignantly tells her she does not have tingling breasts. Ho ho. Finally, it is time for the results to be revealed. Yes, Cassie is pregnant. Shocking. Cassie's new lineof babbling denial is that it's obviously Troy's, even though she used protection with him, but not with Azazeal, because "feminine intuition." Thelma points out that this is total bull, obviously. Cassie points out an actual good reason to think it's not his; it's only been a couple of days. Thelma finds yet another opportunity to helpfully remind us that she's a ghost, and also that Azazeal is a fallen angel, so, usual rules probably don't apply quite so much. Jenny interrupts by knocking on the door at this point, Thelma hurriedly hides the pregnancy test in a drawer. Jenny is concerned that Cassie doesn't look well, Cassie insists that she's fine, then promptly faints. Convincing! She wakes to find that Jenny is, of course, more concerned, and insistent on calling a doctor. Cassie tries to talk her out of it with such lameness as "I have a doctor phobia", but in the end she's forced to tell Jenny about the whole pregnancy thing. Thelma gives some pretty excellent face pulling throughout.

So, "we need to talk". Those words just never herald good times. Jenny gets Cassie a doctor's appointment after all, then moves onto it. "Maybe we should tell your mum?" Cassie just gives her an eyebrow raise. "Maybe not." Next question is, of course, "Do you know who the father is?" Cassie just shrugs. "Is that a 'yes, but I'm not going to tell you' or a 'no, I've slept with so many people I have no idea'?" Jenny jokes. Cassie continues to say nothing. Jenny's worried now, "There can't be that many options, can there?" Cassie gives an evasive "Hard to say", Jenny's eyes expand to about twice their normal size. "Oh god, please tell me it's not Leon." Hee! Cassie can at least confirm that one. Jenny asks if she's thought about what she's going to do; "Drink a bottle of cooking sherry, take a hot bath and throw myself down the stairs" is the plan. Look, tackling issues! How topical! Jenny's kind of worried that she's so blasé about it all, but ultimately she agrees that it's Cassie's decision to make.

Cassie dreams some more of Azazeal, cheap-looking yellowy demon Azazeal and crude drawings of Robert Smith, then wakes with a customary start. Thelma appears to not be there to fret, for once, so that's all there is to that scene.

Daytime now. Camera pans absurdly slowly across Cassie's bed. Guys, I thought we'd stopped doing shit like that. Come on. When we eventually reach her face, a hand appears to stroke her cheek. I wonder who that could be? The other hand of this person, whoever they might be, puts down a mug of tea on the bedside table, so I guess we can rule out J. Walter Weatherman. Cassie wakes up so we can reveal tonight's mystery guest; it's Azazeal! What a pleasant surprise. He's being his usual creepy all-knowing stalker self. Cassie makes a lame attempt to pretend she totally isn't pregnant at all, honest, Azazeal starts rambling "I've been thinking about strollers, and I've decided that three wheels is a bad idea. If you look at the history of transport through the ages, four wheels has always been best." How the fuck is it possible that he makes that speech so incredibly creepy. Seriously. Cassie politely asks if he's going to leave her alone, which is absolutely the way to deal with demonic stalkers. Azazeal ignores her, asks if she's thought of any names yet, and tells her with great excitement "He's going to be an amazing boy!" Dude, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to agree on whether or not you want to know the gender beforehand. This relationship is just never going to work if you can't get something like that right. He also tells her he knows what she's planning to do, and that she feels more for him than she cares to admit, and she doesn't really want to lose the child, and Cassie does not exactly put in much convincing denial to any of this. And then he leaves. Yeah, just like that. Why not?

Cassie runs a hand over her rather inflated belly and complains that the baby is growing way too fast. Well, that is the way of demonic pregnancies. Because keeping one of your cast members in a fake pregnant belly for an entire season is just too much hassle. Anyway. What's going on? Oh, right. Thelma's reminding us all once again that she's a lesbian. Wonderful. Oh, and a ghost. Even better. Well, onto some actual worthwhile dialogue; "I'll be glad when this is over," Cassie says, and Thelma agrees. Cassie asks "How did we get into this mess?", Thelma suggests "I'm told that when am man and a woman love each other very much..." It's hardly an original joke, but you know. This episode is reminding me of the first two so far, so I take what I can get. I mean, I've seen the rest, so I know it gets much, much better fairly soon, but right now.

Cassie and Thelma head outside, where a taxi's waiting to take them to Cassie's doctor's appointment. Well, the taxi is probably only waiting for Cassie, but you know. Not a problem, since Thelma can walk through car doors. And check me out with the lame segue again; this fact was established with Troy's rustbucket of a car, which comes trundling along the pathway at this very opportune moment. Troy gets out, wants to talk to Cassie. Thelma offers to distract him by driving his car away, but Cassie says she'll handle it. Troy greets her with "You look awful," which is absolutely the way into any woman's heart. Cassie tries to be all casual and dismissive, though she obviously doesn't want to, but Troy is having none of that. He thinks he freaked her out by getting too into her too quickly, "but it's only because I really like you", Cassie tries to claim that they just aren't destined to be together, and Troy notices her inflated belly. Cassie lamely tells him "It's Christmas, I've been binge eating", which probably worked a lot worse than just completely ignoring it would have done. Troy naturally assumes the baby is his, Cassie tells him it isn't, he refuses to believe her because she won't tell him whose it is then, and gets kind of angry, Thelma stands behind Cassie making hilarious devil horn faces. Cassie ducks away into her taxi, and man, the driver was awfully patient there. Troy sadly watches the taxi leave. And hey, Thelma never walked through the door! If she appears at the doctor's office with Cassie, I will have to complain.

So, doctor's office. No complaining, Cassie's on her own. Well, there's a doctor there. Who would like to know when the baby was conceived. Cassie vaguely tells him "Um... I think it was... can't you tell from the scan?" He's like, "You can't remember?" Cassie gives the usual 'I have no actual answer to this question' answer; "It's complicated." And wait, I was wrong, Thelma IS standing behind her. Fine, she can fly, or teleport or something. Whatever. Dr. Condesension tells her to have a guess. "A few weeks?" Cassie ventures. "Try twenty." Cassie takes a deep breath and stammers "Twenty's good." Hah. He asks what kind of contraception she was using, and gives her a "You stupid bitch" look when she says she wasn't (see, there's a reason I named him that). Has she thought about what she wants to do? Yes, we've established that at least three times by now. She's close to the legal limit, so the termination will have to be preformed soon. Dr. Condescension tells her "Motherhood can be a very rewarding experience, are you sure you want to miss out on that?" like, if you could just get on with doing your fucking job, that'd be great. Cassie assures him that she does indeed want to miss out on this rewarding experience, so he tells her he can fit her in next week. She's worried that that might be too late, what with the rapid development of demonic babies, though obviously she doesn't mention that part, and asks if he can't make it any sooner, so after being a patronising dick some more, he tells her he'll see what he can do.

Back home now, Thelma is also complaining about Dr. Condescension; "That doctor was just like my mum. Always taking the higher ground." Hey, both of the main characters have parental issues! You're still not Buffy. No, seriously though, "She thought she was Mother Theresa, but I know for a fact she fixed Pass the Parcel." I love Thelma. Apropos of not a great deal, she moves onto "I think Jesus was a lesbian who loved too much." See? Thelma's awesome. Also, when Cassie was "being the bitch from hell", Thelma reports, "I called a helpline." Well, that answers that question then. It generates a few more, but you know. I just can't be bothered thinking about Thelma's ghost stuff any more. So, anyway, Thelma suggests that she is Jesus to Cassie's Judas. Sure, why not. Anyway, this scene is basically here to remind us Cassie and Thelma being cute together is cute so it'll hurt more when all the shit that goes on later goes on.

It is a dark and stormy night. A taxi pulls up outside somewhere. Jenny steps out. Oh, and Azazeal. Well, that can't be good. She leads him into her room. "The first time I saw you, I thought you were a burglar or a paedophile," she tells him. "Well, you weren't far wrong," he replies. Whoever said romance was dead? He explains that he's the leader of a group of fallen angels, she assumes he's joking, they procede to makeouts.

Library. Peggy's remembered another inscripted stone of hers that she didn't understand before, but with her new information about Azazeal, it makes more sense and sheds more light on things. Basically; The survival or otherwise of Herath (and, by extension, Cassie) was not important, but if her child had been born, all 200 odd Nephilim would have been released, which would probably not be a good thing. Oh and now the episode starts to get pretty excellent. And by 'excellent', I mean 'tugging away at those heartstrings over and over as hard as possible until something breaks'. Because preventing the birth of the child would restore the natural order of things, which, of course, includes the whole 'dead walk with the living' thing. Thelma pretty quickly picks up on the implications of that and starts with the crying. Let me warn you now, there's going to be a lot of that. Peggy tries to comfort her; "We're freaks of nature, we're not meant to be." Thelma emphatically declares "But I like being!", and now I'm going to go ahead and stop dismissing the Buffyness of it all, because that was everything that "I'm 16 years old. I don't want to die." was. And damn but Jemima Rooper can do a good cry. And a good acting in general, especially for the whole of the rest of this episode, which is why it hurts so good.

So, let's get on with it. Thelma wants to know if Cassie would have kept the child, had it been Troy's. Cassie passes on that one, and says she's "given up wishing things were different, it's just a waste of energy". Thelma has a depressive response, which is fair, considering what she's just discovered. Cassie has a letter from the hospital; everything's finalised, "no going back." And she joins the heartstring tug o' war, with a simple "I'm scared." Thelma calmly reassures her and does a pretty good job of it, and they do their usual sweetness and making light of pretty big deals, actually. "It's such a standard procedure these days. Hell, every girl under 20 should have one!" But, soon as Cassie turns away, Thelma's face falls, and the tears, they are coming.

Cassie, pacing anxiously with letter in hand, knocks on Jenny's door. And Azazeal answers. Well now, this is awkward. He's calling himself Ian, Cassie is obviously a little freaked, but does her best to hide it. And also, does her best to hide the letter, she pretends she just wants to borrow a feather duster to get rid of a spider, which is fairly flimsy, but it was pretty short notice, so I'll let her off. Azazeal smugly offers to give her some help, which she quickly turns down, obviously. And runs away, looking rather unhappy.

Cassie's packing for the hospital visit, Thelma makes fun of her for taking so much for a "two night stay at a one star hotel with your butt sticking out". Rah rah banter, "just think, 48 hours, and it'll all be over. How good is that?" Yes, Thelma how good is that? Oh, it's rather horrible for you actually but your going to keep trying to pretend it isn't so as not to give Cassie added stress, even though it's all totally breaking your heart and you really aren't hiding it very well any more? OK. And then Cassie's going to make it even worse by talking about how it'll be great spending new year together, and what do you want to do, and here comes the crying once more. And Cassie notices this time, and tells her to stop this, "I'm the one who's supposed to be crying!" And so she does. And as if all that wasn't enough, they're playing Blur's "Sweet Song" in the background. It's a lot to take. Thelma suggests she talk about something else in the hope that it might repel the crying a little, which prompts Cassie to remember that she has a Christmas present to give to Thelma; a photo of the two of them from a year ago. OK, as far as plans to stop the tears go, that ranks slightly below spraying tear gas directly into her face. NICE GOING, CASSIE. They reminisce a little about the good old days, when they could hug as much as they liked, and Cassie was a carefree girl who didn't have to worry about carrying the actual literal spawn of Satan, and Thelma could walk into car doors without once passing through them. Ah, simpler times. But alas, those days are gone, and Cassie must be off to abort that Antichrist (that totally sounds like the name of some sort of weird gameshow, no? 'We've met today's contestants, so now it's time to Abort That Antichrist!' Come on.), leaving Thelma alone with her memories.

Hospital. Dr. Condescension's confused about the whole demonic rapid growth thing, but chalks it up to incompetence on his part. Cassie's concerned that this might cause a problem with the whole abortion plan, he assures her that she's still within the legal limit, though shows clear disapproval of said limit. Under the circumstances, he thinks they should operate sooner rather than later, which just so happens to put it slap bang in the middle of Christmas Day. But of course. Like we needed another layer on top of all the tragic that's going on. Dr. Condescension tells her the anaesthetic will put her to sleep until after the operation is done, which, duh, and then heads outside. Azazeal watches him from the rooftops, so you know there's some good times in store for the not-so-good doctor.

But before he gets on with that, Azazeal has to go about his usual creepy stalker business, so he's bringing Cassie flowers. Cassie, as usual, tells him to fuck off, he ignores this, and tells her she's hormonal from the pregnancy. "Don't patronise me," Cassie grits. Yeah, she's got a doctor to do that! She turns the subject around to his whole shacking up with Jenny, he claims he had no idea she was Cassie's teacher. He gets his usual creep on a while longer, but eventually relents to Cassie's request for him to leave her alone.

In the corridor, Thelma sees him leaving and comes in to check that Cassie's OK. Physically, she is, but she's most definitely losing it mentally, and she doesn't think she can go through with the abortion; however totally creepy and evil Azazeal is, it's not the baby's fault. Thelma points out that it is clearly not a normal baby, and Azazeal probably does not have good things planned for it. Cassie's all "You don't know that!", Thelma's like, 'actually, kinda do' and fills Cassie in on the whole Nephilim Release Clause, though she refrains from mentioning the part where she'll be actual proper dead, not just 'drinking with your buddies' dead, if the baby doesn't live. There's some more crying, of course, Thelma gets in an excellent line; "There are plenty of men out there with devilish qualities, you don't have to settle for the real thing", and manages to not lie, even when Cassie asks "Will you stay with me?", by telling her "I'll try." Doing good, Thelma.

Church. Priest recites that little known tale of Jesus' birth from the bible, and dude, that's not just any priest, it's GiDeon! Man. Among the rather few gathered paritioners is Dr. Condescension, which does not bode well. GiDeon concludes his recital by asking "what is it's relevance on this Christmas night?" On of the paritioners stands up and says he has some thoughts to offer, and oh shit, it's Azazeal. "For me it's the courage of Mary. Imagine the scandal, a young unmarried girl" -- GiDeon interjects here that Mary was not unmarried, Azazeal proves his superior Bible knowledge; she was betrothed to Joseph, but not yet married, how else would she be a virgin? -- "It was an illicit pregnancy, and everyone in Nazareth knew it." Dr. Condescension watches with interest. "Even long after his birth, the people taunted him. They questioned his parentage." GiDeon, seeming a little annoyed at being upstaged, snits "I don't recall that." "Oh, I do." Azazeal pointedly tells him. Hah! He backs it up with a Bible quote though, so he can seem like your every day crazy obsessive Christian fundamentalist. He moves on to his point here; "Imagine the looks she got. Imagine her plight, her confusion. A mother nowadays might consider abortion." Dr. Condescension has a 'woah' reaction shot. "Then there would be no Baby Jesus, no Christianity." Azazeal is truly a magnificent bastard. GiDeon smiles and rolls his eyes a little; "I take it you oppose abortion?" "It's an act of Herod," Azazeal replies, "The taking of another human life is a sin. And when does a human life begin? Does it begin at birth? Or does it begin at the end of the second trimester of pregnancy when the law says a baby is deemed viable?" The doctor looks majorly spooked. "No. It begins at the moment of conception, because that is the moment that the soul is born." I'm quoting Azazeal a lot more fully here than normal, I know, because a) his magnificent bastard manipulation skill is seriously impressive, and b) I'm extremely relieved that he didn't just stick a bloody maggot in Dr. Condescension's ear.

Hospital. Nurse comes in to do nursely things, and attempts to engage Cassie in small talk about how she's still not done wrapping presents and writing Christmas cards. "If it was just the two of us, I don't think I'd bother at all, but it's for the kids, isn't it?" She gets her irritaing baby voice on; "When you see their little faces!" Cassie just glares at her. She remembers who she's talking to, and there's just about the most awkward silence ever. Hee hee! The nurse quickly makes excuses and gets the fuck out of there.

Montage time! Sad, sad music plays. Cassie is being wheeled off for her operation, Thelma standing by, staying strong. Thelma sits alone by Cassie's empty bed, then slowly fades out as Cassie fades in to the bed. It's a simple effect, but it's pretty damn effective nonetheless. Blurry camera slowly comes into focus as Cassie wakes up, looks over at Thelma's empty chair. Cassie rather frantically calls for Thelma... and Thelma pulls back a curtain and smiles at her. Wha? Thelma has the same reaction. Cassie tells her "My stomach's not flat, but it's definitely empty". Thelma offers that this is "very strange", Cassie doesn't understand, "Isn't that what's supposed to happen?" and Thelma sits down and prepares herself for a Serious Talk. "Do you want the good news or the bad news?"

Music gets pretty intense and awesome, Azazeal tells Dr. Condescension he did a brave thing, "I have a feeling God isn't going to forget this", and the camera pans over to show Li'l Lucifer in an incubator, alive and well. Merry Christmas!

My One Big Eyeball #3

Battlestar Galactica 3x04 - "Exodus (Part 2)"
Episode grade: A+

PREVIOUSLY: Cylons enslaved most of what was left of humanity, but Galactica's coming to the rescue.

NOW: Boom! Bang! Whee! Ooooooooooooooooh! Boom! Boom! WOAH. Kablammo! So, yeah. Apollo changes his mind, so the Pegasus joins the rescue crew at a crucial moment, and, though they take heavy losses, the human race leaves the cylons (and that esteemed weasel Gaius Baltar, and baby Hera) in the dust. Among the casualties; Ellen Tigh, Hera's surrogate mother Maya, and the Battlestar Pegasus. *sniff*. I'll miss you all! Most everyone who makes it to Galactica celebrates more than they've ever celebrate before, because why wouldn't you? Well, maybe if you were forced to, say, poison your wife and leave her dead on New Caprica. Or you've spent the last four months being completely frakked with by the creepiest cylon of all, and it turns out the daughter he gave you, who you absolutely love by this point, is actually someone else's daughter that he stole from a random New Caprican, and you have to give her back. Yeah, that'd do it.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: There is literally no way I can express that in actual words. It's not hyperbole, this episode, and this show actually really is that good. I'm serious. And not only that, it keeps on getting better. I just cannot conceive how it is possible to do that. And frankly, I think this episode could have done with being split into two again and made it a three parter, because I'm fully certain they could have made at least another episode out of all the stuff they didn't get a chance to pack into this one with everything that went on. And what the hell is going to happen next? Roslin and Zarek are totally going to hook up, and it will be awesome, for sure. Starbuck and Tigh may also hook up, and that would be incredibly frakked up, but also awesome. Gaius is with the cylons and like woah. The politics will go crazy nuts. Technically, I think Tom Zarek is president now? Or he resigned as vice president when the occupation began and it's... Felix Gaeta? I just don't know. At all. I'm just so excited to see where they take this now. Man.


Desperate Housewives 3x04 - "Like It Was"
Episode grade: B+

PREVIOUSLY: Susuan went off with Ian, so she missed Mike waking up. That's pretty much the main thing that's still important by now. Oh, and Andrew returned from his homelessness. I guess that was quite important too.

NOW: Well, of course Mike has amnesia. DUH. So, he totally can't remember anything that's happened, pretty much since the show started. It's probably for the best. Well, except Edie gets to him first and totally poisons his mind against Susan, because she's mean like that. Ian's cabin gets little to no mobile signal, so it takes a while for the news to get to Susan, but when it does it's all a little heartbreaking. Meanwhile, in other storylines, crazy Nora takes a break after last week's overload, so Lynette bribes everybody to make Parker love baseball, or hate baseball, I can't even tell any more. Carlos thinks the divorce is all fun and games until Gabby tells him about her affair with John (her new affair, I mean. He knew about the other one, of course.) Bree finds out about just what Andrew got up to while he was away, and Bree and Andrew and Orson are all kind of lovely together, while Danielle is sleeping with her history teacher. Ho hum.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: I'm definitely getting more into this season now, and most particularly Bree and Orson. Andrew's return most definitely helped their whole storyline to not seem like a terrible rehash of George. Susan's story is so, so much better this year, and I'm really not entirely sure why. Gabby and Carlos were excellent fun this week too. But, while I appreciate the need for a break from crazy Nora in Lynette's story, this wasn't the way to go with that, and let the side down a little. Still, three out of four is NOT BAD.


Heroes 1x04 - "Collision"
Episode grade: A

PREVIOUSLY: Claire answered the question "How do you wake up dead?". Hiro and his buddy Ando followed the comic's instructions and went to Vegas. Nathan was a bitch to Peter, Simone was a bitch to Isaac.

NOW: Claire wakes up on the autopsy table, says "Oh my god" this time because they can't censor by cutting out halfway through the word, sneaks out while the coroner is on the phone and, after meeting one of his previous victims, gets revenge on Rapey the Quarterback by crashing his car into a wall at top speed. With him in the passenger seat. Awesome. Matt also wakes up on a table, this one with arm and leg straps so he can't sneak out, and Claire's creepy dad being all creepy at him, along with a bald black guy (maybe Sylar) who can apparently block powers, because his mind-reading is pretty much a no-show. Ando encourages Hiro to use his powers to cheat at the casino, which wins them big money, but then gets them beaten up. Also in Vegas, Niki seduces Nathan in order to repay her debt to the mob guy, but backs out at the last second. However, the elevators have reflective surfaces, so ikiN takes over and, after beating up a thug, seals the deal. Claire's creepy dad and his power-blocking lackey visit their post-coital huddle, but are only taking one of them, though which will have to wait for next week. Peter goes to see Mohinder, who is starting to be sceptical about it all, but is unable to demonstrate his power due to a) Nathan being in Vegas, b) Isaac being too busy painting Claire to let them in, and c) Peter not knowing any other Heroes. On the subway ride home, time stops for everyone but Peter, because post-apocalyptic non-dorky future Hiro, rocking a samurai sword and speaking perfect English, has a message for him.

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Oh man. How much do I love this show. A lot. A lot is how much. Now that everyone's actually starting to meet, there's less disparate strands of storyline to keep track of, and the less interesting Heroes don't have to rely solely on their own ability to keep me interested. And, interestingly, it's all the less interesting ones who do the most colliding; Claire's still very much on her own, and despite being in the same place as a couple of them, Hiro & Ando don't run into the others. Claire's calculated murder, however much of an irredeemable bitch the guy was, is like woah darkness, which you KNOW I love. Also love all of the following; actually seeing ikiN this time, instead of blacking out on her along with Niki, and her being every bit the badass she seemed. Isaac's painting effects and especially the time stopping effects are so very cool to watch. And of course, that ending. Future Hiro gave such a perfect sense of world weariness. I can't wait until, like, season seven or whenever when we actually get to see the time that Future Hiro came from, and this show damn well better last long enough to get to that.


Lost 3x03 - "Further Instructions"
Episode grade: A

PREVIOUSLY: Locke had a crisis of faith or two, but Desmond and his hatch restored his faith by shining a light, then exploding and turning the sky purple.

NOW: So, turns out my guesses on the three lostaways we'd catch up on this week were wrong. For a start, more than three; we see our whole non-kidnapped or sailing crew, so vastly diminished that some redshirts have to turn into actul characters. Hi, Nikki! Hi, Paolo! Nice to meet you. I assume we'll be finding more about you in one of the next couple of episodes. But most all of the screentime goes to Locke, Charlie, and slightly less so, Hurley. So Locke wakes up from the exploded but actually apparently IMploded hatch with no voice and has to play charades to Charlie because apparently nobody else is the least bit interested in where he's been for the day that's passed since hatch implosion. Locke has a little crazy awesome vision quest where dead Boone tells him to go rescue Eko, so he does so. Charlie follows, and is as annoying as possible, as is his wont, and on the way they run into Hurley, who's back with his message from the Others. But in the end, they rescue Eko from the polar bear, Hurley finds a naked Desmond, who's even more crazy than before and can apparently SEE THE FUTURE, and Locke takes up Jack's torch and becomes the unelected leader of the lostaway tribe, and gives an Adama-style "I'M GETTING MY MEN" speech.
Meanwhile, in flashback land, Locke joined a hippy commune. Fun!

WHAT I THINK OF IT ALL: Man, why was this not the season opener? I know you'd get the annoying fans all WHAT ABOUT KATE AND SAWYER/JACK, but fuck them. This should have been the season opener. Vision quest was way freaky and cool, as they should be. Desmond was also way freaky and cool, as he should be. Charlie being annoying to Locke was much less annoying to me than usual, somehow, and woah, character continuity paid a visit to Craphole Island, loved that Charlie is still bitter about the only good part of "Fire + Water"; Locke punching him in his stupid hobbit face. Flashback was totally not what I'd expect from a Locke flashback, pretty interesting. It seemed to get less screentime than flashback usually do, which I'm totally in favour of, less is more, I think. It might actually have had the same screentime as usual, and it just seemed shorter because I enjoyed it. I don't know. Anyway, all in all, it's been a pretty fucking awesome week in TV, that's for sure.

Sunday Shuffle #8: Always the last to know thyself.

NOTE TO SELF: "Publish Post", not "Save As Draft".


The Killers - All These Things That I've Done. I've got soul but I'm not a soldier. I've got soul but I'm not a soldier. Those are truly, truly apalling lyrics, but somehow it works quite well as a singalong anthem anyway, really, doesn't it? Still, it's most definitely not one of their best.

Belle And Sebastian - Act Of The Apostle. You know what, I haven't listened to The Life Pursuit near as much as I should. I don't know, the times I have, it's never really struck much of a chord like If You're Feeling Sinister or Dear Castrophe Waitress do on, like, every single track. This song is nice enough, but it doesn't have, you know, it.

But maybe it would if I listened to it a few billion times, which is about how long it took for R.E.M. - Aftermath to leave even the slightest impression on my brain. I actually kind of love it now, but man it takes a lot of work to remember even WHILE you're listening to it. Even given the lack of particularly single-worthy tracks on Around The Sun I cannot believe anyone would choose this one. They totally deserved to miss the top 40, really.

The Cure - Love Song. Wow, so, this is one of those songs that has a whole lot of personal importance, you know? For months, I just could not listen to it without crying. Still feel a small part of that to this day. But anyway, it really is total perfection in it's simplicity. However far away, I will always love you. However long I stay, I will always love you. Whatever words I say, I will always love you. What more could you reasonably need?

Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger. So much better than Wonderwall.

My Chemical Romance - Welcome To The Black Parade. HAHAHAHA! Hmm. I'll tell you later.

South - Broken Head I. Interesting. A minute or so of funky instrumentalism. I like it. I'm being pretty brief here, aren't I? It's not my fault, yo.

Marillion - Goodbye To All That (Live). So, the regular album version is one of their many over 10 minute songs, but since the live album puts the constituent parts of the song as separate tracks, this is only 40 seconds. and it actually cuts off in the middle of a line. Heh.

Arctic Monkeys - From The Ritz To The Rubble. I'm really having trouble coming up with anything to actually say about this. Any of their other songs, I'm sure I'd have no problem, I'm telling you. I don't know what the hell. Uh, so... I like the way the... music... rumble dumble... sports team?

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Cabron. Hee hee! Let's keep the moon awake and do electric boogaloo. ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. What more needs to be said?

And finally, Catatonia - Strange Glue. So, have I mentioned that Cerys Matthews totally has the most amazing singing accent ever? Oh, I have? Well, it's still true. Also, wow, this song is really really good. I'd totally forgotten.

Nine Tenths Of The Lore

Hex Episode 1x04 - "Possession"

Episode grade: A-


Previously: Lesbian ghosts, repeating history, and the bloodshot eyes of demonic possession.

Now: Thelma's sitting alone in the cafeteria again, when she hears some music playing in the distance. She stalks carefully towards it, and you'd think that sooner or later she'd pick up on the fact that NO ONE CAN SEE OR HEAR HER. Anyway, it's sort of jazzy or swingy or some other such genre of music that I am none too knowledgable about. Someone's singing "Close your eyes, pretending we're just counting sheep" and the like, camera pans across a room full of people in fancy ballgowns and those glittery eye-mask things to show that it's Rupert. Someone smokes a cigarette with one of those absurd cigarette holders that I just can't see any purpose to whatsoever, and a couple of women stare at Thelma, one smiling flirtatiously, one glaring angrily. These two women then commence making out with each other. I seriously do not have the slightest clue what the fuck is going on here. From the look on her face, neither does Thelma. Hey, there's Azazeal! And, next to him, all dressed up to the point where I barely recognise her, Cassie. Who kisses the girl on her left, then turns and kisses Azazeal. It's all very arty and weird, so I'm going to go ahead and assume it's a dream sequence. Cassie, now looking more like herself, opens her eyes to Thelma's lips right in her face saying "Sweet dreams?" So, yeah, dream sequence. Although it really seemed like it would have been Thelma's. "Yeah, until you appeared," Cassie bitchily replies, then lights a cigarette so she can hold the lighter to her face and show off her bloodshot eyes, in case we'd forgotten what happened last week, and also five minutes ago in the previouslies. Thanks for looking out for your goldfish viewers. Thelma looks surprised, so apparently she's one of them. Credits.

Cassie walks down the stairs to the locker room, hair all coiiffed up weirdly and ridiculous amounts of gold eyeshadow applied to, again, remind the goldfish that she's not herself. Troy approaches for makeouts while the Trio of Suck exchange glances. Bitchily. Troy apologises because he apparently has to take Cassie out for drinks with the Trio of Suck later, but he promises to take her straight home. Hint hint. Cassie tells him she has better things to do, Troy's like "WTF", Cassie teasingly tells him that of course she wants to see him; "I want to see all of you. Just... not any time soon." then wanders off so the Trio of Suck can bitchily admire her attempt to usurp their role.

In their room, Thelma sits looking concerned about the whole possession thing while Cassie tries on clothes. "You'd have me, wouldn't you?" Cassie asks her. Thelma says "I'm not sure, you look... you like you're after something". Tactful! Cassie puts on a mock surprised tone and says "Really?" Thelma digs herself deeper into more hot water in her attempts to disguise the fact that she's fully aware that Cassie's possessed, presumably; "I mean, it's very sexy, it's just not you." Cassie, of course, asks "You don't think I'm sexy?" Thelma's just like "Fuck it" and shuts up altogether. Cassie taunts her some about how she wishes she could touch Cassie again then leaves to "Nowhere [Thelma] would fit in".

Which, as it turns out, is a bar where everyone appears to be groping each other at random and everything is covered in horribly neon lights. Fine. Cassie struts up to the bar and orders straight vodka, and Azazeal stalks up to her. And, oh man, he's smiling. That just does not look right. He tells her he wasn't sure she'd come, she replies "How could I resist?" and he matter of factly says "That's true." Heh. Cassie asks if he doesn't get bored playing the same game, different women for 300 years. No, no he doesn't. Azazeal blathers once again all "This is your destiny" and "You don't have to believe it", so Cassie's like "OK, I won't." I'm going to go ahead and start calling Possesed!Cassie "Sassie", OK? So, Sassie asks just what exactly he did to her mother, "She's completely in awe of you." Azazeal tells her "We had some good times together" and Sassie pretends to be grossed out even though she's possessed and thusly does not give a shit and says "Too much information", which, a) YOU FUCKING ASKED HIM THE QUESTION and b) THAT WAS NO FUCKING INFORMATION WHATSOEVER ANYWAY. Shut up, Sassie. Azazeal tells her the necklace her mother gave her looks good on her. Sassie points out that this is a lame chat-up line, Azazeal claims it works, Sassie suggests it only does so "on a certain type of woman. You'll have to try harder with me." Azazeal leans in for a kiss and asks why she doesn't just give into the inevitable. She teasingly tells him "You know what, I don't think I can" and walks off. Azazeal watches her leave and smiles ruefully.

Back in her dark, lonely cafeteria, Thelma's apparently stolen the key to the vending machine so she can get food from it. I'm glad I don't have to keep wondering where the hell she's getting money from. She's startled by a creaking door behind her, and watches a woman walk through the cafeteria, paying no attention to Thelma, obviously. She follows her, and again we can here Rupert singing the same song. Someone walks through a door in front of her, so Thelma, startled, quickly drops her packet of crisps and hides behind a pillar. Her continuous inability to remember that no one can see or hear her is starting to become pretty hilarious, now. Oh, wait, bad lighting strikes again; it was Sassie, who actually can see her. Dropping the crisp packet was nonetheless funny, and would surely draw a lot more attention to her either way.

Rupert (by the way, it's the fourth episode now, and I still have no idea what his actual name is) and Jenny walk along a path outside. He asks if she'd be upset if he said she was fired due to staff cutbacks, she's like "Duh." He asks if she'd be pleased then, ifhe said she could keep her job by spending her Christmas at the school. Heh. Yeah, the best way to deliver bad news is to deliver fake worse news first so the real bad news looks like good news. I forget exactly where I learned that, but it's an excellent sentiment, anyway. Rupert further entices her by pointing out that Cassie will be there. "And your boyfriend?" he asks rather nosily. "No, he no longer exists," Jenny replies. "Turned out to be an arsehole." And also, not a young demonically possessed blonde girl, I presume. Rupert spots Sassie walking opposite and darts away so he can be the one to start interfering in her business this time. "You look like you had a good evening" he intrudes. Sassie agrees, though she's "wearing the scars this morning." Doesn't look like it. "Still, you can't have pleasure without pain," she adds, and Rupert's like "Woah," and Sassie continues "You should try it some time." Rupert's even more like "WOAH." and he stammers "I don't think the governer's would approve," which Sassie tells him is "all the more reason to do it," with a sultry wink as she slinks off. Rupert's head actually explodes. Well, no, OK, he just gives a hilarious eyebrow raise and stares at her. But that's "enigmatic headmaster" for exploding head, I'm telling you.

Library. Sassie's at a computer, Thelma's doing a pretty good job right now of pretending she suspects nothing as she asks Sassie what she got up to last night. Sassie says "It's not so much 'what' as 'who'" and tells her "You know how I get when I've drunk too much." "Sick?" says Thelma. Heh. Sassie starts going into great detail, but then notices Thelma's "Oh fucking god I cannot keep pretending I don't know she's so totally possessed when she's being so obvious about it" look, takes it for jealousy and says "I guess you don't want to know" and leaves. Thelma looks like Cassie apparently does when she's drunk too much.

Common Room. Troy's smile totally vanishes when Sassie comes in and he tells her he stopped by her room last night and she wasn't there, which is a little suspicious considering she said she was staying in, so what's the deal? Sassie gets right up in his face and asks "Do you think I was with another man? Do you think you don't satisfy me?" Oh man. Troy, concerned, tells her no, so she tells him to "apologise for being such a stalker." Troy starts to see the funny side a little and smiles as he submissively does so, but then brings back the concern and asks "We cool?" Sassie leans towards him a little, then walks off without actually answering. You know, maybe I should be calling her "Cassius". Yeah, it's a Buffy thing.

The Trio of Suck walk down a corridor pointing out the obvious; Sassie is totally leading Troy on evilly, and they can't help but be impressed. Leon suggests that this makes it the perfect time for Gemma to "swoop in and save him", Roxy notes that it's "a bit weird" that "a few days ago she was this hapless virgin, now she's a total whore." Leon says "I like it," (DUH.) "It's kind of like having our own Britney Spears", which, what the hell, that was actually funny. I'm scared and confused. Gemma opines that Cassie "used to be nice. Boring, but nice." I still hate her, so we are not entirely in Bizarro World. Roxy suggests that Gemma could learn something from Sassie, Leon agrees; "Like, not to be so desperate." OK, they're abusing Gemma. I guess that explains why I'm not thoroughly despising them right now. They continue to do so, sarcasming that her concern for Troy is totally all about 'just being a good friend', I'm sure. Gemma complains that Troy seems to be totally in love with Cassie, despite her being a total bitch. I'd have thought Gemma would be pleased that he liked that kind of thing. Roxy adds that what's worse is "she's really enjoying it."

On a path outside, Jenny approaches Sassie. Oh, this is going to be fun. Jenny asks if Sassie's had any thoughts about what she wants to do next term, because she was thinking about putting her in for an English module on "Women in love; romantic heroines through the ages". Sassie gives a disgusted look at this. Jenny says "It's either that or Milton, Sassie, thoroughly bored, relents to the former. Business out of the way, Jenny gets down to why she actually wanted to talk to her; "So, David says you're staying here over Christmas?" He has a name! But, yeah, it's been too long. I'm too used to calling him Rupert by now. I'm sure you knew that would happen. Sassie gives an affirmativ sound. Jenny is a little confused; "Surely they'll let you mum out of hospital?" Sassie tells her "I don't really want to spend my time feeding turkey to a vegetable." Bwah! Jenny gives her a "WTF" look. "So tell me," Sassie continues, "These women in love; are they actually going to do anything? Because supressed desire is all well and good, but it's a bit boring without any action." She takes Jenny's arm and goes in for the kill; "Maybe we should just read some of your erotic stories instead." Hee hee hee. I am really enjoying this. Cassie should get possessed more often.

Night time exterior shot, voiceovered by, I think Roxy, but possibly Gemma asking "So, you have a large penis, but a hairy back, and every time you wax your back, your penis shrinks. What do you do?" Is that even a question? I mean, really. So, yeah, camera jumps inside now, where Sassie and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalame are playing Truth or Dare, in... someone's room. Not Cassie's. Leon's turn; "How old was the oldest woman you've slept with." Leon offers to do two dares rather than answer, but that is not in the rules, dude. He continues to protest, so Roxy tells him his forfeit will be to kiss Troy then. Troy's like "Mate, answer the question, come on!", but his heart really doesn't sound in it. And frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Leon was happy to do so, either. But anyway, he does decide to answer; "It was a friend of my mother's." Sassie presses for the answer to the actual question, Leon continues to evade with "Old enough to know what to do." so they threaten to all get up and leave if he doesn't answer, so he does; "Fifty... four." and also, "But, she'd had plenty of plastic surgery", which apparently makes it better. Leon is so gross. Thelma stands in the doorway, spying and looking upset. Sassie takes a dare, which is to "pick a victim and put one of your body parts into theirs." So she goes to kiss Troy, turns away at the last second and crawls over to stick her tongue down Leon's throat. Roxy stares like "Dude." Troy stares like "For fuck's sake", Gemma gives Troy an apologetic look. Troy basically tells them to all fuck off, so I guess it's his room. Which, wait, is also Leon's room, so why is he leaving? Oh, so Sassie can totally have sex with him in a shower. OK. Well, Thelma's having none of that, so she turns all the cold taps on in the sinks to make the water in the shower come out too hot and put them off, which works, as Leon apparently assumes this is Sassie's doing, so he tells her she's crazy and runs off. Sassie is obviously suspicious of the magically turning on taps, but doesn't notice Thelma hiding in a different shower.

Same bathroom, Thelma sits in a toilet ranting on the phone about how mean Sassie is, and how totally possessed she is and how Thelma needs to totally electrocute her to snap her out of it because that's what Cassie "always" did that one time, and WHO THE FUCK IS SHE TALKING TO?

Thelma is buying from the vending machine again. I just cannot be bothered. Someone walks past, presumably the same woman as before, Thelma again follows, looking puzzled. She goes into the library, where the woman is inspecting a stone slab with carvings of some kind on it. The woman notices her and asks if she's come to look at the slab. Zwuh? "Because let me tell you now, I haven't spent the last 80 years working on this inscription for some pert-breasted bunty to come and solve it all in a second." Oh right, she's a ghost too. Of course. "OK..." says Thelma, which is about the only thing you can do in this kind of situation. "OK? What does that mean?" the woman asks. "OK, I won't solve it?" Thelma suggests, which brightens the other up considerably. She introduces herself, but talks too fast or too weird for me to entirely understand her. I think her name is Pippi? Maybe? Anyway, it's nice that they at least made an attempt to tell me her name. I appreciat the effort. Also, she is a "full-time esyptologist, part time suffragette." She shakes Thelma's hand and Thelma, in awe, says "We can touch each other." Pippi's all "Steady on, I should at least know your name." I think I like her. Thelma introduces herself, Pippi tells her she died in 1928, her father owned the place then and "I'd like to say he caught me with the scullery maid, but actually it was the flu. How about you?" "I was ritualistically sacrificed by a fallen angel." "Ah, the flu too, eh?" Yeah, I like her. Thelma really likes her, too. Pippi, despite being all defensive about it two seconds ago, bring Thelma over to the slab and explains what exposition she can translate thus far; it's a funeral inscription for someone named Herath, daughter of the pharoah, but there's one name she can't work out, it seems to say Azazeal, which isn't very Egyptian at all. I have no idea how hyroglyphics actually work, but, is it remotely plausible that they'd have a way of writing Azazeal despite that not sounding Egyptian at all? That's not rhetorical, if you can answer, please do so. Thelma tells her "Actually, I may be able to help you." And, shockingly, we're actually spared her doing so. Hooray!

Jenny gives the class homework over Christmas; watch one film and write a review. Troy looks thoroughly pissed, Leon at least has the good grace to look guilty. Leon tells him he has to end it with Cassie, Troy tersely tells him it's not that simple. Leon's like "It's not my fault, I was drunk". Troy points out how lame an excuse that is, sarcastically tells him to "have a nice Christmas, mate" and runs off to chase Sassie. Leon again looks guilty. I'll tell you why I'm not despising him so much now; that's a second dimension to his character! Hooray!

Troy catches up with Sassie, who gives "Right"s to the following; "Leon reckons that you were trying to get off with him." Oh, yeah, trying. Whatever, Leon. "He says you lost the plot." Then to "I don't want to believe him, I mean, it doesn't sound like you." Sassie asks "So, what's the problem?" Troy tells her "I just need to know, is it true?" Sassie just says nothing, so Troy's all "Maybe we should call it a day." Sassie shrugs and tells him "OK, if that's what you want" and he continues to be confused and infuriated. Hooray! Alright, I'll stop that now.

More Wacky, Wacky Hijinks music as we watch Thelma's backside wiggling about under a desk. She's fiddling around with the electrics. She hears Sassie coming in, and quickly gets up, bashing her head on the desk in the process. Sassie suspiciously asks what she's doing, Thelma guiltily says "nothing." Sassie just takes it as more of Thelma's usual weirdness, which is kind of funny, and shrugs. She walks out again, and Thelma immediately goes back to what she was doing.

Later, Sassie comes back from a shower saying "I wish I had an ensuite, it's like living in Auschwitz." Dude. Thelma quite hilariously holds an upside down magazine to her face, very blatantly watching Sassie over the top of it. I'm fully aware that that is not a remotely original joke; the hilarity comes from the fact that Thelma apparently thinks Sassie would find it more suspicious if she wasn't trying to disguise the fact that she was watching her. Sassie drips ominously on the floor, plugs in a hairdryer, flips the switch and... cuts off the power to the entire building. Thelma runs up to her all "Don't worry, Cassie, it's all right, it's probably just a power cut." Sassie looks at her, like, "Thanks, Captain Obvious." Thelma lights a cigarette lighter right in her face to check for bloodshot eyes, which are still present. Sassie asks what she's doing, Thelma lamely claims "I... thought you had a spider in your hair." but fortunately Sassie is slightly distracted from the total lameness of this claim by, I guess backup power kicking in. She does, nonetheless, tell Thelma that she is sometimes a total freak.

Azazeal silhouettically hangs around by the Hanging Tree. That's... not why it's called that, dude. Oh, he's managed to find a thin strip of light that actually lines up with his eyes this time. Good work!

And now he's inside. Ominous Descend Piano Notes of Ominousness play as he walks past the camera, which ignores him to slowly zoom in on a mirror, in which, after a couple of seconds pass, we can see him walk up the stairs. It's an effect that does a reasonably good job of distracting from the fact that we've just spent, like, ten seconds watching someone WALK AROUND.

Sassie wakes up, and there's Azazeal, sitting on a chair, watching her. Because he is a creepy, creepy motherfucker. More creepy; he tells her "I missed you." Sassie smiles and tells him maybe he should call, suggest a drink... So, Azazeal offers her his hipflask of brandy. Sassie gets out of bed, puts on a dressing gown and asks if he was planning to watch her all night. "Yes," he shrugs. But actually, it appears he's planning to start speechifying about how Sassie loves it when she knows it's wrong, but does it anyway, and how women are all the same and other such chauvinistery. He also tells her she's hardly innocent; "You broke that poor boy's heart", so that Sassie can lamely segue into to asking who his last true love was. She suggests Rachel, then the woman he made the pendant for; "Herath," he says. I'm not sure if that's the answer to the original question or if he's just telling Sassie who he made the pendant for, either way, "it wasn't meant to be." Sassie is sorry, Azazeal tells her not to worry; "I've had therapy." Ha! More creepsome music starts to kiss in as he gets up to go sit beside her and tells her "They'll never be another man who waits 250 years for you". Ech. And then they kiss. And there's some nice "la la la la" music, and then Azazeal leaves, smiling.

Next day. Sassie watches Troy get in his car and drive away. He does not look happy, obviously. Thelma tries to sound cheery telling her it's just the two of them and they can have a quiet Christmas together. Sassie gives her a Look and tells her to just ask what she wants to ask. Thelma's like, "Buh?", Sassie tells her straight up, she's been seeing Azazeal, she intends to continue to do so, she doesn't care what Thelma thinks. But she does care enough to try to convince Thelma that they might have misjudged him; Thelma's like "I've got a FATAL KNIFE WOUND IN MY GUT says we didn't." Sassie tells her she's just jealous. All things considered, that is pretty hilarious. Thelma skulks off angrily, Sassie gives her an eye-rolling "Bye."

Tacky neon bar. Azazeal sits with a floozy on each arm, looking more like Baltar than ever. He makes out with them a little, then goes over to Sassie, who's waiting by the bar. Sassie does not care at all about the floozies. She asks what it's like being him, he is an arrogant son of a bitch answering; "The trouble is, you see everything before everyone else, and then you have to wait for them to catch up." Sassie tells him to stop being a prat and buy her a drink, and dude, she's got a side ponytail thing going on. Those always freak me out a little. It's asymmetry where no asymmetry should be. It does look pretty awesome on her though, she should maybe try it more often. Anyway. Azazeal ruminates on how "desire is always greater than the consequences", which doesn't actually mean anything at all. Sassie rolls her eyes, tells him he's arrogant. He's all "You like that", she tells him she prefers shy, retiring types, he's like "whatever, dude". "You're going to fuck me up, aren't you?" Sassie asks conversationally. Azazeal shrugs, "Probably." I love the way they're so completely blasé about all this. They procede to makeouts, followed by a cut to further makeouts in the locker room.

Locker room makeouts are momentarily interrupted by Jenny wandering down the stairs, Azazeal and Sassie hide behind a pillar, he suggestively tells her he feels like a naughty schoolboy. Sassie takes the bait, and they head up to her room for some poorly-lit intercourse. Next morning, she wakes and he's gone, she doesn't care, what with the whole possession thing.

Outside, Azazeal's going for a pleasant morning stroll around the grounds, when he's accosted by Jenny, telling him that this is private property. Azazeal apologises, saying "It must look like I'm casing the joint or something." "The thought had crossed my mind, Jenny responds, and there's an uncomfortable pause before she asks "So, what are you doing?" Hee hee! He pretends he's some kind of architecture enthusiast or something. But still a really creepy architecture enthusiast; Jenny tells him it's a school, he says "lucky kids", Jenny suggests they don't realise it, he ominously replies "No, but they will. When it's too late," thanks her for her time and walks off.

Cassie's room. Hi, Smurf Penis! Haven't been seeing much of you lately. Sassie notices it, has a fondle, and seems rather disappointed that she's unable to achieve the usual flash.

Laundry room, Sassie's cheerily ironing clothes, Thelma asks her what she's so happy about. "Nothing you'd understand" is the response, which is apparently her stock answer to any question Thelma asks, as well as being total bullshit. Thelma mutters "give me strength, if I could slap you I would" to herself, and the Seriously, This Electrocution Thing Is Wacky, Wacky Hijinks music once again starts to kick in as she loosens a nut to start water dripping all on the floor. Sassie engages her in some irrelevant conversation as the water slowly trickles across the floor, somehow not picking up on Thelma exceedingly suspicious behaviour as she wraps her foot around the wire of the iron. Thelma drags it to the wet floor, of course, but Sassie uses her telekinetic powers (remember those?) to stop it before it actually hits the floor. She is having a hard time writing this shit off as accidental, by this point, but Thelma actually manages to look nonchalant for once.

Library. Pippi apologises to Thelma for being so uptight before, Thelma tells her not to worry about it. But enough small talk, what we're here for is exposition. So, Azazeal loved Herath, which we knew, the Egyptian's believed that their union "destroyed the natural order", and "the veil between the worlds was broken, and the living walked with the dead and the dead walked with the living" and so on and so forth. Thelma picks up on her and Pippi being fine examples of dead walking with the living. And thusly, Pippi believes that the same thing is happening again. Man, I am so ecstatic that she did not use the phrase "history repeats itself". The Egyptians banished Azazeal somehow, Herath was left the shoulder the blame, and was buried alive. Friendly people, those ancient Egyptians. Oh, and also, Herath was carrying his child. Just FYI.

Would You Stop It With The Wacky Electrocution Hijinks Already music plays as Thelma rigs up some wiring to electrify Cassie's locker. Also, she is wearing huge safety goggles. It is totally cute. Sassie opens up her locker, nothing happens. Thelma looks annoyed at her tools, then some other generic student sticks her key in her locker and starts writihing. Oh, how wacky this is. Sassie clearly paid no attention to whatever fire/electric safety guy repeatedly visited her primary school, because she flutters around a bit, then grabs the girl's arm, which obviously bring her into the writhing fun. There's a flash of black and whiteness, then the two fall back, still clutching the key. Thelma put her goggles back on and walks away looking humourously guilty.

Ambulance pulls away outside, Cassie, wrapped in a blanket, sits on a bench with Thelma. Jenny comes over to tell her the other girl is going to be fine, and she should get some rest. Thelma asks how she feels; "like I have the worst hangover in the world" is the answer. They laugh about how Jenny was angry, and thinks it was one of the lads pulling a practical joke. Thelma opines that she hopes Leon will get the blame, which triggers horrible memories for Cassie; "Oh God, what did I do to Leon?" They go for a wander through the trees, Cassie tells Thelma that she was "sort of semi-aware" of what was going on while possessed, but she couldn't do anything about it, á la hyena person, or indeed soldier boy Xander. Cassie apologises profusely for being so mean to Thelma, Thelma wonders if this will stop Azazeal coming after her now. Well, that would sure make for a boring season finale, wouldn't it? Thelma gets all cute and tells Cassie that she'll have to keep a tight leash on her now. Cassie thanks Thelma for electrocuting her. "Anytime," she replies. The Wacky Flourish Of I Think The Wacky Hijinks Have Stopped Now, So I Guess I Can Finally Shut Up flourishes.

Cassie sits at a mirror and removes the necklace, realising it offered no actual protection from Azazeal, and notices him lounging in a chair behind her. She asks what the hell he's doing there. He, of course, ignores the question. Cassie tells him to fuck off. He stalks over to her, starts kissing her neck, and asks "why the sudden change of heart?". Cassie again tells him to fuck off, but she's not actually putting up a lot of resistance to the neck kissing. Cassie calmly tells him that whatever happened between them, it wasn't her, Azazeal claims that "sometimes it takes extraordinary circumstances to see what we really want". Cassie lets him kiss her. Cassie again weakly pulls away and tells him to go away, he suddenly gets all intense and yells "Just because your rational mind pulls away doesn't mean your heart has changed." She gets more adamant that she wants nothing to do with him anymore. He does now fuck off, leaving her with "It's a little bit late for that." History repeats itself. Oh, right. Dude, was that some actual subtlety in a revelation I just saw? I think it might have been.