On paper, I should have loved the latest Torchwood: Miracle Day episode, ‘The Middle Men.’ Character progression is there, plot points are well defined, and dialogue is definitively Torchwood. There is a giant explosion, Rex finally accepts his role in the world, and Jack confronts the head of PhiCorp.
A lot was crammed into this episode. In fact, it was chock full of huge moments pieced together in a non-stop narrative that, even when the pacing slowed down for dramatic effect, mentally put you through the ringer.
I should have loved this episode, but I didn’t.
Watching ‘The Middle Men’ feels like an episode is missing in between. It feels wedged into the narrative with no flow whatsoever, a real shame because it is a very important episode. It fully establishes the Concentration Camps happening worldwide and finally reveals PhiCorps’ involvement in The Miracle.
At the same time, the execution and delivery is ho-hum. All the action and plot points were to hammer home the idea that everyone is just a “middle man,” to the point where those words are spoken on-screen. That’s fine, but does every scene have to center around the core idea?
Ernie Hudson is absolutely wasted in this episode. Here you have an accomplished film and television actor whose character is at the heart of all of the themes presented up until this point, and he’s tossed aside in a throwaway storyline that he’s cheating on his wife and knows next to nothing about The Miracle.
There is also no questioning by Jack about PhiCorps’ obsession with Oswald. It should have been there, plain and simple.
Speaking of Oswald, where are he and Jilly? I know that too much of them may be a bad thing, but there isn’t even a snippet in the background on the news. Oswald just had a major public appearance and said all the right things like he was supposed to, but nothing is even whispered about it.
One of the things that made the earlier episodes of Torchwood: Miracle Day so awesome was the multilayered universe they presented. You had to pay attention to the TV’s in the background and to the side conversations you saw going on around the main characters. This episode was a complete departure from that structure.
The lone bright spot in ‘The Middle Men’ is Gwen. Her scenes are wonderfully put together and the ending is fantastic. I won’t ruin it for anyone who has yet to see it, but if the rest of the episode had this type of dramatic tension and depth, then it could have been one of the finest episodes yet.
What should have been done in ‘Middle Men’ is split it into at least two separate episodes and expand on each scenes’ depth. Instead of a fully formed teleplay on screen, we got a couple of episode treatments crammed together into a single one-hour block.
Maybe this is a downside to having multiple writers on a show, but Russell T. Davies is still at the forefront of every episode and I really expected more from he and his creative team. ‘The Middle Men’ is a major let down from last week’s episode. I’m hoping next week’s, which looks like it is a glimpse into Jack’s past that may help explain what The Blessing is, is a return to form.
– James Zappie
