Regarding the alien roofies, I also hate that the jokiness about sexual consent effectively camouflages the fact that Owen is canonically thrilled to go home with a girl he pulled in a bar and her boyfriend.
Yeah, that scene is the one and only definitive evidence of Owen's bisexuality in the run of the show (I feel there are additional hints of it in his interactions with the guy they're conning in the cage fighting episode, but not that clear-cut), and unfortunately it's a scene that's so terribly squicky that I wish it didn't exist.
Which not incidentally helps a lot to recenter Owen from being a sexual creep: faced with a rape-murder, he's unequivocally on the girl's side.
Yeah, I think as far as a sympathetic introduction to Owen, this episode works much better than either of the previous ones, which was why it made sense to point Rachel there, since both I and the other person we were watching with (who had also seen it before) really wanted her to like Owen ...
I don't know that it would have gone as far as hating him, but he's much more of a hard-ass and it's doing his team cohesion no favors. It doesn't feel accidental that three episodes so far have centered around characters choosing personal attachment (Ianto to Lisa, Tosh to Mary, Gwen to Suzie) over duty to Torchwood. I can see that's building toward "End of Days" when the entire team will open the Rift in joint defiance of Jack, but it also doesn't say much for his management skills at this point in his immortality.
Yeah - Jack's general darkness and dysfunctionality was one of the big reasons I bounced off season one when I watched the show back in 2008 (the reason why I had only seen season two until this summer). I have a lot more sympathy for him this time around; I think it's much more obvious to me, especially comparing season one Jack to season two Jack, how incredibly messed up and unhappy he is, and how hard he's trying to keep from getting attached to the team, both due to being hurt before, and due to knowing that they're going to die and leave him. But Jack's hot-and-cold, alternately hands-off and overbearing management style directly contributes to the team's general dysfunction in season one.
... also, I have absolutely no idea when Jack and Ianto started sleeping together. It appears to happen somewhere between Countrycide (when Ianto says his most recent kiss was with Lisa) and "They Keep Killing Suzie," when they definitively are sleeping together, but it had to be off camera. Of course it's also possible they were sleeping together before Cyberwoman, stopped for a long while, and then at some point around the time of "They Keep Killing Suzie" they started again. The show makes it very hard to say.
Additional comments to come re: the audiodramas (and the other episodes you've now seen).
[edit] Good news; speaking of "End of Days," it had desensitized considerably by this time around.
Oh good, I'm glad to hear it!
What did you think of Owen's arc? I feel that, now that I've seen the entire series rather than just season two, it actually does add a lot to Owen's arc in season two to have seen how far down he went in season one.
no subject
Yeah, that scene is the one and only definitive evidence of Owen's bisexuality in the run of the show (I feel there are additional hints of it in his interactions with the guy they're conning in the cage fighting episode, but not that clear-cut), and unfortunately it's a scene that's so terribly squicky that I wish it didn't exist.
Which not incidentally helps a lot to recenter Owen from being a sexual creep: faced with a rape-murder, he's unequivocally on the girl's side.
Yeah, I think as far as a sympathetic introduction to Owen, this episode works much better than either of the previous ones, which was why it made sense to point Rachel there, since both I and the other person we were watching with (who had also seen it before) really wanted her to like Owen ...
I don't know that it would have gone as far as hating him, but he's much more of a hard-ass and it's doing his team cohesion no favors. It doesn't feel accidental that three episodes so far have centered around characters choosing personal attachment (Ianto to Lisa, Tosh to Mary, Gwen to Suzie) over duty to Torchwood. I can see that's building toward "End of Days" when the entire team will open the Rift in joint defiance of Jack, but it also doesn't say much for his management skills at this point in his immortality.
Yeah - Jack's general darkness and dysfunctionality was one of the big reasons I bounced off season one when I watched the show back in 2008 (the reason why I had only seen season two until this summer). I have a lot more sympathy for him this time around; I think it's much more obvious to me, especially comparing season one Jack to season two Jack, how incredibly messed up and unhappy he is, and how hard he's trying to keep from getting attached to the team, both due to being hurt before, and due to knowing that they're going to die and leave him. But Jack's hot-and-cold, alternately hands-off and overbearing management style directly contributes to the team's general dysfunction in season one.
... also, I have absolutely no idea when Jack and Ianto started sleeping together. It appears to happen somewhere between Countrycide (when Ianto says his most recent kiss was with Lisa) and "They Keep Killing Suzie," when they definitively are sleeping together, but it had to be off camera. Of course it's also possible they were sleeping together before Cyberwoman, stopped for a long while, and then at some point around the time of "They Keep Killing Suzie" they started again. The show makes it very hard to say.
Additional comments to come re: the audiodramas (and the other episodes you've now seen).
[edit] Good news; speaking of "End of Days," it had desensitized considerably by this time around.
Oh good, I'm glad to hear it!
What did you think of Owen's arc? I feel that, now that I've seen the entire series rather than just season two, it actually does add a lot to Owen's arc in season two to have seen how far down he went in season one.