Review: Misfits 2.3

 "You think I risked my life travelling through the dimensions of time to sniff your knickers?"

Seeing as Misfits only has six episodes to work with per series, its a good sign that Series Two used its middle-episode to make a leap in its plot. At the same time, all of the characters got a decent look in and significant development, and they manage to fit some comedy in there as well. Spoilers.
     The more interesting plotline was that of Alesha and Superhoodie Simon. After saving Alesha several times, the Masked Man brings her to his "lair", where he almost immediately reveals his identity as Future Simon. They meet again throughout the episode, and Simon's revelation that she eventually falls in love with him makes Alesha apologise to Barry (mine and Nathan's name for Present Simon). Future Simon's ability to touch her gives Alesha more comfort and warmth than she has had since the Storm, and she starts to doubt her relationship with Curtis (who's already looking into shacking up with the Future Girl from last episode.)

     The main plot, however, surrounded Vince, a tattoo-artist friend of Kelly's. He takes the power to control tattoos to new extremes, warding off Nathan by making him fall madly in love with Barry. This provides a funny distraction from the plot advancement, with some excellent lines. When Vince makes Kelly fall in love with him, a now more confident Barry manages to, with help from Simon, stop him. With a bag of peanuts. After that, a Kelly+Nathan romance was definitively ruled out, to the cries of a thousand shippers.
     Our main areas of Character Development are Alesha and Simon, for obvious reasons. Alesha finally becomes more than a three-dimensional sex machine, showing a more human and sensitive side than her usual gobby self. Her rightful protestations about Future Simon's sudden appearance in her life are counterbalanced nicely with his ability to satisfy her emotionally (and physically.)
     Simon, on the other hand, is given potential. Along with our Superhoodie, Barry also gets his own Crowning Moment of Awesome when he disables the villian with a bag of roasted peanuts (he had an allergy, it makes sense in context.) This extra dimension yet again makes Simon one of the more interesting and thoguhtful characters on the show, and it helps that we can see the parallels between Future Simon and Barry.

     Now we're at the half-way point, I'm glad that Misfits is making ground on its plot, something that otherwise lacked in Series One, while still managing to work in a lot of character. The two plots both had pace, intrigue, and while they didn't work with each other there was still a lot of room to move. The development may feel a little forced, but that reinforced Simon's idea of prophecy that ran throughout the episode. This was a fun, enjoyable episode with a lot of good development.

Thanks.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The images were removed from this article because it was garnering an unfair amount of coverage for its images alone.