Review: Misfits 1.5

Sally "seduces" Simon at his house.

If there's one character for whom we see the effects of character development, it's most certainly the perplexing and complicated Simon, the first character to display his abilities and, until Series Two, to properly control them. As one of the most interesting characters in the show, his episode gives us a similarly intelligent episode that not only deepens and muddy's his character, but also advances the plot.
     Simon, alone and depressed, is chirped up when suspicious Sally makes advances and inquiries into his limited social life. She takes him out to a drink, pretending to be his girlfriend to annoy old school bullies, and then he invites her back to his house, where she steals some of his tapes. Eventually, in the Community Centre at night, Simon finds out about what she's been doing and, angry and protective, he accidentally kills her. Both Simon's psychotic turn and Sally's persuasive fascade are very well acted and come off as quite chilling. Simon undergoes a personality change between Series One and Two, and in Series One he slowly heads towards psychotic madness, elements of which can be seen here.
     As if to relieve the mind of the horrors of the main plot, the two subplots took on a lighter theme. Curtis, having saved girlfriend Sam in last week's temporal tale, tries to break up with her but suffers from a Groundhog Day loop caused by his own guilt. He eventually breaks out of it using one of Nathan's lines from Spiderman. Nathan was busy himself, having become the victim of a child affected by the storm, and given the ability to make any man act like a father to it (not a very good power in the long run, one would think). Ultimately the former was a nifty cleanup operation and the latter was fairly unnecessary, but both added a light touch to an otherwise skin-crawling episode.

Nathan takes a baby hostage.

     Despite having a lot going on, the episode kept a fascinating pace that ran all of the subplots smoothly into one another, climaxing them off one-by-one and ending with the grand finale of Sally's untimely death. In some ways it's a better finale to this series than the one coming up. Join me next week, when I finish off my Misfits reviews with 1.6.

Thanks.