Review: Torchwood 4.4: Escape to L.A.

I'm starting to feel some fatigue towards Miracle Day. The slow theme is uninspiring and there are several factors that make watching the show a tedious experience. It feels like Torchwood in name only, and I care more about the new American characters and their respective issues than I do about our fast-redundant Welsh characters. Escape to L.A. did nought but codify my irritations despite its increasingly enjoyable tone.
     The team this week, while heading to California to hack into PhiCorp, also managed to all explore their pasts. Esther visited her sister's house, where her already psycho sister was holding Esther's nieces hostage, and reported her to social services. In the face of a campaign from a far-right republican, Ellis Monroe, to strip rights from "dead" people (appropriately and satirically called "Dead is Dead"), Rex visits his hobo dad who fobs him off. The increasinly irritating Gwen repeatedly called her hubby in Wales about her daughter and her dad, something she managed to avoid for the past three effing years.
      Gwen at the moment is entirely superflous for me. Her entire purpose as a character was the Torchwood equivalent of a Doctor Who companion - someone more human and down to earth than the rest of the characters for the audience to relate to. We don't need that now - this is more of a political thriller than a fun moster-hunting romp, more of an American slow-burner than a British classic. All Gwen does is act ridiculous, worry about her relatives and make condescending remarks. Her character at the moment is empty, vapid and irritating beyond belief.
     Oswald Danes, who is really enjoying his comfy hotel rooms, is having trouble too - Ellis Monroe's Dead is Dead campaign is upstaging him and is directly opposed to his continued existence. He's also used his... skills... as a kiddie-fiddler to discover PhiCorp's hidden information network. In the episode's climax, at an "overflow" hospital designed to hide away the sick, Danes upstaged a speech by Monroe by walking into the hospital and seemingly getting the "dead" vote.
     It's telling that after this momentous piece of political television the climax felt more like a whimper. Our Welsh characters, half-way through hacking into PhiCorp, were knocked out and tied up by an assassin working for The Triangle (the unseen enemy behind this series, the Triangle being their only representation so far). The assassin, who at that point had also stalked Esther, tortured the guy who made the Phicorp server and left Ellis Monroe to be crushed in her car, was shot by Rex... in the throat. This felt like a very contrived "prophecy" tease, although I should be used it that with RTD by now. 
     Overall I was glad for this week's development of Rex and Esther, which made the characters finally feel a tad more three-dimensional. The downside to this, of course, was that our Welsh characters, despite having three years' worth of development, felt surplus to requirements. At the moment I'm really wishing that this series was an independant project by Davies that didn't involve Torchwood, as that would change the tone of it completely for the better.


Thanks.


P.S. RTD is really writing Jack as a carbon-copy of the Tenth Doctor at the moment. It's subtle but still irritating.