Review: Misfits 3.1

Rudy meets Curtis

Misfits returned with its third series, this time with new boy Joe Gilgun as leading man Rudy. The episode didn;t hesitate to return us to the action, providing us with fare that avoided the show's issues with its Freak of the Week formula. Left with the task of introducing our new lead and his entire personality, the episode does so perhaps too well, as the episode's "villain" feels overshadowed. Nonetheless, this Rudy-centric beginning to the series was an excellent comedy hour that set the stage perfectly for this extended series.
     As Simon, Kelly, Curtis and Alesha adapted to their new powers - Short-term premonition, the knowledge of a Rocket Scientist, the ability to change gender and perception respectively - new boy Rudy arrives and begins to woo his two fellow new Community Servicers - a brunette called Charlie and a vicious blonde with the ability to pause time. The blond frames the gang for assaulting Rudy after his multi-man exploits, but they manage to avoid police attention.
     Rudy gets on with the gang until he meets Alesha, who broke his heart back in college - something his clone is aggravated by. After a confrontation, Simon calms Alesha and Rudy effectively disowns his clone. The blond is angry when Rudy tries to frame her in turn, and so she causes Rudy to murder Charlie and then strings he and Alesha up by a rope. While the blond is killed by a kick to the face, Alesha and Rudy are saved by the clone.
     The rest of the gang help to bury the bodies, explaining that they're no strangers to accidental murder, but because they end up travelling in Rudy's stolen car, the entire gang is put back into orange jumpsuits. I hope this isn't because Overman couldn't handle having characters outside the Community Centre, because that feels a tad like a cop-out to me.

The old gang are re-suited.

     Rudy is the perfect replacement for Nathan, imbued with the same manic humour and sense of timing. An aspect of his character that I love is his clone, who exercises the deeper parts of his personality and allows us some excellent character development through his insecurities. His history with Alesha is also sure to stir up some trouble in future episodes, and it perfectly complimented this episode. Really I'm not used to this format of episode, as a lot of the episodes in Series Two were more serialised and this is more similar to the character-centric episodes of Lost or the first series of Misfits. Hell, next week is Curtis centric.
     Overall, 3.1 spent most of its time persuading the audience that the show didn't need Robert Sheehan, and I am fully, fully persuaded. The hour was a brilliant character study of our new character that integrated character development into the normal Freak of the Week plot, and thus I think that the next seven weeks are going to be incredible.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: Curtis gets his mac on. He doesn't really stay for long, does he?