Review: Misfits 3.7

I've never liked cats. They go and play tricks like this.

"You kill numerous probation workers but you can't kill one cat?"

Misfits has already done Zombies. Not real zombies, of course, but they took on the genre and parodied it relentlessly in the Series One finale, where the modern interpretation saw people becoming overly-moral Christians. Seeing Misfits actually try a straight version of this storyline feels a little weird, especially this close to Chrismas and far from when it would have been more appopriate in Halloween.
     Following on from last week, Curtis and Seth prepared to bring the latter's dead girlfriend back to the land of the living. Shannon, played by the massively underused actress Charlene McKenna, is incredibly bewildered by her return to life and by what Seth has become. Curtis enjoys his new ability, bringing back to life a dead woman's cat. As cheerleaders visit the centre, Rudy expresses disgust. Curtis visits the old woman again, to find that the cat he ressurected has killed the owner and begun to drink her blood.
     Seth dumps Kelly, and admits what he did. The team then head across to kill the evil cat, Mr. Miggles. As they debate over killing the cat, the old woman gets up as well and tries to eat Rudy. The gang realise that it's the Zombie apocalypse and Kelly goes off to warn Seth about Shannon, who's eaten his pet iguana. Kelly accidentally spills the beans on Seth's cheating heart. Rudy reveals to Simon and Alesha why he hates Cheerleaders so much; he walked in on his parents having sex as a young child where his mother was dressed as one. As Kelly and Curtis plan her demise, Shannon bites a neighbour.

Emotionless stares: the height
of the McKenna repertoire.

      The neighbour escaping, the team arrive to off Shannon and the couple hide in the neighbour's flat. As the neighbour gets the munchies, the team raid the flat to discover it empty. They leave, and Shannon tells Seth everything. Later that night, Seth himself prepares to kill her, but can't bring himself to destroy the one thing he loves. Instead, he askes Curtis to kill her instead. As Simon prepares to kill Mr. Miggles, he discovers that the cat has infected the entire cheerleading team. They make their way through the entire team (including another probation worker) until a final confrontation with Shannon, who is killed by Seth. The bodies are buried in the Woods, and the issue is forgotten.
    I'm just feeling rather empty about a lot of the storylines in this year's Misfits. They aren't as specifically heartrending as Series One, and they aren't as clever as Series Two. Rudy's links with Alesha have never been mentioned again, and Simon's future as Superhoodie was the focus of only one episode. This year has been the year of Seth and Kelly, and that's certainly left me feeling rather cold. This week, which supposedly featured the culmination of Seth's character arc, saw absolutely no poignancy from that side of things at all. I felt like crying out, "Seth! Your dead girlfriend has been brought back to life! Show some emotion!!!" I think that's one of the main problems with this storyline on the whole; neither character is known for their broad scale of emotions. Kelly was better as a defrosting ice woman, trying to spurn Nathan's awkward advances.
     What made the zombie storyline so much worse was that it was predictable. You knew that Zombies would appear, that people would be infected, that the team would have to kill them. When the new probation worker was killed, it felt more tragic to me than overly funny because it was so damn predictable. Nothing about this episode added to the series or to the characters. Seth is the same now as he was before, as far as we can tell. None of the characters has learnt anything of any particular interest, and while fascinating to watch, the episode didn't have any obvious tension or power behind it.

Simon is strangely... bloodthirsty this episode. In any case
he felt more manly, which I assume was a nod towards his
character progression next episode. Touch wood.

     You wouldn't think that Zombies a bland script would make, but that's what happened here. In the grand scale of things, nothing happened, which was a shame because it struck right at the epicentre of the plotline that this series has been reluctantly centred on. I didn't care for the straight-played Zombies and the bland, bland, bland characterisations, and I can only hope that next week's pre-Christmas finale will sort things out.

Thanks.

NEXT WEEK: All of the villains from Series One return. Really. Oh, and Simon becomes Superhoodie. WOOOO!