Live-blogging Torchwood Season One: "Random Shoes"

We have a special guest for the live-blogging tonight—our friend, Heather—but thus far, everything she’s said has been unsuitable for this time slot. So we’ll wait and see if she can keep it PG during the actual episode.

Of course, right now we’re stuck with that Rob Brydon sitcom that has never really appealed to me. Though I do find Sarah Alexander quite adorable.

I am deliberately not repeating word for word the conversation that Nick and Heather are having about exactly why men are from Mars (hint: universe’s tallest mountain) and women are from Venus (no hints there).

And now Nick has won an argument about whether this sitcom actually has Ben Miller in it instead of Rob Brydon. (He was right, but don’t tell him that.)

Here’s the opening monologue from Torchwood—though we’re actually talking about Guy Pierce, here in my living room.

HEATHER: God, I hate Owen’s pants.
ME: Yeah. Well, I hate Owen.

But we actually open on a guy lying in a road, apparently dead, except he’s opening his eyes and sitting up.

And there goes two paragraphs, as my Internet connection goes down. Bugger.

I can’t recall it now, but (in short) Eugene tracks down the Torchwood group at the side of the road and finds himself dead. I wrote quite a touching paragraph about that. (Not really.)

He doesn’t know whether he’s a ghost or a zombie. But he decides to stick with the “team,” to find out.

Once my Internet connection is back up, we find Eugene talking about losing a science competition, and being given an eye (HEATHER: Eye? Ew.) by his science teacher as a kind of comfort.

And Eugene’s family life is really screwed up, especially his father.

But we’re back with Eugene and David Bowie, and Eugene’s increasing obsession with the alien coming back to find its eye. He begins to collect alien artefacts, and that’s when he meets Gwen, who isn’t that interested.

NICK: Pushing through Gwen’s self-involvement take more effort than that.

Then he tries to attract Owen’s attention.

EUGENE: I’ve got this thing I need to show you.
HEATHER: Yeah. Yeah.

Meanwhile, as I try frantically to catch up with the narrative, Torchwood are explaining Eugene’s death to his mother. And then they’re rummaging through his collection of alien artefacts, and mocking the fact that he’s been taken in by so many shysters.

Back at the Torchwood Hub, Eugene is mostly excited about actually being in the Hub.

In terms of Owen being a moron, he’s now telling Gwen to do the autopsy, if she thinks it’s so important, because he has a stack of admin. to do. I really, really hate Owen.

Just as Gwen is about to start the incision, though, Ianto come up with a report of a drunk driver who admits to knocking a man over near Cardiff, and the investigation is called off.

Eugene lies in the autopsy room and looks at his own dead body, wanders around the Hub, and stands outside his own house to watch his mother cry.

But Gwen isn’t sure that there isn’t anything else going on. Owen mocks Gwen—of course—but Gwen backs down.

Of course, the next thing we see is Owen watching the DVDs that Eugene has borrowed from the video store before his death. Owen is really incredibly unbearable in this episode.

But Gwen offers to return the DVDs, and ends up in Eugene’s usual cafe, eating two eggs, ham, and chips for lunch, and working her way through Eugene’s friends [on his phone, I should have added] while waiting for his video store to open.

Gwen returns the DVDs.

VIDEO STORE CLERK: Dead, eh? Shit. That’s pretty final.

Apparently, Eugene owes thirty-four pounds in fines—while the clerk is cracking on to Gwen with the worst pick-up lines in history—that Gwen agrees to pay. The clerk is also a jerk: he and Owen should get together. (He suggests that Eugene might have killed himself, because Eugene “has loser written through him like Brighton through a stick of rock.”)

Now Gwen is at Eugene’s job, where they’re passing a card around—some colleague has written “Good luck in your new job,” and when Eugene’s colleague Gary points out that Eugene is dead, the colleague says, “No! Who’s it for, then?”

I don’t think that Eugene’s mum will be pleased with that card.

NICK: You know what’s interesting about this episode? It shows that Gwen is actually a pretty good cop, and is probably wasted on Torchwood.

And then Owen talks to Gwen on the phone, and tells her to just hurry up with the investigation, will you?

NICK, HEATHER, AND ME: F—- off, Owen!

Meanwhile, Linda is telling Gwen that Eugene offered to buy her a ticket to Australia, where she wanted to move, by selling his alien artifact—his eye, the one his science teacher gave him—on eBay.

And he does.

And the item just sits there, until the bids start climbing and climbing one day, until they reach fifteen-thousand pounds.

At this point, though, Eugene’s mother rings Gwen, and she leaves Linda alone in the pub where she’s been telling this story. (And I’ve just realised at this point that Eugene messed up a maths competition, not a science competition.)

At Eugene’s house, the brother tells Gwen that Eugene found out about a fortnight before that their father, rather than moving to the U.S. because of his very important job—as the mother has always told them—was working as a garage attendant just down the road.

Gwen drives there, with Eugene still in the car, but he stops Gwen getting out of the car. He says he wants nothing to do with his father: he says, “Sorry” and Gwen, not seemingly realising that she’s addressing him, replies, “It’s okay.” She doesn’t look at Eugene, but it’s a creepy moment.

Back at Torchwood, Gwen talks about Eugene’s alien eye and Jack explains what it is: I’ve forgotten the name of the alien already, I’m afraid. But the eye lets you “see behind you, see where you’ve been,” Jack says. That’s why they’re in demand.

But Gwen, tracking down the buyer of the eye, finds Gary, Eugene’s colleague, who is the one who originally inflated the bid for the eye on eBay.

Gary says he first did it to cheer Eugene up, because he was so depressed. But then Eugene came to him with his argument that it was the alien, the original owner of the eye, who was bidding so much money for the eye.

But then Eugene made an arrangement to meet someone in a transport cafe, but Gary, sputtering slightly, says he doesn’t know who he was meeting.

Gwen shows Gary photographs of feet on Eugene’s phone, but Gary says they’re just “random shoes,” he supposes.

ME: Hmm, I should probably not have written that as “random hoes,” I think.
NICK: Great band.
HEATHER: Best album ever.

Gwen, in a hotel in Aberstwyth (oh, I’ll check the spelling later! I’m not Welsh!), ponders what could have happened to Eugene—Eugene babbles about happiness and doors and what happened the day he died, until he blurts out to Gwen, “I love you.”

She stands up, and they’re almost lip to lip, but Gwen can’t see him—she’s just looking out the window, or perhaps at her own reflection in the window.

The next morning, Gwen heads out to where Eugene ended up meeting the buyer of the eye—which turns out to be his friends, Gary and the prat from the video store. They bid as a joke, though there was a real buyer who bid up to the fifteen thousand—the friends are the ones who then upped it to fifteen thousand, five pounds, and fifty pence.

They now want to buy the eye from Eugene for thirty-four pounds, and then sell it to the collector who bid fifteen thousand—he collects alien ephemera, Nazi memorabilia, and Beanie babies.

Then the friends start attacking Eugene, who swallows the eye.

The waitress who is telling Gwen this story, says “Well, that’s not acceptable behaviour, not in a Happy Cook.” But, of course, she has quite the heavy Welsh accent.

HEATHER: I’m sorry—a happy what?

It’s best to leave that there.

At that point, Eugene’s friends turn up: the guy from the video store (Josh) acts as a total prat, but Gary trips him as he tries to flee from the store—he shouts at Josh that he misses Eugene.

Ack! I just pasted instead of cutting! But it’s fine. It’s fine, really. (Stupid Internet connection.)

Now Eugene remembers everything that happened to him, and it’s one of the more nihilistic moments in the show: Eugene remembers running across the field, feeling the sheer joy in life, just before he is hit by the car.

And Gwen rings Eugene’s father, and we skip to Eugene’s funeral, where the father stands, talks about Eugene’s life, and then sings “Danny Boy.”

(Gwen, meanwhile, has bribed the funeral home to take the alien eye out of Eugene’s body. We all say “Eww” in unison.)

And, while family flood in to the wake, Gwen starts talking to Eugene, but not as though she can actually tell where he is—she’s looking in the wrong direction. Then Torchwood tear up in their enormous black 4WD—they tell Gwen they need to go, but Gwen is distracted by the reunion of Eugene’s parents.

And then Eugene knocks her out of the path of an oncoming car—and she can see him.

Everyone can see him.

All the family and friends standing at the wake can see Eugene, as Gwen gives him a quick kiss (since he did just save her life).

And then he hands the eye—which had fallen out of the bag Gwen had it in—to Gwen, and he disappears.

He has a monologue, but it’s mostly about random shoes and loft insulation.

Wow, but that was a depressing episode.

(In other news, they’re at least playing “The Runaway Bride” next Monday, and I’ll be live-blogging that: I don’t know if they’re going on to season three, but I’ll live-blogging that.)

HEATHER: Now, I think, First Spaceship to Venus!
ME: What?
NICK: Is that like Last Exit to Brooklyn?

And I think we’ll leave the night there, shall we?