This episode finally meshes all the exposition and new characters into a pleasantly action packed, funny, heartrending and thoroughly entertaining cocktail reminiscent of the best episodes of the past.
Rex and Jack get snippy about who's in charge, Esther and Gwen bond, loads of jokes and comments about British English and American English fly fast and furious, action and conspiracy are rife hand in hand with opportunistic jokes. It's good times.
This is also the by-now-infamous episode with a sex scene cut down by the BBC. Now, to be clear, there are two scenes interwoven, Rex having sex with a female character and Jack having sex with a male character. Both basically involve chitchat, kissing (with implied oral sex between Jack and his partner) and then quick cuts with thrusting.
Really, the best part is post coital drunk Jack calling Gwen all maudlin and desperate because he's still mourning Ianto and drunkenly attempting to confront his new-found mortality in the face of everyone else suddenly having a chance to out live him. Gwen (inadvertently?) hangs up on him to talk to Rhys and her daughter Anwen via videochat.
Plot wise the team learns that a drug company has a suspiciously ginormous supply of a painkiller that is not a narcotic and therefore perfectly tailored to the brave new world. It's pretty firmly established by the end of the episode that if the company isn't the *actual* big bad then it and the big bad are totally BFFs and play golf on the weekends.
Meanwhile Dr. Juarez confronts a cop in her E.R. over not being able to charge anyone with murder as she has a patient whose husband strangled her so hard and thoroughly that her brain was rendered to mush and her hyoid bone is powdered, the roughly 50% of otherwise non-viable pregnancies that naturally spontaneously abort no longer are resulting in children being born with horrific birth defects, China and India are introducing contraceptives into the water supplies and at least one doctor with a religious agenda is freaking out over it all.
Jack confronts Danes. Danes becomes the drug company's unofficial spokesperson in return for protection from the mobs. The team attempts to spread word about the role of the drug company but are stymied at every turn. Jack and Rex have a spat over TW's mortality rates and Rex tries to argue that TW no longer exists. Later Jack sneeringly calls Rex out for running off in a huff and accuses Rex of, 'not liking his jokes too gay' whereupon Rex claims that he just doesn't like it 'when a man in his forties acts like he's in his twenties'. Esther freaks out a bit as she's not used to the field and worries she's slowing everyone else down, she's also worried about her older but unstable sister and how she'll do without Esther in her life now that Esther is on the run with TW.
It's the best episode of Miracle Day to date, the disparate group is actually becoming a team and finally making some progress on discovering more about the Miracle. The past members of the team are acknowledged more than once including Jack's relationship with Ianto, and the action is most enjoyable. Danes is a slimeball extraordinaire.
A highlight for me was the verbal interplay between Esther and Gwen early on that acted as a shorthand primer/reminder that the original audience and heart of the show are British and the newcomers are the Yanks. Esther serves as Gwen's de facto translator and such things as the difference between American lemonade (flat) and British lemonade (evidently fizzy) are brought to light in a nice nod to the show's new international audience.
Bottom line? If you were upset or annoyed by the first two episodes being slow, exposition heavy, 'Americanized' (still not sure just what that means, or losing the feel of the old Torchwood, reserve judgement until this episode at the least.
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