July 21, 2011

Rendition (2011)

The second instalment is where the novelty of the show returning goes and the series has to stand on its own merits. This episode is written by Doris Egan. Apart from having a wonderful name, she has an impressive CV. She been a writer and producer for several top US shows including House, Smallville and Numb3rs. The story does a fault prett much immediately when Rhys is written out of the episode. I quite like Rhys and think that for the brief time that he was on screen he was funny. With Jack poisoned they manage to create bit of drama getting a group of scientists to come up with a cure. I swear it’s the sort of thing I saw in Apollo 13 when they were putting junk together to make something that could be made on Apollo 13. There seemed to be a substantial amount handed over to this.

They try and make a bit of comedy by saying that Danny is gay and he denies this yet everyone has a bit of a dig and it’s another RTD trait. Thankfully they have cut down on the gore. There was a brief moement when there is an arm that is moving but that’s about as gory as it got. Which I have to say I was thankful for because I was still recovering from the boat load we had last week.

Bill Pullman continues to impress. Again his involvement seemed to be very limited but whenever he was on screen he was yet again brilliant. The best bit was when he was on that talk show and he was reduced to tears when the pictured of the girl that he raped and killed was put on the screen. He is in danger of stealing the entire season. We are introduced to yet more characters. The first is Lyn Peterfield. Yet again we get another American who is portrayed as a bit of a jackass. Dichen Lachman is instantly unlikeable as the character, within a short amount of time she is poisoning Captain Jack and this makes Rex Matheson look reasonable. Just when I thought that her involvement in it was going to be short lived then there is a massive twist when she turns up with her head the way it wasn’t intended to be. It was when I thought she was gone for good that I finally started to like the Matheson character. He seemed to have undergone a personality transformation in the space of an hour. Then we have Wayne Knight who is most memorable in the first Jurassic Park film. He is the boss of CIA and he is like Pullman, superb. He isn’t an arsehole like Peterfield or Matheson. Jilly Kitzinger is an interesting character who is clearly up to something as she was to represent Oswald.

It’s clear in this episode that someone is working against Torchwood and this is confirmed by the fact that Lyn has poisoned Jack and when she is handcuffed coming of the plan the bloke that has cuffed her gives her the keys. Also the fact that $150,000 has been put in the bank account of Rex and that blonde woman from CIA.

It’s not as action packed as episode one but it does continue to build things up and if the trailer at the end of the episode is anything to go by then things do look like they are going to get big and Bill Pullman will get even better. So things are continuing to look up.

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