Give Rhys a Chance

Torchwood: Meat

Seeing that Gwen was our entry point into Torchwood way back in Everything Changes, it was inevitable that boyfriend Rhys was gonna get his fifteen minutes in the spotlight eventually. Meat - somewhat like its much-abused subject - is a curious beast; part True Lies style domestic thriller in which one half finds out what the other half has been doing on all those late nights at the office; and on the other a somewhat heavy-handed treatise about the sort of ‘Meat is Murder’ anti-carnivorism that Morrissey was making T-shirt friendly more than twenty years ago. Whether it succeeds is a moot point, as largely Team Torchwood seem to have reverted to type this episode (even the ‘grown up’ swearing makes a less than welcome return). But there’s still plenty of meat (sorry) on the bones to make its failures at worst interesting; and at best something more than that.

So, having a girlfriend unknowingly work for a top-secret (ahem) government-ops type organisation in Cardiff without having bumped into her for the past year or so, Rhys (think Paul Cornell with a weight problem and better teeth) finally stumbles across his soon-to-be-betrothed strutting her stuff with her fellow Torchwood mates at the site of a lorry crash in which one of his drivers has just been fatally injured. Problem is, said driver wasn’t exactly being upfront about his cargo, and when Torchwood get wind that alien meat has entered the local food supply then it doesn’t take Sherlock to work out that pretty soon the professional lives of Gwen and Rhys (thus far about as diametrically opposed as it’s possible to get) are gonna come crashing together.

the wholesale exploitation of an intelligent life-form for base, human greed. But that’s enough about Rhys

All of which leads to arguably the most entertaining aspect of the episode. In fact when Gwen and Rhys finally cough up the truth about knowing what each other has been doing behind the other’s back it’s a relief to find that Torchwood can still do angsty, angry human emotion after the more touchy-feely direction so far adopted by Season 2. Their dialogue fizzles and snaps with hurt and betrayal - ‘I catch aliens’, Gwen implausibly says; ‘Oh, piss off’, Rhys retorts, before most memorably describing her attempts to explain her suspicious behaviour with little green men as some ‘pretty high grade shit!’ I wasn’t sure whether this was all to make the viewer laugh or cry at the bizarre juxtaposition of it all, so I chose the former.

So Rhys gets temporary secondment from meat packing to alien-hunting, drafted into Torchwood under the spurious conception that he can help solve the illegal meat supply being run by the Stereophonics look-alikes down town (even Jack has a point when he says that Rhys bungled Torchwood’s attempts at infiltration by going all commando himself). Still, at least he gets the chance to meet the bloke who was boffing his intended last year, not to mention check out his final resting place of that skewed timeline of End of Days. I dunno, for a bloke for whom character development thus far has amounted to little more than being knifed to death Rhys is a surprisingly likeable bloke; the human equivalent of a slobbery dog who always brings your slippers to you caked in spittle. Still, he managed to pull Gwen so what do I know about sartorial elegance?

And thus we’re brought to the core theme of Meat - the wholesale exploitation of an intelligent, albeit morbidly obese, life-form for base, human greed. But that’s enough about Rhys, what about the whale-like meat-feast that Team Torchwood aim to free from the shackles of a bunch of got-lucky entrepreneurs for whom animal rights is about as important as basic security.? Well, it moans like a harpooned animal, has doe-eyes that belie its gross weight and finally cracks Jack’s cool exterior after the extended run in the Grade-A prick zone he’s been inhabiting for the last few episodes. But enough about Ruth, Rhys’ secretary, what about the alien?

the human equivalent of a slobbery dog who always brings your slippers to you caked in spittle

Okay, I digress. If Meat has one major failing it’s in the heavy-handed message it tries to inject us syringe-like just in case we’re not sure we can work out the equation of animal exploitation = bad and compassionate humanity = good. It’s like someone saw Star Trek IV and Saw back-to-back and decided to mesh them together. But I for one find it hard to fall for the fact that Torchwood as a whole - and Jack in particular - get all dewy-eyed over what is in essence an overgrown tin of Pal dog food. Given his wholesale bastard treatment of Beth the alien-terrorist-in-disguise just a couple of episodes ago, it doesn’t chime right that all of a sudden Captain Shit is suddenly getting down with the whole compassion thing. And are we really going down the route of will they-won’t they shenanigans between Gwen and Jack given the less than subtle sexual tension between the two here?

But as a self-confessed non-veggie, I couldn’t bring myself to hate Meat. Catherine Tregenna’s script - much like her debut entries of last year - are a notch above the usual Torchwood fare (though, worryingly for her, it’s yet another treatise about the powder-keg debate surrounding euthanasia. She must be a hoot at dinner parties). And Kai Owen is a revelation as Rhys, finally given some meat (sorry again) to put on the bones of the dim, beer-guzzling boyfriend he’s been stuck with for the past year (and his comic timing makes Ianto’s current sabbatical at the Comedy Store pale into redundancy by comparison). But on the minus side, isn’t this the third out of four episodes so far that has relied upon Owen’s pharmacological version of Ready Steady Cook? And while we’re kicking the cat, so much for Tosh’s brief glimmer of character development last week; one week heartbroken lover of a doomed WWI soldier, the next clingy, needy groupie to arguably the least deserving bag of bollocks masquerading as a medical genius. Go, as they say, figure.

Still, at least somebody finally made the obvious comparison between Team Torchwood’s inept investigations and Scooby-Doo. Charlie Brooker, you’re vindicated at last…

Next Time: Would you Adam ‘n’ Eve It!?! Someone’s clearly been tampering with the timelines as Torchwood gets a hitherto unknown member (if you’ll pardon the expression).