I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!

When I looked closer
I saw negative rift spike
Residual rift flares

Nice to see Chibnall combining the haiku and the tongue-twister.   Always experimental.

Torchwood: Adrift

I'm sure Gwen means well, but let's face it she's the kiss of death.  She has spent all of her time in Torchwood extending the metaphor of breaking the photocopier to the point that when she comes to stay the mice are throwing themselves on the traps.  Adrift was another example of her good intentions gone awry, but she wasn't entirely to blame.  This time that snake-in-the-grass PC "Spooky" Andy was responsible for tempting her back into the life of blighting other lives.  I've never trusted him - he has the look of a man who'd happily watch Torchwood if it wasn't already a fictional construct of which he is a part.  So once tempted back to her interfering worst by PC Andy she is then encouraged along the path by the most incompetent wanker on the planet aka Captain Jack.  I've lost patience with myself going on about this, but no wonder Torchwood fucks up so much when they are led by a man who has taken the mushroom management of his staff (shit on them and keep them in the dark) to a new art form.  Except most managers like this might bankrupt a company or two at worst, whereas this clown causes a legion of pointless deaths per episode while sexual harassment lawsuits go through the roof.  And what's worse his antics are televised.  I didn't think Jack could sink any lower than his Benny Hill bum-pinching in Meat, but he managed it here. His inexplicable behaviour in withholding the whereabouts of the rift victims from trusted colleagues was bad enough, but the sound of him off-screen roaring "Ianto" like some sex-crazed Jack Nicholson impersonator was enough to put the teenagers off their dinner.

Give Nikki her hope back - it's a piece of piss.

However, if you could ignore the Scottish American long enough there were signs of a real drama trying to get out.  I've been meaning for a while to give due credit to Kai Owen's work on this series, but I think he's one of the best things about it.  All the scenes between Rhys and Gwen were excellent and actually sounded like real people arguing.  Admittedly you had to forget about the pregnancy talk coming hot on the heels of Something Borrowed, but Rhys's "Sometimes I fucking hate you" speech was great.  In addition to this there were powerful performances from Ruth Jones and Robert Pugh, the latter an actor I've always had time for since his monumental performance in In a Land of Plenty. Mind you I wasn't expecting him to turn up looking like Uncle Fester after a night on the tiles.  But as ever, so much of the good stuff was undermined by nonsensical plotting and motivations.  Doesn't Jack think to mention to Gwen that Jonah is stark, staring mad most of the time and that therefore getting his mum to visit might not be a great idea? "These people are sick in ways you can't imagine".  Well if you told her she wouldn't have to imagine.  And after flinging retcon pills around like Smarties in every other episode in the series, no-one even thinks about retconning Nikki Bevan, the one person who categorically should be helped to forget, and this omission is seemingly for the sole reason of contriving a situation that makes Gwen feel sad and responsible. Give Nikki her hope back - it's a piece of piss.

Has he never thought through this stuff at all?

The hospital was also bizarre.  Jack sets it up on Kirrin Island and tells the staff that "These were experiments that went wrong" as a cover story.  How desperate were the people at the Job Centre that day?  What were the interviews like? "That brings us to the end of the interview.  Do you have any questions of your own?"  "Er...what experiments? And what's the soundproofing like in the staffroom?".  And when it comes to the crunch and Gwen wants to bring Nikki to visit it takes her approximately thirty seconds to convince Jack that he's morally wrong to keep the inmates a secret.  Has he never thought through this stuff at all?  Or does he have the concentration of a fucking goldfish? Maybe everytime he dies another part of his cerebral cortex is nixed. The brain damage would explain years later why he can only say "You are not alone" as opposed to "The Master's at the end of the universe, do all you can to avoid that scenario.".  He'd just forgotten.

Those girls really researched hard

But all of this is just putting me into the downswing.   Back in the upswing, I was particularly enamoured of the montage scene where Tosh and Gwen researched the negative rift spikes via a flashy edit that did for research what Flashdance did for dancing.  Those girls really researched hard.  They had more red sticky dots on their maps than Sergeant Benton in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, and they had bespoke rift spike stationery!  With barcodes!  Which they stamped with bingo markers!  For the sheer glamour of research, this was probably my favourite scene in the series so far.  But to my surprise, it was swiftly overtaken by Gwen and Rhys's reconciliation at the end of the episode.  Because in spite of all the nonsense that came before, the characters were convincing and moving. Who would have thought it?

And before anyone says it - yes I know Jack has issues concerning a missing member of his family.   It's no fucking excuse.