The plot thickens a new political speaker enters the scene: Ellis Hartley Monroe, a clear take on Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman who has begun her own "Dead is Dead" campaign that insists that those who should have died after the miracle should be treated as dead people and removed from society. Her presence poses a threat to Oswald Danes’ own campaign to get people taking PhiCorp’s new pain killer.
Meanwhile, Torchwood relocates from Washington DC to Los Angeles to get a closer look at PhiCorp’s main headquarters. Hiding out in Venice Beach, their attempts to keep a low profile prove futile when an assassin working for the mysterious spinning triangle group (played by C. Thomas Howell, who seems to have found a new niche for himself playing frighteningly cold killers) has tracked them down. They attempt to break into PhiCorp to get to a very secure server with information that could lead to the connection with the miracle, but their efforts are impeded by the assassin. In the end, they do manage to get what they need, but only after a frightening confrontation that alludes to a conspiracy that goes back much further than any of them could have anticipated.
Trying to gain higher ground against Monroe, Danes makes a bold move that puts him even more into the role of eventual messiah. But it is not his own efforts that take Monroe out of the game. The organization behind the miracle has a very specific plan that Monroe is upsetting, and those who cross them end up meeting truly disturbing fates.
What makes this season of "Torchwood" so interesting is that we are given the unsettling images of dead bodies that aren’t dead. We have scenes that show people in situations where they should be dead, and yet their corpses are still breathing and have moving eyes. When the assassin makes his move, we are treated to dead bodies in his wake that are still awake. It’s a far more unnerving image than one might think.
Some tensions are building among the team as Rex is showing more and more impatience with how flippantly Jack and Gwen behave. Esther is still having a hard time dealing with the pressure of being a part of Torchwood, and yet I don’t find her to be as annoying as a character like that might usually be. The funny quirk with both Rex and Esther is how they just don’t believe Jack when he makes statements about how old he is. It’s a fun running gag, and this show does need levity with the hook that ends this episode. Things are ramping up, and the next episode promises to be a good one.
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