Misfits series 5 review – episode one
Well basically the deal is that in an estate in London in 2009, this weird storm thing rained down some kinda giant hailstones and zapped a bunch of people and gave them dumb powers based on whatever it was they were feeling at the time they got hit. So the main group (young offenders on community service) got invisibility due to feeling like nobody noticed them, guilt-based time travel due to being obsessed over a personal failure, etc. Seemingly quite a lot of other people also did so it’s lucky they’ve all managed to keep it mostly under-wraps for so long.
Oh also there’s sex and drugs and some pretty graphic violence plus bad language. And with the exception of the really bad handling of Curtis in Season 4, because who needs character development when you can just push someone so far into the sidelines you don’t know they’re there and then just kind of wallpaper over them, the cast and characters work together really well, the powers are interesting and the show looks and sounds fantastic, great art direction and soundtrack. Now it’s on Season 5 which is set to be the final season.
ANYWAY NOW I’M GOING TO SPOIL THE FIRST EP OF THE LAST SEASON & SOON THE SECOND EPISODE (NOT HERE BUT SOON)
Going into the episode I had a bunch of questions. Why are Finn and Jess on community service? What is the deal with this Abbey chick’s mysterious past? What’s Alex’s power going to be? Was Finn’s sister seriously just in that one episode and now that’s it? Is anyone going to feel bad about a friend or loved one’s death on this show apart from like one time for more than half a second?
So two of those questions were answered in this episode: Alex (Matt Stokoe)’s new power is the transplanted ability to sex other people’s powers out of them (which, have fun with your mental state, dude who originally had that power) and Rudy (Joseph Gilgun off Emmerdale)’s growth seems to have consisted of being a bit more subdued and getting a haircut and a wardrobe change which I guess is at least something.
The episode was pretty Alex/Finn-heavy with both of those dudes mostly driving the plot and Jess (Karla Crome) kind of caught in the middle, so I guess this is a continuation of that relationship dynamic because sure? Please, more love-triangles where the woman doesn’t know what she wants and is barely there. Nobody is tired of that yet.
The deal was that this scout dude’s power was that the Devil was real and inside him sorta, which was cool but it raised a bunch of questions such as what had he been doing for the past almost-year in show-time, and what was going to happen to the scout kids after he died part-way through, transferring the Devil into Finn, but don’t worry because the scouts totally disappear from the episode so you don’t need to think about them anymore.
The whole thing’s an excuse to change the dynamic and have Finn and some other characters act all evil like they did a few times in Season 4, (especially with Rudy) this time it worked a -lot- better than Season 4’s opener (due to having a better handle on the characters before playing with them) and Nathan McMullen did a really great job of portraying a dark, menacing version of Finn while still retaining the original’s personality. Natasha O’Keeffe did a great job with dark Abbey too even if she wasn’t in this one so much.
Oh wait and before I forget, another thing was a support group for people with powers and this old lady can knit the future which gives me something to talk about (it looks like Abbey can fly and that might be an invisibility dude who I’m guessing bought the power off Seth before he retired? And maybe Jess with lightning and some dude about to jump off a tower that might be Rudy?) and Tim’s back (from season 2? The videogame guy?). He’s out of prison I guess and it looks like he’ll show up quite a bit which will be nice.
The whole support group bit (apart from a fun gag that also worked as kind of a callback to the season 2 paper-aeroplane opener) mostly involved Rudy Too (Joseph Gilgun off Harry Brown), and it’s cool to see the Rudys branching out and becoming slightly more rounded people as seemed to be happening towards the end of the last series, even seemingly thinking about the future in some meaningful way.
Oh and Alex is still incredibly good looking even if he did wind up saving the day by means that will probably take a short while to process properly. Oh and there’s a tortoise now too. Anyway I’m done re-capping so feel free to leave a comment telling me if this was too long or if I missed anything or whatever! In conclusion, two out of five stars (this is a goof on star ratings).
Next up: More characters from the past to make it feel like this is a final season, and other stuff like that!