The main issue with this episode is that it seems to be trying to be two things at once: it wants to be a funny, rather lightweight story, but it also wants to be a standard
Torchwood story, with horrific aliens and macabre events. (It also wants to be the "event" episode, showing the marriage (finally) of Gwen and Rhys.) The end result falls between the two camps, not really succeeding at either.
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Gwen is escorted up the aisle by her father. ("Something
Borrowed") ©BBC |
It is rather funny at times, but it really needs to go the whole way to be successful. Instead we get some jokes that are decent -- along with a few that fall flat -- but ultimately it doesn't go all the way. It doesn't do enough with the situation of Gwen suddenly pregnant and trying to handle the reactions of everyone there -- a few quiet jokes ("Oh, we must have had way too much to drink," one of the bridesmaids says, wondering why they hadn't noticed that Gwen was pregnant at her bachelorette party) but that's about it, and they really needed a lot more to make this part work. You can tell they tried a bit (as opposed to just slipping some jokes in) because there are just enough moments that seem almost funny (Tosh's reaction to "Banana Boat", the way every guest is dosed with Retcon at the end) that you wonder what the committed version would have been like.
This is also a problem because the other storyline (shapeshifting alien implants an alien baby in Gwen, then the mom comes to collect the offspring) just isn't distinct enough to maintain interest. There are some interesting moments (the way the mother kills the DJ and wraps up Tosh and "Banana Boat", the general shapeshifting idea), but there's no real impetus behind them, no way to distinguish this from any other monster episode. There's not even much danger involved -- once the female shapeshifter is discovered, there's little in the way of complications until Jack shoots it dead.
And that's really the problem with "Something Borrowed" -- it clearly wants to be the "fun" episode of the series, but it pulls most of its punches, as if it's never quite sure if the comedic moments are acceptable. This means that the whole thing falls flat. It's not actually a bad episode, but it could have been so much better; instead, we get a rather unmemorable "event" episode.