The big problem with "The Middle Men" is that it has almost nothing new to say. Its most interesting scenes only take up something like five minutes of screen time, and the rest is filled with people being horrible to each other. But we've already seen humanity being awful last time -- this doesn't add anything to our understanding of the bigger picture, and none of the conversations we witness deepen our appreciation for the story.
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Stuart Owens is confronted by Jack. ("The Middle Men") ©BBC
Worldwide, Limited |
The best scenes involve Ernie Hudson (probably still best known as Winston Zeddemore from
Ghostbusters) as Stuart Owens, the chief operations officer for Phicorp, trying to find out more about the Miracle. He only gets two scenes here -- one at the beginning where he tries to get more information about some property in Shanghai, and one conversation with Jack -- but they're far and away the most interesting thing on display here. He's as much in the dark as Torchwood, but he also wants to know what's going on. "I'm not a bad man, Captain," Stuart says. "I'm not a good one, either. I'm a middle man in every sense of the word. ... You don't believe me. You think I'm the epitome of evil, the devil in a three piece suit." "In my experience, that's how it works," Jack replies. "Your experience must be rather simple," Stuart says. "You have a rather archaic view of good versus evil, don't you?" It's an interesting conversation that moves the story forward more than the rest of this episode's running time. "I'm sorry, Captain, but Phicorp isn't controlling this. Profiting, yes, but this is part of a much larger design way beyond any of us."
The rest of the episode involves the aftereffects of the events of "The Categories of Life": Rex is trying to sneak out of the San Pedro Overflow Camp with the video evidence he's collected, while Gwen is still trying to get her dad out of the Cowbridge Camp in Wales. Gwen is railing against the doctor who's employing the Nuremberg Defense as she marks people for burning, while Rex is caught and handed over to the camp's director, who decides he has to take care of Rex as well, after Rex mentions that he has evidence that Vera was murdered. The San Pedro portion adds nothing to the overall story, other than showing us that Colin Maloney isn't happy about what he did but doesn't want to be caught and having Esther turn Colin into a Category 1 patient -- except we find out that she didn't actually, and it's only the actions of Maloney's attaché Ralph that save Esther. And while it's exciting how Gwen blows up the ovens at Cowbridge, it doesn't really add much to the narrative.
In other words, most of this episode is simply spinning its wheels, content to do little more than reinforce points made more eloquently and subtly (if such a thing can be believed, as "The Categories of Life" was hardly subtle in its approach) in the previous installment. Perhaps the events witnessed here will have a larger impact down the line, but as it stands now, "The Middle Men" is largely redundant.
