I liked the doctor! I didn't want him to die, even if he was evil. I like all the plot threads being set up/hinted at. I am very interested to see how this all comes together. Lois had probably the worst first day of work in the history of humankind (and I loved see the pieces that didn't come together because Lois didn't know they had to go together). I like all these agencies running around with their own agendas. I loved that the team's response to 'we need a kid to study' is to go try to steal their younger relatives, in glorious Torchwood tradition of sheer fucked-upness. I liked seeing the families and watching the team trying to navigate through them. For all the cracktastic glory of Torchwood, I thought this was a fairly well put together episode.

On the other hand, WHY WAS EVERYONE ORANGE. DEAR TORCHWOOD, LAY OFF THE SPRAY TAN.



Of course, whatever one might think of the quality of Torchwood, I watched Kings just before it, which makes even Torchwood seem like well-structured television.

A lot of the time, Kings has moments of good, enough that I can sort of see the show it's trying to be. This episode, I just wanted to take about behind the shed and shoot in order to put it out of its misery.

1. YOU DO NOT GET TO INTRODUCE A FRAMING DEVICE IN THE FUCKING TENTH EPISODE.
2. YOU DO NOT KILL OFF CHARACTERS JUST AFTER YOU GIVE THEM PLOTLINES.
3. David: still can't act. still dumber than a box of rocks. also, in the rule of one additional piece of furniture per apartment shot, now has a stove.

I kind of have the urge to re-edit Kings. I'm curious if that could make it a better show. It wouldn't solve a bunch of the problems (like the acting), but I've been thinking about structure and narrative a little lately, and I think one of the problems is that Kings's structure doesn't match the tone it's aiming for, like, at all, and it makes it jarring.

Okay, example. The last several episodes have been very Monster/Case Of The Week feeling: plague, traitor in the king's inner circle, missing Charter, sex scandels, all presented and then solved in 45 minutes. Now, there's nothing wrong with this format - I like lots of CotW shows (Leverage and Burn Notice are two I'm watching right now) - but it takes away from the impact of a lot of these problems. They should be stressful! Make the characters unable to sleep well for weeks! But right now, Michelle can freak out for a day about a missing camera, and then it comes back to her, or Silas learns of a traitor and then identifies and kills him 20 minutes later, or David goes undercover (hahahaha) to search for the Charter and brings it back a week later. It just makes these things...not real. Too easy, when we know these things aren't easy. The structure they should be looking to is something like West Wing instead. (or Heroes, or Lost, but without the suck of either of those two).

So what I'm curious about is whether it would be possible to fix that, with the footage we have. It means sacrificing the neat five act structure that a lot of the episodes have, but it might be worth it. What I would do - if I were doing this, which I am not - is find each plot thread and then introduce them all much faster and draw them out much longer, rather than introducing and then solving them, one after another. Like, if you have plot elements a1-a5, b1-b5, etc, rather than putting them in that order, put them a1, b1, a2, c1, b2, a3, b3, c2, etc. I think you'd run into trouble with contradictions, like putting David in the mansion taking naked picturs of Michelle at the same time he's looking for the Charter, but you might be able to get around it.