Monday, August 27, 2012

Misfits Season One, Episode One



The misfits are a group of young teenagers who have been centered to community service.  Alisha recognizes Curtis as a runner who was in the papers. We also learn that Kelley is in trouble for punching a girl who called her a whore.  Nathan accuses Simon of being a pervert and a panty sniffer and we learn that Nathan tried to burn someone's house down when he rejections Nathan's speculation about his crime.  The crew is outside painting benches, when a huge storm comes in and massive hail stones start falling from the sky.  They make a mad dash for the community center, where Gary is in the bathroom, but before they can get indoors they are struck by a bolt of lightening.

Tony, the probation worker says its time to call it  day.  In the locker room where Alisha and Kelly are changing, Kelly begins to overhear Alisha's thoughts.  Alisha repeatedly refers to Kelly as a chav, which does not exactly endear her to Kelly. Tony watches them leave and there is clearly something wrong with him, because he is twitching and groaning. Gary is in the bathroom again and when he drops his phone, someone uses an axe to crash through the stall door.

At home, Kelly is playing with her dog and she is suddenly able to hear its thoughts.  Nathan returns home where his mother has changed the locks because she wants to give her relationship with Jeremy a chance.  Nathan is freaked out because he has nowhere to stay, but she simply tells him where his bags are and walks away.  Nathan calls friend after friend, but no one is willing to let him stay and so he sleeps at the community center.  The next morning he uses the same stall where Gary was murdered but he is so out of it, he doesn't notice the broken door or the blood on the wall and the floor.

Outside, the other misfits find the words, "I'm going to kill you all," on the walls of the community center.  When Alisha's phone rings, Tony gets upset and demands that they all hand over their cell phones. In the change room, Simon finds Gary's cap and it it's covered with blood.  His body convulses briefly and he calls out for help, but none of the other misfits can see or hear him. He is even invisible in the mirror. 

When the other misfits head outside, Simon has another little fit and changes back.  In the meantime in the hallway the probation worker finds a spliff on the ground and then has a fit and starts throwing around chairs. Outside they are scrubbing the walls when Kelly asks if anyone felt something weird after the storm.  Simon says that something happened but won't elaborate.  Kelly goes to leave in frustration but Tony grabs her and calls her a bitch.  Kelly is forced to slam his nose in to escape and this enrages Tony to the point where his eyes becomes a strange colour.  Tony makes a point of saying that no one will believe that he attacked her given their respective positions and I thought this was a great point about how easy it is for an official to abuse his power.


Inside, Nathan is trying to talk Curtis into dividing the women up and it seems that he has his eye on Kelly. I do like that Curtis points out that the women should have some say in this but am disgusted with the idea that women are objects to be divided.  We learn that Curtis is doing community service because he was caught with cocaine. He believes that because of his profile they threw the book at him.  Nathan starts to talk about how Curtis let all the kids down which causes Curtis to grab him and get in his face.

Outside, Kelly is sitting on the ground crying when Tony approaches her and she hears his plans to kill her.  Kelly takes off running and crashes into the room where Alisha is talking about her crimes.  Though she warns them, Curtis opens the door and the probation worker bursts in and kills Kelly.  The stress of the moment causes Curtis to go back in time.  The worker is trying to burst the door down and Simon suggests that it was Tony who wrote "I'm going to kill you on the door."  They decide to sneak out the back way and Nathan slips on a puddle of blood.  When Curtis opens a locker he finds Gary inside dead.

Curtis grabs a hold of Alisha's hand to try and comfort her and he immediately starts talking about wanting to have sex with her.  When she touches Simon he says, "I'm so hard for you, I want to rip your clothes off and piss and your tits."  When the probation worker bursts through the door, Kelly ends up stomping him to death while screaming, "I'm not a chav."  Curtis suggests that they should call the police, but Kelly says that no one is going to believe them and Simon suggests if there's no body, there's no crime.

They put Gary and Tony in a wheelchair and take them outside to bury them.  They make a pact not to tell anyone about what happened and this includes keeping their powers between themselves. As they are burying the bodies, Nathan realizes that he has no idea if or what his secret power is. That night they go their separate ways and do their own thing.

The next morning, Sally tells the gang that both Gary and Tony have been reported missing and asks if they know anything.  Nathan says that he saw both Gary and Tony having sex and asks, "in this world of intolerance and prejudice, who are we to condemn them?"  Yeah, that entire scene was played for a joke and the butt of the joke is the idea of two men having illicit sex.  This is not at all cool, considering that there isn't a single GLBT character on the show to day.  Lucy calls Tony's number and only gets his machine.

Outside, Simon asks if they are meant to be superheroes but the rest of the crew is not at all pleased with his idea.  Kelly wonders if  they are gong to be like this for the rest of their lives. For the first episode of a new show, Misfits is interesting though the continual classist label of Chav for Kelly was disturbing.  It was just so normalized to think of her as less than.  There is something deeply disturbing about Simon and highly believe that  am going to come to hate Nathan.