Even though I praise Misfits for being a show that's much smarter than it looks every other week or so, it still manages to surprise me at being, well, smarter than it seems like it should be. I think it might be because I'm mentally treating it in the same way as, say, a Joss Whedon show—serious at its core, surrounded by flippancy. The show seemed to be pointed that way, thanks to its copious foreshadowing this season, thanks to Future Simon as well as Curtis' vision of himself in a superhero costume.
But while Future Simon's seriousness remains a point of concern, today's episode pretty firmly takes the piss out of the “superhero” flash-forward. It was at a party. A “fancy dress party,” which apparently means something different in England than it does here, leads to our misfits putting on a semi-matching set of superhero costumes, and Curtis lives out his flash-forward just a few weeks after having it.
So, yeah, that was one bit of apparently-serious foreshadowing totally ruined. And for some reason I was surprised by this, even though writing it now, it seems ridiculous. OF COURSE it was a costume party! These misfits wouldn't actually be real superheroes. Except for Future Simon, but that involved time travel, and we can pretend it never happened now.
With that out of the way, we can get down to what this episode was really about: fucking.
The most important fucking belongs to Simon, who, as foreshadowed, pops his cherry with one of the week's guest stars. She also appears to be related to a string of murders, since any man who so much as looks at her inappropriately ends up dead, starting with Nathan. Like that'll work. It seemed pretty obvious that the killer was the father from the second he showed up, but the misfits didn't see that, and spend most of the episode thinking it's the girl. It's a little too easy, but it works, largely because Iwan Rheon seems to be having so much fun as Simon. He was certainly good as the first season's shy, creepy Simon, but the added dimensions to the character this season really show off what he can do (which leaves Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as the only cast member to not really have a chance to shine yet).
The second fucker is Kelly, who has an odd side-plot where she meets a sweet boy who seems entirely too sweet and straightforward. Because he's a gorilla who got hit in the storm, because why not have a gorilla who can appear human? Gorilla-boy fucks a little too hard, which causes some drama, and then takes Kelly to the top of a building, King Kong-style, because once you've got the gorilla, you really have to go all-out.
The final fucker is Curtis, who's getting it on with Nikki at the party when Alisha shows up. I suppose it speaks to Curtis' sidelined nature on the show that the situation is primarily about Alisha and her burgeoning relationship with Present Simon instead of him. He seems to immediately regret the situation, but not so much that he actually rewinds time in order to turn the couch around.
This is a lot of fucking, including over half of the misfits, and not with each other either, which would be easy. And since the fucking is done in relation to side plots, it means that this is a particularly busy episode of Misfits. Perhaps not its best, but it's never boring. And I think that's Misfits' highest aim sometimes.
Stray Observations:
- “This is why people kill you.”
- “No. I love the police.”
- “…DIVIDED by all the weird shit that happens to us EQUALS guilty!”
- “What kind of a shit name is that?”
- “…and then they eat their own feces.”
- “Right, but after I'm done killing Hitler, I'd do the orgasm thing.”