Season premieres are often problematic, especially in the DVD era. You have to remind viewers of what went on in the previous season, and also hold new viewers' hands. You also have to try to be entertaining enough to keep everyone's attention, but that usually takes a back seat to the introduction aspects.
Misfits…doesn't have any of those problems with its 2nd season premiere. At all.
And really, that's thanks to Misfits' strengths. This episode was, simply, Misfits. It covered the characters and the storyline because that's all there is, and those are the show's strengths – especially the characters. If it seemed like it was just hanging out with Nathan, Simon, Alisha, Curtis, and Kelly for half the episode, well, that's what Misfits does.
It also helps that this episode of Misfits might have done it better than all of the previous episodes. It feels like over the break between the seasons, the producers, writers, actors, and crew polished all the rough edges away. Every line feels just a little bit funnier. The plot feels just a bit tighter. The direction and the editing feel, well, much more than a little bit more interesting – half the episode seems to be filmed with an odd lens and Vaseline on the camera. There even seems to be an improvement in SFX, with a new character's superpower showing far more than we saw in the first season.
There's also a pleasant level of self-awareness, as a third probation worker shows up, and the misfits crack wise about how they seem to tear through them – and then accidentally kill him before Curtis (inevitably) fixes things.“It's the new probation worker. It's always the probation worker!”
The most important new plot development is that our misfits have a stalker/helper (who I am assuming is also the masked person from last week's finale). He or she seems to be taking a far more active role this episode, launching a perfectly placed paper airplane into Kelly's eye and turning off the lights in order to save Curtis.
This episode even goes head-to-head with one of the banes of superhero stories everywhere: the shapeshifter. Shapeshifters are difficult because they seem like shortcuts to causing chaos for the main characters, but they also tend to rely on the main characters and/or the audience being total idiots. And there's a bit of that here, especially when the shapeshifter gives Simon a blowjob without him going insanely mad with lust (just normally mad with lust). But, to their credit, they do figure it out quickly once they realize something is amiss, and they have a solution. The password is: monkeyslut. Sure, it doesn't work more than once if everyone just shouts it, but if the prospect of the misfits shouting “monkeyslut” at one another at the climax of the episode doesn't appeal to you, then maybe Misfits isn't for you.
Stray Observations:
- “To her that's like saying hello.”
- “That does sound like him.” Nathan wanking off in the coffin.
- “Hey guess what? I'm immortal! Can you believe that shit?”
- “Should probably go tell my mom that I'm immortal. Catch you later?”
- “And obviously you fancy me.” Nathan is on fire.
- “Do I like food?”
- “I have feelings! And so does my cock!”
- “Saw it in an episode of Star Trek.”
- “We're not having monkeyslut as our password.”
- “Well you're obviously lying…but it's five o'clock. I couldn't give a shit.”
- “Monkeyslut is blown.”