1.7 Limbo The cold opening tonight, in which we are introduced to the threat of the week for this episode, is straight out of a 2000s-era horror movie, but it’s actually executed really well. A creepo attacker is mentioned, and a girl is left on her own to wait for security to return. Of course, after the guard walks away to lead another vulnerable woman to her car, the creepo strikes. This is where the show gets interesting. The creeper whistles, then teleports, then whistles again, and keeps repeating this until he gets close enough to grab the girl. In case you didn’t get that he was a rogue breakout turned evil (they never show him teleporting, he just does the horror movie villain pop-up trick), when the girl gets her mace out and tries to spray Creepo J. Rapist, he cleverly uses his powers to turn her spray back on her so she ends up macing herself. It’s a pretty funny moment, albeit in a blackly comic sort of way. Of course, because this is The Tomorrow People, once folks actually show up to do something about the Tomorrow Rapist, everything goes downhill. Last week, Cara and Stephen explored their mystical mental connection via intercourse, despite the fact Cara is dating John, the defacto leader of the Tomorrow People. This conflation of elements leads to a horrible development as Stephen, Cara, and John attempt to out-cliche one another courtesy of the script from Nicholas Wootton and Micah Schraft. John speaks in nothing but canned leadership dialogue for a good five minutes at one point. When he’s not speaking in leader-speak, he’s speaking in the worst romantic drama cuckold dialogue imaginable. He blames himself, misreads Cara, and so on. Cara also gets a lot of terrible ‘woman torn’ dialogue when talking to both John and Stephen (who in turn gets spurned one-night-stand/pseudo-obsessed stalker dialogue). The only one who gets any decent lines is Russell, and most of his lines are a direct response to the episode-long sniping between John and Cara. Stephen, being Stephen, goes off on his own and stops the threat, because he has to prove something both to himself and to both sides of his life, Ultra and the Tomorrow People, who all agree that he’s useless without his powers. And he is useless without his powers, because it takes Cara and John coming to his rescue to keep him from drowning, but the Chosen One gets to have a vision of his late, lost father, who reveals to him some secret Obi-wan Kenobi ghost clues while Stephen drowns in sewage water; the show tries to milk the tension of John giving Stephen CPR, but he’s the main character and at no time his is peril believable or dramatic. Thus is the problem with The Tomorrow People. There are attempts at drama, but none of them really work because there’s no actual sense of peril and no real stakes. We know Stephen is making the right decision by chasing the rapist, because he’s always right. We know someone will stop the rapist, because there’s no room for an ongoing threat aside from Jed and Ultra. We know John and Stephen will forge some sort of peace, because they have to for the future of their species. We know that Cara won’t pick Stephen so early in the season, because that throws off the show’s dynamics; ditto John dumping Cara for cheating on him while he was gone comforting one of his best friends after the death of his father. We know Astrid loves Stephen, because it’s telegraphed pretty hard, as are Cara’s feelings for Stephen. Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Sorry For Your Loss, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan is rapidly running out of goofy jokes and comments to make in this little italicized blurb at the end of the article. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.
