It’s amazing that even though Torchwood monopolises the lives of the staff so much that while they constantly bleat on about how they have no time for a personal life or their fiancés, Gwen still has plenty of mates at her hen do. But in Wales, you see, everyone is matey. You don’t need to see them to be friends. There are fun-loving friends on tap in Cardiff. It’s the Welsh way!
By contrast, Wales has Banana, Rhys’ idiot best friend who is evidently lots of fun, in a 18-30 kind-of way. Knock back your Screamer shot and hit on the nearest Valleys girl; he’s another loveable but dim-witted Welshman. Still, spending time with the Welshest people on television did at least therefore mean there were lots of jokes at hand. Even Tosh was allowed to make a very funny joke about her intolerance to banana.
This was a good strategy as it acted as a distraction from Gwen and Rhys’ plan that got more ridiculous the more you thought about it. To stop their parents, friends and family from knowing that Gwen was temporarily carrying an alien egg, they decided to pretend she was pregnant. And then when they didn’t create a baby…probably crack a joke about it while enjoying a pint of Brains out the front of a Cardiff landmark. Because the Welsh enjoy a joke, you see, unlike those uptight English.
Indeed, this really wasn’t a bad episode, but someone needs to take away the writers Big Book of National Stereotypes to stop this being such a bloody great problem. What about an intelligent Welsh person? Gwen doesn’t count; she’s ‘bolshy’, meaning that she has an air of self-importance while preserving her epsilon-grade mind. Or an Englishman who can crack a smile? You can just bring back James Marsters to deal with that.
Alternatively, kill off Gwen and give Banana a place in Torchwood. It might not do anything for defeating the writer’s idea that the Welsh peeter out at about 80 on the IQ scale. But at least it would be funny.
