Ready to touch some wood, Torchwood fans? With the fourth episode, "Escape to LA," of Starz's American port of Torchwood: Miracle Day now behind us, the team continues following every lead available to unravel the mystery of death, and just what pharmaceutical corporation PHICORP or the newly released and unsettlingly creepy Oswald Danes have to do with it! Not to mention C. Thomas Howell's mysterious new threat!
A bold new day dawns for planet Earth as the population realizes that its citizens are no longer dying, despite grave injury and sickness; only the mysterious Torchwood team can answer the threat when the CIA finds itself powerless to answer the question of where death has gone.
So what will happen on tonight's fifth episode "The Categories of Life?" Here's our bit-by-bit recap of episode four "Escape to LA" to get you up to speed!
- Esther Drummond brilliantly (read: not brilliantly) decides to visit her mentally unstable sister despite being pursued by the CIA. When she sees how Sarah's condition is affecting her children, Esther attempts to call social servicies, but can't give her name. Meanwhile, a mysterious man (hey look, kids, it's C. Thomas Howell!) appears to be following her, in an effort to find Torchwood.
- The team regroups at their new digs in a California shack, while Gwen contacts Rhys to assure her father and daughter are safe, and Rex learns of a new Tea Party campaign "Dead is Dead" to separate the "undead" from society, headed by Ellis Hartley Monroe.
- The same Ellis Hartley Monroe becomes something of a sore subject for Jilly Kitzinger, who believes Hartley is hogging the spotlight from her and PHICORP's campaign with Oswald Danes. Meanwhile, we finally see something of a human side to the PR representative when she reveals her disgust at Oswald's crimes, particularly his hands.
- Don't count Oswald Danes out just yet, as the creepily reformed murderer ambushes one of Monroe's press conferences and makes an impassioned speech about wanting to represent the dying, regaining public support in the process.
- Of course, because one stupid move wasn't enough, Rex goes to visit his own father, who promptly threatens him with a shotgun claiming he'd been ignored for fifteen years.
- So what's the next tactical move for Torchwood? Why, let's raid PHICORP's server hard drives! Jack and Gwen hilariously pose as an American couple to obtain the necessary DNA matches from employee Nicholas Frumkin (seriously?). Of course, C. Thomas Howell's mysterious hitman takes a different approach, recording Nicholas' voice, severing his hands and stealing his eyeball!
- Jack and Gwen manage to infiltrate the facility and replace the hard drives with fakes designed to look burned out, until C. Thomas Howell ambushes Gwen! He knows Jack is mortal, and wishes to bring him to "them" to secure his own place in the "new world order," and we almost learn who he works for until Rex bursts in (having climbed 33 floors with a heart condition), and unloads a full clip into the asassin, silencing him for now.
- As for the hard drives? It turns out that PHICORP's planning to use certain hospitals as "overflow camps," mainly to drop off loved ones who should have shuffled off the mortal coil long ago. Gwen gets a call from Rhys and realizes the corporation now has posession of her sick father.
- Defeated by Danes, Monroe leaves the hospital only to be kidnapped by unseen forces and placed into a car compactor, where she is told "The families cannot be stopped," disturbingly trapping the crushed but still-living representative in the junkyard.
Be sure to catch tonight's all-new episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day, and check out our Comic-Con coverage of the Torchwood: Miracle Day panel!
