Misfits, Season 3, Episode 6
Written by Jon Brown
Directed by Jonathan van Tulleken
Airs Sundays, 10pm GMT on E4
After a drunken one-night stand with a mysterious girl, Rudy discovers that he has a strange superpower STD. With only 24 hours to undo the curse, Rudy enlists Simon to help him find the girl. Meanwhile, something weird is happening with Curtis’s gender-swap power. And Seth finally finds the superpower that he’s been searching for.
Finally Misfits puts its best assets to use. I’ve been complaining for weeks now that they haven’t been using their powers in an interesting way or advancing the storyline at all. In the latest episode they did just that however. Every storyline had a point in order to move the season ahead and they used most of the powers in interesting ways that benefitted the story.
To start, Rudy is currently my favourite character. I know they have pushed him as the current star in order to replace Nathan, but I personally think he is better. He has all of the charm and humour without coming across as someone who thinks he is God’s gift to women/comedy. That always bugged me about Robert Sheehan. He knew that people loved him regardless of the way he acted on the show and so his character played up to it, which got annoying at times. Rudy however has a likability that comes from him being vulnerable and that was never more present than in this episode when he broke down to himself about how he is afraid of rejection.
Another thing that was great was that the notion of the powers coming from their personalities was addressed again because Rudy, someone who sleeps around actually picked up a deadly STD from the girl that he slept with. It wasn’t him getting the power but his actions led to the power being used on him. I hope that this is a trend that continues.
Curtis and Melissa, his female counterpart were used to great effect for a change. I hadn’t been a fan of this in the past, excluding episode 2 when they chose to focus on it. It seemed as though they weren’t sure what to do with the power, excluding have him masturbate while as Melissa. So seeing that backfire when he discovers that he is pregnant from himself because he switched back after masturbating and used the same tissue to clean up was hilarious and disturbing both at the same time. Luckily they also decided to have him get rid of the power because like I said before, there are only so many places they can take that story.
Simon following Rudy around while trying to find out the woman who gave him the STD was also very funny. He seemed like an innocent schoolboy, unaware of how to react and disgusted by everything Rudy says. It was very reminiscent of Simon from back in season one but also incorporated his skills of saving the day that he has gained over time.
Seth has been growing on me over the show, I initially didn’t trust him, he seemed a little sleazy but seeing him with Kelly made me like him, but then he went and blackmailed Curtis into taking the power to resurrect his dead ex-girlfriend and I went back to not liking him. That was an awful thing to make him do and I can see that the story is heading to him falling in love with her again, although he likely never stopped loving her but you get what I mean.
Next weeks preview hints of a zombie storyline which hopefully means another great episode like this one. I really enjoyed it and I haven’t been able to say that even for many moments on this season, let alone a whole episode. They did everything that I wanted to see of an episode, everything that made the show so good in the first place. There are two episodes left of the season so let’s hope they use them well and advance the story even further so that the lacklustre season can end on a high.
What did you think of the episode? Let me know in the comments below.
Yiannis Cove