Misfits, Season 3, Episode 3
Airs Sundays, 10pm GMT on E4
Around the time of season 2 something changed within Misfits. Slowly Simon started becoming much more interesting as a character than Nathan. I can already feel the hate coming my way but let me explain. Nathan was popular because of his looks, charm and comedic delivery, however there wasn’t a huge deal of character development thrown his way for most of the show until it came time for him to leave the show.
Simon started out as the nerdy and shy but nice archetype but as we learned in season 2, he was actually so much more than this. Once he started to grow into his character and develop more of a personality, he was much more likeable. Then upon learning that he was the masked hero from the future that saved everyone, he completely won me over. Suddenly he was so much more interesting than before and I wanted to see how he would eventually become this man.
In the most recent episode we get the most development of that story that we have gotten in a long time and it was fascinating to watch. Simon’s new friend Peter was a great way of getting across why Simon eventually went back to save Alisha. He kept saying how it was his destiny to do so and while Simon and the rest of the gang may not have seen themselves as superheroes in the past, with the exception of the episode in which everybody finds out about their powers, he certainly saw himself that way in this episode, the fact that it was because of Peter is irrelevant.
What I enjoyed most about this is that it played with the notion that everything is already predetermined in our lives and that no matter what we do, it actually doesn’t matter because we have always had the same set path laid out for us. He was always going to back in time because without doing so and saving Alisha, she wouldn’t be living in the present. She tried to explain that it didn’t matter because she was living now already so when it comes to the day, he actually won’t have to go but they are telling us that it is meant to be.
By having Peter’s character be a comic book nerd it allowed us to at first see him as someone innocent who just wants a friend but when we see the lengths that he goes to in order to have Simon live up to his “destiny”, we realise that he takes these stories and conventions way too far. He made Simon hurt everyone else that he cares about just to make sure that he would become a superhero. But if he wanted a superhero to really exist, surely he could have just drawn the comics that would have made him one. He didn’t because he is clearly still a scared guy, someone who would rather live out fantasy than reality.
Simon took pity on Peter because he reminded him of himself when he first got given community service. Simon has changed and grown in a big way since then. He has the friends that he wanted when we first saw him and doesn’t need to force people to do what he wants.
One common theme in the show is to have the bad person die at the end of every episode. I get why they do it. Good vs evil, hero vs villain, but it seems as though everybody that they come into contact with is dying. Maybe what they are saying is that the bad guy never prevails, regardless of how powerful they are.
Yiannis Cove