TQS StaffAfter a great opener last week, I was keen to see if they could keep up the momentum with the second episode. And even more keen to see how they’d make further use of Curtis’ gender swapping power.
Things were back to “normal” for the Misfits by the end of the last episode; they were all back in their orange jumpsuits with their probation officer, Shaun being generally unhelpful and rather unsurprised they were back.
After Rudy’s opening episode, this one centres on Curtis and his new power. While watching a group of youths train for athletics it’s obvious he still misses it. He then realises his power to swap his gender will give him a second opportunity at running and he grabs it with both hands. However, it also brings about some home truths about his personality and what he’s been like to be around the past few years.
While watching the athletes, he notices an attractive runner called Emma and she recognises him from his athletic days. They hook up one night and Curtis seems pretty happy about it all. He gets the gossip on himself while he is “Melissa”, the female him, and he is not happy at all with what he hears. Emma tells Melissa that she only ended up sleeping with Curtis out of sympathy. She also said that he has a really negative attitude and does nothing but moan all the time. Plus, he’s not even that good in bed. Ouch. So Curtis asks Alisha, his ex, if he really was that bad and she confirms his worst fears. He’s even worse than Simon.
If anything, this just plunges Curtis even deeper to his negativity, and more into his girl’s body. As Melissa, he is getting closer to Emma and she notices. Emma isn’t interested in Curtis anymore but she is in Melissa and they end up sleeping together.
Melissa has other admirers too. Rudy and their probation officer both try it on with her but it’s the athletics coach who is the most worrying. He seems to have a crush on Melissa but it all turns sinister when, at a party, he drugs her. Melissa realises just in time what is happening and turns back into Curtis.
There’s a lot of stuff about sexual harassment in this episode, and when Curtis is a woman the guys all hit on him; her/his little outburst in the locker room didn’t quite fit for me, just a bit preachy for something as fun as Misfits. For a gender swap story line, it definitely wasn’t played for laughs, Melissa went through some horrible things here. Curtis somehow managed to laugh it all off at the end. He didn’t even seemed bothered about the incident with Rudy in the locker room, which I found quite uncomfortable. Not much for the other Misfits to do in this episode, and I’m pretty sure it was only Kelly who got to showcase her power to help a mystery man with his car.
While Curtis can be quite a mopey character, I hope this has dragged him out of that funk and he’ll be happier from now on. He seems to have put to bed his athletic dreams, so hopefully now he can move on. All in all a solid second episode, although a bit light on fun. I am looking forward to Simon’s episode next week though and his mission to become the “guy in the mask”.
Favourite Moments:
I loved it when Curtis was talking to Simon in a classic doctor/ patient roll about him sleeping with Emma as Melissa. As Curtis said, “There’s no official term for this shit.”
My favourite line is from Kelly though, when she finds out Melissa is Curtis,
“Do you need a tampon? Do you need me to show you how to shove it up there?” Delightful!
Words by Natz
