This week, the hunt for Alex’s wayward wang continues. And as the hunky barman hits rock-bottom, girlfriend Jess begins to sense that there’s not a lot he won’t to do get his lovelength back to where it belongs. Meanwhile, Rudy is pining curiously for the girl he met last week, and what is new(est) newcomer Abby doing hanging around the community centre all the time?
Abby gets herself added to the credits animation this week, so it looks like she’s here to stay. Maybe her superpower is standing on her own two feet, since neither Finn nor Rudy have called dibs or tried to hit on her just yet. No so luck for Jess, whose own story remains an extension of Alex’s. She won’t know what to do with herself when she finally, inevitably, gives the Hollyoaks wannabe the elbow. Until then, she’s left on the sidelines looking a bit sad and constantly rebuffing Finn’s annoying advances. Credit where it’s due though, she handles Alex’s little, ah, problem, with remarkable sensitivity.
It didn’t take her long, but Abby gets one of the episode’s bigger subplots. In it, she encounters a terrified pregnant lady in the Community Centre loos. Chaos ensues when the girl somehow swaps the baby from her own body into Abby’s (oh, that zany storm). It’s an odd storyline for a character we don’t really know all that well, but it’s an interesting concept. If we’d been given the time to get to know her better, it’d have a lot more meaning and resonance. Meanwhile, Rudy finds – and then loses again – the mysterious girl of his dreams, and Alex trawls the local nightclubs for his penis’s new owner. It’s a lot like that episode of Futurama in which Fry has his nose stolen by aliens, only a lot less funny. It’s also somehow less rude, which just goes to show that sometimes less is more.
It’s when the group hits the karaoke bar that this episode hits its stride. Not only does Alex finally find the knob-napper, but a very unlikely figure takes to the stage for a stirring rendition of “The Power of Love”. What with that always-on-TV John Lewis advert and the song appearing at the end of Sightseers, it’s been a busy year for Gabrielle Aplin’s cover version, but it’s the group’s community worker who proves to have the definitive rendition. What could have been a throwaway joke actually works. It’s a good performance of a great song. I would certainly rather see that than the stupid emotional blackmail buy-our-crap snowmen from John Lewis.
The curious case of Alex and his disappearing dong is well-handled by the show – even if it is just a redo of an episode from last year (the one with Rudy and the super-powered STD). Where you might expect it to be an excuse for breaking out the phallic thesaurus (as I may have possibly used this recap as a front for) it’s actually done with an odd sense of pathos and sympathy. This makes for a less funny episode than usual (a recurring problem in Series Four) but Alex’s encounter with the schlong-stealer is a surprisingly subtle affair. Well, as subtle as Misfits could ever be, anyway. The lack of an overriding arc is beginning to hurt this series, which just seems a little aimless and lost.
As Jess begins to realise that the member does not maketh the man, we move focus to Rudy and his own romantic troubles. Next week, Misfits gets itself to a nunnery!
