TORCHWOOD: MIRACLE DAY Recap: ‘End of the Road’

TORCHWOOD gave us some answers last night, but it also brought some frustration and confusion. We’re hurtling toward the finale now — only two episodes left! — and as this episode drew to a close, we were no closer to reversing the Miracle or getting Gwen back to her cozy seaside life. So what did we learn?

The episode started with Olivia Colasanto delivering the entire Torchwood team to the Nevada home of her grandfather, Angelo. For an operation that was so important and secretive last week that she had to hold Rhys and Anwen hostage, she seems to be playing pretty fast and loose now. She brings everyone in to meet Angelo. Knowing that Angelo has managed to cheat death, Jack is expecting to see the young man he abandoned almost 100 years ago, so he’s surprised to see a man whose wrinkly, oxygen-masked face shows every one of his many, many years. We learn that Angelo dedicated his life to discovering Jack’s secret; his mantle is littered with photos of Jack snapped over the years.

But unfortunately for everyone, Angelo was not actually the person who managed to make the Miracle happen. No, that would be “The Family,” the descendants of last week’s triangle men. Olivia has no problem sharing the names of those three families with Torchwood, which would be really helpful if Esther could manage to get any results for them in a Google search. Turns out, they’ve been wiped from history — just like Torchwood was in episode one. The Family are also the people being fronted by Friedkin, whose team raids the Colasanto house and plans to shut the whole operation down.

Luckily, Rex hijacked Gwen’s Torchwood lenses, which have a secret failsafe device that broadcasts the footage worldwide when Rex’s heartrate rises high enough. As video of Friedkin breathily confessing to being bought off by a power higher than the CIA is broadcast, the real CIA swarms and removes Friedkin from the property. They load him into a car with another agent and (for whatever reason) Olivia Colasanto, but Friedkin’s wearing a wrist bomb, which he uses to blow up the entire vehicle. If there were any more answers to get from Olivia, we won’t get them now.

Meanwhile, Jack is watching over Angelo, feeling nostalgic and sad. The monitors start tripping, but Jack isn’t bothered — he unplugs Angelo’s life support, believing he’ll keep breathing even without it. So it’s a big surprise when Angelo actually manages to die. Torchwood and the CIA are rightfully confused by this, and set about investigating the reason. They’re led to some loose panels under the floor, which reveal what Jack calls a “Null Field” underneath — a field that cancels out all other forces and is likely extraterrestrial in origin. A Null Field can be used to hide things, have secret conversations, and — if Jack’s worry is correct — completely destroy all semblance of reason in the world. (It’s also responsible for Angelo being able to die.)

Jack is extremely concerned about the Null Field, and begs Rex and Esther to help him escape. (Gwen, by the way, has been deported. This woman is racking up some serious frequent flier miles!) They make a getaway, but are thwarted by some CIA goons who shoot Jack. Rex and Esther load Jack into a car, but Rex stays behind, to keep helping the CIA and possibly move toward a resolution. This leaves Jack in the care of the world’s worst spy, who literally drives away saying, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.” It’s only been eight episodes, but I’m going to go ahead and call that CLASSIC ESTHER.

We also returned this week to Oswald Danes’s story, where he’s getting creepier by the minute. He asks Jilly to hire him a prostitute, but when Oswald just wants to date the lady of the night, she gets sassy and uncomfortable. (Turns out, nobody wants to be friends with Oswald Danes.) The girl even spills the beans about “category zero,” a new classification that puts living people in the ovens unwillingly — people who “deserve” to die. He’s still agitated when Jilly returns, and the two get into a physical fight that leaves Jilly with a black eye. He storms out, heading out on the run.

Jilly meets up with her intern, previously revealed to be a double agent for the CIA, but then the two run into the blonde man who bumped into her at the stadium a few weeks ago. Blondie kills the intern with a silenced gun (which would be sad and scary if she had been in more than two scenes), then offers Jilly a promotion. This guy, it turns out, works for The Family. So does a rarely-seen CIA agent — the one who sat next to Esther in the premiere and hasn’t been heard from since — which would be a bigger surprise if we knew anything about her.

As the episode closes, things are once again looking bleak for our guys. Gwen’s been deported, their secret CIA mole has been killed, and Jack’s being driven to certain death by Esther. Also, The Family seems pretty unstoppable at this point — they have Jilly, the sexy blonde man, and the girl who sat next to Esther and is obviously better at her job. Things aren’t looking good. Surely with the last two episodes, they can stop The Family, reverse the Miracle, and get things back to normal. Right?

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