Who are you, really?

It’s the question bubbling through Episode 3 and one that has to be asked of, or asked by, each of our Misfits. Who is Jess? Who is Lola? Who is Finn’s dad? And the immediate question: who is Rudy?

If you saw Joe Gilgun earlier this year in the vacuum-packed sachet of sci-fi cheese that was Lockout, you’ll know he can play ‘crazy psycho’ like nobody’s business. But Rudy 3 isn’t some Glaswegian space rapist. He’s a character of fearful symmetry. A dark reflection of the happy-go-lucky cheek of Rudy 1. It’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Fuck-You-Up; with a dead-eyed stare, threats squeezed through taught lips, and the kind of psychological manipulation that would make Patrick Bateman smirk with admiration. And he plays a mean ukulele. Literally. We’ve never heard a uke strummed with such malice. Nor has the ridiculous ‘Macarena’ ever ramped up tension to such chilling levels.

Overwhelming his fellow personalities, Rudy 3 takes a Lecter-level of interest in Jess. Like all the best psychopaths he immediately isolates her weakness and weaponises it, using it like a knife to prise open Jess’s tough exterior and then jab at the exposed emotion to provoke the desired response. Unsurprisingly she’s been hurt in the past. It’s not a dramatic revelation, but the way Rudy draws it out of her makes it more compelling, until we find we’re hanging on every word just to see how he’ll use it against her. It’s just the flesh we need on Karla Crome’s cross-armed character.

When not being harassed by Rudy, Jess is fending off the clumsy advances of Finn, who is himself fending off the advances of his step-mother, who forfeits the sexual innuendo for the sexual in-your-face-o. It’s a cheeky, prurient plot that only serves as mild titillation leading up to the reveal that Finn’s father isn’t who he thinks he is. And so a fuse is set for a future episode, where we’ll have some Finn family fuming.

Similarly Curtis is given a sexy, slow-burning plot that looks to explode next week, as ‘not all she seems’ Lola continues to flirt with him in the way a Venus Flytrap flirts with a fly. We can only hope it has a good pay-off that justifies Curtis still being part of the show.

Beyond the sexual shenanigans this is Joe Gilgun’s episode, and it really is his finest work on the show to date. Not because of the usual cheap scene-stealing grotesquery that the scriptwriters gift Rudy week on week, but because Gilgun delivers three individual, identifiable performances, and then bleeds them together with great effect. Split-screen can really sap the tension and immediacy out of drama, but here it’s seamless, and the production crew should be applauded just as much as the actor.

Though we’re far from the camaraderie of the first two series we can see this cast starting to gel together, and Episode 3 is proof the show is beginning to hit a comfortable stride. So, who are you? Hopefully you’re a happy Misfits fan.

Aired at 10pm on Sunday 11 November 2012 on E4.

> Buy the complete Series 1-3 boxset on Amazon.

> Order Series 4 on DVD on Amazon.

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