We open on … Rhys, for once. He’s driving and singing along to a jingle on the radio for Harwood’s. Rhys is such a dork. His cell starts ringing suddenly, when Rhys suddenly looks incredibly confused, like he just realized he’s in a car. He pulls over and answers, and someone named Ruth tells him there’s been an accident. He says he’ll be right over. One of the Harwood trucks has struck a car and flipped over on the highway, and Rhys introduces himself to the cop on duty as the manager of Harwood’s. This was the job he called Gwen about earlier when she was busy getting creeped out by Captain Spike. The driver is dead, and Rhys is horrified because he knew the guy. He tries to arrange to have the wreckage hauled away, but the cop says their good buddies Torchwood want to take a look at something suspicious in the truck first. I foresee awkwardness. Also, more drugs in Rhys’ future. Just then, the BBSUV pulls up and the whole team strut out, doing their little “look around and sneer like we’re too cool for this” thing. Rhys stares in utter confusion as he sees Gwen walk by.

credits!

Jack seems to have been hoping for a shipment of beefcake, and is understandably disappointed. He pokes at some of the big bloody hunks of meat with his boot, and observes there’s no bones in them. Owen gets the unenviable task of taking a sample, so he disgustedly chops off a porterhouse-sized hunk of nastiness and chucks it in a box. Ianto says the trucks belongs to Harwood’s, and Gwen says Rhys works for them. There’s an awkward pause, then they all pile back into the BBSUV, Gwen still not having seen Rhys standing on the other side of the tape. He stares after her, and the impending awkwardness is making me itchy. Rhys hops back in his car and tries to follow the SUV, but the police stop him. Yeah, you don’t wanna be anywhere near that thing once it’s got up to speed, mate, trust me. Rhys pounds his steering wheel in frustration.

Back in Deep-13, Owen is wearing a cute, shiny-green apron and fooling around with the chunk of meat, saying it’s definitely alien, and whoever’s smuggling it around isn’t doing it by accident, as some of the passes and things have been faked. Gwen is pissed off that Rhys has to be involved, and Jack says she can take herself off the case if she wants, but she refuses, because that will prevent her from interfering in every tiny aspect of the case for the rest of the episode. Tosh pulls up the Harwood’s website and they all sit around and listen to the utterly awful jingle again. They start making plans for the investigation, and Gwen is already jumping down the throat of anyone who dares to even suggest implicating Rhys. I break out in hives. This is gonna be a loooooong episode. Gwen calls up Rhys’ office but lets Tosh speak to him, saying it’s the police. She does not, however, refrain from hovering around irritatingly in the background. Rhys says the order was placed by some guys called Harris and Harris – Harwood’s is just a trucking company. He’s annoyed to find that H&H didn’t leave any contact information or any way of getting in touch, thereby making Rhys look super-dodgy. They hang up, and Ianto crows that he’s found the truck on CCTV. He’s ridiculously excited about this, but is interrupted by a super-weird, swoopy shot of Owen staring intensely at the slab of what I’ve decided to refer to as Spaaaaaaaace Meeeeeeeeat. He says it’s totally from an alien, and the Torchies are horrified that people in Wales have been eating the stuff for months. I resist making a crappy-British-food joke here, but I can’t promise there won’t be any Sweeney Todd references as this thing goes on. Owen says it looks safe as far as he’s concerned, and Gwen asks if he would eat it. Ianto comes running in, possibly to see if they’re all going to get drunk and play “Will Owen Eat It,” but it turns out the pizza’s arrived. Damn. Maybe later. He says he’s gotten Owen’s fave, the meat lover’s special. Owen looks sick.

Later, they’re all chowing down, and oh. My. God. Ianto, in a bid to out-cute Owen’s little apron from earlier, is trying to win back my affection by tucking a fucking enormous napkin into his collar. It’s working. Gwen says she’s going to run home for a bit and check on Rhys. “Good idea!” says Jack around a mouthful of pizza, “Find out how much he knows!” Gwen says that’s not what she meant, and goes off in a huff. Damn, my hives are back! I must be allergic to predictable and stupid plotlines. Jack throws down his crust in disgust, and the other Torchies look awkward. Well, Owen and Tosh just more awkward than usual. Ianto continues to be cute.

Ugh. Hang on while I go get some rash cream. Okay, here we go. Gwen comes in to find Rhys all depressed. He tells her about the accident and that one of his drivers died. He says the police have confiscated the contents of the truck, and asks whether she knows why. Gwen opens her eyes big and says she doesn’t deal with traffic accidents, and doesn’t know anything about the case. What follows is a super awkward and tense conversation where they’re both pretending everything’s fine, but Rhys is convinced Gwen’s trying to pump him for information, and Gwen’s too dumb to notice how wound up he is. She kisses him bye and says she has to go back to work. Once she’s out the door, Rhys looks grim and grabs his keys, following her. He pulls up outside of the fountain that hides the entrance to Deep-13 and sees Gwen meeting with Jack. She assures him that Rhys has no idea what’s going on, and Jack’s in a goofy mood, and offers her his elbow so he may “accompany her to the slaughterhouse.” Rhys glowers. Then, this happens.
Gwen: Have you ever eaten alien meat?
Jack: Yeah, once.
Gwen: How was it?
Jack: Well … he seemed to enjoy it.
The look on Gwen’s face is priceless. Rhys is pissed that not only is Gwen lying to him and hanging with sketchy Torchwood, but has chosen this weirdo over him. Don’t hate Jack because he’s beautiful, Rhys!

Ianto and Owen are already at the warehouse they’re checking out, and Rhys follows as Jack drives Gwen over. At this rate he’s gunning to get shot in the head. Ianto and Owen continue to duke it out with adorable outfits. Owen and Ianto walk around, trying to find a way in, while Jack and Gwen sit in the car doing fucking nothing. Rhys watches from some distance away (STALKER) and calls Gwen’s cell. She hears it ringing and quickly turns it off. Rhys explodes with rage. Jack and Gwen hop out of their car and Rhys hops out of his. Jack spots Rhys and they hide, watching him. So now they think Rhys is involved, all because Gwen can’t answer her damn phone.  Elsewhere, Ianto asks Owen if he brought something to deactivate the alarm. Owen goes all Rambo on him and shoots the alarm until it dies. “That’s … one way of doing it,” Ianto mutters. The rest of that sentence, which is “if you’re a scrawny little twerp who feels the need to overcompensate for something” is left unsaid, because Ianto is, if nothing else, a polite little butler. A white car pulls up and the bad guys get out and confront Rhys, who is wandering around. Jack sees this and decides Rhys is totally one of them. Gwen tries to run to Rhys but Jack grabs her and pins her to the wall. I really want Rhys to walk in on this. Owen and Ianto have just managed to kick in the door and are standing there all Charlie’s Angels when Jack tells them to stand down and retreat. Disappointed, they close the door again and leave. Awwwww, I’m sorry, boys. The sketchy guys take Rhys off into the building. They walk through a room full of cubes of spaaaaaaace meeeeeeat, and the guy in charge, who is kind of a ratty-looking guy with a scruffy beard, tells one of the butchers to come with them, and bring a cleaver. They put Rhys in an office, and he haltingly tries to explain that he’s the manager at Harwood’s. Just when I’m getting fed up with Rhys for being an idiot, he decides to tell them that the truck driver told him what was going on. Thinking he’s in on everything, the Scruffy Trio ask him about the accident. Rhys says he took the contents of the truck and had them incinerated, so they don’t need to worry about evidence. He says that now that the driver’s dead, maybe he should be the new liaison for the little operation. Wow, I didn’t know Rhys had it in him. Also, judging from the butcher standing behind him with the meat cleaver, what’s in him could very soon be all over the floor if he fucks this up. And of course the Scruffs ask him exactly what he knows. Crap. Bye, Rhys. Rhys says that he knows they’re cleaning up old meat and reselling it. His bluff fails, but the Scruffs don’t kill him, they just take him back for a little exposition in the warehouse.

They bring Rhys into a huge room, where something is wailing like a cross between the world’s largest cow and a sperm whale. Rhys walks over to a weird, CGI lump that’s taking up most of the room, and the lump opens an eye as tall as he is. The thing wails some more, and the Scruffies tell Rhys that they have no idea what it is, but they’ve been cutting chunks out of it for awhile now and it just keeps growing them back. Rhys throws up, and we zoom out to see some kind of huge, limbless lump of a creature like something out of Lovecraft. Only without tentacles. Probably the Scuffies chopped em off for jumbo-sized calamari. Jack and Gwen watch as Rhys comes back out, acting all buddy-buddy with Mister mcScruff. Jack thinks they’ve seen enough and leads Gwen off.

And we finally get the fight! Yes! Thank God! I hope they split up forever and Rhys goes and finds some nice normal girl who won’t taser him. When Gwen comes home he starts screaming at her, saying he knew she was at the crash site and the warehouse, and wants to know if she’s fucking Jack. I’ma answer that last one: NO PLEASE GOD NO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Gwen goes cold and tells him he wouldn’t understand, and that he needs to trust her, but Rhys has had his fill of bullshit. He wants to know why she’s even marrying him if she can’t tell him anything about anything, and asks if he’s “just an old habit you can’t be arsed to break?!” Bin. Go. He forces her to admit that the police job is a cover story, and asks if there’s anything in her life that’s true. Gwen goes for sap: “Us!” Rhys does me proud and laughs in her face. He tells her he wants the truth and Gwen finally screams, “I catch aliens!” Rhys is pissed because he thinks she thinks he’s an idiot. And he’s right, but not for the reasons he thinks. Gwen collapses in a chair and looks like she’s going to be sick. They’ve both stopped shouting. Rhys looks her in the eye and says, “Prove it.” I like new Rhys.

Down in Deep-13 things are tense. Well, except for Jack and Ianto making googy eyes at each other. Jack says no one’s ever had a significant other find out before. “Mainly because we’re all sad and single,” Tosh mopes, and Ianto snorts to himself because he’s totally not. Owen chimes in to tell her to speak for herself. The saddest thing is that she totally is. Sad, sad, single Tosh. She says that maybe they should only date people who know about Torchwood, and Owen, missing the point entirely, snots that that’d mean they could only date each other. He wanders off and Tosh sucks down some wine like it was apple juice. That’s the ticket! Jack continues to make googy eyes at Ianto and says nothing. Hee. Outside, Gwen is helping Rhys up onto the paving-stone that’s really the elevator. I’d also like to note that even though they’re supposed to be invisible, you can see their reflections in the fountain. So whatever. Gwen says the elevator is “too complicated to explain,” because, “we don’t know how the fuck it works” doesn’t sound terribly impressive. She stands next to him and they start descending. The CGI guys get to trot out another huge background of the Hub and that fucking pterodactyl shows up again. Am I the only one who hates that damn thing? The Torchies all watch from various corners, looking rather ominous. Ianto is sort of half-hiding behind a wall, and Owen has busted out a v-necked shirt for the occasion that makes him look gayer than Jack. Ianto, you’re going to have to top that so I’d get on it now. There are introductions, followed by a long silence where no one’s really sure what to do. SO ITCHY! Rhys asks them if they really catch aliens, and Owen tries to give him the reader’s digest version of the whole Rift deal, then smiles stiffly. They really should’ve let him hang out in his lab, he’d be so much happier without having to interact with other human beings. Rhys says they seem like some kind of weird cult, and why can’t they be alien catchers AND a weird cult? Gwen tells him to tell the Torchies about what he saw in the warehouse, and Rhys gives a quick description of the alien and looks all proud of himself, like “I’m helpin!” Owen says the thing was probably aquatic, and has beached itself in Cardiff somehow. They wonder how this huge thing got into the warehouse and Rhys chimes in again to say it was originally smaller, but kept growing and growing. He is gleeful to be like part of the team. Dawwwwww. Tosh is excited about this magic meat-beast, and says they could feed the world with it. Yeah, with the still-living flesh you’ve scraped painfully from the boneless sides of some horrible Cthulhu-beast! Good luck sleeping at night, you big weirdo. Snarky Ianto mutters that they could release a single.

Jack tells them to get back on track and switches gears suddenly, telling Rhys they could’ve fixed this by now if he hadn’t blundered into the warehouse and fucked everything up. He also calls Rhys “Mister Caveman,” and Gwen giggles a little before stopping herself. Oh Gwen you are such a bitch. Rhys snaps back that Jack should try to work with him instead of getting all puffy-chested and showing off.
“Do I show off?” Jack asks Ianto.
“A bit.”
Rhys gets right up in Jack’s face and says that he didn’t fuck things up, in fact he’s found them a way in because now he can be their inside man, “but if you can’t handle it, Big Boy, then you can STUFF IT!” Jack stares at him for a second or two and then turns to Gwen and says, “This is quite homoerotic…” Gwen quickly intervenes before her fiance has anything violated that he doesn’t want violated. Gotta watch that personal space, Rhys. Gwen says she doesn’t want Rhys putting himself in danger, and Jack calls them all into the conference room. Rhys tells them the layout of the warehouse, and Gwen says again that he can’t come. She and Rhys start yelling at each other, and Owen smiles and mutters, “oh, lovely. A domestic.” I love him. Jack says they’re going in, and Gwen can opt out if she wants – Tosh backs him up on this idea – and says that she’s more vulnerable because she loves Rhys. “He’s not going in there without me.” Oh how touching. The other Torchies are staring at the table and looking uncomfortable. Awkwardness continues in part 2! tbc!