Talon is separated from Zed. Tobin reaches out to his cousin to make peace. Janzo’s work on the cure for Plaguelings takes another step, but a complication in his love life proves a distraction. Gwyn proves just how much she’s warmed to Tobin.

So last week we ended with Garret stabbing Talon (because in fairness, it’s been a few weeks now since anyone had done that) and this week we pick up at exactly that point, as once again in the land of no-consequences that The Outpost inhabits, Talon squares up for a swordfight with someone who just ran a knife through her ribs. However, it’s not long before she’s overpowered and ends up going on a little unintentional excursion to escape, leaving Zed to just wonder where she’s got to for a while.

That excursion lasts a very short time for us the audience, I presume because every second of it showcases just how little FX budget the show has. Anyone who thinks it might yield something of interest will end up disappointed, and when she returns, it’s only to tell Zed they need to get their arses in gear and head back to the Outpost before Garret gets there and does awful things.

Meanwhile at The Outpost, Janzo’s search for a cure for Plaguelings seems to be yielding some results, though he’s still frustratingly not quite there. Unfortunately for him, his love life arises to distract him in the most unexpected of ways, with Nya finally confessing that it isn’t just the fact she has the creepiest man in the world as a boyfriend that’s making her so sad all the time. Janzo’s response and the subsequent long, tortured discussion do not good television make, and when Nya tears up an incriminating note and just throws the pieces on the floor in the street, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what’s going to happen next. Chin up though Nya, it might be high treason but there’s a certain pattern in this show when people are sentenced to death…

Tobin himself, one of the more interesting characters amidst all this drab nonsense, is feeling a little bit sore because he’s basically sent a note to his cousin offering to end their inherited familial beef once and for all and he’s worried it makes him look a bit soft in front of his men. When Milus arrives, he’s a fairly typical gloating archetype, every bit as arrogant as Tobin was when we first met him, but Rosamund suddenly comes over all politically skilful and wrongfoots everyone in the room to get her own way.

But even as it seems there’s time for some celebration you know that the clock is ticking until a certain someone arrives at just the narratively perfect moment to throw a spanner in the works. And they do. And it does. And now they’ve left us with another ‘cliffhanger’ which I suspect will be solved very quickly and easily so that we can all move on with whatever distraction The Outpost fancies flinging at us next.

Verdict: It raised a few laughs for me, one or two of them even with it rather than at it, but this is still so painfully obvious, cliched and poorly written that I continue to be amazed it got renewed. 4/10

Greg D. Smith