Kyle XY Returns, with All-New Plot Points!

When last we saw Kyle in September, he was racing through a mid-season finale that "left so many loose ends it's positively frayed," as I said at the time. Monday's return from hiatus resumed the show's recent habit of pinballing from plot point to plot point without taking the time to develop any interest in any of them.

"To C.I.R., With Love" should have felt climactic and cathartic, containing as it does Kyle's confrontation with Madacorp, his soul-baring revelation of his own story to the Tragers, and Jessi's conversion from tool to individual. But all of these points felt hastily sketched out, as if the writers were bone-tired with the Madacorp plotline and were hitting the minimum marks necessary to complete the current story arc, like unambitious figure skaters tossing off their compulsory moves. (I'm thinking of figure skaters only because, in one of the episode's few interesting moments, Josh admits to once having wanted to be one in order to allay his girlfriend's suspicions that he's keeping secrets from her.)

Proof that the show's creators aren't invested in their own storyline lies in the fact that ABC Family's heavy advertising promotion of the main question left over from September, "Did Jessi Live?", is answered with "Yes" – and nothing else! She jumped off a cliff. A big cliff. Foss says at the top of this episode that even Kyle couldn't have survived that leap. But twenty minutes later she turns up at Madacorp, fresh as a daisy (she's got headaches, but only because of the secrets she stole from Kyle's brain last time). And no one is the slightest bit interested in how she survived. Lazy, lazy writing.

The tossed-off explanation of Adam Baylin's presence in the cabin in the woods – that it's really Adam and he survived the gunshot that killed him at the beginning of season 2 – was likewise deeply unsatisfying, especially considering we saw Kyle disposing of Adam's ashes. They don't go back the the cabin (why? because they didn't hire J. Eddie Peck to play Adam this episode) and the issue is quickly dropped (why? because it's time to tell the Tragers). On the basis of how Kyle has been acting this season he should have instantly gotten deeply angry at having been lied to about Adam's death to the point of being given a fake cremation urn, but the episode quickly forgets the whole thing to rush on to other matters – which eventually include apparently writing out Foss, one of the show's more complicated characters, for no reason whatsoever.

The next story arc involves Jessi becoming a threat because she doesn't want hide her abilities now that she's free to be herself. This looks more promising, despite the fact that Smallville already covered that ground this season, and it looks to involve more of Amanda's light-switch jealousy ("I trust you, Kyle"/"What's she doing here?"), which is immensely tiresome. At least we can hope that the writers will stop making the characters jump through hoops and return to making Kyle XY as fun, magical, and charming as it was when I first started to fall for this show a year and a half ago. I have faith in Kyle, even if his own writers don't.