Well, that’s more like it. The problem with the first four
episodes of Syfy’s Deadly Class was
that they talked a big game about subverting expectations of the teen drama
genre but then kind of fell into John Hughes-esque clichés like the teen dance
and rocking house party. While a road trip is still a common teen show subgenre, this one ditches John Hughes for Hunter S. Thompson, allowing “Saudade” to fulfill the promise of adapting a book like Rick Remender, Wes Craig & Lee Loughridge’s trippy Image
comic, playing with visual language and characters in ways that we don’t often
see on TV. It’s also narratively risky, allowing its characters to do more
drugs than a Bret Easton Ellis novel and then killing off one of its more
interesting players. Keep it up, Deadly
Class. Your grades are getting better.
Drug trips are notoriously hard to pull off in film and TV because,
well, it’s difficult to truly convey the sensory explosion that comes with
taking a whole lot of acid. Terry
Gilliam had to pull out all of the visual toys in his bag of tricks to even
remotely convey what Thompson experienced when he made Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So while I was looking forward to
the adaptation of one of the more crucial arcs from the source material – the Vegas
trip that takes up most of issues #4-6 – I also wondered how far the show would
go and if they could pull it off. It turns the answers were “pretty far” and “they
totally did.”
Billy wants to kill his abusive father. His abusive father
is in Vegas. Time for a road trip! Marcus, Saya, Maria, Willie, and Billy are
in a convertible on their way across the Nevada desert to the city of sin, with
a jealous, heavily-armed Chico on their tail. They stop off at a
hippie-populated rest stop on the way to score some drugs because Vegas &
Vengeance don’t work without some serious hallucinogens. Maria and Saya do some
coke in the bathroom while Marcus and Billy seek out some acid. The first hit
they do seems like bunk so Marcus acts like a tough guy with the next seller.
He calls himself “The Acid King” and downs seven tabs. Bad idea. A lot of what
will unfold over the next hour is from Marcus’ deeply-altered perspective.
At first, everyone is tripping hard, Marcus is just doing it
seven times harder. And then the ‘deadly trip’ gets to the Strip, where the
creators of Deadly Class have some
serious visual fun. It starts with the expected, exaggerated versions of the
bright lights of the city of sin and things like flying playing cards and
gigantic dice, but then it gets much, much weirder. The visuals move through
several kinds of animation, some of which look like the source material, some hand-drawn, some CGI, some black & white, etc. It’s kinda great in that it’s unlike anything
else on TV recently in its visual excess. Sure, you could argue it’s
over-the-top, but an episode about a car of young assassins going to Vegas and
taking a lot of acid should be
over-the-top, right? The refreshing thing is that “Saudade” doesn’t pull back
from what it should be, unlike elements of the first four episodes.
As they get to a casino called Big Top, Big Top (Circus, Circus
clearly didn’t feel like giving up its name), Marcus reaches the “What if this
never ends” phase of a bad trip. Saya tries to comfort him, but Billy has other
plans. It’s time for some patricide. Billy’s dad is in the room next door, but
Marcus is still tripping hard, even seeing Billy as Slimer from Ghostbusters at one point. Billy goes on
his own and Marcus hears fighting. He rushes in to find Billy’s dad winning. He
intervenes, blows are thrown, and then papa’s head connects with the corner of
a coffee table and blood flows. Mission accomplished, but what will the trauma
of it do to Billy?
After a funny exchange with an Ice-T slot machine (actually
voiced by Ice-T, saying things like “These slots are looser than your mother”),
and an encounter with a casino security guard who knows he’s underage (as well
as Marcus’ facially-scarred arch-nemesis), the real action of “Saudade” kicks
in.
Marcus bangs on Maria’s door, who answers in her underwear.
They talk about pain and running away and then start making out. Marcus is
about to lose his virginity when the door bursts open to reveal a gun-toting
Chico, and he starts firing. Marcus flees and Chico chases him to a convenience
store and starts beating on him. Marcus is losing consciousness as head trauma
gets added to his head trip. The owner of the store pulls a weapon on Chico but
the killer disarms him and then shoots him. Chico is killing innocent people
now. He’s really lost it.
He finds Marcus in an alley and does enough monologuing for
the rest of the Deadly Scoobs to catch up. They point out that it’s against the rules
to kill another student (although, apparently, Vegas store owners are fair
game). Billy gets stabbed in the gut and Chico punches Maria before Willie
finally gets a gun on Chico. But he can’t pull the trigger. Finally, Maria does
what needs to be done, using her razor fan to slice Chico’s throat. Saya looks
at Marcus & Maria getting close in the back seat as they speed off across
the Mojave Desert. It’s time for a lesson on love triangles on Deadly Class.
Stray observations
- This was far and away the most loyal episode to the source
material with many of the visual compositions pulled directly from panels in
the book. I also loved the nod to someone dressed like Thompson in Big Top, Big Top. - It was also a great episode for music with the following needle
drops: “Our House” by
Madness in the opening, the title-giving “Saudade” by Love and
Rockets down the Strip which segues into “Canon and Gigue in D Major”
by Capella Istropolitana as they get into the casino, “Holiday in Cambodia” in
the convenience store showdown, the excellent choice of “To Have and to Hold” by
Depeche Mode when Maria cuts Chico’s throat, and the awesome “Brother Wolf; Sister Moon”
by The Cult in the end. The Cult rules. - Michel Duval was one of the most charismatic performers on
the show but I’m glad the producers didn’t change Chico’s arc because of that. A
show like this only works with high stakes, and if it’s willing to sacrifice
characters for the narrative.