Killjoys - Oh Gods, We Are a Family

WarningThis guide and all of my reviews contain occasional bits of rude language,
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
                    Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
As hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.

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Killjoys - 2013 Canada – Sci Fi TV Drama Series

Highly Engaging and Entertaining

Follows the adventures of Dutch, John, and D'avin, a trio of hard-living bounty hunters who, travelling in their sentient space ship, Lucy, work a portion of space known as the Quad.

Although Killjoys doesn’t set out to be a comedy, it just can’t help itself. This might be because it was created by Michelle Lovretta, who gave us Lost Girl. It might also be because the writing is excellent, character-driven writing. On top of that, the world in which the Killjoys live is brilliantly conceived, and the characters are brilliantly drawn. – Can you guess how much this show has impressed me?

The first one or two episodes are a bit “clunky”, but I was instantly tickled by the idea of a currency unit called “Joy”, and delighted to learn the world of Killjoys was owned by a few privileged, wealthy families and run by a corporation which, for the sake of efficiency, simply issued warrants to get things done. None of these concepts sounded at all difficult to follow.




But beyond reflecting society, Killjoys is not really out to change anything. The real appeal is in the characters.

The space ship Lucy is owned by Dutch and so it sort of follows that the team of Killjoys is her team – it’s not a “chick’s show” but it is a story with a strong female character at its heart. When they are at the Royale for a drink the Killjoys help the bar owner, Pree, maintain a little order.

 

Pree is gay but does not conform to some boring stereotype, which is what I love about shows like this. Nothing is a big deal, and nothing conforms to stereotypes; people simply are who they are.

 

There are two utterly cold and calculating heartless bitches for villains on this show who just happen to be lesbians, and I love every minute we get to spend with them.
If anyone doesn’t like having lesbians portrayed as cold, calculating and heartless bitches then they should get stuffed – how refreshing to see people just being people.

Of course there are also heterosexuals on this show so nobody needs to feel slighted – I’m just making the point that Michelle Lovretta  brings a sane and relaxed approach to creating human characters. People do sex stuff if and how they like and that’s fine by her, and I like her approach. And Killjoys laughs at life in an adult way without resorting to crude language which is to say it is often clever.

Killjoys’ humour is not relentless because this is no comedy or dramedy, but when this show does use humour to balance out the drama the humour is really, really hilarious. I love it to bits. I sometimes spend days chortling to myself, not just over a few of the lines Mayko Nguyen delivers in Killjoys, but over her always masterful delivery.
(By Season 4 I’m beginning to think Delle Seyah Kendry, the supporting character played by Mayko Nguyen, is one of the best supporting characters written in the last 30 years. Thom Allison, who plays Pree, is obviously a huge talent and the role of Pree gives him a chance to show this, but the character of Delle Seyah Kendry is just "out there" in another galaxy even the Killjoys have yet to visit.)

If no show on earth is perfect this is just because life is not perfect – we accept that all countries have armies and law enforcement agencies as a matter of course. In one episode, a plot device requires the Killjoys to take a child permanently from his father and escort him to a school for gifted children. Killjoys enforce the law; they don’t question it. It’s just a plot device, not what the episode is “about”, but this episode still smacks of “Australia's Stolen Generations was perfectly okay as a policy”. It was probably an accident that this plot device jolted me out of my complacency, but sometimes I like to be reminded to question what I accept as “normal”.

Apart from the “Stolen Generations” accident, the dramatic stuff in Killjoys does sometimes deliberately include some powerful Western Union messages. I'm especially impressed with what the show has to say about "family", and the characters of John and D'Av often say things that impress me so much I get all weepy.
But Killjoys is not all life, death and the meaning of the universe either – it is engaging on a very entertaining level too: We get to do some armchair travel to the Killjoy’s corner of space and time and work out the backstory of the characters as well.

From the very first episode we find ourselves wondering why the seemingly “normal” character Dutch is actually a trained assassin who had a secret childhood with a different name. Season 5 will wrap up the bigger story arc of intergalactic alien doo-dah, and I will be sorry to see it all end and say goodbye to my friends from the Quad.

So, what should a white person like me make of the casting of this show?  Fancy Lee is a regular, and far from the biggest arsehole in The Quad.

I get why some POC are peeved that people of mixed race are more likely to be cast in major roles than much darker people no matter how much this is an improvement on the situation that prevailed a generation ago. I can't say I know much about Canada where this was made, but if it were made in Australia it might be a struggle to find access to a steady stream of "non-white" actors at all, so, you know, glass houses and all that. TBH, just one of the reasons I don't watch a lot of Australian shows is because ultra white casting makes everything bland (not to mention the often stupid content). It can be like watching an episode of Beverly Hills White-Wasp and when there are four blonde women on the screen all with the same hairdo and breast implants and eye colour I have no idea how to tell them apart. "They all look the same to me!" (Or are my eyes just getting old? No, your mind is just wandering again, Maude. Focus.)

Where was I? The casting is also disappointing here because in a show like this there is not one sane reason to make any assumptions about the demographic make-up of the schoolyard. At least there is a steady stream of supporting roles for darker people, if that's any consolation, for example, amongst the higher ranks of society or "The Company" and so on. But don't get me wrong - I love this show to bits!

Ma 15+ Strong Violence The violence on this show is not frequent or excessive, but if you are vulnerable, occasionally the images may be triggering.