‘Deadly Class’ Review – Season Finale: Sink With California

Everything falls apart in Episode 10: Sink With California, the season finale of Syfy’s Deadly Class. Master Lin tries escaping the wrath of Diablo, the gang battles the murderous Fuckface family, and Marcus finally confronts Chester and the demons of their past.

REVIEW

Overall, this season finale nails it on every level. Providing a bit of humor, some crazy cousin related content, the best fight scenes in the series, and a whole lot of heart – with some nailbiting cliffhangers by the episode’s end.

I like how things wrap-up, providing a resolution of sorts for just about everyone, except for Diablo’s ongoing story. Billy and Petra have been a smile-worthy gem in the series, and their minor moments in this episode are a bright spot in a dark-looking future. The Maria/Marcus/Saya storylines finally converge as the characters address their issues in a cathartic and violent fashion. I also like how Saya has finally given up. Even though it’s harsh, she’s right: she’s better than these rejects we’ve come to love. Given what happens in this episode, I don’t blame her, and in some ways, I feel like she’s the actual main character of the series. Her story rings truest and makes the most sense to me.

Still, despite what the finale does well, the world is still rather shaky. For one, Willie and his girlfriend have no role in the show – which is offensive, as they’re the only two black characters featured. Also, while Lin runs throughout the school’s outer and inner territories, I kept thinking to myself: where the hell are all the other students? The series tends to ignore the fact that it’s a school, whenever faced with faculty versus outsider challenges and battles. Likewise, I know Maria does this in the comic, but why is she always in the crazy makeup and attire during battle? It makes no practical sense as an assassin, outside of the first episode being set during the day of the dead. This is of course unless we’re confirming what everyone has said all along: that she’s utterly crazy.

I will say though, that I loved the depth between Maria and Saya’s friendship captured in the show. Looking back at what they’ve gone through, I think they do a much better job building an arc of friendship to hate here compared to the comic. I also thought the show delivered a perfect amount of drama at the end, with the final scenes providing compelling enough moments to hopefully propel a season two.

OVERALL: 9.3/10

RECAP

DIABLO’S WRATH

The episode opens at a Butcher’s shop in Chinatown. The song ‘London Dungeon’ by The Misfits plays as background noise, setting the tone for something crazy about to go down. We see several pigs’ heads, and an Asian butcher packaging some pork for a customer, who then gets accidentally shot in the head by a stray bullet.  In the backdrop, daughter in arm, is a fleeing Master Lin. He is trying to retreat to King’s Dominion as two of Diablo’s cars give chase and open fire recklessly at Lin. Innocents be damned.

Lin gets inside the Butcher’s shop and two of Diablo’s armed men follow. Lin gets behind the alley, where several butchers working for King’s Dominion try and protect Him. A brawl ensues allowing Lin time to escape until Diablo’s right-hand man arrives with an automatic rifle. He guns everyone down, including his own men. After, he speaks with Diablo who coldly addresses him, “Lin, watches his daughter die (tonight).”

Master Lin continues fleeing from Diablo within the territory around King’s Dominion. He tries to console his crying daughter, telling her to clear her mind of the murder of her mother. Lin is upset, as Saya was supposed to protect his family. Instead, as we know, she went off to aid Marcus against Chester. At that same exact moment, Master Gao goes to visit Shabnam. He informs her that he knows where Marcus and Maria went.

At a drug den by the school, Lin continues running with his daughter. Diablo’s men slowly approach. Lin hides with her in a closet and asks her how long she can hold her breath. Nearby, Diablo’s right-hand looks for Lin and his daughter, just as one of the henchmen passes by a homeless man strung out on drugs. The right-hand opens a closet – to no avail – when suddenly, the homeless man stands and snaps the unsuspecting henchman’s neck. Diablo’s right-hand shoots him in retaliation, just as Lin jumps out of the closet, and attacks him. The two have a drawn-out battle as Lin’s daughter looks on in silence. Diablo’s right-hand then pulls out a match and blows a type of flamethrower onto the headmaster, forcing him to remove his now flaming coat.  The right-hand asks where Lin’s daughter is. A split second later, Lin’s daughter hits him in the head with a wooden plank. Lin uses the chance to throw him down the stairs. Now exhausted, he gets up and keeps running with his daughter. Shortly after, Diablo’s right-hand gets up from the stair fall and continues chasing them.

Outside the drug den, Lin uses a secret passage to get behind a wall. The right-hand man loses them. He is picked up by Diablo, who smokes a cigar. Diablo is informed of some recent events through his pager.

Lin carries his daughter into his office and then hits the floor, dead tired. He notices that the monks around him are dead. Madame Gao approaches saying that her brother has failed. She says she will take his daughter to the temple for examination. Lin begs his sister not to as she’s not ready. Gao replies with a snide, “Nor was I” – referring to when Lin let her get taken as a child. Lin cries on the floor as Gao steals his daughter. All the while, bleeding out from his wounds today.

THE FUCKFACE FAMILY

On the street outside Shabnam’s house, the gang prepares for battle inside the large blue truck.  Marcus constructs a nail-bat, as Saya steaks out the joint. Marcus wants to say something about them sleeping together the night before, but Saya says she can’t right now.

The group starts assembling and immediately notices Marcus still smells like shit. Petra mentions she’s alright with Saya’s plan but wonders if they can trust Maria? Coincidentally, Maria arrives just after scouting the back. She confirms there are traps, but also, that there is no way to know if Chester is inside. Lex is skeptical of the plan. Petra wonders if they should just call the cops. She is starting to see why Willie bailed on them.

Seeing the group get the jitters, Marcus tries delivering a motivational speech, acknowledging that they could die in there, but for a good cause: stopping someone evil. It fails. Saya gets on his case, then shows him how it’s done – emphasizing that their little messed up group is a family and that Marcus and Maria need them. Inspired, Billy tries giving a three musketeers rally before Petra cuts him off. Lex cockily mentions to Petra, that when this goes wrong – she’ll come to his rescue. Saya reassures him they’ll be fine, then goes over the plan again, which is executed onscreen in real time:

Mailman Lex drops the bomb package off at the front door. Petra and Billy go out back, being wary of the minefield. They are the backup team, waiting until Marcus signals to detonate the bomb so they can flank the rear. Remembering their lessons, Saya believes distractions are mandatory and has Billy and Petra set off fireworks to drown out the noise of the bomb explosion. Saya grapple hooks and goes topside. Marcus and Lex, who is armed with a custom machine pistol, go through the front door.

When they enter the rundown house, a cat escapes, and the duo finds animals everywhere. Lex confirms that Marcus wasn’t lying about Chester’s ‘love’ for creatures. Billy and Petra look on from outside. Billy thought Petra wasn’t afraid of death, but she confirms that this is obviously different. Saya jumps in through a window, katana in hand. She scouts upstairs and into Shabnam’s room to find nothing there. She notices a cigarette burning out but it’s too late. A woman from behind jumps Saya, twists her arm, and breaks her finger.

Marcus gets to the family room and sees a video of Chester holding a knife up to a guy’s throat. Lex is concerned that the house is empty when suddenly, he is caught in an animal trap which pulls him a great length away, towards Chester’s bloodthirsty cousins. Marcus calls out to Lex but gets ambushed too. He fights off more of Chester’s cousins with his spiked bat, as a crazy fight scene ensues amongst everyone in the house. Eventually, Lex breaks away to run from a chainsaw-wielding hillbilly who chases him into the kitchen. The cousin swings but misses, and then accidentally gets his chainsaw stuck in another cousin in the process. He tries prying it and revving it loose from his poor cousin’s flesh, but then falls onto his back, and accidentally chainsaws his own face. Marcus and Lex scream in hilarious fashion as it happens right in front of them. They get disrupted by gunfire and take cover behind the refrigerator in the kitchen. Lex fires back at the hillbillies. Chester finally comes out to join with a shotgun and starts shooting at his former roommate.

Upstairs, the crazy woman grabs Saya’s katana and brings it against the girl’s throat. Maria sneaks in and hovers above them and addresses Saya as she’s about to be killed: “You fucked him, didn’t you?”

Outside Shabnam’s house, Billy and Petra wait for the signal. Petra admits, that their friends are the only people she likes in the whole world. Because there’s a good chance they’re going to die, Billy asks if they can (kiss) just once… just as they’re about to they get the signal. They activate the backdoor bomb, and then Billy bum rushes the door, to no avail. It’s sealed shut with reinforced steel. Billy says they should go up through the second floor as the main entrance seems like it is death. Petra believes they should go through the front, as she promised Lex.  

Chester fires shotgun rounds and then sends cousin Jim to finish Marcus and Lex. Jim hops over the fridge to kill them, but he sees a bomb and says ‘aw fiddlesticks’, as he gets blown up, and turned into scattering chunks of viscera.

Upstairs, the bomb goes off, allowing Saya a moment to kick off the crazy cousin. Saya kills her with a throwing knife to the face. She gets mad at Maria for letting her almost die. Saya tells her former best friend, that she risked the future of her family to be here and help her. Maria asks Saya, what it says about herself, that Saya risks so much just to prove Maria wrong. To prove that she can have anything that’s hers (i.e. Marcus). Saya agrees that everyone was right: Maria is crazy.

Angered, Maria attacks Saya.  The two exchange a flurry of blows in what’s easily the best-choreographed fight sequence of the series: Maria striking with grace and calculated precision using her fans; Saya fighting with a whirling defense utilizing side-flips, her katana and sheath. During the fight, Saya tells Maria she should be grateful that she gave her a new reason to play the victim. Maria retorts, by saying Saya’s just happy she gets to play the assassin: cynical, unsafe, and alone. She strikes Saya in the face with her fan blade. Saya says Maria would’ve killed Chico anyway. Maria condemns her, saying that it doesn’t make what she did (sleeping with Marcus) alright. Out of the corner, a hillbilly woman charges with a pitchfork pinning Maria’s shoulder to a wall. A big bald looking hillbilly, looking like something straight out of ‘The Hills Have Eyes’, tells Saya that she doesn’t belong here.

Meanwhile, Marcus and Lex bust out of the refrigerator they hid in to protect themselves from the bomb. Chester and the cousins begin open firing on them again, just as Chester says, “Party downstairs!” and heads down into the basement. An obvious trap, Marcus wants to follow anyway, and so Lex provides covering fire for him.

Upstairs, Saya fights the large ‘hills have eyes’ looking hillbilly. He knocks her sword out of her hand, then punches her unconscious, Saya’s body rag-dolling as it hangs off the edge of the upstairs balcony. That same moment, Maria forces the handle of the pitchfork in her shoulder back, grabs it, and then stabs the hillbilly woman. The ‘hills have eyes’ man gets angry, as Maria killed ‘Gran-Gran’, and so he starts chasing her. Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mr. Crowley” starts playing in the background, as many of the epic fight sequences from various scenes continue.

In the basement, Marcus descends with a lighter in hand, Ozzy’s “Mr. Crowley” playing on a downstairs radio. He looks around and sees different dogs in cages, and then finds Dwight Shandy there, who confesses Chester fucks the dogs – something Marcus already knows. Marcus finds a woman dressed as a dog (Shabnam’s mother?) who begs for her ‘bulldog’ to love her with his ‘murder stick’. Suddenly, a surprise Chester appears and shotgun blasts the woman in the face. He questions Marcus’ choice in weaponry, observing the spiked bat, he says Marcus watched ‘The Warriors’ one too many times.

The ‘Hills Have Eyes’ man finds Maria, but a revived Saya stabs him, then calls him a “White trash piece of shit”. She helps Maria up but gets interrupted, as the man knocks her down again, angry that Saya’s slandering his Godly people. He mentions that there’s a “Price for getting too close to the real America,” but before he can stomp her to death, Billy arrives, and fires darts of Mellow Yellow. It doesn’t work. Saya tries warning Billy but gets smacked down hard. The man chases after Billy downstairs.  As he flees, Billy is told to “Get down!” by Petra, as acid is flung into the large man’s face. Billy is ecstatic Petra choose to save him over Lex.

At that same moment, Lex runs out of ammo. A hillbilly jumps him and gets on top of him with a knife. Inches away from being stabbed in the chest, Billy arrives and uses a razor wire to choke the man to death. Lex hugs his two best friends, scared shitless that he almost died. Petra says they need to head to the rendezvous.

Upstairs, Maria binds up her wounds. Saya is badly beaten up. Maria says that they need to find Marcus. Saya says outright: No. She then says that the group is like bloodsucking ticks, draining her, and pulling her down with them. Saya admits that she’s done with them and abandons the mission.

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN

In the basement, Dwight films the ‘Chester Fuckface Variety Hour’, introducing his new master. Marcus is tied up on the couch with tape over mouth. Chester talks about what makes a monster as if this were a talk show. He wants Marcus to admit that he didn’t commit the orphanage murders. That he, Chester, the ‘fuckface’ killer, did. Dwight releases Marcus’ mouth tape. Marcus admits Chester killed all those people. He says that Chester did it because he is desperate for some semblance of significance to “Make a mark, even if it’s just a shit stain, because you’re the type of guy who’d screw a goat on national television if it got people to pay attention.”

Angry, Chester holds the shotgun up to Marcus’ face calling him a hypocrite, because when society came to reward him for his work, Marcus took the credit. He threatens to blow a hole in Marcus’ brain to make a point across. Marcus apologizes. He admits that he thinks Chester’s murder spree was done in pursuit of the adulation of strangers because if enough people loved him enough, it would fill the void.

“Sadness is rage turned inward. When I look at you, all I see is sadness. You don’t want fame, you want to be loved. The solution isn’t on the other side of that camera. Fame won’t fix what happened to you. You can’t fix what’s broken.”

– Marcus to Chester.

Marcus realizes from the events of this year, that inflicting pain on others doesn’t fix you. That when you’re feeling weak or sad, friends and family are the only things that make you feel strong. Chester rebukes this, saying that his family is a bunch of dumb hill people, people he’d be happier with if they weren’t around. Marcus tells him family isn’t only defined by blood.

Chester breaks down. He admits he was happier when Marcus was with him. Marcus was Chester’s first friend before he blew him up. Marcus apologizes, saying both did shitty things to each other. He offers to put it behind them and tells Chester to join him in King’s Dominion, where they can figure it out together as friends. Chester says he’d love to go to that school. He’d love to be Marcus’ friend.

Just then, Marcus grabs a nearby brick and uses it to smash the shotgun. Marcus flees and Chester chases after him, tackling him just beneath the dog cages. Chester starts beating Marcus severely on the floor, and so Marcus unlocks the cage to one of the dog’s above him. The ravenous canine tears open Chester’s jugular and devours his flesh. Dwight picks up Marcus and films Chester’s death.

Marcus walks over to the nearby refrigerator and finally finds Chico’s head. He carries it upstairs and finds only Maria there, waiting. Maria tells him that all she ever did was love him. He responds by saying he never asked for that. She voices that he doesn’t have to worry about that anymore, and then admits that Saya’s and her cynicism was right: she should have never let herself care. She saw Marcus was alone just like she was, and so she thought that he’d understand. Marcus tells her that he does. She admits she was desperate to believe in that lie. But she knew better because, in the end, you can’t count on anyone but yourself.

Marcus says that’s the last thing he wanted. He admits that he doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. Their relationship just started feeling like an obligation. Maria storms off, upset. He tries to console her and admits that he loves her. She asks him, after everything they had been through together if he could do her one courtesy: stop lying.

They exit the house and find Diablo and his men. They immediately notice that Maria is with Marcus, who is holding onto Chico’s head. Lex rushes out asking what’s taking the two so long? Then is shot and killed by Diablo’s men.

End of Season One