In Review: Killjoys – The Kids Are Alright

Synopsis: Team Awesome Force sneaks onto the RAC to rescue Westerly’s stolen children. Zeph ad Pip grow closer.

Review: War is hell, and this latest episode goes some way to illustrating that point as we see one of the Team Awesome Geek Squad having to make the ultimate sacrifice.

The Story

[Spoilers Ahead]

Picking up from last week. An unusual configuration of scars has started to form on Dutch’s back, which we learn is due to her connection with Aneela, who is still in the Green and suffering greatly. So not only to the Killjoys have to rescue the kids from the Hullen occupied RAC ship. They also have a mission of trying to find out what the scarring on Dutch’s back is saying.

The puzzle with regards to the scarring is a chance for Pip and Zeph to work together, which involves a visit to a brothel, which is run and owned by a former Scarback. While there they learn that it is Aneela that is sending the message and the scars or in an ancient Scarback dialect, which is only used for ceremonial purposes.

While Zeph and Pip are doing their thing. Dutch and D’avin infiltrate a space hippie commune in order to steal some mind-bending tech, which they need to use to lower the Hullen shields around the RAC ship.

As the team reassembles Turin gives the order to execute a three-pronged plan that involves rescuing the Westerley children and teleporting the Lady’s only active green pool off of the RAC ship.  In order to pull this off right, John needs to be plugged into some Hippie tech and form a connection with a small sample of the Green to bring the Hullen shielding down. To that end, Zeph has to stay with John to monitor things, which means that PIP has to board the RAC with the other Killjoys as their Geek support.

The plan all goes smoothly until the Hullen realizes their vulnerability and reboot the RAC ship. Which means that one of the Killjoy’s boarding party has to stay behind and punch in the self-destruct code in order to prevent the surviving Hullen from being able to access the ships cannons and other valuable RAC data, which they were blocked from accessing. Pip draws the short straw, which allows Dutch and the rest of the team to get off safely and live to fight another day.

Unhappy and feeling let down by Dutch. Zeph decides to leave the gang and goes off on her own. Her feelings for Pip were much deeper than the others realized. As we said war is hell. Especially on relationships.

The episode closes with Dutch realizing the answer to the message that Aneela has been sending, but what a cliffhanger.

The Acting

There are some fantastic performances in this episode. The most noteworthy being the scenes between Zeph and Pip getting to learn more about each other, which felt like it was destined to end in tragedy from the start. Atticus Mitchell and Kelly McCormack do a fantastic job of selling this relationship, which started out as a friend’s with benefits type scenario but evolved into something much deeper. So when Pip faces the music by the close of the episode it has a huge emotional punch to the characters within the series as well as the viewers watching. I genuinely feel bad for Zepth and don’t blame her for holding a grudge. We’ll have to hope that she can rise above it and help the Killjoys save Dutch.

I also enjoyed seeing D’avin and Fancy having their regular banter as they are competing against each other as they shoot Hullen while on the RAC ship. I didn’t realize how much I missed Fancy who hasn’t have much to do this season.

Overall

This was a great episode, which went some way to tying a few plot threads up and setting things up for the season finale.