Deadly Class

Deadly Class takes a beloved genre and offers a new take. With touches of humor, layered characters and creativity to spare, this is a series that resonates.

There’s certainly a spark from time to time. But for now, Deadly Class is failing to live up to its potential. It’s messy and hollow.

Deadly Class also misfires at times with this tale of disaffected, dysfunctional young outlaws being trained to lethally rage against the machine. But the first four episodes also vividly embed themselves with their blend of fierce action, relatable characters, striking visuals and a pounding, dynamic soundtrack that offsets some of the ham-fisted spoken words.

Occasionally the dialogue lays into this a bit too thickly, via character soliloquies resembling anti-corporate rants from the “Repo Man” school of screenwriting. Viewers turned off by that won’t be impressed by the cynicism winding through the opening episodes, either. But the central cast, led by Wadsworth and Condor, wins you over eventually--or, I should say, the most fleshed out characters featured within the first four episodes do this.

As sardonic and irreverent as it aims to be, I love that Deadly Class never shortchanges the anxiety and fears of being a teen, and the cast really nails their performances of those feelings. This sometimes results in lengthy narration that I could live without. But it also pays off with stories like Billy’s, or the unmistakable spark between Marcus and Saya.

Deadly Class doesn't make much sustained sense, either as practical reality or pointed satire. (It is, in any case, no way to run a school.) But it has rude energy (and many bad words) and a certain conviction, and possibly what seem like bugs in its system will prove to be features instead; the creators do not seem unaware of internal inconsistencies in their creation. And many viewers won’t see a problem.

The pilot, which also introduces the animated flashback sequences that represent easily the series' best element, presents enough potential plot avenues and appropriately satirized '80s targets to offer hope that Deadly Class would turn out to be more than a bloody high-school goof with the profundity of a freshman's depressive diary scribblings. It mostly does not, though I wholly expect that to be more than enough for some viewers.

It’s a frustrating run of intoxicating highs and off-putting lows, at least in the early going. ... As it stands, uncertainly, at the starting gate, it’s poised somewhere between pass and fail.

Watching it walk the walk often proves more frustrating than fascinating. Even when it lets characters admit that they’re not quite as tough as they seem, that they want to be braver and better and less of a high school cliché, the potential of that vulnerable moment is more frustrating still because Deadly Class so rarely does the same for itself.

The series’ dedication to a dark and violent world of murderous impulses--or cultivating them--is a bummer. Deadly Class asks what it takes to change the status quo, but its answer so far is not particularly revolutionary.

Aggressively unpleasant and unrepentantly nihilistic, Syfy’s Deadly Classis likely to have limited appeal.