Deadly Class

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.