Review: Paranormal Action Squad “The Shape of Shifts to Come”

Oh, how the turns have tabled.

Spoilers Below

We once again meet up with Paul and Eddie in a regular public setting where Paul is holding things up with his eccentricities, this time being the search for a perfect ice cream flavor to start the day. All seems fine until Eddie sees his arch-nemesis, Sasquatch, flipping him off through the window. Apparently, Sasquatch killed Eddie’s wife some time ago and now continues to dick with him because…because…they don’t say. Nor do they say how why there wasn’t any legal action taken against the murder of a human being, but this foundation is already rickety enough with so much weight on it. I appreciate trying to build a grounded world with fantastical quirks to it, but you need to be willing go all the way with it, or else you just leave huge holes.

But the next mission awaits (even though they’ll be walking there since Sasquatch stole their car). This time the disturbance is at a high school, the culprit being a shapeshifter terrorizing students. The teacher explaining things seems on the up and up…until he kicks Eddie in the dick, exposing himself as the shapeshifter itself. I’m not really a huge fan of Eddie so far, but it really is not his day. It soon escapes, but Paul comes up with a way of tracking it: a modified metal detector that will detect…shifting, or something. And they can try it out fast on the thing itself, as it makes its way into the base disguised as Pad. It nails Eddie in the nuts again, which Orb seems to identify as a sign of affection somehow. Looks like it’s taken a liking to him, probably due to a weakness for absolute pathetic-ness. This is not helped by making Paul and Vanoss crash into a tree in order to keep them from interfering.

Soon enough, the shapeshifter makes it into Eddie’s home and sees him kiss a picture of his dead wife. Lo and behold, the next day it has morphed into a replica of his wife, which Eddie just decides to overlook as long as he can perpetually hump something resembling her. The team tries to get him to end it, but he won’t listen, so they decide to find an interdimensional portal (which just sort of appear places, it seems), and push it in. Eddie jumps in after it, finding its true form to be basically a giant talking shit pile. Nonetheless, he and it try to make things work, only for the Sasquatch to also kill the shapeshifter. All’s well, I guess.

This one certainly dabbled more in explaining the more lax nature of the phenomena happening in this world but doesn’t go into it enough for it to matter. Eddie gets some character growth regarding his wife and his relationship with the Sasquatch, but what might be laying the foundation for a mystery only leaves me confused instead of intrigued. Even so, it’s definitely more than I can say for other shows I’ve covered this year. But the art is still crap, so…they should fix that.