Review: Dead Pixels “The Chair”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

When Meg refuses Alison’s offer to take a look at the sunset, Alison takes it upon herself to bring her friend back to reality and away from the world of Kingdom Scrolls. Meanwhile, Nicky is still addicted to crates and ends up selling his avatar to Russell in order to get more virtual coins in the game.

Our Take:

The second episode of Dead Pixels’ second season is a bit of a mixed bag. After a pretty focused first episode, things are already drifting apart again in The Chair, which still has some solid humor to it but not as much of a coherent storyline connecting things.

Alison seems to be playing a more vital role this season, which is kind of cool to see. She’s much different than all the other main cast members when it comes to juggling the supposedly more important things in life, so she brings a fresh perspective to things. Her plot in this episode pulls in Meg and attempts to make her into a more well rounded person. We did see hints of this in the premiere, but things get taken to a greater extreme this week. Alison has Meg out of her dark room and even drinking healthy amounts of water… at least, she does until it becomes too much and Meg develops something of an addiction. It’s kind of a weird plot line that never really gets wrapped up conclusively, but it was fun to see Alison and Meg together more often.

Nicky’s part of the episode doesn’t really contribute anything more than we saw last week. He’s still on a quest to get more Kingdom Scrolls coins he can then spend on opening crates. Instead of giving donkey rides this time, he winds up selling his avatar to Russell for a while, which is funny to watch as Russell enjoys having a human avatar for once. Later on, Nicky tries to keep up with Meg’s real world progression by flirting with a girl who likes beating him up in the game. It feels like a storyline that could take up an entire episode on its own, so hopefully that happens at some point.

Usman doesn’t have quite as much screen time this week, but he does get to have a delightful little moment with an exterminator who comes to his home in order to get rid of mice, and opens a closet to find Usman has turned it into his Kingdom Scrolls hideaway. While some might find it odd that he stays in there all day and resorts to Skyping his family in order to speak to them, this exterminator is a big Kingdom Scrolls fan and gives him a royal salute. It’s a cute moment for Usman, who usually get more sad scenes with his family interactions.

The Chair isn’t quite as ambitious as I was hoping the show would start off for its second season, but it still delivered some fun moments. I just hope Meg recovers from drinking all that water at her workplace!