Review: Psi Cops “The Facility”; “Kyddnapped”

Posted on July 4, 2023 by Chelsea Gamble

Overview

“The Facility”

This week’s first episode of Psi Cops sees our professionally co-dependent paranormal investigators doing their best speed run through an experimental research lab, a real win for patrons obsessed with the show’s wild pace. Kydd and Felixx are needlessly cranked to the max from the get-go, following their most impulsive impulses on a long, fast drive to the Yukon. Having refused to slow down long enough to be briefed even a little as to this week’s assignment (or to winterize their vehicle), the boys crash at the facility in record time, with no idea as to what kind of a lab it is, or what they are supposed to do there. Those of us in the audience know what’s in store for the Psi Cops from the outset, thanks to an intro scene illustrating how scientific hubris so often leads to destruction and decapitation.

Figuring out exactly what’s going on at the lab takes the investigators a few minutes of sporadic clue gathering (the first clue that something happened – everything is destroyed) while actively ignoring the words of a number of (mostly dying) scientists desperately attempting to fill them in on what happened. The team spends the episode taking action first and planning those actions second, keeping themselves alive against all logic and fighting their way to freedom from the facility.

From choosing wrist watches over shotguns to convincing an old scientist to kill himself Kydd and Felixx are in fine form across the board in this episode, climaxing in an explosion that is equal parts cool-looking and unnecessary.

Turbo-charging an episode is a smart move for a formulaic show like Psi Cops. We know every episode is going to see the Psi Cops hunting a different monster, so cutting-out chunks of the formula (like set-up, motivation, and back-story) keeps the audience on their toes and the investigators working double time. Since nobody is here for the plot and everybody is here for the mayhem, whatever amps up the crazy is a welcome addition.

Also, it was mutant monkeys this week.

“Kyddnapped”

When an episode of the X-Files starts with a child being abducted by aliens, it’s a safe bet that at some point in that episode, Mulder is going to go on about his traumatic childhood experience, at least a little. The same is not true for the X Files’s spiritual serial mutation of a show, Psi Cops.

“Kyddnapped”, the tenth episode of Canada’s best animated melee, finally sets up a storyline about alien abduction with an instalment opening with a young boy being sucked through the sunroof of his (bizarrely detached) mother’s car.

A quick conspiratorial aside – a song, featuring lyrics about finally being free, comes on the radio as the alien ship approaches, seemingly hypnotizing the abductee’s mother, who calmly opens the sunroof so the beam can take her child and then peels out without a second thought. The radio is shown clearly with the song’s listing – “Silver Lining” by Jingle Punks, which is a subsidiary of giant music library Anthem Entertainment, the main provider of music to Corus Entertainment, which produces Psi Cops. Will we be hearing this song again? Was there a reason it came on the radio? Is it important or is it nothing? If it’s anything, you heard it here first, people!

One would think that this alien heavy set-up might lead towards an explanation of Kydd’s traumatic childhood experience, at least a little. The show’s infectious theme song makes it clear every week that aliens from Kydd’s past haunt him like ghosts, leaving him to fight the skeletons in his closet all alone, with his friend (the friend is Felixx). It’s a semi-nonsensical ear worm, stringing together just enough words in an order to make the audience assume that Kydd has had some kind of alien encounter.

If he has, you wouldn’t be able to tell from this episode – it may start with a possibly genuine alien abduction, but the majority of the episode’s mayhem centres around a definitely genuine, mostly regular abduction, with Kydd offering no insider info on aliens.

After forcing agency hacker/child Bitsy to take out a Craigslist ad seeking an alien abduction with full-consent and unlimited funds, Kydd and Felixx accidentally attract the attention of terrestrial criminals looking to make a little extra cash through kidnapping, with farcical results.

Whatever this episode seems like it’s about, it’s all just an excuse to get to the real point – to get a couple of burlap sacks on the boys’ heads to show how much stupider things can get when the already deeply dysfunctional duo are short one of their senses. From a neck-only tractor beam to four-walled, dirt floored spaceships, Kydd and Felixx get it all wrong, with an attempt to review alien cuisine by eating a whole unopened bag of potato chips being a real highlight (knife-like mouth feel with crunchy, nostalgia-inducing bits that taste good flavoured with coppery notes of blood). It’s also important to note nothing is stopping them from taking off the bags at any point, even when safely back at their favourite bar having post-kidnapping drinks.

Will we ever get to the bottom of Kydd’s past, or is everything we need to know right there in the theme song? The episode’s failure to return to the initial abduction could mean that there’s more to the story, or it could mean absolutely nothing.