Review: Psi Cops “Illuminaughty”;“Stake Out”

Overview

 “Illuminaughty”

Today’s twisted tale of top secret ops on Canada’s West Coast opens with a secret society (with amusing silhouettes not quite worthy of the Council of 13) planning a top secret fluid-internalization ceremony on a group Zoom meeting covertly attended by the Psi Cops’ resident hacker, Bitsie.

If they want to crash the party, Kydd and Felixx have to create new, uber-rich personas to fit in with the perverted elite. Felixx goes with big boxcar railway money made by his grandpappy before the World War times, and Kydd chooses the path of nouveau riche – making all his money from a computer that sells money over the internet. Their corresponding orgy masks (a full-length railway tie with eye-hole for Felixx and hollowed out old computer monitor for Kydd) cramming just a little bit of extra absurdity to a show that perpetually feels like it’s about to hit the absurdist ceiling.

For their mission to infiltrate the Brilliant Country Club, the Psi Cops bring under-utilized teammate Stone Faceman along to play the part of the wealthy men’s whipping boy, a role he embraces with enthusiasm. Normally relegated to things like emergency snake wrestling, Stone really rises to the challenge here, proving himself to be a valuable team player repeatedly throughout this episode, while learning a little bit about himself during mule birth cosplay.

The team have to fake-rich their way through the fancy party, making up manners and refusing to suffer fools that don’t understand them, all while dodging suspicious and a 209 year-old overlord who turns out to be surprisingly hot when he’s unmasked.

The skewering of elite society is done with all the unsubtleness you’d expect from Psi Cops – all the old rich white guys are deeply insecure about their own lack of coolness, and the orgy games they play are particularly bizarre (it seems like they’re not going to show it but then they totally show it). Kydd wins the rich asshole game by eating a waiter’s finger, Felixx wins the depraved pervert game by drawing boobs on a price of paper, and the boys come very close to killing a smart-mouthed kid they hate. All in all, a very successful mission.

“Stake Out

A lot of episodes of Psi Cops start off with bad parents nonchalantly allowing their child to be killed by supernatural forces – “Stake Out” is one of those episodes. A call from a concerned neighbour on the vampire hot-line (never before mentioned, but obviously  important enough for Felixx to take a bullet for without thinking twice) leads the boys to a quiet suburban street being terrorized by a pair of dapper vampires.

The game plan is a classic stake out, one that Kydd and Felixx bungle immediately by approaching the vampire’s house and attempting to purchase an ornate headboard. Neither investigator can seem to believe how hard they blow it on this mission, and their constant banter devolves into a singsongy dirge of imminent disaster and impending doom. (For all you headboard aficionados out there – the Psi Cops are attempting to pay $61 for a marble headboard with leather accents, but end up paying $500 for a bejewelled mahogany headboard that used to belong to Rasputin.)

We get to see some interesting little moments between the vampire couple as they attempt to navigate the situation – and they seem to have a pretty cool life together. They are a bit like two nosferatus living it up like the cool sexy vampires in a Jim Jarmusch movie. The couples do whatever they can not to tip their vamp-hand to Kydd and Felixx so they can get back to watching their World War II documentary – even if it means selling their beloved headboard. It’s another somewhat farcical episode, with the boys repeatedly getting way too close to their undead quarry, and end up way more involved in the ins and outs of headboard salesmanship than they reasonably should be.

It’s interesting to note that the female vampire has the same serpentine tongue as the egg-laying alien/demon from the episode “Breeder,” lending more credence to the popular fan-theory that the egg-layer was possibly a vampire/succubus.

And don’t worry about the concerned neighbour who called the hotline in the beginning – he got fully ripped apart by vampires while everybody watched and did nothing!