TV Review: Killjoys

Once upon a time, the channel now known as Syfy was a critical darling.  Against all odds a reboot of the cheesy 1970’s TV show Battlestar Gallactica was a commercial and critical hit and even won a couple of technical Emmy awards, along with nominations in the writing and directing categories.  This must have been heady stuff for a small, fairly obscure basic cable station (at the time whatever cable system I was on didn’t even carry Syfy).

Since then Syfy has tried to catch lightning in a bottle again, but their track record has been one of surprisingly consistent mediocrity.  I’d say their best series after BG was Eureka, which struggled to find an audience.  Warehouse 13 made some bad casting decisions and never achieved buzz.  Haven is awful; it must only survive by meeting very low expectations. Lost Girl had been on for three seasons before I even knew it existed.  Definace has some interesting elements, but not a lot.  Syfy is now best known for deliberate cheese like Sharknado, which must embarrass them even as they rake in the profits.

Syfy’s latest attempt to get back on the science fiction map is a series called Killjoys.  It is about futuristic bounty hunters who call themselves Reclamation Agents and operate independently from The Company (which you know must be evil because it doesn’t have a name).  There are rules to bounty hunting, but of course the protagonists break them because who would watch a TV show where people followed rules?

Maybe because the series is created by a woman (Michelle Lovretta), gender stereotypes are broken and the leader of the bounty hunters is an attractive woman (Hannah John-Kamen) known only as “Dutch” (presumably in the future everyone is as pretentious as Cher or Madonna).  Her assistant John (Aaron Ashmore) helps her run scams so they execute warrants on wanted fugitives; these warrants give them authority over seemingly anyone so long as they physically touch the fugitive.  In the first episode John accepts a “level 5” warrant (basically wanted dead or alive, preferably dead) on Dutch’s behalf because the fugitive is his long lost brother.  He and Dutch then try to get the warrant cancelled by finding an even more wanted fugitive who stole something valuable from The Company.

Like Firefly, the production design mixes futuristic and retro, probably because retro in the future is modern, and that’s cheaper that doing all futuristic.  It’s surprising how many sci-fi shows think cyber-punk will be the fashion statement that survives the centuries.  Dutch is a little slip of a girl but can toss burly guards around like paper dolls; she has some training that is hinted at in the pilot and looks fairly unpleasant.  John is supposed to be some sort of con man, but he doesn’t seem very effective in the pilot.

The acting is competent.  I must confess to having an irrational dislike of Ashmore, only because he played a jerk on Veronica Mars and the “Jimmy Olsen who was not Jimmy Olsen” on Smallville.  Prior to Mad Men I had similar reservations about John Slattery because he always played jerks (I don’t watch Supernatural primarily because I was annoyed by Jensen Ackles on Smallville and Jared Padalecki on Gilmore Girls).

The plotting is neatly positioned between being just trite enough to be familiar but just fresh enough to avoid being entirely derivative.  I must confess I was amused by some of the one liners (John makes a bold statement to the guy torturing him, who replies “Is it difficult to walk with balls that big?” to which John replies, “Yeah, they do chafe a little.”). But overall it was nothing I haven’t seen before somewhere.

I’ll stick with Killjoys because, well, what else is there on Friday nights while Grimm is on summer recess?  It is in Syfy’s wheelhouse, another unmemorable example of science fiction that can be amusing on Friday night and forgotten by Saturday morning.  Frankly, I’d rather watch the 1970’s version of Battlestar Gallactica; that much cheese is definitely memorable.