Posted in: Review, SYFY, TV | Tagged: Deadly Class, syfy

'Deadly Class' Season 1, Episode 8: Lin Drops "The Clampdown" on Assassin High (SPOILER REVIEW)

Week after week I tune in to SYFY's Deadly Class, and week after week I hope against hope that Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth) doesn't get the living snot beat out of him. His super power appears to be getting beat. This week, "The Clampdown" puts Marcus in a tough spot, and he gets put through the ringer worse than ever before.

Master Lin (Benedict Wong) puts Kings Dominion on lockdown after Yukio's murder, and decides that he's going to get to the bottom of the rash of murders at the school. His sister, Madam Gao (Olivia Cheng), is taking the investigation into her own hands and interviewing students on her own.

The students end up in interesting combinations. Willie (Luke Tennie), Marcus, and Viktor (Sean Depner) are crammed into a dorm, and we learn two things: Viktor likes pop music, and "to abuse one's Horkum is to anger the Baba Yaga". Thanks, Vik!

Petra (Taylor Hickson), Billie (Liam James), and Lex (Jack Gillet) end up together, and Lex passes the time by huffing glue and sexually harassing Petra. There's an interesting interplay between the three personifications of punk manifested in these characters, and Petra makes an interesting proposition that leads to some hilarious comedy.

Brandy (Siobhan Williams), Saya (Lana Condor), and Riku (Doralynn Mui) find themselves detained together, with Riku putting pressure on Saya to attack Maria (María Gabriela de Faría) and avenge Yukio's death. Brandy eggs Saya on, because she's white supremacist trash.

And then there's Maria, who is being interogated by Madam Gao for being 'the poison that courses through Kings". Gao is terrifying, and watching her try to take Maria apart is unsettling.

But all of that is nothing compared to Lin, which we'll get to in the spoilers.

The stakes are raised right through the roof in "The Clampdown", and there's a touching moment of a family coming together in adversity. I'm not sure if any of them survive that adversity, and the main cast of kids is so damned good that it makes it hard to think of any of them coming to harm.

Let's beat up some spoilers!

Master Lin captures Marcus, straps him to a chair, beats him, and then makes him watch film of his family, including film of their corpses. How on earth did he get that? These are family movies. Lin just tears Marcus apart, pulls a confession out of him, and leaves him alone with those films ripping him apart. That scene is so freaking brutal, and despite Lin's pat of assurance, I still don't know what his agenda is.

Lin, of course, fabricates a lie that absolves any of the surviving Kings students of Chico and Yukio's deaths. Is he doing it to save the kids, or his school?

Saya, of course, chooses her friends over her duty to her clan, and in the process learns how far gone Maria truly is. Condor and de Faria are simply fantastic together, and it really punches you in the gut seeing their relationship unravel.

Ultimately, though, the whole episode is completely stolen by Taylor Hickson, who's Petra decides to initiate a threesome with Billy and Lex. Those poor boys. They never had a chance. The way Hickson plays the entire exchange, especially the, uhm, climax, is priceless. I really had to stop playing the episode because I was laughing so hard!

"The Clampdown" puts everything on the line. Marcus comes clean with his friends about his past. Lin knows everything. Gao also knows everything, and has established a network of snitches. And Chester, the F***face Killer (Tom Stevens), probably knows everything, too, since Shabnam (Isaiah Lehtinen) keeps calling his mom to fill her in things, unaware that she's Chester's captive.

We're still waiting on news on whether Deadly Class will get a second season, and with only two episodes left in this season, I'm starting to worry. This is one of the most original shows on television right now, and deserves to keep going.

Next week, the "Kids of the Black Hole" decide to take the fight to Chester. All the action is hitting SYFY on Wednesday, March 13th, don't miss it!

From Sony Pictures Television and Universal Cable Productions, Deadly Class was adapted for television by original comic book series writer Rick Remender and Miles Orion Feldsott, who will serve as executive producers alongside Joe Russo and Anthony Russo (Avengers: Infinity War, Captain America: Civil War), Mike Larocca (Spy) and Mick Betancourt (USA's The Purge, Shots Fired). Remender, Feldsott, and Betancourt will also share showrunner duties on the series.

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