2 out of 5

Created by: Michelle Lovretta

covers season 1

With its grainy and excessive blue, green, yellow color filters, sassy theme music and good looking cast, I think I’m supposed to hail Killjoys as some bridge between geeky sci-fi and slick, wider-appeal actionry.  Alas, at least on me, it doesn’t have that effect.  It rather has the opposite, assuming my interest and losing me pretty quickly.

Killjoys are reclamation agents; essentially space bounty-hunters.  We’re introduced to a duo of John and Dutch (Aaron Ashmore and Hannah John-Kamen, respectively), who soon become a trio including D’avin (Luke Macfarlane) when one of the partners’ contracts turns out to be for the third, who happens to be John’s brother.  We’re introduced to other things, too, like mysteries concerning The Rac (I think) from which the team is tasked, mysteries concerning Dutch’s upbringing, and a mystery concerning D’avin’s missing memories, and this is all splatted on top of some kind of space war in our setting – the Quad system – and the aforementioned cool theme music.  Now, some shows need a mythology.  And some shows need to stick to an episodic basis.  Some shows do well with balancing both at different ratios.  I cannot possibly claim to know the secret formula that determines what will work best for any given series, but as soon as KJ veered away from a bounty-hunt-of-the-week setup – that is to say: right away – it seemed to sprinkle molasses on the run-and-gun tone they otherwise seemed to go for.  The seriousness that starts to creep into those mysteries then feels really out of place, and soon I find myself not really looking forward to sifting through an episode, which I’m sure isn’t the intention.  And isn’t to discredit the otherwise solid world-building of The Rac and the Quad and the various consorts our Killjoys keep (although rooting things to a home-base alternately stifles the sense of things existing outside of the system, which is a little disappointing and also interesting, how human-focused this sci-fi show is), as well as the enjoyable characterizations of Ashmore and John-Kamen.  Macfarlane’s sort of the fuddy duddy out of the group, the taller, handsomer brawler guy, but that’s the role he’s meant to play and he’s well cast for it.  But overall it’s one of however many shows that can’t seem to decide on an exact tone or focus and so wants it all, building up to an anti-climactic season ender that feels like it drops three or four conclusions into the mix just to cover all bases.  Assuming this goes to another season, I’m not positive I’ll tune in, though there’s certainly a solid base here if the writers can shape things up a bit.