Deadbeat Season 3: The Full Collection

DEADBEAT SEASON 3: THE FULL COLLECTION, EPISODES 1-13 (7.8 AVERAGE)

(NOTE: All of the episode descriptions preceded by a * are sourced from Wikipedia.)

DEADBEAT - Episode 3x01 "El Caboose"

"After losing his apartment and working/living in a disreputable Chinese massage parlour, Pac takes the job of retrieving heroin from the anus of a recently deceased drug mule. Along the way to making the drop and earning himself $5000, he encounters a necrophiliac morgue assistant and a jailbird stoner who has more in common with him than it first seems."

Two words to describe the Deadbeat s3 premiere: "gross" and  "hilarious". Given the episode's subject matter most of the top quotibles are too graphic even for this roundup, but it was a romp to see Pac struggle from one chaotic encounter to the next, all the while hiding the drugs he took from the ghost's human corpse in his own ... backside.

   The episode concludes with Pac's new jailbird friend, Clyde, free from prison and finding his way to the massage parlour where Pac lives/works. Clyde takes the opportunity to offer Pac a place at his apartment, which Pac duly accepts.

   I was pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of this episode. I had thought the loss of every one of the first two season's side characters would severely impact the quality of season 3, but if "El Caboose" is anything to go by the humour will easily offset the character loss.

VERDICT: Laugh-out-loud moments scattered throughout an outrageously disgusting plot - everything I like in a TV show. A well-written premiere, and the loss of Sue, Camomile and Roofie was not felt at all. 9/10

DEADBEAT - 3x02 "Digging Up The Past"

"When Pac moves in with his new roommate, Clyde, he is soon visited by the ghost of Clyde's old middle school guidance counsellor, Mr Faget, who had fled to Africa after Clyde told the principal Mr Faget exposed his testicles to him and was subsequently mauled to death by guerrillas (and gorillas). Mr Faget says his unfinished business is to see Clyde achieve his potential by winning the Ideas Fair, but when it becomes clear entrants must be under twelve Mr Faget's hidden agenda emerges."

To win the Big Apple Ideas Fair and finish Clyde's middle school guidance counsellor's unfinished business, Pac and Clyde have to find a child aged 12 or under to enter for them - only when their advert and ensuing emails become suspicious, they are ambushed at their meet with the kid by a TV show host and end up on an exposé segment called "Dumbest Predators" - which was Mr Faget's real motive: getting revenge on Clyde for the lie that led to his dismissal and later death. Following their arrest, they are forced to bribe their way out of jail.

   In short this was another hilarious episode, its humour once again on the cusp of too far, but never straying across the line. The plot was well-worked and fit easily inside the 23-minute sitcom timeframe. I had been worried the premiere's excellence would be a one-off, but "Digging Up The Past" is another superb offering. Kal Penn (Clyde) and Tyler Labine (Pac) play a great on-screen bromance.

VERDICT: I like the edgy stuff, and this was another edgy episode that was dealt with in just the right manner. Funny, and the two main characters' relationship is blossoming brilliantly. 8/10

DEADBEAT - 3x03 "Bong Pong"

"Pac and Clyde's new business venture gets underway when Pac takes a job getting rid of a ghost who keeps leaving all the lights on overnight at a department store. It turns out the ghost in question wants to win the annual Bong Pong-a-thon, but that means recruiting his old friend Nugget - and Nugget isn't in a position to compete anymore."

This was another hilarious episode. Nugget is now a forty-year-old brain surgeon under the thumb of an insanely domineering wife and Pac and Clyde have to break him out of his own home to compete in a bong pong tournament with teenagers. To do so, Clyde had to distract Nugget's wife by demonstrating his new super-effective hoover/vacuum - but it fails to work just after he finishes spreading peanut butter and dog shit all over her carpet. In the end, Pac and Nugget lose the tournament to the Tamp-Bongs team, but the ghost suddenly remembers he won it already in 1987.

VERDICT: The hilarity continues, even in an episode as tamed down as this. Season 3 continues to delight! 9/10

DEADBEAT - 3x04 "The Cindy 500"

"Pac and Clyde take a job helping a ghost whose daughter is about to get married. She wants them to track down her daughter's biological father so he can walk her down the aisle; the only hitch is that the mother used to be a pornstar, and the father is one of 500 men with whom she filmed a cult classic porn video in the 1990s."

I keep waiting for Deadbeat's newfound hilarity to wane but four episodes in and I'm seeing none of that. This was another hilarious twenty minutes to sit through and included plenty of gay sex jokes, some questionable profiling and a very flawed theory on how to make money. It all ended with the probable introduction of an upcoming arc, where Pac, in the final scene, sees a man at a poker tournament on TV who is winning via the help of a ghost looking at his opponent's cards.

VERDICT: Funny, on the edge and entertaining throughout, this season is shaping up to be the best of the three. 8.5/10

DEADBEAT - 3x05 "Weeknight at Skillitz"

"In order to get a meeting with the star poker player Danny Poker, who Pac saw communicating with a ghost to win poker hands, he and Clyde try to get into the club where DJ Skillitz is due to perform. Unfortunately, it turns out DJ Skillitz died earlier performing auto-erotic asphyxiation, and he promises VIP passes if they go to his home and move his body. But even that doesn't go to plan ..."

Deadbeat continues its ventures into on-the-edge topics as DJ Skillitz, a parody of DJ Skrillex, dies while masturbating. Interestingly, Pac and Clyde actually manage to help him move into the light very quickly, which is something the show hasn't really done before, but the second half of the episode was their antics as they escorted Skillitz's dead body to the club - which also paved the way for necrophiliac coroner Carol to return.

   I was wondering how they would conclude this when the clubgoers realised Skillitz was dead, but the funniest scene of the episode was Dead Rat, Skillitz's rival, turning up and putting a dozen bullets into his already dead body. 

VERDICT: Lower on the laugh-out-loud humour, but entertaining nonetheless, and it moves along the Danny Poker arc nicely. 7.5/10

DEADBEAT - 3x06 "Hawk Smith"

"After failing to meet Danny Poker last time out, Pac and Clyde try again by taking a ghost job for a pharmacist, who can give them 1000 pills for Danny's party. However, the ghost wants Pac and Clyde to solve his murder, and the outcome is not what they expected."

Deadbeat returns to form with "Hawk Smith". A superhero parody, our characters spent much of the episode in the outfit, but the format and production of the show even latched onto superhero tropes such as the flashing words appearing on the screen surrounded by sharp thought bubbles. Only this time they read things such as "runny shit", as Clyde relieved himself in a dustbin.

   Some real laugh-out-loud moments that the previous episode missed held up an interesting story that ended with the reveal that the pharmacist was backing the killer in order to sell pills on the black market - and when Pac killed him with a seven-year-old Jawbreaker they realised he had just enough of the pills they wanted on his person to get them into Danny Poker's party - which was the prompt cliffhanger ending.

VERDICT: Great episode, and if anything can be learned from the previous episode to this it's that when Deadbeat uses the edgy as tools for humour, it works plenty better than when they dial it down. 8.5/10

DEADBEAT - 3x07 "Am-Ish"

"Pac gets into Danny Poker's party, but before he can speak with him he has to help out the ghost father of an Amish boy who isn't keen to end his rumspringa."

Playing on a number of Amish stereotypes, and maybe adding an extra one by making nearly all the Amish people's accents German, "Am-Ish" was an about average offering, and we're certainly hitting the stage of deterioration (or yo-yoing is perhaps a better phrase) I expected to happen much earlier on. The laugh-out-loud toilet humour largely vanished, and instead the only real light comic relief came from Clyde, who remained at the party while Pac helped the Amish boy, in his efforts to start the fabled "avalanche" that leads to sex orgies. The best moment by far was Clyde tied up to a bed by just a single drunk girl ... who then vomited on him from her significant alcohol intake and left him there.

VERDICT: Not one of the season's standout episodes, and I do wonder if the Danny Poker arc will detract from the bank of goodwill the first six episodes built up. 6.5/10

DEADBEAT - 3x08/09 "The Duchess of Stourbridge"

"After leaving Danny Poker's party, Pac is followed home by a naked Duchess who says the royal painting of her is flawed: she only has one chin. Pac and Clyde try to get the painting at auction but when that fails they attempt to steal it - only to run into a second burglar."

Deadbeat's yo-yoing continues, as today it returns to the brilliant form that has characterised most of its third and final season. The frequent and explicit sexual advances of the Duchess made Pac uncomfortable and me laugh, but everything else was laced with just the right amount of laugh-out-loud humour, including the auctioneer's questionable descriptions of buyers ("Sold to the couple who haven't gone down on each other in a decade") and the name of the second burglar, with whom they team up to try and retrieve the Duchess's painting, Hugh Janus.

   But where was Danny Poker? Pac and Clyde spent at least two episodes trying to get a meet with him but when it finally happens it's completely skated over and ignored by the writers? That cannot be right. Oh wait, the episodes have been listed out of their natural order online. OK, so it looks like we've reviewed episode 9, not 8, so we'll have to do some off-kilter backtracking and fastforwarding over the next couple of weeks.

VERDICT: A truly exceptional episode. Frustratingly ordered wrongly online, but that's nothing to do with writing quality. 9.5/10

DEADBEAT - 3x08/9 "The Shawshanked Redemption"

"When Danny Poker suggests Pac and Clyde take some more high profile cases, Pac goes undercover in a high-security prison where a ghost wants help to finish her final tattoo."

Among hilarious incomplete tattoos, prison race riots and pigeon advertising, I still have one question: is this actually episode nine or episode eight? I still can't tell, and that's a problem for the writers that has really thrown out the flow of these last two very funny episodes. Regardless, if we judge this episode on its own merits as we did last time, it's really rather good.

   As has become the norm for Deadbeat, it focuses on the gross and the outrageous for some great laughs. Among masturbation jokes, prison rape and some trial and error in the pigeon advertisement business, Tyler Labine who plays Pac gets a lovely amount of fat jokes thrown his way, and like any true actor he takes them in his stride - but it makes them no less funny or true. Spot on writing, but now we have only four episodes left until this unique (and perfectly titled) show ends. Sad emoji.

VERDICT: Another solid promoter of an episode. Rarely does a third season consistently out-quality the first two. 8/10

DEADBEAT - 3x10 "Diaper Training"

"When Pac and Danny wake after a boys' night in, they discover Clyde is missing and follow clues to retrieve him."

I'm suddenly not sure where Deadbeat is going. The intrigue of Danny Poker's ability to speak to ghosts as well as Pac has flatlined, having received no focus since it was introduced; now all they seem to do is party together and make lots of jokes about orgies and weed. Is this actually going to reach a climax or will I look back on season 3 and think it was wasted?

   Meanwhile, this episode itself seemed off-pace: without the outrageous topics it had been using as plots before, the humour was non-existent; and the whole premise was missing in the search for Clyde. Sure, a ghost turned up to ask for help, but only because they needed one in the episode: the ghost's entire unfinished business was a fight between Pac and a Yakuza fighter that was built into winning Clyde back anyway.

VERDICT: Can't be forgiven for turning its entire premise into a forced subplot, and didn't have the decency to make me laugh in exchange. 4/10

DEADBEAT - 3x11 "Medieval Dead"

"When Pac is hired to get rid of a ghost terrorising the basement of a museum, he is drawn more and more into the curious world of LARPing."

Another headscratcher in terms of the Danny Poker arc, and the final scene where Danny texted Pac an invitation to Las Vegas did little more than typify how the arc has stagnated over time. But for the most part, "Medieval Dead" was a much better episode than its predecessor. It returned to the actual premise of the show - helping ghosts complete their unfinished business - threw in a few good laughs for measure, smartly utilised medieval graphics to help illustrate the fantasy of LARPing (live-action role-playing) and even had Carol the necrophiliac coroner make a cameo, even if it was to do nothing more than have her continual but wastefully sporadic advances amusingly rejected by Pac.

VERDICT: Better, but doesn't push Deadbeat in a direction that wraps anything up. Carol was misused. 6.5/10

DEADBEAT - 3x12 "Abra-Cadaver" (penultimate episode)

"Danny Poker reveals to Pac that he has invented a device that will automatically deliver ghosts into their light. Pac steals it to win his bet with Clyde that he can complete the unfinished business of 20 ghosts in one day, but his plan is derailed when a magician magics the device from him and demands he complete the magician's final trick."

I feel like this episode needed to have come two or three episodes earlier on in the chronology. Danny Poker was finally involved in a way that directly affected the larger arc, and with his arrogance offered a slew of side-bursting comments that only added to the hilarity of Pac's endeavours and Clyde's dealings with a butcher. The opportunity for expansion on the Pac-and-Clyde business arc which fell off midway through the season was explored here in the form of Danny's automatic-light-delivery device, but, disappointingly, it's going to have come way too late for it to take shape.

VERDICT: A great episode from start to finish, Deadbeat might be firing on all cylinders again. And while the show will flatline next week, this week it showed why it doesn't deserve to. 9/10

DEADBEAT - 3x13 "Death List Three" (series finale)

"Pac learns the automatic ghost-to-light device isn't what it seems, but in going up against Danny Poker he risks not only his own life, but Clyde's too."

Before I watched this finale I thought about Deadbeat's first two seasons and remembered they ended them pretty well, so I questioned why would they not be capable of that here? And as it turns out, they were more than capable. The over-the-top, outlandish humour that permeated most of the standalone episodes this season was substituted for sheer plot and, like the Deadbeat of old, a simple but effective and focused 23 minutes was presented.

   When Pac discovers Danny's device traps ghosts rather than send them into their light, (the souls of whom he plans to then use to power his new Danny Poker's Poker vibrator business), Pac enlists Clyde to help bring him down. Along the way Pac is buried alive and the ghost of a rather horny "Ben fucking Franklin" possesses Clyde's body to create a superconductor that eventually kills Danny, before Pac uses Danny's own device to trap his soul forever. The series concludes with the two friends laying on the roof next to Danny's dead body, engaging again in their excellent passive banter.

   Everything was neatly timed here, but just like Castle's finale, Deadbeat left itself with a shade too much to fit in. And since Danny wasn't really important to the plot until the last two episodes, I'm still of the opinion that this plot could have been adapted and extended by another one or two episodes. After all, while we all knew Danny was going to be the season's main villain, he was nothing like Camomile (played by Cat Deeley), the fraudulent medium who bullied, attacked and tarnished Pac's reputation in the first two seasons.

VERDICT: The focused writing style of the first two seasons was really felt here and made the series finale feel comfortingly familiar - a tactic employed brilliantly to close out such a clever and inventive show. 8/10