Killjoys - 'Meet the Parents'

Oh, but that face!

D'av and Dutch are doin' how they do, bagging bad guys and flirting with bartenders (although in this case that's just D'av, hitting on mixologist and amateur psychologist Selina. Not much action for Dutch this episode.)

Meanwhile, Johnny is working a solo escort warrant to return Pawter to her home on Qresh, where we meet her sister Louella and her husband Hank, whom I think everyone pegged for a nogoodnik from the moment Louella's 'of course you know Hank' hinted that he'd hopped sisters after he failed to get into the Simms household via the Pawter route. Then her dad shows up, and he's a sweetie, if a little overshadowed by his as-yet-absent wife. Johnny finds a pool - or, as it turns out, baptismal font - and goes skinny dipping, luxuriating in that much water to remind us what a crapsack the rest of the Quad can be. Then Pawter finds him and takes him off to drill him in Qreshi table manners, and damn that dinner is awkward. As much as he gets to do later, Johnny's big hero moment is when Pawter's mum, Adaline, sends her fleeing from the table and he follows.

"There is a ritual for leaving."
"Yeah, but I'm not from Qresh, so I don't give a shit."

They say good manners cost nothing, but Qreshi etiquette is such a contrived form of social control that honestly they do have a cost; in dignity if nothing else.

Meanwhile, Khlyen and Fancy visit Papa Jaquobis and find nothing out of the ordinary. Khlyen tries to tap into D'av's brain to find his mother, but accidentally gives himself away and Dutch urges D'av to push back. Brains are swapped and hilarity ensues, as the actors have a ball pretending to be each other. D'av's hilarious failure to convince Fancy that he's Khlyen is especially priceless. Oddly, this leads to a new rapprochement between Dutch and her former mentor as they seek a way to swap the minds back (the non-clinical decription would be 'taser in the face') and the revelation that the woman D'av saw on Arkyn in his green goo memories was not Dutch. I'm calling it now that Dutch is a clone of whomever that was. It also brings a new understanding between D'av and his father, so it turns out Freaky Friday plots are still recommended family therapy in the Quad.

Back on Qresh, the Simms household comes under biological attack from a freezing virus created, it emerges, by Adeline herself, to render Qresh uninhabitable by the enemies of the Nine. Adeline sacrifices herself to provide a detailed prognosis and Johnny heads out to rig an exploding gas main to destroy the viral fog. Hank tries to stop him, having been paid to destroy the Simms, but Papa - who is also revealed to have been the family's carpenter before Adeline rebelled by marrying him - takes his skeazy would-be son-in-law out and then sacrifices himself to manually detonate the damaged bomb.

Pawter becomes Lady of the Land and she and Johnny kiss, which I didn't hate as much as I thought I might, although it does lead to him keeping secrets from Dutch, which makes me sad.

'Meet the Parents' is a cracking episode of Killjoys, balancing the comedy of manners with action, plot progression and just the right amount of sentiment.