My Review of Dead Boy Detectives: "The Case Of The Dandelion Shrine"

 

Written by Shoshana Sachi And Cheech Manohar

Directed by Glen Winter

Cat King: "I am fascinated by you."

Edwin: "What the bloody hell is this?"

Cat King: "Oh that? That's your punishment. It's a caging spell."

On to the second episode of this supernatural YA series and consequences are being felt. First of all, never use magic on a talking cat. Edwin learned this lesson the hard way.

Enter the Cat King (Lukas Gage). If you found Desire to be a charming menace with glowing eyes on The Sandman, then you'll love this guy. As someone who finds Lukas Gage a bit of a mixed bag as an actor, this role absolutely played to his strengths here.

The Cat King was affronted by magic being used on his followers and while he was openly dismissive of Charles and Crystal, his demeanor with Edwin was more flirtatious. He played on Edwin's sexual repression and use that moment of weakness to bind Edwin to Port Townsend.

Fortunately for the Dead Boy Detectives and Crystal, next door neighbour Niko gave them their case of the week. All that glowing pink light that screamed "manic pixie dream girl" had a purpose to it. Turned out that she had a sprite problem.

The sprites being of the Dandelion variety and that lot needed to be flourishing with attention in order to survive. Niko's story was a good way to offer context to her as a character while building a nice rapport between her and Crystal as they bonded over dead/missing parents. While I'm more interested in the Dead Boy Detectives themselves, the show is doing a decent job with it's female characters too.

As for the Sprites themselves - Kingham (Max Jenkins) and Litty (Caitlin Reilly). Well, they were foul mouthed but got tricked into being trapped into a jar/vessel after Crystal used herself to lure them out of Niko. Crystal's near sacrifice did however endear herself to Edwin, who took to Niko a lot quicker than expected.

Last but not least, two other problems for the boys were the Night Nurse not happy with Edwin and Charles wandering about as well as Esther. The latter chose a more direct means of revenge on the meddlesome detectives, which involved turning her crow familiar Monty (Joshua Colley) into a human. As a witch would do.

- This episode also introduced Tragic Mick (Michael Beach). He's a former Walrus turned human, running a magic shop. 

- Niko's near death experience makes her able to see Edwin and Charles. Both the Cat King and Crystal likened Edwin and Charles to a couple.

- Charles was confirmed to have died in 1989 due to hypothermia and internal bleeding. Edwin escaped Hell the same time.

- Chronology: From where the first episode left off. Every episode seems to break things down in chapter titles and has a "To Be Continued" title card.

The Case Of The Dandelion Shrine did have fun with it's main story and confirming that Port Townsend was going to be where the season would remain in. Saying that, I would've loved of the Cat King but undoubtedly we'll get that as things progress.

Rating: 7 out of 10