The Dead Boy Detectives was recommended to me as an if you like X you should try Y post on Facebook. If you like Heartstopper and Buffy. If you’re missing a sweet pair of teen boys, queer longing, found family between ghosts, a psychic, a former parasite host who can now see ghosts because of her brush with the supernatural, and their butcher landlady. Dead Boy Detectives can fill that niche.
Protagonists and titular Dead Boys, Edwin and Charles, solve supernatural mysteries for ghost clients out of their detective agency, while trying to evade Death and their assigned afterlives. Along the way, they’ll fold Crystal, a psychic with a bad case of demon-ex-inflicted amnesia, into the agency. And they’ll continue the pattern of adopting former victims of solved cases into their found family, after taking up residence in Port Townsend and rescuing Niko from parasitic explosion.
They’ll cross paths with a very power-hungry witch, an intrusive demon, some sassy dandelion sprites, and a toothy forest elemental, not to mention take a brief sojourn to hell.
It really does create a romp of a story, with all manner of mystical, unpredictable, off the wall creatures and characters. But the villains and the horror elements are more gruesome than Buffy tends to run. The queer longing more repressed. The effects are slightly garish, the jumps into dripping green screen brain spaces a little jarring. It’s not a comfort watch, in the way its predecessors are.
Episodes would leave me feeling a little unsettled by the tone, the tension of the violence building up and not being fully released by the humour and the relationships. Like, if the whole thing had aimed a little funnier, a little spicier, it would have felt like a better pay off for putting up with the blood and gore and kitchy CGI and monsters. On the other hand, it wasn’t especially scary, and the violence was all a bit camp. There were friendships and relationship dynamics within the found family foursome of wayward teens (although I kept forgetting Edwin and Charles were teens, considering they live – er exist – with none of the traditional restrictions associated with teenagehood, what with being ghosts. In fact, Jenny, the landlord, has to keep reminding the audience that Crystal and Niko are also teens, because they both rent apartments from her and neither of them goes to school or has families, or normal lives in any way.) (In retrospect this is a fun running bit, but it also was a little too true.)
I craved more of the balance. The sweet spot of Dramedy that perfectly combines heart, melodrama, and humour (with the monsters and fighting, if you must). There were some really sweet moments, some deepening friendships, some self-reflection, that left me wanting more of that! This is at its heart a found family story and I want to see them dig into it more.
I really enjoyed the Dead Boy Detectives story and premise. But I wasn’t all in on the tone, the style, the creepier choices. It hit the balance close, but I guess I’m a sucker for more kissing and less torture for my dead queer teens.
