Animation
Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld
Netflix’s Jentry Chau vs. the Underworld isn’t your typical fantasy-horror blend, with a mix of Chinese mythology, Daoism and a whole lotta violence.
When Ella threw the Molotov cocktail at the police car, she didn’t really think about what she was doing. She acted on instinct—an impulse decision after watching her friend get beaten with police batons.
Of course, that failure in judgement had dire consequences.
Despite having no previous record, California law enforcement agencies want to charge the teenage Ella as an adult. They want to make an example of her—to show other violent protestors that if you attack the police without cause, you’ll get sent to jail.
Only, Ella isn’t a violent protestor. Or at least, she wasn’t until the tear gas started flying. And she didn’t exactly attack without cause.
The protest was peaceful—right up ‘til the moment counter-protestors decided to break through the police blockade and attack Ella and her friends. Police used tear gas for crowd control. But officers got caught up in the confusion. One grabbed Ella, mistaking her for an instigator and began to choke her. Her friend acted in her defense, shoving the officer away. Unfortunately, his actions were misconstrued and resulted in further violence.
Ella just wanted it all to stop. So when someone handed her a bottle with a flaming rag stuffed inside, she didn’t think. She just reacted.
Ella’s one of the lucky ones. Unlike her buddy—who’s facing criminal charges of his own—Ella has family in high places. She’s released into the custody of her estranged father, Gabe, who lives in South Africa. But Ella has no intention of staying with him or his new wife, Dianne.
Her home, her friends, her life are all in Oakland, California. And Ella doesn’t care if she’ll get arrested if she returns. It’s her fault her friend got in trouble to begin with. She feels responsible for him. She wants to go back and help.
Of course, that decision isn’t really up to Ella. So what does Ella do? She doesn’t think. She just reacts.
On her first day of school at South Africa’s most elite private school, she burns bridges with the school’s most popular (and mean) girls, pits a notorious drug lord’s kid against the daughter of a powerful British emissary and manages to escape the top-security campus.
She makes it all the way to Johannesburg—even onto the plane that she hoped would take her back to her beloved California—before she’s caught.
And that’s when she learns the truth. She wasn’t released into her father’s custody. She was released into Dianne’s. Because Dianne isn’t just some emissary, like many of the other rich foreigners living in South Africa. Dianne is the director of all CIA operations on the continent.
Dianne is willing to help Ella get back to Oakland—and to get the charges against Ella dropped. But first, Ella is going to have to prove herself. And that’s going to involve a bit of spying on her fellow classmates.
Too bad she already burned those bridges.
Prime Video’s Classified feels like it was written by someone who wasn’t sure which social justice issue on which they wanted to focus. So they just threw in every cause they could think of and hoped the actors would be able to carry out some semblance of a plotline.
The result? Well, besides bad acting and an overly complex story, some really serious content concerns.
Prime rates the show TV-14, but mysteriously so. The first episode includes two uses of the f-word, among other profanities. Ella gets on the bad side of a popular girl after catching the girl performing oral sex on the girl’s best friend’s boyfriend in a school bathroom. LGBT students protest outside another bathroom, preventing anyone from entering until the school establishes “gender neutral” bathrooms—an effort, they say, to prevent the bullying of LGBT kids. But that initiative is fervently opposed by female students who don’t feel safe sharing the space with male students or adults. Life-threatening situations, drug-dealing and racial tensions and discrimination all make frequent appearances, too.
Then there’s the fact that Ella is kind of a brat. Her whiny attitude causes most of her problems. She’s completely ungrateful to Gabe and Dianne for the protection they’ve offered her. She purposely stirs the pot in any scenario even remotely related to race—and sometimes makes a fool of herself since she doesn’t recognize the cultural differences between students of various African countries. And she’s completely ignorant of the distress she causes to those around her with her constant disobedience. (Did I mention she had been forbidden by her mom to attend the protest that landed her in jail in the first place?)
I honestly have no idea where this show plans to take Ella. Maybe she’ll drastically mature over the 8-episode season arc. Maybe she’ll start acting a bit more grateful. Maybe she’ll start thinking before reacting.
But I doubt it.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, theres always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out. )
Ella is sent to South Africa to live with her father after getting arrested at a protest gone wrong.
The protest turns violent when counter-protestors break through police lines and start a fight. Police release tear gas and attempt to arrest the instigators, often using brutal force (Ella is choked and her friend is beaten with batons after he defends her). Ella is arrested after setting a police vehicle on fire via Molotov cocktail.
Racial tensions with violent undertones plague the rest of the episode. And Ella experiences a bit of a shock at her South African school when she realizes she’s ignorant of the cultural differences between African countries. (She’s mocked for wearing traditional Ghanaian clothing her first day since she doesn’t understand anything about it. And she’s compared to a white Norwegian girl who tried the same thing.)
Ella knocks her dad and stepmom for living in a ritzy neighborhood and sending her and her younger brother to an elite private school. She scoffs at the security measures employed by her school and is rude to her family’s bodyguard, ultimately putting herself and her family at risk by breaking out of school and running away.
After revealing her position with the CIA, Dianne gives Ella a reality check on the security situation in South Africa. She tells Ella that one of her newest recruits was killed on a routine trip to Kenya, along with a dozen civilians, because they were trying to get to Dianne. And now that Ella lives with them, she’s a target too.
We see news about a local terror group on TV. Ella is mugged when she runs away. A classmate spots her and yells for help. Folks beat the perpetrators up, but Ella’s phone is still stolen.
LGBT students advocate for “gender neutral” bathrooms. They prevent other students from using the facilities during their protest. Ella talks to some classmates about this later, saying she sympathizes with them since LGBT kids are often victims of bullying and physical assault in bathrooms. However, the girls she speaks with voice their disagreement, stating that they wouldn’t feel safe sharing a bathroom with “drunk, horny men.”
We hear moaning in a bathroom stall and see a girl kneeling before a boy, the implication being that they were having oral sex. We later learn the boy was cheating on his girlfriend. A gay couple makes out. A teen girl ogles some guys playing basketball. Students wear revealing outfits.
Ella is selfish, disobedient and ungrateful. Her actions lead to problems for herself, her classmates and her parents. She’s also quite rude to her dad and stepmom. However, she does seem to care deeply for her mom, who has a debilitating illness.
Ella’s parents lie to her to get her cooperation. Ella herself lies quite a bit, even taking her dad’s phone without permission to buy a plane ticket back to California. A classmate mocks her for being ignorant of African cultures, so she humiliates that classmate during a school presentation.
We see a commercial for a non-alcoholic beer. People drink wine with a meal. Teens talk about raiding their parents’ wine cellar. Students smoke a hookah. One girl vapes marijuana. We hear someone’s dad is a drug lord.
A woman wears an ankh necklace. Someone says, “God bless her,” as an insult.
There are two uses of the f-word and five of the s-word. We also hear uses of “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—.”
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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