Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
Maggie has known she was a psychic since the seventh grade.
For Maggie’s friends and family, this has been mostly a good thing because, well, she can see what’s going to happen. But her ability comes with a caveat: While she can see other people’s future, she can’t see her own.
One night, at a party, Maggie is paid to offer readings to whoever saunters by. When a handsome, persistent man named Ben sits down, she plans to just grab his hands, give him a quick reading and move on to the next person. But for the first time in her life she sees her own future… with Ben.
Maggie tries to shake it off, but how can she when she’s just seen the man she’s going to marry? The man who will be the father of their children. It’s impossible!
One thing leads to another and Maggie and Ben end up in bed together. Might as well get a head start on happily ever after, eh?
But the next morning Maggie gets a completely different vision–and this time she’s not at the altar with Ben. Freaked out, she breaks things off and goes home. Yet, as fate would have it, Ben moves right next door to Maggie days later–with a new girlfriend.
Your potential, future, possible husband can move next door and just be your friend. Right? Well, that’s how it’s going to have to be, Maggie decides. But what if her glimpses into the future aren’t as set in stone as she thinks?
Hulu’s latest dip into the psychic universe is found in Maggie. This TV-14 series features 33-year-old Maggie, her gay, male psychic friend, Angel; her naive yoga instructor BFF Louise; her overly sensitive, nosy mom Maria; her loving dad, Jack; her possible future husband, Ben; Ben’s off-and-on again girlfriend Jessie; Ben’s vegan sister Amy; and Amy’s happy-go-lucky Australian husband, Dan.
Each episode is composed of Maggie being able to give readings to others quite easily, but wrestling to understand what the glimpses into her own future mean. She’s not sure who she should date, who she should trust or why her visions, at least about herself, seem so woefully inaccurate.
She often consults her own psychic, Angel, but he refuses to let her know too much because, he says, how can you live in the present if you’re constantly obsessed with the future?
That’s a solid lesson here that is repeated time and time again: The future matters, but the present is more important. And while that is a true statement often played out in kind ways, this bubbly show still has its flaws–some of which are pretty obvious.
First, Maggie is a psychic who holds readings at her home using incense. There’s light language and drinking, but the bulk of this TV-14 rating comes from the sexual activity, jokes and innuendo peppered throughout each 20-minute episode.
Maggie helps her friends see their futures with her psychic abilities, but gets thrown off when she sees a glimpse of her own future for the first time.
Maggie gives various psychic readings at a party, as well as in her own home office, lighting incense and holding others’ hands to see into their futures. Maggie tells a client, “The closer I am to your energy, the closer I am to vision.”
Maggie and Ben have sex, although we only see them kiss and make their way, fully clothed, to underneath covers). Ben makes a reference to male genitalia. Maggie tells a persistent man that she avoids relationships because she knows how they’ll end. Women make a few jokes about men being “bad in bed.” Maggie’s male psychic, Angel, makes a joke referencing sex with a man. Maggie predicts that a woman’s wedding will be ruined by a cheating best friend. Louise, Maggie’s best friend, tells Maggie that she once walked in on her dad “taking a pee.”
Men and women alike consume shots of hard liquor, beer, and wine at social settings and at home. A yoga instructor says “I drink while I teach sometimes.” A man asks Maggie if she’ll come to the Burning Man festival next year to get high, as he is while he speaks.
The word “b–ch” is used once.
Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
An elf mage contemplates on connection and regret as she watches her human friends grow old and pass away.
