Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
Bennie Upshaw doesn’t always get it right. In fact, he feels more accustomed to losing than winning.
In high school, he got his girlfriend, Regina, pregnant. Now, he’s married to Regina, with an adult son, Bernard, and two daughters, Aaliyah and Maya. Oh, and he has another son the same age as Aaliyah named Kelvin, from another woman—a product of when he and Regina were “on a break.” It’s messy, to say the least.
And if that’s not enough mess for one person, it certainly doesn’t help that Bennie gets constant criticism from his sister-in-law, Lucretia (who’s been in her own extramarital affair); that his wife often feels she’s being failed and unsupported by Bennie; that Kelvin’s mom is a terrible influence on his son; and that he never had a father figure to emulate growing up.
Turns out it’s hard to know how to be a good dad when you never had one yourself. But Bennie is determined. He might not get many things right, but he’s ready to step up his game to be the best husband and father he can be.
And just when Bennie is starting to get it right, the family gets bigger. Bernard finds out he has a daughter with Monique, his prom date whom he ghosted at the end of their relationship. And the family has to learn how to support each other all over again with the addition of Sydney.
The Upshaws rolls the clock back to the 1990s, when laugh tracks and multi-camera family sitcoms The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Home Improvement ruled. This show features a middle-class Black family from Indiana working through normal, everyday life.
It offers, with some laughs, lessons on resilience, kindness and appreciation. And those are all positives. But some elements felt out of place in a TV-14 show being pitched for the family.
The first is that men, specifically Bennie, are portrayed as incapable and incompetent. They forget everything; they’re terrible role models; and they constantly need saving. (They also tend to act misogynistic and selfish, especially when their wives, whom they all seem scared of, aren’t around.) That’s just not true of all men and, honestly, it’s getting old. The women, meanwhile, can be condescending and even cruel.
Additionally, Bennie’s eldest son, Bernard, is gay. Many jokes focus on sex, strippers, drugs and alcohol. And we hear buckets of profanity, as well.
The Upshaws might be trying to work on their family, but that doesn’t mean this series will make the cut for your family.
Regina is living with Lucretia temporarily while recovering from a heart attack caused by stress at home. She asks Bennie to attend therapy as well in order to help her identify her triggers. Instead, he blows the appointment off to hang out with his friends.
Everyone tries to be supportive of Regina while she is in recovery, but they all act selfishly in her absence. Lucretia complains that Regina is using all her nice things and eating all her fancy food. And she tries to make Regina miserable enough to return to her own home. Bennie blames Lucretia for not helping out enough (even though she’s doing quite a bit for the family in her sister’s absence) while he, in turn, does nothing to pull his own weight. And Aaliyah—Regina and Bennie’s teen daughter—turns up the sass to voice her discontent.
Lucretia makes several jokes about how Regina should leave Bennie. When a woman tries to kiss Bennie on a Kiss Cam at a basketball game (he pushes her away), her boyfriend (who was getting food), punches Bennie and the two men fight. Later, they’re put into a temporary jail cell used by security when fans get too rowdy. A woman jokingly threatens to kill someone. Other characters make empty threats. A woman listens to a murder mystery audiobook.
Characters drink alcohol and make jokes about it. When Bennie accidentally walks in on Lucretia dancing in the nude (her torso is hidden by clever camera angles), he rubs alcohol in his eyes to blur his vision. We see a woman in a tub from the shoulders up.
A woman helps a teen boy pop a pimple. A teen girl is frustrated when her dad purchases brake pads instead of sanitary napkins. A few men blame their personal problems on their wives and girlfriends. And they tell lies to these women to defend their inconsiderate behavior (though one woman is admittedly awful to her paramour). Characters are generally rude to each other. Lucretia tells Kelvin (who isn’t her biological nephew) that he can’t call her “auntie.”
We hear a dozen uses of the s-word as well as several uses each of “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is also abused a handful of times, once paired with “d–n.” Bennie talks about making a rude hand gesture.
When young Sydney shows up at Bennie’s front door claiming to be his daughter, the whole family is thrown into chaos. The situation becomes only slightly less complicated when it becomes clear that Bernard, Bennie’s adult son, may actually be the father. Bennie is frustrated by the ease with which his family believed that he had failed them again (since he has a history of fathering children with other women) and goes gambling out of spite. Meanwhile, Lucretia and Regina try to convince Bernard to get a paternity test.
Regina’s not ready to be a grandmother, and she even says being called “grandma” would make her want to drink bleach. Bennie says that he feels better about Bernard being gay since Bernard will still get to experience fatherhood.
The kids discuss feeling like trash and like they are “ghetto” because of their complex family relationships. Bennie and Regina fight. Bennie is seen at the end of the episode in a car with a woman. He lies to his wife, and we’re meant to think that perhaps he’s having an affair, but it becomes obvious in the next episode that he was just trying to sell the other woman his car. People causally reference abuse allegations surrounding a celebrity couple and efforts to defund the police.
The s-word is said more than a dozen times, alongside “b–ch,” “h– ,” the n-word and “b–tard.” Regina calls herself a “M.I.L.F.”
Regina and Bennie describe sex in a conversation about the ups and downs of their relationship.
Bennie drops the ball on planning his 13-year-old daughter’s birthday, as well as attending his 13-year-old son’s birthday.
Bennie’s daughter’s party is accidentally decorated like a strip club, dance pole included. Bennie makes a joke about sex, about going to a massage parlor and about staying around to hang out with strippers; his friend tells him that there will be “baby oil” and “booty” included if he stays.
Bennie’s ex-girlfriend, and the mother of one of his children, is irresponsible and careless. She throws a birthday party for her son, which ends up being a party for herself. There, she serves “weed brownies,” people smoke marijuana and drink liquor. One man even asks the young 13-year-old boy to go and buy him cigarettes and alcohol after teaching him how to gamble. Bennie’s son is suspended for stealing his teacher’s wallet.
Lucretia (Bennie’s sister-in-law) is continually rude and degrading toward Bennie, telling his wife she could have done better and telling Bennie he isn’t really capable of much. However, Bennie’s wife, Regina, makes it clear that no one will trash talk her husband in front of their children.
Bennie calls his ex-girlfriend “a demon spawn.” Bennie’s friend is released from prison and tells his friends he “found Jesus” while in jail.
God’s name is misused once. Elsewhere, there are over 10 s-words and other profanities such as “a–,” “d—n,” “h—,” “d–mit,” p-ssed” and “b–ch.”
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.
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.
