Comedy
Dead Boy Detectives
Dead Boy Detectives targets teens in style and story. But it comes with very adult, problematic content.
If you watch the first five minutes of Who Killed Sara? you may be wondering why the show’s title poses this as a question. After all, it seems pretty obvious what happened.
Sara and her friends had all been drinking when they went out on the boat that fateful summer day. Sara got strapped into the parasail harness and was soon gliding behind the boat, hundreds of feet in the air.
Then, the harness straps started tearing. Sara’s brother, Alex, noticed she was in distress, but the others insisted she was just being dramatic and decided to drive faster.
The straps snapped, and Sara fell to her death.
No one thought it was murder. At worst, Rodolfo Lazcano (Sara’s boyfriend and the one responsible for securing her harness) was looking at criminal negligence. It was an accident, after all.
In fact, Rodolfo’s family is so sure of this, that they coerce Alex into taking the blame. With everything they’ve done for Alex’s family, the least Alex could do is prevent his best friend’s name from being dragged through the mud.
But Alex didn’t know that Rodolfo’s dad, Cesar, was lying.
Sara’s death wasn’t an accident. The investigation into her death revealed the harness straps were cut before she put it on.
And before he can figure out the truth, Alex is thrown into prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
It’s been 18 years since Sara died. And Alex is being released from his 30-year sentence early for good behavior. But now that he’s out, he wants revenge. And right at the top of his list are the people who sent him to prison: the Lazcano family.
Rodolfo is married now, and he’s actually about to inherit his family’s casino business. His brother, Chema, is trying to have a baby with his boyfriend via surrogate. And Cesar? Well, I would say the guy is still doing everything he can to maintain his family’s good reputation … but that’s only partially true.
Through bribes and coercion, Cesar has managed to keep his family’s name out of the press. But beneath the surface (quite literally, in the basement of his casino), he runs a secret brothel, kidnapping foreign women and forcing them to be sex slaves.
And even that’s pretty shallow in the pool of secrets that Cesar keeps.
As Alex soon discovers, Sara was pregnant when she died. That alone would be enough for the Lazcano family to want her dead. Having their heir knock up a poor girl from the slums would certainly have tarnished the family’s reputation. But it wasn’t even Rodolfo’s baby: It was Cesar’s.
With every secret Alex uncovers, the mystery of who actually killed Sara becomes even more convoluted. Was it the jealous boyfriend? Was it the jealous wife? Was it the family patriarch trying to cover his tracks? Or could it even be the family friend who nobody’s seen in 10 years?
To be honest, it doesn’t really matter who killed Sara. Because in order to find out, you’d have to finesse your way through a lot of mucky content to solve the mystery.
People have sex (including same-sex couples) and we see a lot of skin onscreen. Almost everyone is having an extramarital affair of some sort. The f- and s-words are tossed around like a hacky sack. We hear about (and sometimes see) rape, abuse, self-harm and murder. And in addition to the underage drinking taking place before Sara’s death, we also learn about drug abuse.
So while you might be tempted to whip out your notebook and try to solve this Nancy Drew style, I’d highly recommend passing since the only things deader than Sara are the brain cells you’ll kill by watching it.
After learning that Sara had schizophrenia and discovering a skeleton in his backyard, Alex wonders if she murdered someone before she died.
A teenage girl cuts her friend’s arm with a pair of scissors and kicks her mom down the stairs, shouting that everyone is trying to kill her. A little girl picks up a rock and nearly crushes another girl’s head with it before her mom stops her. A woman confesses that her daughter was born out of rape. People shoot at each other, and a bomb explosion knocks several people off their feet. Two men fist fight. We hear people plotting murder. We hear a woman died of kidney failure.
A married woman does sexual acts with a teenage boy. People talk crudely about sex and male genitals. Some female characters’ outfits are revealing. We learn that a same-sex couple is separated. Someone uses the derogatory term “f-g.”
Alex’s mom calls Sara a sociopath. Teenagers drink and use cocaine at a party. We hear uses of the f-word, s-word, “a–hole,” “b–ch” and “h—.” We also hear misuses of God’s name, including a pairing with “d–mit.”
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.
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.
