Before I get into this episode of Blood Drive, I want to take a moment and praise how much freaking action and plot goes into every episode. Blood Drive will never get the respect of a Walking Dead or a Game of Thrones but I would argue that those shows like to kill a lot of time and then throw in an exciting five minutes at the end to get trending on social media. Blood Drive is the exact opposite, they have a lot of shit to do and a short time to get there and it shows in every episode. The entertainment calue per minute of Blood Drive puts the prestige shows to shame.

This episode of Blood Drive promises the finale of the Blood Drive race. what could it be? A demolition derby with the last racers? One last race through some hellish obstacle course? No! This is the SyFy channel and they don’t have that kind of a budget so we get a battle royal inside a warehouse.

Having said that, it is a nice looking arena they have there. They make the most of their limitations and we get a cool fighting area. My favorite bit is the stands which have mannequins with the heads of TV cameras to represent the Heart employees looking on. There is a small VIP area complete with velvet ropes for the higher executives. At least Slink gets a stage to look fabulous.

This is a super busy episode. We find out that simultaneous Blood Drives have been happening around the world and the survivors are participating in the grand finale. That translates into a ton of guys with masks and one super hot Evil Nun. Hot Cop gets thrown into the battle royal first where he kicks ass but refuses to kill anyone because he is noble and shit.

The Heart CEO knows how to get Hot Cop to kill. He captures Karma, throws her in a cage and threatens to kill Grace if Hot cop doesn’t murder folks. Grace talks shit, which might be her other superpower, and in a fit of rage, the Heart CEO pulls off his blody body to reveal that he is in face, Karma, Grace’s long lost and thought dead sister!

Wha?

Yes, Karma survived the riot at the asylum and then umm, became CEO. They don’t explain much but fuck it, this is Blood Drive and shit happens. Also, Karma is a Bitch.

Karma and Grace and fight and due to a misunderstanding, Hot Cop thinks Karma kills Grace. Grace is actually fine, but Hot Cop doesn’t know that and he loses his shit. Hot Cop becomes Hot Killer and slaughters just about damn near everybody. Grace appears later and kills Karma. When Hot Killer finds out that Grace is still alive, it is too late. He has gone Complete Psycho and seems willing to kill Grace to claim the final prize. Grace walks away in disgust, which means Hot Killer, AKA Dumbest Man in the Apocalypse is the new Primo!

Well, now. We have two episodes to go so it will be interesting to see what happens next. Karma is alive because of a machine that got referenced way back in the Sex Zombie episode. Tortured Cop and Evil Robot Woman did some sneaking around and breaking into shit and are still the cutest fucked up couple, especially now that the other murder couple killed themselves in a final act of love. Hot Killer is really nuts now and Grace, well who knows what happens with Grace now.

I am really curious what happens to Slink now. His show is over although the CEO that cancelled it is presumed dead. As we all know, Slink is the real hero of this show.

Drive by thoughts,

Murder couple truly did have a wonder murder-suicide sequence as they realize that deep down, they want to make sure they are murdered by each other. True psycho love.

My laugh-out-loud moment was when Tortured Cop is looking at the Soul Reclaimator. He has no idea what it does but we see a guy with a hat get fed into a blood engine, and then his hat pops out at the Soul Machine. Tortured Cop looks at it and goes, “I think it makes hats!” Holy shit that was funny.

Speaking of which, Karma gets fed into an engine and pops out of the Soul Machine. Since she is the only one who does, we have to assume it is some sort of CEO perk.

Blood Drive proves that your security is only as good as your dumbest guard.

Evil Nun had a simple shtick but in her brief time, she proved that she should have been in the show all along.

I loved Slink’s relationship with his henchman and how fickle the henchman’s loyalty was. Sheesh, Slink truly is a tragic figure.

I nearly forgot about the ads! The fake ad for the Blood Drive action figures nearly made me cry as I realized I would never get a Grace or Slink figure. Also, the board game! Kudos to Blood Drive having a family with two gay dads playing with their kids.

This episode of Blood Drive has a Western theme, complete with an evil sheriff, a gallows, a showdown and Ennio Morricone. Grace and Barbie end up in a town that has a continuous EMP pulse, preventing any sort of electricity.  This lets them remove their brain bombs and catch a short break. Grace uses her break to try to seduce Arthur but the Good Cop is too Good to just sleep with Grace when she is depressed.

However much of a Good Cop Arthur is, he is still the dumbest man in the apocalypse and a sucker for any authority figure that happens to be around. This time it is the Evil sheriff who tricks Arthur into sneaking into the next town over, and sabotaging their defenses on the flimsy premise that the people are vaguely evil. Arthur jumps at the chance until uh oh, PLOT-TWIST, the people are quite nice and the Evil Sheriff plans to hang innocent men, women and children.

Where is Grace in all this? She runs into Best Character in the Show, Slick, at the local coffee bar. Slick explains he diverted her to this no-electronics town because it is free from surveillance from Heart Industries. See, Slick is tired of Grace messing up his art and just wants to kill the woman. Corporate however has a ton of notes on Grace and won’t let him kill her. Slick plans to have a showdown with Grace and kill her ass once and for all.

Once again, the show notes are the real evil of the show.

Meanwhile, Tortured Cop gets free and spends about ten minutes back in the real world before nearly getting killed by raiders. Evil Robot Woman comes to his rescue and declares that she now feels this emotion that humans call love. Tortured Cop, with a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, declares he loves her too. They have awesome sex and Evil Robot Woman’s eyes change. She is becoming more human and why the fuck not?

I don’t need to tell you that Grace eventually saves Arthur. I knew it was going to happen and so did you. What Blood Drive did that was clever was for the first half of the episode, we follow Arthur and his repeated attempts to get Grace to help. In the second half, we see Grace’s point of view where she is trying to find shit out from Slick and Arthur keeps bugging her about this week’s adventure until she eventually has to stop and rescues Arthur.

You know, I really wish we never saw Arthur’s side. The shit he went through was so predictable and quite frankly, the same stupid shit he always falls for, that I would have loved to have an entirely Grace episode where Arthur checks in to give us and her a bare-bones outline of the episode we don’t need to see.

“Grace! This Sheriff we met needs our help!”

Later, “Grace, that Sheriff is totally crazy! I got a bad feeling but I am going to keep doing what he asks!”

Later, “Grace, that Sheriff is really a monster and he tricked me into hurting people. Now some orphans are going to die!”

Later, “Grace, I fucked it up and now they are going to kill me too!”

That would have been awesome.

Quick thoughts,

The Scholar gets a girlfriend and becomes the new sheriff! Holy crap, is he the first character in this show to get a happy ending?

Slink got stabbed and healed as soon as the knife was withdrawn. He was also set on fire and calmly put it out. That boy ain’t human. I’m leaning into thinking Slink might be an actual demon from the Scar.

With no more brain bombs, I have a bad feeling we might not be doing the racing part of Blood Drive for much longer.

Tortured Cop’s eye-weapon is awesome and I wish I was still running role-playing games because it would be in the very next adventure.

This episode of Blood Drive sends our Heroes into a wasteland that also just happens to have the women’s penitentiary where Grace’s sister is being held.  I thought we were going to have a parody of women’s prisons but the show throws us a curveball by doing a parody of Amazon culture when we discover the women prisoners have escaped and are running a female Utopia/Spa. barbie gets beat up a lot and thrown into a cell to be milked later while Grace gets a spa treatment and is told how great her sister was.

You see, Karma apparently led a revolt against the prison guards and is the reason the woman have a spa lair today. Now that gets me thinking. What if Karma is the Mad Maxine of this world? She could be a lone wanderer, going from place to place, doing good deeds and defeating evil gangs and staying one step ahead of the sister that she doesn’t know is looking for her?

Now the Amazons try to spoil this idea by saying Karma fell in the rebellion and all they have of her is her ID bracelet and a really nice shrine. Nice try Amazon ladies! We all know that if there is not a body, then a character isn’t really dead.

The other plot involves the Murder Couple still having martial problems. I feel kind of foolish for thinking they had resolved their problems a few episodes ago. Anyone who has ever been married knows that no issues ever get resolved in a single episode. Murder Couple gets seperated by the Amazons and Murder Wife is seriously considering staying with the Amazons but her husband’s heartfelt plea for them to murder together wins her over. She slaughters some Amazons and creates enough chaos for the Heroes to take advantage of. Oh Murder Couple, you truly are the heart of the show.

Speaking of Heart, Tortured Cop is now a Security Guard and living in strange Stockholm domestic bliss with Evil Robot lady.  Tortured Cop almost immediately uses his new position to break into the wonderfully named Hall of Secrets to find out anything. What he finds out is Evil Robot Lady can spy on him through his eyes and she presses some buttons to make him projectile vomit until he submits.

Side note, if you wanted to write a grim dystopian BDSM story, you could gather enough ideas for a series of novels from Tortured Cop/Evil Robot Lady’s arc.

Meanwhile, the best character, Slink, endures another executive meeting. Sweet Vincent Price, watching Slink explain the appeal to the Blood Drive and what he is trying to do to clueless artless executives warms a place in my writer’s heart. In this executive meeting, Slink throws a knife into an executive, Slink gets fired and the head executive discovers that he can;t kill slink outright because Slink has a “Holding Contract”.

Let’s take a moment to think about how a contract prevents Slink from being killed by the head of the worse company on Earth. Why would a contract hold so much power? Could it be because that contract is infernal which would prove my earlier theory that Heart gets their technology straight from Hell? Hmmm?

Favorite random bits.

Barbie gets beat up by women alot in this episode and it is awesome.

The amazons have a milking machine to extract seed from men and it is wonderfully awful.

The Milked Men are douchebros who are placated with junk food, beer and video games.

Our Heroes get tricked by a painting of a wreck, which Grace calls “Getting Wile Coyoted”.

Some new drivers show up, without names, and pretty much die in 15 minutes.

Blood Drive has had an amazing first couple of episodes.  They have had a streak of great action, great world building and greater character development. Sadly, all streaks must end and episode four gets a bad case of the “Are you fucking kidding me?”

In this episode of Blood Drive, the Heroes sneak away from the race to go to where Grace’s sister is being held in an asylum. Slink is not amused so he sends Rib Bone to go kill them. Also during this episode, we get flashbacks to Grace and her sister before the events of Blood Drive as well as even more torture scenes with Tortured Cop and Hot Robot Woman.

Now if you have ever read, watched or heard of fiction involving an asylum, then you know that there is a 90% that any asylum is being run by the inmates who have seized control. Blood Drive maintains that by having the crazy people in charge. What is bizarre to me, is that Grace and Barbie are completely obvious to this until it is too late. Barbie especially suffers from a case of near-terminal stupidity in this episode. Honestly, I wonder if the writer was new to the show or this was an early episode because Barbie is just about too stupid to live where as in previous episodes, he was Naive-But-Tough.

Rib Bone on the other hand, walks in and instantly asks the first person he sees how long ago did the crazy people take over. Go Rib Bone! I mean seriously, Rib Bone catching on was so damn entertaining that I almost forgive the stupidity of Grace and Barbie.

Sadly, the two other plots are not very good. Tortured Cop gets really put through the wringer in this episode. O-M-G was it rough. The bright light was when Hot Robot Woman took off her dress to reveal nipple-less breasts like a doll. That was a nice touch but man, you got a lot of torture to go through to get there. I will admit, I had a pretty good laugh when Robot Woman offered to collect his seed with the plunger or the hand. Poor Tortured Cop. It never works out for him.

As bad as the torture was, the flashback was worse. Grace and sister Karma get into a nightclub so Grace can get a job with the Blood Drive. They need money and Grace is trying to support her sister. Along the way, Karma overdoses on some drugs and gets committed. At the end we get more backstory where we find that Slink offers Grace a blood-sucking engine and a spot in the race to pay for Karma’s treatment. We also discover that Slink probably hooked karma on the drugs. Diabolical!

Yet, also dull. Grace trying to get the attention of a previous Blood Drive winner by acting slutty isn’t compelling to watch.  Also, she is a bad sister.

There are some highlights to this episode. The primary reason the crazies are crazy is that they are hooked on a synthetic sugar made by Heart Industries. When poor Rib Bone gets covered in the stuff, the inmates literally eat him alive. Barbie finds a nurse who teaches him how to act crazy to blend in and that’s cool. Grace had an awesome fight with an inmate that almost offsets the awful flashback.  We get a hint that Slink used to work at the asylum fifty years ago and doesn’t appeared to have aged. Wha? The plot thickens.

But sadly, we lose Rib Bone. Damn, I would almost rather lose Barbie. At least Rib Bone gets an awesome tribute in the end and who knows, maybe he will come back as a cyborg?

All in all, not the best episode of Blood Drive but it is still my favorite show on television right now.

Episode Two of the insane series Blood Drive evolves into a different beast from the pilot episode. We are given a history lesson that fills in a lot of what has happened to America. We are given multiple separate storylines with the Heroes bonding, Julian Slink at an employee evaluation, The Gentleman and the Scholar’s relationship problems, Tortured Cop’s ordeal AND a small peek at the villains of this episode, the Cannibal Diner Crew. A shit-ton is going on and yet no plot line feels lost or tacked on.

In fact, there is much going on that it is impossible to discuss a lot of it without doing a blow-by-blow of what happened. Instead of that, I just want to touch on them briefly.

First of all, the Orientation video for Tortured Cop explains that fracking caused a giant earthquake rift to open up in America. A company named Heart explored the ‘Scar’ and found “new minerals, morally questionable fuel alternatives, unnatural gases and deep wells of unidentifiable glowing goo.”  From this, Heart was able to become the most powerful company in the world.

The “morally questionable fuel alternatives” has to be those shredder car engines that run on blood. How do you find car engines that run on blood in a hole in the ground? My guess is that the Scar goes straight to Hell. It would certainly explain why the engines look like they were designed by Pinhead from Hellraiser.

That is my best guess. The answer I am hoping it will be is that the Scar opens into the Hollow Earth filled with sadistic Dero.

The second thing of note I want to focus on is the arc of Julian Slink. He runs the Blood Drive and in the first episode, he comes across as the Chief Villain of this evil race. In this episode we see him go to his bosses, at Heart, and sit for hours in the lobby. He is being put in his place and he knows it. This person who have come to know as the tormentor and villain is literally middle management in a bigger enterprise. not only that, but we see him suffer and go through insecurity. This transforms him from a villain into another victim.  The fact that he murders someone he perceives as his competition just includes us in his struggles.

This is quite unexpectedted and I applaud it.  Julian Slink is a charismatic character and I hope we see more of him.

Speaking of unexpected, Rib Bone, the main thug in the first episode, stops a huge brawl to find out who locked their dog in a truck with the windows rolled up. He wants to know so he can rescue the dog and kill the former owner. This promotes Rib Bone straight from Forgetful Thug to Monster-With-A-Heart. That is a clever and delightful surprise. Go Rib Bone! I hope he sticks around forever.

Which brings us to the couple who gets as almost as much screen time as our heroes. The Gentleman and the Scholar have an unhealthy relationship of abuse, homosexual sex and humiliation. Most other fiction in the ‘Grindhouse’ genre would have used the genre as an excuse for homophobia. They would have played up their homosexuality as a campy thing or something that is gross, but Blood Drive manages to treat it as just another bad relationship without getting offensive. Heck, the Scholar becomes a genuine sympathetic character. There is show of affection near the end that will warm your heart if you forget these guys kill folks for fuel.

Speaking of the Heroes. I don’t think I said much last time but the dynamic between these two is good. Grace is certainly the brains and maybe the muscle while Barbie is the heart and and more muscle. Can I say how much I love that the pretty guy is the one who gets stuck with the nickname, Barbie? That rocks. Barbie is a bit too naive for a cop but I am sure that he will get that beaten out of him.

Meanwhile, Tortured Cop keeps getting seduced and tortured by Evil Robot Lady. I enjoy their exchanges, especially as Evil Robot Lady is a quirky looking brunette instead of a statuesque blonde like something from Battlestar Galactica. It is a shame that the one prominent black character spends most of his time in bondage getting abused but I am sure he will have a thrilling arc later when he is turned into a Cyborg Hunter of some sort.

Last we have the killers. I am not a big fan of Cannibals in fiction. One of my problems is that movie cannibals are always filthy and disgusting. How are you supposed to catch anyone if your place looks like a sewer? I was pleasantly surprised to see these cannibals keep a tidy place and hygiene becomes a running theme. As someone who has worked in restaurants, it made my soul feel good to see someone die from not mopping enough.

All in all, this was the episode that really hooked me into the series. The explanation of the Scar does a lot of heavy lifting for the universe, while quite a few potentially shallow characters like Julian and Rib Bone were made into elevated into something special. So far the show appears to really aspire to be something interesting as opposed to just throwing gore on the screen.

RIP Fat Elvis. We never got to know you but then again, I guess being called Fat Elvis and dressing like the King is all we need to know.