Review: Psi Cops “The Cave”

Our two part cavesploration of the soul opens with a couple of hunters in a cave encountering some sentient bioluminescent cave goo. Shooting the goo to better see what it is enrages the beast, who takes out its wrath against lax gun laws on the two hapless chaps.

Meanwhile, it’s finally time for Review Day – an annual examination by a shadowy Council of all the year’s collected paranormal evidence. For Psi Cops Head of Ops Chief Beef, the event can be nerve wracking – if the Council doesn’t like her findings, the Psi Cops unit of the Canadian Armed Forces will be disbanded, and everybody will lose their jobs. Her stress is compounded this year, as she has accidentally let some of the more perishable magical artefacts rot away in her file cabinet, most grossly including the witches’ arm from when Kydd and Felixx got cursed so hard they got to wear crop tops, and what’s left of Eric’s chupacabra from that time Kydd had to shoot Felixx for some deeply convoluted reason. The arm used to move on its own, but now it only moves when it’s falling apart, and the chupacabra resembles any number of internet photos of wanna-be cryptids losing their battle with the elements.

In the Chief’s defence, assuming that magical objects are immune to putrefaction just makes sense – a preserved arm or taxidermified chupacabra just hits differently. And how do we know all the paranormal stuff isn’t contained in the guts?

Improper storage aside, this year’s offerings to the Council are on the lean side. Having to present all the successes and failures of the past year is a cute device that allows super fans to think back on what an action packed year of Canadian animation it’s been, while leaving outsiders pleasantly alienated from the proceedings.

Through their time trapped in the cave, we learn all about the different kinds of rope, and it is revealed that Kydd is not the smart one, he just looks everything up on his phone. This episode also featureds Kydd and Felixx’s longest accidental 69 to date!

Much of the second half of this two parter involves Orange Mustache and Italian Guy? going full out Arrival and creating a middle language between the King’s English and penis-blob alien spit talk while one of the hunters from Part 1 slowly dies in front of them. Junji Ito-esque is a term oft bandied about when discussing Psi Cops, but the gruesome death of the semi-absorbed hunter is the Junjiest Ito the show has pulled off thus dar. His dying words (I’m racist. Like, fully.) get the boys off the moral hook, and their newly invented language gets the cave blob on their side.

Presenting the blob (which is named after an 11th century Hittite king) is a perfect way to secure funding from the Council – unfortunately, Bitsie’s realization that one of the Council members (the scary looking one) has been fortold to be a world-ending bad guy by the crop circles she processed through her computer in a previous ep means that the team has switched gears in an effort to intentionally tank the presentation. Keeping the power-mad man away from the paranormal artefacts at all costs becomes the name of the game – they even make a failed attempt to get recurring punk Lippy Boy to shit talk their evidence. Lippy Boy starts strong with a “What up, fuckers?”, and if he had left on his declaration to “fuck recycling” instead of going to to spill the beans about how a secret society stole his blood to become immortal, everything would have been fine.

Lucky for the team, Kydd and Felixx are very good at presentations, and everything works out perfectly, just like they planned. Even Eric was impressed!