“Jailhouse Rock”
Original Airdate: May 20, 2017
The more episode of Class I watch, the more I sympathize with Ms. Quill. She is, for all intents and purposes, treated as Charlie’s servant and she’s also the only actual grown-up in our Scooby Gang. Does that justify her locking all her charges in a classroom, claiming they’ve been given detention so she can get some peace and quiet for once? Probably not, especially since we know she’s actually going to have that pesky Arn removed.
What’s truly unjustifiable is, after she locks the gang in, she says, “So you won't come to any harm.” Come now, Quill, you know that’s exactly what’ll happen. And indeed, within moments, an asteroid comes hurtling through the crack and explodes in the room.
CONFESS
The meteor fragment transports the whole room into a kind of suspended space. The gang’s emotions go into overdrive, especially their anger. Charlie turns out to be claustrophobic, which isn’t helped by being trapped not only in a room but in an unknown realm with no discernable way out.
Hoping to solve their problems, Matteusz picks up the meteor to chuck it out the door. Instead, he turns to Charlie and says he loves him but is afraid of him. April knocks the rock from his hand and Matteusz is himself again. He explains that while holding the meteor it was impossible to not speak the truth. Hurt by his boyfriend’s honesty, Charlie retreats from him.
As usual, Tanya figures out the trick. Something about the meteor is ramping up everyone’s emotions so that they feel angry rather than scared and she wants to know why. She grabs the meteor and blurts out that she thinks none of the group are really her friends. But then she uses the truth-telling compulsion to her advantage by having the others ask her questions. Before Ram knocks the meteor from her hand, we learn it’s dangerous and will fry your brain if you hold it too long, it’s a kind of intelligence, and there’s a prisoner in the room with them.
PLAYING WITH PORTALS
Basically, they’re in the Phantom Zone — a prison suspended in space. Charlie thrusts his arm out the open door and it comes back in front of him. The whole meteor was a kind of prison and, as we learn when Ram picks up the rock, each piece had a prisoner’s consciousness in it. While holding it, Ram confesses he loves April but believes she doesn’t love him back or not as much. That’s quite a reversal from last week’s “I’ve only known you a month.”
The prison forces those in it to tell the truth and thus leaves them only with confessions to make (not unlike the Confessional Dial on Doctor Who, really) and anger to let out. This prisoner killed all the others. How? To know that, either April or Charlie needs to hold the meteor.
April takes her turn and confesses that Ram is right: she doesn’t love him as much as he loves her. Through her we learn the classroom is in “no time and no space,” where they won’t age or need to eat but they’ll be trapped forever. The only way out is to kill or be killed. The prisoners were living consciousness where guilt became a weapon. As the gang feels worse about their confessions to one another, it makes them angrier — just like it did to the prisoners.
FIVE ANGRY STUDENTS
Ram is ready to break up with April because of her confession and nearly picks a fight with Matteusz. Charlie tries to calm everyone down, making his confession all on his own: he had no friends on Rhodia and believes his friends now simply put up with him. When that has no effect, he grabs the meteor and reveals he wants to use the Cabinet to kill the Shadow Kin. The only thing that stops him is Matteusz and that makes Charlie hate him sometimes. I can’t decide if this is a healthy relationship or not.
In trying to force a confession from the prisoner, Charlie begins bleeding from his nose and eyes. But the only thing the prisoner has left to say is, “You’re my murderer.” Charlie smashes the rock and they’re returned to school. What the prisoner was actually looking for is someone guiltier than himself and he found that in Charlie because “on Rhodia, a wish is the same as an action.” This technically makes Charlie a mass murderer, which is really unfair, honestly.
One problem, however: the prison still needs a prisoner, and who is the guiltiest of them all? It grabs Charlie, but his loyal guard is there for him. Quill shoots the rock, calling it her “last favor.” She’s got a major scar on her face, a new long coat, and longer hair. She throws the Arn at Charlie and says, “Things are going to change around here.”
Final Thoughts:
- Ram: “Yeah cause nothing’s tried to kill us lately.”
- Some very interesting perspectives on Charlie were revealed in this episode. On the one hand is Mattuesz, who is afraid of what’s lurking inside Charlie. “You're human. You look human. You're human all over. But inside, you're not human at all. And I'm afraid of who you are, of what you're capable of. Of what you will do.”
- Then there’s Tanya, who thinks Charlie is a lot of talk with no action and kind of just a stuck-up ex-prince. “God, you keep saying how you're this prince but all you do is stand around and ask stupid questions and get obvious things wrong.”
- “Oh, my God. You can't even handle detention right.”
- Charlie: “You shouldn't avenge genocide with genocide. That's what the Doctor said.” Quill: “Oh, the Doctor. And, of course, no one else in all of time and space can think for themselves.”
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