Review of The Coach with the Dragon Tattoo by dema1020
23 May 2024
This review contains spoilers
One doesn't go into an episode like "The Coach with a Dragon Tattoo" without having certain expectations. Obviously, the title being a play on the famous novel and film adaptation are used to communicate this is going to be a story with an evil coach, sporting some sort of Dragon Tattoo. Being part of the Who franchise, the tattoo having alien origins was all but guaranteed, too.
So this episode could and maybe even should have just hit a number of standard points along the way. This is the second episode, which often can struggle in quality for other shows as pilots or even season premieres can use a lot of the budget up depending on how production works, while our characters still have to be firmed up in any given new show. Second episodes rarely stand out that well for these reasons in any given show.
This is where I am particularly impressed by Class. Not only is this the episode where I really started clicking with our main characters (basically everyone except for Tanya and April here) but I was thoroughly interested in the main story centred around Ram and his coach. Ram Singh, so far, is one of the most unexpectedly great parts of this show. He could have just been some boring meathead character but already he is an amputee and hasn't just forgotten about his dead girlfriend. So much potential already in this one character, and already I'd flag this episode as a must-watch just like the pilot in how well it follows up on those events.
I really like how Class is really taking his time to showcase that just because two of its main cast are aliens, all of the main cast is really cool and each have some level of intrigue to them. So far, to me, this is a pretty great show.