Episode 5 – Sonny Boy [2021-08-14]

Sonny Boy‘s fifth episode opens in a way that made me think I had accidentally skipped an episode. That’s not really a criticism on my part, but it is another acknowledgement of the series’ drive to disorient its audience—unmooring its viewers in parallel with The Drifting Classroom. Instead of greeting us with a warm handshake each week, it’s dumping a bucket of ice water over our heads and forcing us to count the spilled cubes. I don’t begrudge anybody for giving up on its messy obtuseness at this point; I, however, am a literary masochist, so I continue to relish in its nettle of slow-blooming conceptual vagaries, eager to tease what meaning I can from the metaphor and technobabble. In that regard, this week adds plenty of fuel to its allegorical fire, heightening tensions and emotions as the class drifts towards serious conflict.

The opening scene acts as a microcosm…