This post contains Spoilers.

“Presidio,” the premiere episode of Netflix‘s latest foray into graphic novel and comic book property supremacy, October Faction, begins with a family trip to the town of Barrington to pay their respects to their dead grandpa. During the car ride we learn that the son, Geoff, has taught himself Mandarin using old 80’s TV shows, the daughter, Viv, is a superior student and the parents, Fred and Deloris,  are definitely not in the risk management business like their cover suggests. At a gas station, they find a creepy Zoltaresque machine and the daughter gets a fortune and what looks like visions of a gruesome future. After a racist run-in with the station’s owner, the family hops back in the car and gets back on the road to the dad’s family home.

Sandra St. Clare, an old high school acquaintance, is the executor of Fred’s family estate and while she tries to sort out the details of what happens next, Fred is in a rush to sell the house ASAP so the family can move on.  While exploring the house the twins find themselves feeling hella uneasy, we discover that Fred had a falling out with his family over joining Presidio and bringing his now wife with him after the death of his brother Seth. Mourning isn’t the only purpose of the trip, the parents use biometrics to log into the house, upload data to the main office in NY and stockpile the weapons in the house to clean it and prep it before a Presidio cleaning team comes to clear it out officially.

Unable to sleep the dad decides to use the key that Sandra gave him for the locked room, belonging to his dead brother  Seth, we learn that he is the one who killed his brother and going into his old room gave him a chance to cry and grieve the loss that mattered to him. After a quick funeral montage, we meet Margaret, Fred’s mom who shows up, not to grieve her estranged husband but, to claim the house.  At the wake, Deloris catches up with an old friend, Gina who is now the town sheriff,  Fred makes awkward small talk with people from his past who only want to kiss his ass because of his family’s money and, the twins engage in avoiding awkward interactions with the local teens whose parents have dragged them to the morbid soiree.

During a drunken drive into town in Fred’s old muscle car to get supplies for the wake, the parents engage in a little puff, puff, pass action and wax nostalgic about their monster-killing jobs and concern about the kids not knowing who they really are and what they really do for a living with conflicting opinions about how to handle it.  Their inebriated condition, and lack of weapons,  makes it a bit hard to be prepared when they run into a couple of monsters in human suits at the local supermarket and need to end them. Back at the mansion, Geoff finds the will and laments that they weren’t on the will and they decide to gather the local teens to perform a seance.

Meanwhile, the parents are back at the supermarket in fresh clothes after hacking up the monsters and stuffing them in the trunk and making the butchers death look like a satanic serial killer and, now that he’s sober Fred he lets Deloris know that Edith, the head of Presidio, is transferring the family to Oslo after the family finally got settled. The seance for Grandpa Samuel is in full effect back at the house and Geoff begins to see some a ghost while he engages in sexy time with one of the other funeral goers.  While Viv is under, she sees a chained and drowning women breaking free from her underwater prison and surfacing to roam free.

This was one of the most carefully crafted and beautifully executed pilots that I have ever seen. The characters were introduced flawlessly, the plot was laid out in a way that would intrigue people new to the October Faction and would make fans, casual or devout, of the comic fall right into a familiar place. The visuals are high quality, dark when they need to be and bright when they need to give you a feeling of hope, the dialogue isn’t clunky or cliched and it gives you a feeling that these are real people, making it easy to connect and giving you a reason to keep watching. The acting is on point, there isn’t a hammy or phoned in performance in the bunch and the cast seems to work really well together feeding off of each other’s instincts and talent.  I found this to be stellar, not just as a pilot but as an episode and I can’t wait to see what else this newly found Netflix gem has in store.

Overall: 9.1