An emcee introduces the band Exorcist to us and their inexplicably adoring fans.  The almost well-named lead singer Danny Darwin’s prodigious musical talent is matched only by his linguistic skills enabling him to work the F word in three times in three sentences.  I have to go back to Demosthones or maybe even Iggy Pop to find a wordsmith of such a skill.

Darwin, blissfully, takes a break from his godawful set to announce that his guitarist Bosch has gotten married.  The girls in the audience jeer as they would at a similar announcement from Justin Bieber; or like guys would the second he walked on stage.

Darwin drags Bosch’s fiancee Scarlett (Tia Carrera) onto the stage, much to her displeasure.  He warns Bosch not to get pussy-whipped, calls Scarlett a bitch and pushes her off stage.  So that Dale Carnegie course really paid off.

Bosch drops the guitar and walks offstage.  Stopping the show, Darwin follows, and Bosch attacks him as much as a guy with big hair, earrings, a necklace and a mesh shirt can.  He demands an apology, but Darwin says it is was just a joke, further demonstrating his grasp of the English language, and communication in  general.

Darwin goes to his dressing room where there are a couple of skanky sluts.  They say they hate Scarlett, too because she treats them like skanky sluts.  So far there is exactly one person in this episode that I don’t loathe (although her taste in men is appalling).

One of the skanks, Vendetta, starts to grow on me as she unzips her leather top.  Sadly, she has destroyed her beauty with a dreadful new tattoo of a snake curled around her breast.  She tells Darwin to look closer, and he sees a tongue slither out of the snake’s mouth.  She promises to reveal the location of this magical tattoo artist if he will sleep with her.

The next morning, she drops Darwin off at the home of Farouche, the magical tattoo guy.  Farouche is also a tattooed douche-bag, but he has an eye-patch treats Darwin like shit, so I kind of like him.  Darwin wants a tiger, but Farouche says he will decide what to create; he “finds what is inside and brings it outside.”  Like my lunch when I think that low-lifes like these are the future of our country.

When Farouche is finished, Darwin races to a mirror — a common practice for him, I imagine — and sees that the artist has put a massive tattoo of Scarlett on his chest.  Outraged, he refuses to pay and storms out.

Back at the house, Scarlett comes in and immediately tears into Darwin for being unprofessional.  She reminds Darwin that Bosch writes and produces the songs and that a lot of labels would love to have him as a solo act.  His reasoned response is, “You’re trying to break up the band, you stupid bitch.  Can’t you see we’re the hottest band in the country?”  Which is why they share a house.

At the small club (where the hottest band in the country plays every night) he finds Vendetta and accuses her of giving Farouche a picture of Scarlett to tattoo on his chest.  She has her first reasonable suggestion and gives Darwin the name of a plastic surgeon who can remove the tattoo.  Because this is the chick whose advice is gold, baby!  The doctor does his thing, but a ghost of the Scarlett tattoo remains.

After apologizing to Bosch and telling him he wants to keep the band together, he skips the next gig.  While the band is playing, he sneaks back into his own house while Scarlett is slipping into the tub.  While Bosch is headbanging on stage, Darwin does some headbanging with Scarlett, and not the good kind.  He viciously slams her noggin repeatedly against the tile wall until she is dead.

Bosch comes into the dressing room and asks Darwin (as he is putting on his guy-liner) if he has seen Scarlett, which just baffles me.  The band was on stage during the murder.  Didn’t anyone miss the lead singer?

Darwin tells Vendetta that he killed Scarlett.  He peels the bandage off his tattoo scar and the tattoo has fully returned.  When he finally makes it onstage for the second set, something is bouncing around under his shirt .  He runs offstage, belts Vendetta, returns to the mirror and has a chest-burster scene that makes Alien look tame.

He then engages in a little self-surgery of the non-plastic variety.  As the climax is spoiled in the first shot of the episode, I don’t feel the guilt that I also haven’t felt spoiling every other episode.

A good episode with brief moments of greatness, largely ruined by too many entirely repulsive characters.

Post-Post:

• Title Analysis:  Again, no thought was put into it.  First of all, it’s not “Deadman’s Chest”, it’s “Dead Man’s Chest.”  Second, who is the titular dead man?  The only person killed is a woman.
• Danny Darwin is an awful name for this character.  If you want to keep Darwin (and there really is no reason to), name him Darwin Dedmon (I have never known anyone with the last name Deadman), then change the title to Dedmon’s Chest.  Both problems solved.
• All I can think is that Darwin is almost an anagram for drawing?
• Gregg Allman, as the club manager, was far more normal that I expected.