Dark Angel is my crack cocaine

Cafe Society
1

I’ve done mostly without television for quite a few years, and I missed Dark Angel during it’s run. So on Sunday my sister has loaned me her DVDs of the first season, and I’m afraid that I became instantly addicted. It’s Wednesday now and I’m through the first 3-1/2 discs.

So … I have a fairly simple question: Is Dark Angel really the brilliant, well-made program I think it is, or have I simply been blinded by the fact that Jessica Alba is the most beautiful woman in the world?

It’s not the action sequences. Those are pretty standard fare for the genre. It’s the characters. Wonderful, wonderful characters. They’re so well-crafted that I feel like I actually know these people after only a few episodes. Strangely enough, my favorite supporting character is Normal (am I hearing his name correctly?), the manager at Jam Pony Express. He seems something of an enigma to me; he’s either a simple asshat manager, or else he really does care for his employees and tries to hide it behind an abrasive persona. I haven’t figured out which yet.

I really like Alba, and not just for her beauty. I’ve seen her in Fantastic Four, Honey, Sin City, and Idle Hands, and she’s always seemed like a very real person on the screen, and not somebody just playing a role. She’s natural.

My sister originally handed me her Firefly DVDs and the movie that followed to conclude that series (Serendipity? Serenity?) after it was cancelled. I commented on the fact that she hadn’t even opened the shrink wrap, and she told me to watch it quickly because she wanted to watch it soon. I handed it back and told her that, with the schedule I’m working, I couldn’t promise to get through it quickly, so why don’t I borrow Dark Angel instead. Well, I’ve seen y’all talking up Firefly here, so I know it’s gonna be good when I get to it. If it’s even half as good as Dark Angel (I suspect it’s even better), I don’t think I should have worried about keeping the DVDs too long :wink:

Dang, I did it again. I always post my question and then follow it with so much exposition that I think people forget what I asked. So I’ll ask it again: Is Dark Angel as good as I think it is, or am I blinded by lust?

2

I really enjoyed the entire run of Dark Angel. Part of this may be my lust for Miss Alba, but I don’t think so - I couldn’t watch Mutant X even though it had double the hawtness. I also liked the supporting characters quite a bit - Original Sindy for one is a peach.

Plus it presents a fututre America that I, for one, find a lot more believable than, say, Star Trek.

3

Ego te absolvo in nomine Father Knows Best, My Three sons, et Casper The Friendly Ghost.

Go now, and sin no more.

4

The latter. Most definitely. Alba has that ability on most men.

5

Substitute in “Jensen Ackles” and “man” and I’ll join you on that couch, Phase42. Dude is gorgeous. However…is the show brilliant? Mmmmmno. (But, mmmmmAlec!)

6

Alba’s lips certainly helped the show, Phase, but no, I think it was a legitimately good program. It was a perfect mix of kicksplode, hawtness, and actual character development. The status quo changed over time, and all the character had distinct personalities that made sense – even characters that only showed up for an episode or two. Plus it was a “realistic” take on superheroes in the modern world – if you were living on subsitence wages and you developed superpowers, you’d be a thief too. We all would. (Similarly, while the show will never be accused of being written as a political thesis, like one can say of BSG, it was unafraid to make a political statement about the growing gap between the rich and poor in this country.) Not to mention having the most racially diverse prime-time cast since Barney Miller. Ultimately, with the possible exception of DS9, Dark Angel was the smartest sci-fi had been in years, even if now that’s hard to remember because we’ve since got two substantially smarter sci-fi shows in Firefly and BSG.

Another thing the show did was cross genres pretty successfully. For instance, you’d have an episode that was mostly going along as pretty light comedy (with butt kicking), and all of a sudden it would swerve into some real, heavy emotion. And the first season works as a complete unit with a beginning, middle, and end; common now (although rarely done as well), at the time DA was on the very cusp of that serialization trend with only one or two other shows to keep it company (early Buffy, Murder One, and maybe you could count Twin Peaks of a few years prior).

Unfortuately, IMHO, there’s a big drop-off in S2. Although it’s still worth watching, the S2 premise changes somewhat into a kind of monster of the week thing, and the relationship between Max and Logan is more contrived than in S1, while the overarching story of the season is both less organically integrated and less well executed, with a big stretch in the middle of the season that seems to be marking time. That said, there are some pretty neat concepts there, and the show still brings the kicksplode every ep. I certainly recommend continuing with S2, but in hindsight, S1 is best if you ignore the last scene or two (which set up S2) and just think of it as an entity unto itself.

Finestole,
–Cliffy

7

S1 seemed brilliant. S2–less so. S3 should never have happened.

8

Like Cliffy also said, this is the truth. The first season was fantastic. Add Alba’s cat-like walking… I’ll be in my bunk.

9

There was a Season Three and I missed it? Or have I been whooshed?

Agreed with the assessments of Seasons One and Two, though.

10

See you get old, you have pain, you take a bunch of pain killers and your mind goes.

No, only two seasons. Season two went from fair to wretched so quickly it felt like a third season is my only defense.

That and the drugs they’ve got me on.

11

Thanks for the comments. I think the relationship between Max and Logan is, well, tragedy and comedy all at once. Sketchy: I think everybody knows a guy like that.

There was one character that really brought a smile to my face in the episode “Flushed” - actor Abraham Benrubi, the big guy who helped Max in prison. I hadn’t seen him since he played Francis Lawrence ‘Larry’ Kubiac on “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose” many years ago. I loved that old show (I still use a term from that show: “Coolness!”) and I thought the Kubiac character was great.

12

He’ll always be Kubiac to me. Parker Lewis Can’t Lose was a show ahead of its time.

13

Benrubi’s on a new show this season, BTW. I don’t remember which. He also has had a recurring role on ER since the first season.

But yeah, whenever I see him I always think Kubiak.

–Cliffy

14

“Let the ketchup flow like water.”

15

[kubiac]Eat Now?[/kubiac]

I loved DA, and not just for the hawtness. Although, I’ll admit, Heat was among my favorite episodes…