I was gonna title the thread *Why no love… * but realized tha there isn’t all that much to love, but for the occasional cheesyness, stupid physics and constant continuity errors. I find it an enjoyable way to spend 40 minutes, certainly on par with Prison Break and the likes.
Maybe it’s because I think Kristanna Loken is a total babe, and an OK actress. Again, not good, but certainly on par with Wentworth Miller, who, for those so inclined, is a total babe too, I guess.
The menu offered during summer is pretty meager and it’s no worse as popcorn tv than anything else.
I’ve tried to like it, and I think there’s potentially a great series here, but they’re missing obvious tricks right and left. Some examples:
Kristinna Lokken is a major babe and hottie. But they shoot most scenes in the series in that muted color style that really, really reduces her attractiveness. Frex, compare the way she looked in last week’s ep when she played the magician’s assistant, with the way she looked in most other scenes. It seems to me that if you are going to hire someone who is known for being incredibly, spectacularly good looking, you should then proceed to capitalize on her looks as much as possible without going into softcore porn territory too often. Not minimize her looks. Make the female team members’ costumes a thong and a crop top. Use lighting that brings out the color on her skin. Jeebus, this ain’t rocket science.
They’re playing with some potentially powerful and culturally resonant themes that could really make the series exciting, dramatic and meaningful, but they’re either too timid or too stupid to develop them. Frex, we have this super secret government agency that runs around kidnapping innocent (and sometimes guilty) people who’ve developed super powers (Neuros, muties, posthumans, skinjobs WHATevah) crippling their superpowers and hauling them off to some unknown, Gitmo-like facility. But Jane and the others don’t appear to be at all curious about what goes on at the facility. There are hints that the writers are aware of some themes to be developed along the lines of “is what we are doing morally sound?” but they sure haven’t developed the themes very strong (caveat: I’ve missed a few eps so the theme could have been explored in them, but I see no sign from the last couple of eps that it was. You could draw some veeeery interesting parallels with current politics without a whole lot of effort. Sure, it’s the first season, but eventually you have to do something that might, you know, attract some viewers, even if you’re on the Sci-Fi channel.
Janes power is kinda stupid. She can get shot, burned, cut, etc. and survive. So she runs headlong in to gunfire a lot, then surprises the bad guys when she gets up from the floor and attacks them after being shot, etc. That’s good for maybe three scenes, top. I did like the scene where she’s secured with plasticuffs and she gets out of them by sticking them into a lit fireplace, along with her hands. I wanna see them do a scene where she’s in a sawmill and tied to a log headed for a big, spinning blade.
In summation, they need to put Jane in a costume that lets her run around half naked all the time, light her up good like a hottie should (be lit), and play up the morally ambiguous nature of the team’s activities more sharply, while linking it a little more powerfully to current events.
So I guess I’m not enjoying it nearly as much as I might.
It reminds me of “Mutant X”, except the cast are not as stunningly hot. No, not even her. Since the only reason to have ever watched “Mutant X” was for the stunningly hot cast, I really can’t see any reason for spending time watching this show.
Even if it is the only thing on this summer. I’ve actually learned where the off button is for my tv, so that hasn’t stopped me from not watching it.
Yeah, I know there’s an off button, but I do want to curl up on the couch, have a glass of wine and turn off my brain for an hour every night.
EC touches on some stuff and the preview for next week hints that some of those things will come up. And I think the latest episoode did as well, to some extent.
Loken is co-producing the show, and considering there has been one brief shot of her in underwear, my guess is that she doesn’t want to exploit the babe factor too much.
WTF? A clip show? translates into “The writers have COMPLETELY run out of ideas/are exhausted”! In the first fucking season they pull shit like this? Absolutely unfreaking believable. Then to pile on top, it was only a dream? That’s ANOTHER sign of total creative bankruptcy on the part of the writing staff.
I think she needs to put on the G-string and fire her writers. Not necessarily in that order. In fact, firing the writers is much more important. SciFi Channel used to have a series called Black Scorpion that featured a hottie in a costume that left much of her butt bared, but which was abysmally written and acted (the acting was much worse than in Painkiller Jane, the writing about as bad). It didn’t last long.
See pic near end of article for example of Black Scorpion in mid-kick:
