Episode Report Card Amorgan: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT How to Make an Actor from Common Household Materials
By Amorgan | Season 1 | Episode 5 | Aired on 11.13.2000
"I don't sleep much, but that's okay. Takes up a lot of time. And I can always find something productive to do." Dear Max, instead of motorcycle racing, I would suggest acting lessons. Just a thought. Love, Amorgan. This episode of Dark Angel opens with Max racing her beloved bike through the unbusy, uncrowded nighttime streets of post-Pulse Seattle, running neck and neck with some other jackass too stupid to stay home and get some damned sleep in the middle of the night like decent folk oughta. I like the background music, though.
Has anyone out there actually read the comic book upon which this show is based? Most shows and movies that are based on comic books are horrendously bad. If you can count Barb Wire and The X-Men among the successes in a genre, then you're really hurting, know what I mean? Not that I'm making excuses for James Cameron. I'm just saying.
Anyway. Max races her bike along, the drone of her voice-over sounding in harmonious monotony with the drone of the motorcycle engine. Until the fuzz pull her over, break her taillight, and impound her bike, that is. D'oh! Those bastard cop-men! They are so mean and unfair. Life after the Pulse is hard and horrible.
Bad bad bad opening credits. That fetus makes me want to barf. I mean, I'm all about the miracle of life, but...YUCK.
Back from commercial break, Cap'n EO is riding the elevator, but oh golly no, he can't quite reach the penthouse button. So he wings it and pokes it with a handy piece of French bread. He's so cute and plucky, that rascal. He wheels into the kitchen of the Justice League HQ and is informed by his new cannon-fodder bodyguard that a woman claiming to be his ex-wife is in the living room. Like, whoa. He wheels into the living room to discover a red-haired hottie scooting his furniture all around. "This table's gotta go. It's blocking your chi." He looks at her like she is a total moron as she nervously babbles some feng shui at him. He calls her nervous feng shui bluff and asks her what she's come for. "I haven't had a drink in a year and a half," she announces. Oh criminy. More twelve-stepping. I wonder if this episode is going to be as full of, um, jargon as the Max-goes-to-jail episode. She tells him that her new hobby is apologizing to people, and they stare at each other meaningfully for a while. She looks a little like a fish. In a nice way.
Max, over at the impound yard, is not having so nice a day. She is being extorted for $3000. That's how much the guy at the impound yard wants before he'll give her her bike back. And he wants it in cash. She takes her disgruntled self to work so that she can get a pep talk from Grape-flavored Cindy and the Original Jamaican, our good friend Herbal. He yammers a whole bunch of bad-accent bullshit philosophy at her, then somehow ends up talking about how his woman has the hots for an old sweetheart who's come to visit them. Um, what? Hello, Subplot Hotline? We're having a crisis over at the Fox network. Yeah, this one's dead in the water. Send help quick. Screw you, Cameron. Thank God in Heaven, though, that yet another blond hottie has come into my life via the magic of television. A Cap'n EO sibling strolls in to the bike center and acts all wholesome and grain-fed, calls Normal "Sir," and asks for a job. I hate Sketch. Yes, I said it and I'm proud. God, that new guy has huge teeth. Oh, I almost forgot the most important part of this scene: Max looks at the classified ads, sees a number and an address, and runs out of the bike center. Earth-shattering, I know. Stay in your seats, ladies and gentlemen; it's only a television program. Nurses are stationed throughout the building in case of heart palpitations or strokes. She runs over to the Justice League HQ and shows EO the ad. "Those numbers are me," she says. He tells her to stay away, 'cause he's no fool. He can smell a rat for sure. But Max, true to form, has to check it out. "Twelve of us got away that night," and here we go. Spare us the freaking flashback already -- we see it every goddamned time the opening credits roll. Before their un-riveting argument can really get going, though, Mrs. Ex calls and spews a bunch of sweet drivel onto the answering machine. I guess they had to go back to answering machines after the Pulse, since Call Notes probably got wiped out. Max and the Cap'n lob some jabs back and forth about him being married and all, and she snits away, leaving him to wonder if he should get back into therapy since he has a habit of surrounding himself with annoying women.