"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, butYUCK.
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.
That night, at the assigned address, Max meets up with the Sneeeeky Detective who sold her out to Lydecker. He asks her for $15,000 in exchange for a whole bunch of info about the Project Manticore kids. As a teaser, he tosses out the tidbit that one of her Manticore compatriots is living right there in Seattle. To let us know that he's not lying, the camera shows us a lurky figure lurking in the shadows, which must be the Other One. The Sneeeeky Detective gives Max two days to come up with the cash, then advises her to blow town, as Lydecker is a scary bad man who should be avoided at all costs.
After the commercial break, Max is busy hounding her good friend Cindy for ideas on where to get cash. Cindy can't listen, though, 'cause she's too busy talking about her crush on a girl named Crueset. There's a line of cookware called Le Crueset. Unfortunately, before either one of them can say anything brilliant, our attention is drawn to the mini-drama that is our weekly subplot. It seems that Normal has fired the Original Jamaican for guess what? Taking it up the rear for cash in the men's room. Okay, I'm just kidding. For smoking dope, sillies! There is an uproar. There is a brouhaha. There is some dumb-ass Original Rastafarian philosophy spouted through the air, bright as a whale's spout on a sunny winter day. And then Normal hires the lovely blond big-toothed guy. Yay. It's not going to last, though. I can feel it. Nobody likes the new guy. Except me, that is.
Max scoots her ass over to the Justice League HQ and finds that Cap'n EO is out with the ex. She grills the bodyguard about Mrs. Ex. He can't seem to come up with anything more meaningful to say about her than "she's nice" and "she's got a great body." Thanks, Detective, for that pertinent information. The time I'm on a manhunt, I'll be sure to give you a call. There's a lot of red in this scene. Red walls. Red shirt on the bodyguard. Red tomatoes in a bowl. Anyway. Max leaves, but runs into the Cap'n and his missus on the sidewalk. He is telling the missus that he hasn't been to a street fair since, oh, ever. Nothing says wholesome like a street fair, eh? Romance is in the air. Or maybe that's the scent of carrion rotting in the streets of the new Third World. At any rate, they seem happy to be together. He asks her to stay for dinner; she says maybe. Max hits Cap'n EO up for a whole bunch of cash. He says no, 'cause she's crazy for following up on this lead. She says she'll explore other options. Borrr-ring.
But not as boring as listening to the Original Jamaican read the freaking Bible out loud to Sketch in a park. He complains for a long, long time about how his woman is in love with someone named Winston.
Hm. There's some crazy photo-flash action going on around Max. Oh. It's her craaaazy soldier eyes. She leaps a tall fence in a single bound, then faces down a junkyard dog by telling him that she's the leader of this pack. Just stares at him and tells him. And he lies down and whines in submission. Any dog owners out there? I have a dog. If you have a dog, too, then you know just how stupid this scene is. If you don't have a dog, well, take my word for it. This is stupider than the phrase "I had so many tattoos that I looked like a human Christmas tree." After her stellar dog-handling, Max feeds the rabid junkyard German shepherd a big steak, thus ensuring his undying loyalty. That's just how dogs are, you know? Max continues to slink through the junkyard, and I am waiting for her abysmal cat-burgling skills to get her into the requisite hot water. Let's watch and see, shall we? She breaks into an office. She finds her motorcycle key. She hears something. She ducks. She cracks the safe by listening to the tumblers. She takes a bunch of money. Aaaaandshe gets away. Huh. I was wrong. Color me surprised.