Dark Angel
"Pilot"

Airdate: October 3, 2000

Max: Super-futuristic cyber-chick... and also she has a kick-ass bike.

"America really thought they had it dialed in. Money hangin' out the butt. But it was all just a buncha ones and zeroes in a computer someplace. So what than bomb went kabloo-ey? And the electromagnetic pulse turned all those ones into plain old zeroes? Everyone's like, NO WAY!"-- Max

Seattle, Washington, 2019, after "The Pulse", an electromagnetic bomb that caused the political, economic and moral collapse of America. Hiding in the city's ghetto is Max (Jessica Alba), a bike courier by day, and a cat burglar by night. She also happens to be a genetically enhanced superhuman prototype who escaped as a child from military confines, led by a shady figure named Lydecker, played by John Savage (in a half-assed, one-note performance). Max has been spending her life searching for others of her kind who were scattered in the aftermath of her escape, while trying to avoid the government officials who want her back into their fold. In doing so, she encounters Logan Cale, played by (beautifully square-jawed actor) Michael Weatherly, an idealistic "cyber-journalist" who tries to battle corruption by running a network that periodically interrupts cable TV to broadcast the "truth" about their new, power-hungry world leaders. In exchange for leads to her past, Max becomes Logan's samurai, in his quest to end this Post-Pulse repression.

The most striking aspect to be seen in Dark Angel are what the people behind the scenes are doing. The production values are very high, which is something I've always come to expect, not only from a obsessive perfectionist like James Cameron (co-creator), but also from director, David Nutter and his Vancouver crew, which consists of former X-Files and Millennium employees. They contribute a great deal to the dark tone and edge that is the one consistent thing throughout this pilot. The casting of various races for supporting players, not to mention that sickeningly gorgeous Alba (of Mexican/Danish descent), do not go unnoticed by this viewer. Kudos to the show for trying to display a little more diversity than most other series and not making an issue of it.

As a child, Max was not allowed to watch television until she finished her vegetables and learned five new ways to kill a man.

The commercials advertise Dark Angel as an action series, and it certainly has its heavy share of special effects and stunts, but rather than go crazy with the spectacle aspect, I was impressed by the amount of time that was taken to set up the premise and specifically, how this two-hour pilot fleshes out its title character. Jim Cameron has always had a good reputation for creating complex female heroines, and Max is no exception. He and co-writer, Charles Eglee really go all out, and Alba's overall performance holds up quite well. But I'm still not sure if I entirely like what they've created yet.

On the broadest of levels, Max appears to be the reluctant hero you've always been waiting to see -- a smart-ass, but also an intelligent, savvy woman, who battles bad guys with ease, and looks great while doing it. Finally! An ass-kicking role model for young girls, right? Yay! Girl Power! Woo Woo!

Yet for all her strengths, there are some things that don't quite sit right with me. It's the method of demonstrating her girl power, if you will, that irritates me the most, and that's through the one-liners that are littered throughout the dialogue. I lost count of the number of references that remind us that yes, Max is of the female species, and that yes, Max really is one tough chick! Take for example:

- "Girls kick ass. Says so on the t-shirt!"
- "You are a totally down-ass female!"
- "Like I've always said, guys are the weaker sex!"

It makes me want to yell "Stop trying so hard!" to my television set. For one, her actions articulate these statements just fine on their own. After a while, these so-called feminist cheers get a little old. They start to lose their meaning and become as distracting as Arnold Schwarzengger's "I'll be back!". This also holds true for her Valley Girl accent (see quote at top of page) which kind of makes it hard to take her seriously.

Michael Weatherly, stealin' the show with them rugged good looks.

There are also a few bizarre scenes that seem a little suspicious to me. Namely, a pointless B-story in which Sketchy, a fellow bike courier, cheats on his girlfriend with another woman (who turns out to be a ruthless, manipulative bitch). He asks Max to help cover for this infidelity, which she inexplicably does. Men are prisoners of their own genes, she explains to a friend, as though by insulting his gender, he's been punished enough. Someone please suggest a reason for the inclusion on this scene! And what is she trying to say? That men are dogs and they can't help themselves, so just accept it? This strong-willed female whose life philosophy is supposedly girls kick ass!, is in fact, just reinforcing the status quo, in less overt ways!

Is there a conspiracy afoot? Probably not. At a press conference for the series, Cameron and Eglee revealed that before they even proceeded with Dark Angel, they had wanted to find an actor who could fulfill their vision of Max. Apparently, they cast Jessica Alba before they even wrote their script. With Alba committed to the project, they then had the benefit of being able to write the script backwards; to write specifically with this actress in mind and incorporate her cadences, her rhythms, her slang, her 'look'. This suggests to me that not all of the aspects that I disliked in Max actually come from these subconsciously chauvinistic male writers. Some of these little nuances might actually come from Alba herself.

But as Max might say, "Like... I mean, whatever. Right?" It seems beside the point to get bogged down by such specific details. When all is said and done, this pilot is trying to sell us this character, this future, this premise. On a broader level, I really was intrigued seeing this ass-kicking, bionic woman on a motorcycle who uses the laws of the jungle to get what she wants. I do care about what's going to happen this lonely girl hanging out like Batman, on top of Seattle's Space Needle.

Any show that takes place in an unfamiliar, futuristic world needs time to develop. That just cannot happen in three to four episodes, which seems to be the grim deadline that studios require these days if the numbers aren't just right. Chris Carter's sci-fi series, Harsh Realm was the last genre show to suffer from this. Now, I realize that I'm the only one at The 11th Hour who actually enjoyed Harsh Realm, but even if I hated it, I would still believe that it never got a fair chance. Dark Angel has a similar background -- it was heavily hyped before it aired, it cost a fortune to make ($10 million), and it was created by a Golden Boy of 20th Century Fox. I imagine that The King of the World has considerably more pull and power than the Zen Master, but for now? Let's hope that the owners of Nielsen boxes help to keep this show on long enough for us to even judge whether Dark Angel can bring the goods on a weekly basis.

-- Julie Ng

Dark Angel airs at 9pm EST/8pm MNT, Tuesdays on FOX.

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