5:08am
Gotta love insomnia.

Watched a couple of episodes of the first season of Dark Angel and I’m still not quite sure how I feel about this show. On one hand the story line itself is pretty interesting: In 2009 terrorists set off an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP) somewhere in the US. So it’s like Goldeneye, except that it affects the entire country (continent maybe? I dunno) with the effect of basically throwing the US into third world status. Suddenly the world power that had placed its faith in the electronic marketplace and the digital age is left penniless and essentially powerless. Social fabrics fall apart and the entire system falls into a Hobbesian paradise. In fact, the writers are none too subtle about this point seeing as how the repeat the famous life is brutal and short mantra at least 4 times by my count within the first 5 episodes.

At about the same time as ‘The Pulse’ (as it is known) – a secret government run project (isn’t there always?) called Manticore was in operation. The Manticore project genetically breeds super soldier children. I guess the plan is to raise them to be killing machines from birth. When the children are 9-ish, a group of them manage to escape and that’s basically the story. Now we are 10-11 years later in Seattle when we meet Jessica Alba’s character – Max.
I like her because she’s not the typical good guy. She doesn’t do good things in the names of Justice and Liberty and the American way, she’s just a person getting by. In fact, she uses her abilities to be a thief and to sell stolen goods on the black market. She falls into the role of the ‘hero’ by accident. In fact, even 7 episodes into it, she doesn’t seem to have fully embraced today’s concept of right and wrong. I like that inasmuch as that it adds some personality to the character and a bit of reality as well.

I’d say that the coolest part of the show so far is just showing what the US would look like in the world after the Pulse destroys its shine. The people behind the show seem to have put in a lot of work trying to figure out what Seattle (and all of the US I imagine) would look like in a post-Pulse world. One of the episodes has one of the characters mention how American icons like Rockwell paintings and the Statue of Liberty and the Baseball Hall of Fame were sold to other nations for the highest price. The constant shortages of food and basic supplies are another good example. The corruptness of city officials and police…and at the same time, we also see groups of people huddling up together and helping each other our.

Watching regular everyday people who have become accustomed to the squalor in a country that just 10 years before lived in opulence. Also, though I really didn’t think so before, Jessica Alba is kinda cute…not such a great actress though.

While the dialogue and storylines can be pretty cute and interesting (respectively) I really like the secondary characters, but not so much with the primary characters…I just don’t understand some of the motivations, actions and choices. It’s certainly a cliché at this point, but with power like some characters have, why deny it? Why use it recklessly? Especially when you have people you care about? And if it happens again and again, then how can I respect and care for the hero?

Often it comes down to that. Shows that I do enjoy watching like Buffy, Angel or Smallville end up bothering me because of the characters themselves.

Clark is incapable of anything resembling original thought and Lex usually ends up stealing the spotlight as a dynamic character seeking growth and improvement.
In Angel we hear the story of a Vampire seeking redemption for 100 or so years. He has become so accustomed to being alone and doing things his way that even after so much time in the Buffy-world/Angel-verse that time and time again he doesn’t ask for help and ends up putting the people that he cares about (and those that care about him) in danger.

I know that they are just television shows, but it gets to me. I’ve always thought Scrubs was a very well done show because it has been able to manage making the characters grow and fall and develop as time passes. I liked watching Friends at the very beginning for that reason also, but they quickly disappointed when they would become caricatures and exaggerations of their former selves. Maybe the reason that it gets to me is that when I watch television I like to see the fantasy and I like to see progress and hope. After all, was that not the whole point of television in the first place?