Thursday, December 20, 2012

Dark Angel Season 2, Episode 5: Boo



 Seattle is, ironically, out of coffee and Asha and Logan are consulting over a big bad hit man who has come to town.  But he has the S1W working on it so he doesn’t need Max. Oh and he’s too busy working on this with Asha to come to a party with Max at Crash for Hallowe’en.

This paragraph hereby concludes my tolerance for love triangles in this episode. Stop, stop right now.

At Jam Pony Cindy has views on Logan spending all the time with Asha, Sketchy is still following the tabloids scaremongering about transgenic monsters everywhere and Max and Cindy poke Normal into letting them go early since it’s Hallowe’en. And Max not!love interest Rafer arrives to let max know he’s going to the Crash party.

Max and Cindy head to Joshua’s who has just had an experience with Trick of Treaters. He realises that, with everyone in costume, this is the day when he can actually leave and not be noticed. Max is dead set against the idea and even solidly shuts Cindy down when she tries to speak up for Joshua.

When they get back to their flat, Cindy isn’t going to drop it, feeling bad for Joshua all alone and puts her finger on Max not wanting to be judged by being associated with Joshua rather than he worried about Joshua being judged. Still she gets a bath until Rafer arrives, she hasn’t bothered with a costume but he has – he looks normal but he’s pasted a barcode to the back of his neck. He is going as a genetically engineered killing machine.

She then goes to see Rafer’s fortune telling mother. No really. Who then, in the most ridiculously overwrought fashion, reveals that Max has deep dark secrets and has no name, only a number, before predicting death and having to have a lie down.

 There is absolutely no way any of that could have been remotely serious. I’m amazed I don’t remember this episode from last time I watched Dark Angel, I may have skipped it. The writer must be on crack.

This is when she sees Joshua through the ridiculous psychic’s window. She goes to meet him and meets Sally. A transgenic having problem with his head twisted through 180 degrees. Apparently he was designed with cartilage instead of bone meaning he doesn’t suffer from fractures, he just twists and bends. And in twisting and bending his head round they accidentally rip his head off. Don’t worry it doesn’t kill him – the starfish in his DNA means his body parts can live separately and don’t even shout fountains of blood from being decapitated. And then his body runs away – so fast even Joshua can’t keep up.

So, hallucinations, dream sequence or hypnotising transgenic because there’s no way this episode is canon.


So Max asks paramedic Refer if he can cure decapitation while Sally calls his friends, a cat woman and a lizard man. And apparently he regularly loses his head and his body goes running. Yet more drivel follows as Joshua fumbles around failing to talk even remotely sensibly to Rafer. They meet they others for more foolishness and eat in a diner whose specialty is haggis.

This episode should have come with a warning to get thoroughly drunk first.

Also in the diner is Normal dressed as a Scotsman who is allergic to the cat woman before heading out to Jam Pony to find Sally’s body. More babble and the lizard man hits on Rafer. In Jam Pony they don’t find the headless body – it’s been and gone – but they do find Normal running an anti-transgenic vigilante group eating cake and ice cream.

From there it’s to Crash where Max meets Original Cindy who flirts with the cat girl and catches Logan and Asha making out – but it’s just people who look almost exactly like them – and the headless body runs out the door with a sniper rifle. And Sketchy reports the transgenic via his watch to Normal’s vigilante group

Just roll with it now, it’s not meant to make sense.

Questioning the head reveals that he’s the assassin Logan was worried about at the beginning of the episode (what, they’re actually trying to make this mess make sense) so it’s off to Logan’s. Where, Asher, Rafer and the animals play charades. Max and Logan look for the target of the assassination and Logan gets bingo in an online game. And the target is either a priest, a minister or a rabbi – 3 religious leaders who are outspoken critics of Lempkin. Giving the head swirlies results in him confessing it’s the priest and Rafer finding out about him and being punched out by Max.

To the place where the hit is taking place. Fighting and rescuing – and Logan and Asha arrive to claim victory and for Logan to dramatically declare he’s Eyes Only in a heroic pose and ask the priest to marry him and Asha. At which point Normal leads police into the room to arrest all the monsters, Max protests and the police asks if she’s one of them… and she denies it.

Aftermath on the space needle where she reflects on a normal life- and Cindy arrives to check on her and tell her the worst thing was Max denying who she really is and denying the people she loved. Then her clothes disappear.

And she wakes up in her bath. Yup, dream sequence. She gets out the bath and goes to see Joshua and take him out.



I’m not even going to try and comment on this episode. Oh wait – except to say that dark, gritty dystopian science fiction should not try to do “zany”.  Especially if you’re going to try and make a major point about Max accepting her not being normal and kinship to the transgenics like Joshua.