So, uh, I watched season two of Dark Angel, because Jensen Ackles is pretty

[rusty_halo]

Dark Angel season two, in a nutshell:

Jessica Alba: I’m a gorgeous, snarky, brilliant genetically-enhanced super-soldier, on the run from a corrupt government and conflicted about how to deal with my emotions thanks to my dark past.

Adorable!Baby!Dean: Hey, so am I! Want to have exciting adventures together with lots of clever banter and smoldering sexual tension?

Jessica Alba: No, I’m going to ignore you entirely because I’m too busy moping over my creepy, self-righteous, passive-aggressive, controlling, unbearably boring douche of an ex-not-quite-boyfriend.

Unbearably Boring Douche: *is creepy, self-righteous, passive-aggressive, controlling, unbearably boring, and in EVERY FUCKING SCENE OH MY GOD GET HIM OFF MY SCREEN BEFORE I THROW SOMETHING AT IT*

Jessica Alba: *mopes for an entire season*

Adorable!Baby!Dean: *stands in the background looking gorgeous and having nothing to do*

Me: *has traumatic flashbacks of watching Veronica Mars for Logan and Buffy for Spike*

This show was terrible. It’s sad, too, because the premise is awesome. It’s a well-realized near-future dystopia with a great three-dimensional, complex female lead* that regularly passes the Bechdel test and includes gay characters and characters of color. Unfortunately the writing is trite, predictable, cliched, and insipid. I’ve seen more nuanced and thoughtful childrens’ cartoons. (Seriously, it’s got an evil snake cult and a goofy dog-man and one-dimensional cackling villains and cliche!mobsters and cliche!vampires and, dude, my brain is melting out of my ears just thinking about it.)

* I assume she was more interesting in the first season, which would have been more about exploring her as a character; unfortunately she really does spend most of the second season moping over the boring douche guy.

I’m guessing maybe the first season was better–I started by watching 1×17 and 1×18 before moving on to season two, and both of those episodes were promising–the exploration of Max’s past at Manticore and the way it fucked up those children was dark and actually interesting. Plus 1×17 has three women of color, two of whom are gay, passing the Bechdel test and being at the center of the narrative, and 1×18 has Jensen Ackles + blood, tears, and bondage.

It’s really too bad. If anything, it highlights how much better Supernatural is. If you’d asked me before I saw either show, I would have assumed that Dark Angel would be better-written. But actually Supernatural is more willing to take risks, to give its characters genuinely complex choices instead of silly manufactured ones, to let its characters be dark and make real mistakes with consequences, to allow ambiguity and refuse to provide easy answers, and (especially in later seasons) to play with genre and subvert audience expectations. There was just nothing smart, challenging, or interesting about Dark Angel. :(

That said, I don’t regret that I watched it. Young Jensen Ackles was so incredibly pretty, and you get more shirtless scenes of him in one season of Dark Angel than you get in the entirety of Supernatural. (Plus his body type was way more to my taste back then–I’m not so fond of bulky guys.) His eyes are so pretty and those eyelashes! and those lips! And his acting isn’t bad–although he doesn’t have much to do, he does get to cry and be vulnerable a couple times. I would be much happier if I’d watched an Ackles-scenes-only edit of the show, though.

BTW, if anyone has Alec-centric fic recs, I would love to read some. I’m going right back to Supernatural but it would be good to have something to take the icky taste out of my mouth before I finish with Dark Angel entirely.

Originally published at rusty-halo.com. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[rivkat]

I am about to watch Season 2 myself! However, my tastes run to bulky guys, and I love what happened to JA's face in his midtwenties (smile lines, a little broadening, stubble as a way of life), so unfortunately I doubt I will enjoy the prettiness quite as much. S1 has some good exploration of Max, and Logan is reasonably interesting too--I fear what I'll find in this next season.

I too would be very interested in fic recs, so if you come across any you like I'd love to hear about them.

[rusty_halo]

I love the skinny pretty boys. David Bowie is, like, my ideal. (70s Bowie, of course.)

Stubble and smile lines are good, though--I just don't like bulk. It took a little while for me to get used to Ackles being so pretty, but yeah, obviously I really ended up appreciating it. :)

My advice regarding season two is to make liberal use of your fast forward button whenever things start to feel repetitive and stupid (which is about 70% of the time). Trust me, you won't be missing anything that you'll regret not seeing.

musesfool has posted a few fic recs in the comment below yours; I'll let you know if I find anything else that's good.

[musesfool]

Ugh. I hate Logan so so much! he's so fucking creepy, with the watching all the time and the passive-aggressiveness, and ugh. I started with season 1, and it does make Max a lot more sympathetic - they sucked all the life out of her in s2 with that goddamn moronic virus. Sadly, the fandom is full of bad, bad, and did I mention BAD fic.

I have a small number of recs here: http://delicious.com/victoria.p/darkangel (all Max/Alec, I believe) and even there I have to make the caveat that some are stories that I wouldn't have recced in any other fandom, but which represent a cut above for Dark Angel.

[rivkat]

Thanks! I plan to make liberal use of your recs in a couple of weeks (when I finish up the season).

[rusty_halo]

Yay, thank you so much for the recs!

Max and Alec were both potentially very interesting characters--it's really too bad that they were on such a terribly written show.

[elz]

Siiigh, Dark Angel. I love that show, bad writing and all. Season 1 really is much better in a lot of ways, although it's never exactly great - Original Cindy has better stories in S1, and Logan isn't nearly as unlikable, but I love S2 for having Alec and Joshua. And as much as the writers definitely deserve some blame, it was a show that suffered a lot due to external factors: there was a lot of network interference, and Jessica Alba and Michael Weatherly were dating, which didn't seem to work out well for anyone, fictional or otherwise.

In terms of fanfic, there's depressingly little that's good. I see musesfool posted a link to some recs, but you should check out her stories, too.

[rusty_halo]

I really liked Original Cindy in that S1 episode I watched. If I weren't so shallowly distracted by the pretty boy, I'd have totally been shipping her with Max.

Do you know what the network interference did? It really felt like the show was on crack, with the crazy tonal shifts and just, gah, EVIL SNAKE CULT AT THE CENTER OF THE MYTHOLOGY, it's like they wanted to get canceled!

I can't really see myself going back and watching season one... Jessica Alba just isn't that strong of an actress. It's too bad, though--the world it's set in is really cool.

[elz]

Do you know what the network interference did? It really felt like the show was on crack, with the crazy tonal shifts and just, gah, EVIL SNAKE CULT AT THE CENTER OF THE MYTHOLOGY, it's like they wanted to get canceled!

I seem to recall that the network wanted them to do the mutant-of-the-week stories to make the show more accessible to new viewers, and I definitely recall that they were behind Renfro getting killed off and White becoming the new big bad, because they wanted a "younger, sexier" villain. :P It's the usual case of a show that premiered with big ratings and then fell back to earth - there was more emphasis on how to "fix" it and drag viewers back than on how to tell a good story. Some of the DVD commentaries are interesting, if I recall correctly. And include a good bit of gushing over Alec/Jensen. *g*

Trivia: In addition to being a sci-fi show on FOX, it originally aired in the same timeslot as Angel, so they had trouble even getting a lot of die-hard genre show fans to watch. And then it got canceled so Firefly could take its slot.

[rusty_halo]

Man, what is with networks getting rid of cool older female characters?! I was so happy to see Nana Visitor, too, and then she was gone. :(

I thinking I'm going to Netflix the DVDs so I can hear the gushing over Alec/Jensen. You don't happen to remember if that commentary was for a particular episode, do you?

[eumelkeks]

I liked the first season of Dark Angel. I hardly recognised baby!Dean because his voice is so different and he looks like, well, a baby.

[rusty_halo]

He was so freaking cute, though. I'm way more attracted to him as Alec than as Dean (though I love Dean more as a character).