[DRK] Boo

TV Programme: Dark Angel
Season: 2
Episode: 5
Date I watched this episode: 04/07/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 1 year, 18 days.

Before I start watching any new seasons, I really have to get back on track with older seasons that I'm supposedly watching at the moment. In the case of this particular one, I haven't watched it in over a year, and it really doesn't seem that long. One of the main reasons for this was the incredibly "bad press" this episode has got. "Boo" was panned by my friends as being one of the worst episodes of any TV series, and so my expectations were not high. In fact, they're not high in general at the moment; while Dark Angel Season 1 was great, it's well-known that in the aftermath of 9/11, the producers decided to make it less post-apocalyptic (due to the general mood of the nation at that time) and more focussed on mutants (for example Joshua), leading ultimately to the shows cancellation. (This season aired starting September 28, 2001, so the first few episodes were still quite good, as they had been produced before 9/11). One example was in this episode when Max said "just another day in this broken world" in a nice happy voice as if she was talking about a music concert.

Critically, this episode was admittedly quite bad. However, it really just fell in the eyes of this show, and wasn't quite as bad across all time, not like the really bad episodes I've mentioned before ([FAR] "Taking The Stone", [SMV] "Krypto" and [SOP] "A Hit Is A Hit"). However there were no real battles (except for Max against a headless body, where you just got so stuck on the awfulness of the costume/props to enjoy it), no cool Manticore people pursuing (Ames White didn't appear in this episode), Sketchy pretty much unrecognisable, and the fact that this episode was all just a dream didn't help. The "where are your clothes?" moment was just awful.

This episode revolved mainly around the mutants. Kat, played by the same actress who plays Alicia Baker in Smallville (but looks totally different) was an interesting and compelling character. But the other two - a headless body and a lizard (who seemed to make lizard noises at weird times, a bit cringe-worthy) just didn't really work as characters. That's in addition to the fact that they really only existed within the dream.

It became more and more obvious that this was a dream as the episode wore on. The weird charades game was fairly unlikely and another cringe moment. The fact that Logan was playing bingo was so out-of-character. And finally, when Logan revealed he was eyes-only, wanted to marry Asha and everyone got arrested, it was pretty clear something wasn't right. But they still spun it on, as if they'd underestimated the audience's intelligence.

As for Max's jealousy of Asha, this likely exists outside of the dream universe. Asha is a cool new character who's come onto the show just as things are going wrong between Max and Logan. This storyline is likely to be progressed later this season.

Other new characters introduced this season have been Ames White (it's not clear what his role is yet, and he didn't appear in this episode), Alec (played by the same actor who played Jason Teague in Smallville, and again not in this episode) and Joshua. Joshua is not a great character, and one who just gets annoying. His search for "Father" is verging on the ridiculous, and he just has a fairly boring personality. This is likely due to the fact that he's a dog.

I do concede that it was a good idea to set this episode at Halloween. Doing this meant that they could feasibly get all these mutants out, in a manner like no other. Some of the stuff tied up with that, within the dream environment, meant that we had the twist about the fortune teller being able to see Max's true being, and another twist that the Manticore agents didn't know Manticore had failed also made a lot more sense within the dream.

The final part of the episode, whilst not great, was at least trying to be moving. Max realises that she should never deny who she really is, so this episode has a "moral" in some sense. I doubt this will continue into future episodes, but it did at least mean the episode had some point to it.

I'm going to persevere with this season to the last, since the last was so good, and I'll always hold out hope that it'll improve. But I have to admit that if all the episodes are like this one, it's not going to be a particularly fun ride.