Thoughts

Rewatching Dark Angel and it is weird the shift between season 1 and 2. I blew through season 1. They had good elements like the tension between Max and Logan, and not just romantically, but Logan’s overworking idealism vs Max’s survival instinct. They had a good story generating engine with Max being on the run, mysteries about Manticore, the other escapees etc, and it created tension and pressure. Episodes had little twists you didn’t always see coming.

Then season 2 comes, Manticore is gone, Max and Logan can’t touch, and all the others have escaped. But Max isn’t looking for the rest of the original 12, even tho there’s no one ostensibly hunting her and them (I know White will emerge later this season), but yeah, the episodes are suddenly dragging. There’s no threat, no mystery, each episode is just a weird slice of life now? We’re not even really doing Eyes Only work for Logan. We even have so little idea what to do this season 2 we have a whole episode that is a dream. Even when an episode has an A plot, sometimes it’ll be so anemic the B plot will take up as much if not more time and I’ll get done scenes on the B plot only to get back to the A plot and have forgotten it was even happening cus pacing and tension are just… gone.

Real weird and disappointing but it sounds like network interference (Fox) and show runner change just murdered the vibe, and style of the show and ejected and blunted the story. I can see why there would have been a ratings drop and then it got canceled cus I’m not even half way into season 2 and it’s dragging so hard it feels like it’ll be hard to complete. Which is a shame since I blew through season 1 happily and felt pulled through it.

There’s other warning signs. Herbal Thought’s character disappearing with out a mention. Original Cindy def is taking a further back seat in the show. All it’s season 1 vibe, edge, representation, messaging, just gone or sanded down. Someone wanted to make this show more “palatable” and killed it instead, as is often the way of these things