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feliciakwI'm doing this mostly for izhilzha, since it's her doing that I've taken note of what a fine actor Jensen Ackles is.
My original thoughts on Dark Angel can be found here. Things haven't changed much.
izhilzha, since it's her doing that I've taken note of what a fine actor Jensen Ackles is. My original thoughts on Dark Angel can be found here. Things haven't changed much.
I tried. I really did. I tried to watch this show to get a sense of the backstory and all. And to see Alimi Ballard. But it . . . it was just too painful.
I rented Disc 2 of Season 1, and I couldn't even watch the first ep. I tried to watch mainly for Alimi Ballard, aka Special Agent David Sinclair on N3.
Alimi is a delight, to be sure, but between the accent and the rapid-fire delivery, I couldn't understand a thing he was saying. The rest of the show was painfully slow, predictable, and acted with mediocrity. Seriously. The show suffers not only from poor writing; Jessica Alba does not add any sort of life to said writing. And she's the one carrying the show. It hurts to watch.
And what does it say when I speed through the A-line scenes to watch the B-line?kerravonsen is absolutely correct. The supporting characters are far more interesting than the main characters.
So I returned that disc and skipped to Jensen Ackles' first episode, "Pollo Loco."
Ironically, this is the one ep I watched beginning to end when it aired one day on the SciFi Channel. In fact, when I discovered that Jensen had played the role of "Ben" on Dark Angel, I knew immediately which ep it was, and that it was the only ep I'd seen.
This ep has to it a certain degree of substance, dealing with faith and misunderstanding. And though the writing is flat, Jensen brings to his scenes a certain degree of proficiency that raises the dialogue from flat to merely cheesy. With his delivery, I can accept that the writing is what it is: stylistic, somewhat cliched, with a degree of melodrama that one might expect of something that weren't taking itself so seriously.
And he gives his character depth. *gasp!* At first, it appears he's outright evil, setting up hunts of people simply so he can kill them and live out his purpose as a genetically engineered soldier. But through a series of flashbacks (which are all kinds of more interesting than Max's present) and some character-revealing dialogue, we come to learn that he's not evil for the sake of being evil; he is trying to live what he was programmed to do in the "best" way he can. It doesn't make it right, not by a long shot. In fact, he knows it's not right and that he has to be killed. And he's scared. We get glimpses of the child that once was, the child who led his "team" or his "classmates" or his "family"--whatever you want to call them--to escape their engineers. The final scene between Ben and Max pulls at the heart strings because Jensen does play it so childlike, wanting reassurance and hope.
I can understand why TPTB would want Jensen back. It seemed to me that he pushed Alba (with whom he had a majority of his scenes) to bump up her game a little bit. To push to bring some life to her character. He just made the scenes that he was in . . . better.
And you know, looking back, Jensen (and the faith-based storyline) might have been why I stuck through that ep when I ran across it on the SciFi Channel. Because I can't remember the rest of the eps being anything more than white noise in the background of my day, white noise that quickly got turned off.
ETA: I took a peek at the following ep on the disc, and apparently someone clued someone in because Alimi softened the accent and made it much more understandable. What little I know of the actor, I really do like him, or at least the way he portrays the characters he plays.
I rented Disc 2 of Season 1, and I couldn't even watch the first ep. I tried to watch mainly for Alimi Ballard, aka Special Agent David Sinclair on N3.
Alimi is a delight, to be sure, but between the accent and the rapid-fire delivery, I couldn't understand a thing he was saying. The rest of the show was painfully slow, predictable, and acted with mediocrity. Seriously. The show suffers not only from poor writing; Jessica Alba does not add any sort of life to said writing. And she's the one carrying the show. It hurts to watch.
And what does it say when I speed through the A-line scenes to watch the B-line?
kerravonsen is absolutely correct. The supporting characters are far more interesting than the main characters.So I returned that disc and skipped to Jensen Ackles' first episode, "Pollo Loco."
Ironically, this is the one ep I watched beginning to end when it aired one day on the SciFi Channel. In fact, when I discovered that Jensen had played the role of "Ben" on Dark Angel, I knew immediately which ep it was, and that it was the only ep I'd seen.
This ep has to it a certain degree of substance, dealing with faith and misunderstanding. And though the writing is flat, Jensen brings to his scenes a certain degree of proficiency that raises the dialogue from flat to merely cheesy. With his delivery, I can accept that the writing is what it is: stylistic, somewhat cliched, with a degree of melodrama that one might expect of something that weren't taking itself so seriously.
And he gives his character depth. *gasp!* At first, it appears he's outright evil, setting up hunts of people simply so he can kill them and live out his purpose as a genetically engineered soldier. But through a series of flashbacks (which are all kinds of more interesting than Max's present) and some character-revealing dialogue, we come to learn that he's not evil for the sake of being evil; he is trying to live what he was programmed to do in the "best" way he can. It doesn't make it right, not by a long shot. In fact, he knows it's not right and that he has to be killed. And he's scared. We get glimpses of the child that once was, the child who led his "team" or his "classmates" or his "family"--whatever you want to call them--to escape their engineers. The final scene between Ben and Max pulls at the heart strings because Jensen does play it so childlike, wanting reassurance and hope.
I can understand why TPTB would want Jensen back. It seemed to me that he pushed Alba (with whom he had a majority of his scenes) to bump up her game a little bit. To push to bring some life to her character. He just made the scenes that he was in . . . better.
And you know, looking back, Jensen (and the faith-based storyline) might have been why I stuck through that ep when I ran across it on the SciFi Channel. Because I can't remember the rest of the eps being anything more than white noise in the background of my day, white noise that quickly got turned off.
ETA: I took a peek at the following ep on the disc, and apparently someone clued someone in because Alimi softened the accent and made it much more understandable. What little I know of the actor, I really do like him, or at least the way he portrays the characters he plays.
