(S01E01) So, you watched the premiere episode of Painkiller Jane, didn't you? Curiosity struck you even after reading my less-than-glowing review of the show, didn't it? Well, good for you! Just because I wasn't enamored with the program doesn't mean my opinion is gospel. Everyone has free will in this society and should be able to decide whether a show is good or not.
So, did you dislike Painkiller Jane as much as I did? No? Well, you must be from another planet to like something like that! How dare you not think what I think! Oh, wait, that rant voids what I said in the first paragraph. Um, never mind.
Seriously, I didn't like the show just because the acting was bad and the writing the was poor (even though the writing was poor and the acting was bad). What turned me off to this show as soon as the first scene showed up on my television screen was that this type of show has been done over, and over, and over. Let's see if this sounds familiar to you: tough-as-nails law enforcement agent obtains remarkable powers and laments over the freak that she is rather than using those powers to fight evil. Let's count on our fingers how many times that's been done. You may need your toes, too, because this has been done a lot.
I don't even know if the concept of Jane and her secret government ops team hunting Neuros would have stood the test if the show had been better. Personally, I would have rather seen a show based on the comic, which featured Jane as a vigilante. There would be many more instances of Jane receiving, and healing from, injuries as a paid mercenary-for-hire. Here, the most that she heals from is a simple gunshot wound.
There's not much I can add to my previous review, other than my complaint on the show's setting. Once again, another program where everything is dark and moody, and all of the good guys dress in blacks and other muted colors. Don't the good guys usually where white? Couldn't we have a little sunlight shine down on these people? Is their task that dire? Am I asking too many questions?
Well, there's nothing left to do other than give it a rating on a scale from 1 to 7, one being the worst. Guess what I'm giving it?
I await your comments.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-14-2007 @ 12:34AM
Andrew Liptak said...
I have to say, I was a bit worried about this program, from the various reviews and promos for it, but I didn't find it as bad as I thought that it would be.
Is it Stargate/Battlestar/Eurka level SciFi-Entertainment? Not a chance. But then again, it's an opening, and it's got potential.
They did have some cool camera work here, from the different frame rates, an effect that I paticularly like, some interesting plot points that certainly have potential and will hopefully lead to a series arc and some other interesting things here and there.
However, there's the very wooden acting, the very stereotypical characters and the very blatent influences from everything from Heroes to the Matrix. There were two scenes, same framing, from behind the computer guy surrounded by the computer screens that's uncannily similar to a couple of shots from the Matrix. Unintentional or not, it's either a cool homage or a bit of a ripoff. The entire Neuros plot is very, very similar to what's going on in Heroes at the moment, and hopefully, they'll take a different direction than that show.
I'll probably tune in a bit more, see if they'll loosen up the actors a bit, and see where the story goes. The SciFi channel has a knack for some fairly good series (althrough terrible movies) and this could be entertaining, although it's off to a slow start...
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4-14-2007 @ 12:46AM
David said...
Sci-fi should just bring back Dark Angel because thats what the 5 minutes I watched felt like.
This show is more rehashed than Stargate plots.
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4-14-2007 @ 12:55AM
Dan C said...
I watched this show against both your review, Richard, and the reviews AICN rounded up. I agree with Andrew too, it's got potential but that's about it at this point. I did like the ending twist though.
By the way, did anyone else get the feeling that this show was Dark Angel meets Torchwood?
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4-14-2007 @ 10:11AM
Kevinc said...
This is their second try at Painkiller Jane. Why? Until their first movie I'd never even heard of it. There is better source material out there.
This show was soo bad. Lokan may appeal to certain age groups but please give me a lead who can act!
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4-14-2007 @ 11:12AM
Tammy said...
I was going to watch this until all the bad reviews. I'm not a SciFi watcher normally but I did watch Eureka after all the glowing reviews and loved it. Dresden Files has a charm to it but I could live without if it conflicted with something else.... I can tape at 1 am, what conflict. But I didn't bother to waste the space on the Tivo by recording Painkiller Jane.
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4-14-2007 @ 4:26PM
Jimmy said...
Painkiller Jane is, at best, underwhelming. Loken has never been an acting dynamo, and the material she's been given only accentuates that. I do agree the series has potential, but there is a lot of work to be done before that potential shows through.
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4-15-2007 @ 1:50AM
Underseen said...
Honestly, im more, furious at the fact that the series seems to have little to nothing to do with the tv movie that SciFi aired a little over a year ago.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466391/
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4-16-2007 @ 2:06PM
Gordon Werner said...
I kinda liked Emmanuelle Vaugier in the role in the movie ... but she now has a real job on CSI:NY ...
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4-16-2007 @ 1:55PM
Scott Shively said...
SciFi's Saturday Night movies are usually really bad but this series made last year's Painkiller Jane look like Oscar material. I'm sorry I should have listened to you.
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4-16-2007 @ 2:45PM
Gordon Werner said...
I'm willing to givethis show a chance ... although the best thing that I learnt by watching Episode 1 was the announcement for the return of Eureka!
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4-18-2007 @ 3:30AM
mike said...
What a horrible show. the openening was disturbing and sexist when a Pre pubescent girl took an uzy to all those "evil" boys and we wonder why 33+ people died in Virginia. But I quess it's o.k. now to be a fem nazi and show a girl commit a mass killing, well, as long if she is a white liberal with homosexual tendencies, and she is killing mainly white boys.
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4-19-2007 @ 8:51AM
Bill said...
Yikes, this was bad. Kristanna Loken didn't look all that good, which I think defeats the entire point of casting her in the first place. Usually in a cast for a pilot, there's at least one actor who stands out as a decent performer, but nothing here. Maybe it's because they all got such awful dialogue, I don't know.
As for the commenter early on who took issue with the Heroes similarities, this is based off of a comic book, and Heroes has lifted virtually everything they've done straight from comics. I love the show, it's really well done, but there's nothing especially original about it, other than it being on television. Jane's healing power is like Wolverine's as much as it is like Claire's, and the Neuros are like X-Men mutants as much as they are like the powered people from Heroes.
http://popculturejunk.blogspot.com/
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6-09-2007 @ 2:57PM
yazid said...
Hi from France,
I've seen the first episode of this painfull serie, and I have to agree with you about this show.
The show is for me the the perfect opposite of a great show
Dark angel. It's like the differences between mutant X and heroes
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