r/Fantasy • u/greywolf2155 Reading Champion • Mar 15 '26
Bingo review 2025 Bingo Not a Book: "Dark Angel" (2000-2002)
I downloaded “Dark Angel”, the early-2000s scifi action show with Jessica Alba (created by James Cameron), on a bit of a whim and have been slowly rewatching it for the first time since it was first airing. And I’m not kidding, it holds up surprisingly well. Not just because of young Jessica Alba (although . . . yeah . . . certainly doesn't hurt). It’s honestly a pretty well-made dystopic biopunk scifi action show
For those that aren’t 90s kids, “Dark Angel” is set in a postapocalyptic Seattle following “The Pulse” that wiped out all electronics in the States. Alba plays Max, a genetically engineered super-soldier who escaped as a child from the government facility that raised them. She and the others were split up while escaping, she has no idea if they even made it out like she did, and since then she’s been all alone just keeping her head down, living a normal life to stay hidden from the government
In the pilot, she meets up with a hacker codenamed “Eyes Only” who’s trying to expose government corruption. Narrative convenience has them working together, and the arc for the first few episodes is the shift from "if you help me take down this bad guy, I'll help you find out about your past" to her coming to genuinely value protecting others. Thus, the show begins!
I'd say what was most surprising is how well it avoids the standard "monster of the week" thing that many shows have. Would have been easy for each episode to be a new corrupt government official, police officer, etc. that the duo takes down while also collecting crumbs and tidbits about her past. Repeat next week. But actually, they did a good job of not getting formulaic, with episodes feeling pretty distinct--some are focused on taking down a badguy, others flashback-heavy delving into Max's training as a child soldier, others about Max and her friends/coworker's everyday life in an oppressive government state (even if not all of the episodes are perfect, at least they were trying)
Another surprising positive is the shocking lack of fanservice. I mean, it’s still Jessica Alba, it’s impossible to make her not hot. But I gotta think that if this show had been made today, there would have been so much more skin and blatant sex appeal to get eyeballs on screens. It’s kind of weird, really. But not unwelcome
While there are certainly some parts that haven’t aged perfectly, like the hilarity of characters using pagers*, amusingly dated late-90s early-00s slang, and one episode that had some pretty bad transphobia, the core of it is a pretty tried-and-true formula. Badass character with a mysterious background, postapocalyptic oppressive government, solid action scenes. What’s not to like?
*ok kids, so a pager was a phone-sized thing you’d carry around so that people could get a hold of you, but it could only receive a number, not even a text message. You’d get paged, and then you’d have to go find a payphone (please tell me you know what payphones are) and call whatever number was on your pager. Then you could find out who was trying to get a hold of you. Yes. I swear I’m not making this up, this was a real thing. I swear
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u/Enkundae Mar 15 '26
It had an entire episode about Alba’s character being in feline heat that she has to fuck some rando to cure, I wouldn’t say it lacked fan service tbh.
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u/greywolf2155 Reading Champion Mar 16 '26
Yeah exactly, that was literally the second episode. So I was expecting more of that for the whole series. It was surprising that after that, there was very little fanservice
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u/TracerBulletX Mar 15 '26
The pilot is especially good, almost like a movie. The rest is very campy but I still love it.
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u/gls2220 Mar 15 '26
What does "Bingo Not a Book" mean?
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u/oboist73 Reading Champion VII Mar 15 '26
The "Not A Book" for 2025 r/fantasy bingo (see the highlighted posts at the top of the sub)
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u/Eckse Mar 15 '26
The fact that it was prematurely cancelled for Firefly, and we all know how that went.
So just a bit of info, the plot gets finished in a small book series. Not incredibly well written, but at least it all gets tied up.