Painkiller Jane, Ep. 1-15 “The Healer”

So I’ve started doing some reviews for a new website, FADPOV.  Right now I’m doing Painkiller Jane on the Sci Fi Channel.  It’s an interesting experience: I’d seen the commercials but wasn’t drawn in, but a female friend-of-a-friend said I ought to watch it, and I wanted to start writing about something right away, so I took this show.

For the first episode, I did a massive play-by-play recap, since I was trying to learn the character relationships 2/3 of the way through the season.  My shorter, actual review is online here at FADPOV.  I hate letting writing go to waste, though, so here is the detailed recap:

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So this is something of an experiment…the first time I’ve ever watched Painkiller Jane.  I’ve never read the comics or watched the Sci Fi Channel movie either, so I’m a complete virgin here.  I’ve read up on what’s happened so far in the season, but if I happen to completely misunderstand something in the plot, or leave something important out, feel free to email me and set me straight.  As a quick synopsis, I’ll just say that this show could have been a lot worse, but it could also have been a lot better—I think the most entertaining moment was the local commercial for The Source Comics & Games over in St. Paul.  Hee—I love Game Master Burl and Super-Otaku Chad-son!

After an opening montage that explains the show’s premise—and makes blonde super-healing Jane look way too much like Claire Bennet to me, since I’ve already been watching Heroes for 7 months—the action opens in a bank… Jane and her OWI-like team are anticipating the arrival of a Neuro, a person with strange mental abilities who is apparently using them for evil.  Yeah.  I’m kind of liking the team though, because although they are unsurprisingly attractive, they’re attractive in an ‘interesting’ way, rather than in a plastic Hollywood cookie-cutter kind of way, which is nice.

I finally get an answer for why they’re all wearing sunglasses inside when the Neuro shows up.  Or doesn’t—he’s invisible, and the glasses are helping them spot him.  So I’m forced to give the show a point because I assumed they were just trying to look badass for no reason.  Well-played, show.  Connor chips the Neuro to neutralize his inborn cloaking device and they hustle him out to their van, where the guy says, “You gonna tell me what this is aboot?”  Hee.  I also love Canada!

As they tool down the road, it becomes apparent that Jane is having doubts about what they’re doing, as well she should, since she’s pretty much one of the people they’re chipping and kidnapping.  Unseen by the team, some creepy blue mojo creeps up the front of the van.  The electrical systems go haywire, smoke fills the inside, and the van careens off into an empty lot.  The back door pops open and the Neuro takes off, ignoring Connor’s shouts to stop or he’ll shoot…which he does, a few seconds later.  Geez—couldn’t they give these guys tranquilizer guns?

OK, I kind of like the quick blip of music they play over the title card.  Another point to you, show.

Back from commercials, we meet up with Dr. Seth Carpenter, a dark-skinned guy with a British accent who’s conducting genetic research.  Uh…huh.  Anyway, Mohinder—I mean Dr. Seth—points out that the Neuro was successfully chipped, and they’ve never encountered anyone with multiple abilities before…so a second Neuro must have been affecting the van.  As the team brainstorms about this, we cut to the one thing that made me want to re-watch this episode: Riley Jensen and his computer.  I have a thing for cute little geeks, OK?  Riley appears to be going for a “somewhat hotter version of Bryce from the Tomb Raider movies” look, which…I think you should aim higher, dude, but it’s not a bad look for you.  I realize Buffy fans are going to hate him sight unseen due to the bad name associations, but trust me, he’s not that bad.  Anyway, Riley has no info on another Neuro they’re trying to track down and team leader Andre is not happy about any of these plot developments.

Andre also isn’t happy that Jane is behind on her paperwork, but lets her late incident report continue to slide when she tells him she has a date with Brian.  Aaaaaand…obligatory shower scene for the male viewers that ends when Jane walks out of the bathroom and finds Brian lying on her bed, and we learn that she thought he was out of town.  Which…is supposed to make me wonder why Jane was lying to her boss, but ends up creeping me out.  I mean, I’m guessing she’s been seeing Brian long enough to give him a key to her place since she didn’t say, “HOW did you get in here?”, but still, seeing this gave me a stalker vibe.

So Jane manages to blow Bri off with the excuse that she needs to finish a late incident report and kisses him goodbye and touches her lips afterwards and…my initial notes at this point read, “Kristanna Loken has surprisingly mannish hands.”  That’s not really a bad thing—I think an action-oriented character shouldn’t be a little pixie princess—but for some reason it really stuck with me.  At any rate, after dark, Jane drives to a house where she’s greeted at the door by a shorter balding guy.  We track them through the window as they sit in the living room and Jane smiles and speaks while laying her hands in his outstretched ones.  Huh.  I’m…actually slightly curious.  Another point to the show.

Riley finally has a hit on the location of the previously-mentioned paralyzer Neuro.  And he’s wearing a jean jacket that looks kinda cute on him.  Wait a minute—is that some sort of bandanna knotted around his neck?  Never mind.  Andre and Connor unsubtly fondle their ginormous guns and the team heads out to The Marina to collect the Neuro, who’s just finished a glass of wine with a rich guy on his yacht and is busy paralyzing him.  Wait…if the guy is “experiencing complete paralysis”, why doesn’t he topple over onto the floor?  And why can he still move his eyes?  Don’t ask questions…just watch show.  Anyway, the Neuro cheesily taunts him as she clears out his safe.

Meanwhile, the team moves up on the yacht while being fed updates on the Neuro’s movements by Riley, who’s still back at headquarters and still wearing that unfortunate bandanna around his neck.  Maybe HE’S actually the Mohinder Suresh of the show.  Suddenly, blue mojo snakes up some kind of marlinspike thingy, and it topples over and pierces Connor’s abdomen.  Jane tries to run to him, but ropes suddenly fling themselves at her.  Connor urges her to go after the Neuro, which she does, but the mojo continues to explode at Andre.  Jane vaults up onto the yacht—her hip-hugging pants and short shirt conveniently parting to reveal the big-ass tattoo just above her butt—and chips the Neuro just as she exits its back door.

Back at headquarters, they finally throw a bone to the female viewers as a shirtless Connor gets lectured on the care and feeding of Neuro-inflicted stab wounds by Mo—I mean, Dr. Seth.  Connor’s a bit too much of an arrogant meathead for me to really like him, but I must admit, he’s got a nice upper body.  Andre once again points out the obvious—this Neuro didn’t have a telekinetic ability…therefore, there must be a second Neuro out there doing it.  The Neuro would have needed info on their movements, immediately making Andre suspect a leak.  Riley denies that anyone could crack his systems, but Andre orders him to triple-check them.  Riley gives him a snotface, but he’s still wearing that damn bandanna, so I’m on Andre’s side.  Jane points out that the leak could have been from someone on the team, but Andre insists it had to come from outside, ending the conversation with, “Besides, I trust you people with my life.”  Gee…anyone else think that might be a bad decision?  As we go to commercial, it appears that Jane does.

And we learn why, as Jane heads back out to the mysterious house from before, where it’s revealed she’s been “working” with Short Guy for five weeks now, and that she’s told him about her abilities, and about a lot of other things.  We also learn he’s some sort of faith healer, so I can now call him “the healer”.  And I just have to say, I spent this whole scene waiting for the two of them to make out.  I mean, Jane’s got the top three buttons on her shirt undone—this was the first scene where I really noticed her breasts at all—and there are these long looks between them, and then Jane asks for a hug, and then she slides her hand up to the back of his head and…I got really confused about where this might be headed.  Luckily it’s all cleared up as Jane gets in her vehicle and we see she’s got a couple of his hairs in her hand.  So…does she also have some sort of special painless-hair-plucking ability?  That might actually be kind of cool.  If the person ahead of you in line at the post office was annoying you, you could give him a big weird bald spot without him even knowing it.

Andre is meeting with someone called Morgan, who apparently is his higher-up?  Morgan looks vaguely familiar to me, and I realize why when I check Garwin Sanford’s entry on IMDB: he’s had guest appearances in everything from Stargate SG-1 to Eureka.  Andre accuses Morgan’s people of leaking; Morgan insists the leak is coming from inside the house.

Jane comes back to HQ late and is surprised to find Riley still there.  Turns out she was hoping to catch Mo—I mean, Dr. Seth—alone.  She wants him to test the hairs she stole from the healer.  Dr. Seth isn’t down with that—only Andre can authorize DNA tests.  Dr. Seth is a wimp, though, and Jane smiles and verbally manipulates him into agreeing to do it.  However, when Jane and Dr. Seth are distracted by Riley and his unfortunate bandanna, some mojo sizzles over the hair.  So, it’s not much of a surprise when the hair turns out to test negative for Neurocity.

It may also be worth mentioning that Dr. Seth has some theories about Neanderthal genes “hiding inside” the human population; I don’t know the show well enough to know if this may be Very Important to Later Plot Points, or if it’s just there to indicate that Dr. Seth is a big ol’ nerd.

After commercials, we find out that Dr. Seth is an even bigger wimp than we knew, because he’s gone and told Andre about Jane’s unauthorized testing.  Jane is forced to admit that she’s been seeing the faith healer, and says that when she’s with him, she feels like something’s “passing through her”.  Andre unsurprisingly wonders why she left her head up her butt and didn’t consider that the healer might be a Neuro.  He’s unimpressed by Jane’s insistence that she didn’t tell the guy anything vital about the team, and makes it clear he’s got very little patience for her crap.

Riley—now wearing a much more tolerable plaid shirt that’s buttoned up to the collar over a long-sleeved black shirt—tells us that although lots of doctors think the healer’s full of it, they can’t deny the fact that he’s healed a number of cancer patients.  Andre orders Connor to fake-limp his way into the healer’s house.  This produces the funniest moment of the episode, when the healer says, “Give me your hands.  I’ll give them back, I promise.”  He then smiles, and I expect him to add, “…in a jar!”  He doesn’t, but that doesn’t stop me from laughing.

Later, Connor is back in his bathroom and strips to the waist again, only to discover that his stab wound from earlier has mysteriously and completely healed.  I don’t know about you, but I thought this scene featured some excellent acting from Connor’s pecs and biceps.

Back at HQ, Mo—I mean, Dr. Seth—is showing Andre some MRI-type scans of people healed by the healer.  Turns out that these people’s bone structure is radically different after the healer is done with them.  Dr. Seth also mysteriously has some scans of Jane that show the same changes, and tells Andre that although for normal people, healed is healed, Jane is different, and who knows how these changes might affect her?

Cut to Andre showing the team video surveillance of a Neuro who he thinks has been ambushing the team.  This scene made me unhappy because Connor used the intensely annoying catchphrase, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!”, so I’m going to ignore as much of it as possible.  After a long shot of the team walking badassedly down a corridor with their badass chip guns in slo-mo, we cut to them at a park that reminds me of the opening of Terminator 2, so now I’m intensely creeped out.  The Neuro enters the park for…a jog?  He seems awfully jumpy.  I guess he’s seen T2 too many times, too.  No one can get a clear shot on him, blue mojo makes inanimate objects attack the team members, Jane chases him into a parking lot where she’s hit by a driverless car.  I’m guessing every episode of this show includes a scene where Jane’s injured but heals immediately?  She catches him but Andre stops her and reveals that the guy is a friend of his.  Jane: “He’s the one who’s been attacking us!” Andre: “No, Jane.  You are.”

OK.  I will admit I did not see that coming.  At all.  I’m not sure if it was a well-hidden reveal or if I was just utterly dense, but dammit, I’m forced to award more points to you, show.

Back at HQ, Jane is outraged to be accused of attacking the team and points out she was in just as much danger.  Mo—I mean, Dr. Seth—tells her that they think the healer’s Neuro ability has affected the way her own ability manifests.  That’s right, Jane—turns out that Connor also acquired a sample from the healer, and without her around, this one tested positive.  Andre tells her that her doubts are now working against the team and that she’s going to have to be chipped for her own good….at which point, mojo suddenly causes explosions and showers of sparks all over the room.

Luckily for Jane, duplicitous little Andre was just doing that to prove to Jane that the mojo was indeed a physical manifestation of her stress and worry.  After some angsting about the good the healer has done, Jane finally agrees that he’s got to be chipped and says that Ol’ Yeller is her dog and she’ll shoot him herself.

Cut to the healer, staring at Jane in her unbelievably low-cut shirt, who asks why she’s come back to see him again.  Jane fully explains her work to the healer and tells him that he’s a Neuro.  There’s some more angsting back and forth as the healer insists his ability is God-given and Jane points out that the diseases he’s cured were God-given as well.  There’s more mojo as Jane tries to make herself chip the guy, and Andre and Connor burst into the house in time to see Jane steel herself and do it.

Dr. Seth—see, I knew sooner or later I’d be able to call him that instead of Mo!—tells Jane that her body appears to have reversed the effects wrought by the healer.  She’s got that extremely-low-cut shirt on again, and Dr. Seth’s eyes flicker up and down repeatedly.  Bad Dr. Seth!  Jane realizes that although the physical effects may be gone, it doesn’t change the fact that her doubts and unhappiness still need to be dealt with.

And finally, Andre meets with Morgan again and learns that there may be “problems” at the internment center, 5000 miles away.  Morgan tells Andre he’ll pass along any info he learns, but for now, Andre must keep this to himself.  DUN!!!  And that, after a final slo-mo shot of Jane walking down a corridor while doing a rather clunky angst-of-the-day voiceover, is that.

So overall, I’m still not entirely sure I’d recommend this to all my friends.  I liked it better on second viewing.  I know the original comic books were done 12 years ago, and the TV movie was done in 2005, and the series was picked up a month or two before Heroes ever aired…but the similarities to Heroes are impossible to ignore, and Painkiller Jane simply comes up short against a show like that.  I’m also aware from reading online forums that a lot of disgruntled viewers would pay good money to see Jane receive a quick and fatal visit from a certain genetic aberrant with multiple abilities and a skull-cutting finger.  However, this is a Sci Fi Channel Original Series—brought to you by the same people who gave the world Mansquito, for pete’s sake—and it’s making do with a Sci Fi Channel budget, so I think it’s acceptable to judge it by a slightly relaxed set of criteria.  It’s not the best-acted or best-written show I’ve seen, but the characters were tolerable and it did have one complete surprise for me, which always makes me more charitably disposed towards a show.  I’m going to tentatively sort of like it and see if it goes up or down in my estimation after next week’s episode.