TV is the New Reading

Sci Fi buries ‘Charlie Jade’

– and with good reason

You might – quite by chance – have seen a promo in the past couple of weeks advertising a sci-fi detective series called “Charlie Jade.” The show aired in two primetime time slots on the Sci Fi network before vanishing into the ether, turning up almost as an afterthought at 3 a.m. Tuesdays.

Generally, I’m opposed to programming receiving this kind of treatment. If it’s worth airing, put a little “oomph!” into it. Generate a little buzz, provide a little bit of fan service. Heck, list the program on your network’s Web site, fer cryin’ out loud.

However, having finally managed to track this show down, I can honestly say they’re being charitable.

Weird

There are people who enjoy “Donnie Darko,” which you can occasionally catch for yourself on the Sundance or Independent Film channels. These people tolerate more than the usual amount of weirdness in their storytelling, kookiness in their character development and darkness in their drama. These are people who claim, more often than not, to “get” post-modernism. And in the interests of full disclosure, generally you can find me right there in the middle of that group.

However ...

In a series – yes, apparently “Charlie Jade” is a 22-part series – tracking terrorist suspects through three distinct universes – that is, an Alphaverse, Betaverse and Gammaverse – which are led by different governing interests and necessarily have different priorities, we meet Charlie Jade, a character who floats effortlessly among them, pursuing suspects for reasons that frankly don’t seem especially clear to me.

Again, full disclosure, I only saw one episode. The third one. Once I’d heard about it, you see, I was having a lot of trouble tracking this show down.

And in the third episode, Jade, a 20-something private investigator played by Jeffrey Pierce, was drifting about in the multiverse, confused by the visions he was having but certain he was supposed to do something about the criminal he was chasing. Vexcor, the corporation that’s hired him, is as huge and greedy as it is destructive and cliched – seriously, Vexcor sounds like one of Dr. Evil’s lairs in the Austin Powers’ series. Its very targeting of this “criminal” makes me think she’ll end up being a Good Guy, and that Jade will be convinced to help her bring the Evil Corporation down.

Boring

But that’s laying in a lot more subtext than I experienced while slogging through this colorless excuse for sleep medication. As Jade flips among his universes, his hairstyle changes, but his three alternate personalities barely add up to one millimeter of depth.

To be fair, the chase scenes were athletic and reasonably cool. But a cool two-minute chase scene where you don’t really care much about either the pursuer or the pursued cannot and does not make up for 40 minutes of thin broth in which – among other, poorly defined objectives – Jade is trying to convince a fellow investigator that he’s traveling between three different dimensions, leading to a lot of ultimately pointless “No, you’re not.” “Yes, I am.” “No, you’re not.” “Yes, I am,” etc.

When he finally does manage to convince him, the revelation is so anticlimactic one wonders how this could possibly be the third installment. And it doesn’t speak well to what grand revelations lay in store (”Hey, that Big Corporation that hired me is Evil!” etc.)

Whatever the case, it seems like Sci Fi is being unnecessarily kind in airing the thing at all – even suspiciously so. It’s probably a commitment someone made after shafting the infinitely superior “Dresden Files” series last fall, which also featured a private investigator with a supernatural bent.

Now that was a show I’d stay up ‘til 3 in the morning for. It was good, well-written and interesting in all sorts of ways that "Charlie Jade" just ... isn't.

As it happens, “Charlie Jade” airs (for now) at 3 a.m. Tuesday mornings on the Sci Fi channel, possibly out of spite, and it really needn’t concern anyone much at all.

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