Middleman: Personally, I’ve never had emo that didn’t interfere with the job.

Wendy: I find that hard to believe. I mean that you’ve ever had emo.

Wendy Watson sure does have a lot of emo in this episode, too. It opens with our heroic sidekick bailing Lacey out of jail. Wendy makes smalltalk with the desk sergeant – as two battlers on the side of law and justice – while Lacey is brought out. She’d exposed herself in a sushi restaurant to open the eyes of the world to the dangers of high mercury levels. In frustration, Wendy calls Lacey’s protests “pointless pranks” and Lacey tells DubDub she has “no idea what it takes to save the world.”

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(this recap was posted on Tuesday morning at 4 A.M. EST, just so it appears RIGHT after the show originally aired at 3 AM. Nice job, Sci Fi Channel!)

After what was effectively a two-hour pilot to set up the universe, it’s time to get down to business and let poor Charlie Jade have a clue what’s going on.

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Yesterday morning we heard that The Sci Fi Channel is moving Charlie Jade to a new day and time. Starting next week, it’ll be taking over the coveted Monday 3am slot.

I can’t be too upset by this. Clearly the show was underperforming on Friday nights and the programming wizards at SciFi needed to move it. What impresses me is the depth of analysis they performed to figure out its new home. Who knew Charlie Jade did so well with insomniacs and people who buy Flowbies?

Taking its place on Fridays will be a repeat of the prior week’s episode of Doctor Who. I can’t say anything bad about the great British import other than asking how he keeps his neck warm without a proper muffler.

SciFi made several errors with Charlie Jade, some of them specific to this show and some of them indicative of systemic flaws. I figured I’d use this opportunity not just to look at the ways they went wrong, but also to discuss the future of science fiction television.

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Over the past decade or so, cable networks have been slowly figuring out that as long as the broadcast networks are going to cling to the outmoded Fall-to-Spring television schedule, they should counter program with new scripted shows in the summer. Several of the cable channels have realized that a different type of program is called for in the summer – lighter, bubblier, more fun and at least a little family-friendly.

USA has been doing this for years, with Psych, Monk, and now Burn Notice. Even SciFi does it with the excellent Eureka. Now ABC Family is getting in on the fun with their new show, The Middleman.

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Two episodes in, and there’s still not much going on. The action will pick up in the next few episodes, but there were still too many questions left over from the pilot. Most remain unanswered – and we’ve gotten some more in the process – but I think the writers have given us just about enough at this point to move forward. If nothing else, we know more than Charlie does.

When last we saw Charlie, he was lying unconscious in the desert, being poked by a weird little girl. That’s where he still is – dreaming about Jasmine, remembering the dead mystery girl, the accident, and the woman at the site. Weird little girl Jody pokes him again and he finally wakes up.

You’re alive! You’re one of them, aren’t you?…The invisible people. I see them all the time.

In Reena’s words

For the rest of the episode, Reena narrates. Even when our focus is on Charlie, it’s filtered through her perspective.

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In last week’s preview of Charlie Jade, I focused a lot on generalities, like the cinematography and a cast overview. In a show so rooted in mystery, it’s important to let things play out slowly. Now that the premiere has aired, let’s explore the Jadeverse(s) and the clues we’ve been given so far.

The show opens with a Spanish guitar picking out a slow and mournful tune over barren, windswept dunes. Cutting away from the desert vista to a huge underground facility, the music moves to the background and is replaced by the sound of hundreds of sprinklers and Charlie Jade’s opening narration. Where there is water, there is life. There is also Vex-Cor.

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