Debuting
in the fall of 2000 on Fox, the James
Cameron-directed series Dark Angel is a sort-of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
meets The Pretender in 2020 post-nuclear Seattle,
following the story of a genetically-enhanced young woman named
Max (played by Jessica Alba) who escaped years ago with several
others from a secret military institution called Manticore.
Ten
years later, Max now lives in Seattle, where she works as a bike
messenger and hangs out with a handful of friends including her
lesbian best friend Original Cindy (Valerie Rae Miller), and her
love interest Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), a wheelchair-bound
vigilante crusading for world peace. When she's not fighting/evading
the evil folks from Manticore or pretending she's not attracted
to Logan, Max is generally chatting with her friends at work or
at the local bar.
Dark
Angel introduces Original Cindy's sexuality early in the
pilot episode with the following exchange between her and Max
at work as they're observing their friend Sketchy with his girlfriend:
ORIGINAL
CINDY: Now, why can't I find a girlfriend like that? Brings
him lunch everyday...thoughtful, sweet...legs from here to there.
MAX: Straight.
ORIGINAL CINDY: Shame wasting a girl like that on a male.
Later
in the same episode, when Sketchy asks Max's help in preventing
his girlfriend from finding out he's cheating on her, Original
Cindy's sexuality is referenced again:
MAX:
I actually kind of feel sorry for guys sometimes.
CINDY: Please.
MAX: They're prisoners of their genes.
CINDY: So are dogs. I say hang Sketch out to dry. Let Natalie
see him for the heel he is. Then, maybe she'll step to the all-girl
team.
MAX: Of course, there's nothing self-serving in that scenario.
This
sets the tone for the show's treatment of Original Cindy's sexuality
throughout the series: matter-of-fact, unapologetic, and humorous.
She is one of the few lesbian characters on television whom we never
see in the tentative, confused-about-her-sexuality phase; both Original
Cindy and her (heterosexual) friends exhibit a comfort and candidness
about her "alternative" sexuality that is still rarely
seen on television.
Conversations
between Original Cindy and Max throughout the series make it clear
that Max is comfortable with and accepting of Original
Cindy's sexuality, so much so that at the end of the first season,
she invites Original Cindy to become her roommate. At one point,
Max even she asks Logan "What is it with guys and lesbians
anyway? I mean, what's so damn fascinating about being unwanted
by the opposite sex?" (Season 1, Episode 15).
Unlike
most shows which go out of their way to
make it clear that the lesbian character isn't
a stereotypical "man-hater," it isn't until Episode 15
of the first season that Dark Angel provides the obligatory
reassurance that Original Cindy still likes men, even if she doesn't
like men: "Original Cindy's aiight with the mens,"
she tells Max, "just don't ever ask her to go to bed with one."
But
Original Cindy doesn't go overboard on the "I love men"
statements, and actually criticizes men regularly, like in Episode
12 of Season Two when she dismisses a group of men trying to out-do
each other at pool with the description "silly boys playing
with their sticks and balls. I may vomit." This is unusual
for lesbians on television, who are usually written in a way that
avoids any negative expressions of men, for fear of playing into
this stereotype and possibly offending heterosexual viewers.
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