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“Painkiller Jane” Recaps: Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

Meet Jane Vasco (Kristanna Loken). She’s a renegade DEA agent whose gritty little life is about to change. She’s also going to be one of the few ass-whipping chicks you can watch on TV for the next few months, so sit back and soak her up. For the record, this is a little show called Painkiller Jane.

Yes, I know that AfterEllen.com doesn’t usually soil its dainty electronic hands with shows that aren’t gay, but this one stars out actress Kristanna Loken, who is really tall, and really hot. And aren’t those reasons enough?

Enough with the rationalizations, let’s get back to Painkiller Jane. I know I’m getting quality schlock when I’m treated to a heavy-handed ’40s noir-style voiceover. But the good part is that it’s Kristanna Loken who is doing the talking, with her arch delivery and trademark raspy growl. (Is it just me, or does she sound a little like Sharon Gless in her Cagney and Lacey days?)

The scene: A young, innocent-looking Jane is being chased by a group of bullies.

Vasco V.O.: When I was little, my dad called me his Painkiller Jane. Whenever I got hurt, I made the pain go away. Only I didn’t just bury it or push it aside; I pretty much murdered it.
Jane picks up a machine gun and opens fire on the group of marauding boys. But before we have the chance to think “Painkiller Jane was a psychopath in her youth!” it turns out it was just a fantasy. Funny, her fantasy looks a lot like mine when I was that age. Kids!

Cut to little Jane staring up at a big anonymous corporate building.

Vasco V.O.: Afterwards, I’d go to a peaceful place in my mind. I called it The Emerald City – partly because it was green, mostly because I could only dream about what magic must be inside.
Um, how many kids – besides maybe Alex P. Keaton – soothe themselves with fantasies about high-rise office buildings?
Vasco V.O.: It was my way of controlling a world that was out of control. Control can be a dangerous illusion. There are some things you have absolutely no control over. Gravity being one of the big ones.
We cut to a body being tossed out of the Emerald City high-rise. Hopefully it’s a flying monkey, or someone’s about to be roadkill. Alas, it’s Jane’s body. She’s wiggling frantically as she plummets hundreds of feet to the ground.
Vasco V.O.: If you thought I was having a bad day then, four days earlier was even worse. Confused? So was I.
Running with the shadows of the night – Cut to Jane and her sassy sidekick clomping through a darkened city street in tight dresses and chunky heels.
Vasco V.O.: A new designer drug had started circulating through the clubs. Maureen and I were hoping to score it. Maureen’s my partner. As DEA agents, we’d been working this case for three weeks. If we’d done it my way, we would have made this bust two weeks ago. Only we didn’t do it my way.
Maureen looks like “Heartbreaker”-era Pat Benatar, and she and Jane look like they’re on a date and headed for ’80s night at the local girl bar. D-yikes!
Vasco V.O.: And one more day in her borrowed heels, and I’d be limping permanently.
They enter a sleazy (and ostensibly straight) nightclub, and Maureen snaps at Jane, “Play by the rules.” Jane tosses her blond mane contemptuously. I’m sensing a certain “dynamic” between these two.

The agents stroll through the club full of writhing bodies, and I’m getting the distinct vibe that this could easily go all Blade at any point. In fact, I’m sort of hoping it does. Traci Lords as a porny vampire and vats of blood spurting through a sprinkler system onto a rave dance floor? Come on!

But alas, there are no vampires in this sleazy club. Just some suspected drug dealers, whose rap sheets automatically pop up on the screen as if Loken is still using the computer program in her head from her Terminatrix days.

The perps in question make a drug deal, and Jane hitches up her skirt and draws a gun from a tiny holster conveniently strapped to her shapely thigh. “You wanted to play by the rules,” she tells Maureen. “Well, it looks like they’ve just been broken.”

Loken chases several perps through some winding hallways until she corners them in a back room. “DEA, freeze!” she commands them. “Hands up!” Somehow the three-against-one problem doesn’t quite feel mitigated by the fact that she’s the only one with a gun. But there’s something fishy going on. The perps seem to be having a little battle of their own. And when they turn around to face her, two of them have shape-shifted to look like the other guy. Suddenly it’s Loken versus the Del Rubio Triplets, and she wants to know what the hell is going on.

One of them pipes up: “Listen to me. My name is Andre McBride. I’m a government agent. We’re on the same team.”

Jane: I’m sure! Andre McBride No. 2: I don’t think you’re sure of anything right now. Andre McBride No. 1: The man beside me is producing an hallucination right now. You can’t trust what you see. Andre McBride No. 3: Are you sure you can believe what you’re hearing, much less what you’re seeing? Andre McBride No. 1: He’s a genetic aberration! Jane: We all have our problems … Andre McBride No. 1: Right now, this is your problem. He’s trying to gain time, to confuse you. Jane: He’s doing a damn good job. Andre McBride No. 1: The man beside me is going to kill you. Andre McBride No. 2: He’s lying.
Crafty Jane sees that though he is standing still, the shadow of Andre No. 3 is moving, drawing a gun from behind his back and aiming it at her. She shoots and kills him, and some ectoplasmy sounds and visual effects reveal his true appearance as he hits the ground. Then Andre No. 2 loses his “mask” and draws a gun on her, but Jane wastes him too. Andre No. 1 looks incredibly relieved.

p>Later, Jane tells Andre No. 1 that he’s been “cleared,” but she still doesn’t know what branch of the government he works for. He’s not about to tell her, but he does want to know why she came after him.

Jane: Saw a buy go down. We’ve been working this place for three weeks. Saw you guys hanging around; didn’t look like your kind of crowd. Andre No. 1: I’ll take that as a compliment. Jane: It wasn’t meant as one. What happened in there? Andre No. 1: I’m afraid you’ll have to be content with a “thank you,” Agent Vasco, and leave it at that.
Jane lets Andre know that while he may have checked out with her superiors, he still hasn’t checked out with her.

One of Andre’s henchmen whispers to him in an ominous tone, “Neuros tagged and bagged, boss.”

Later, Jane and Heartbreaker Maureen are walking home from the bust. She asks HM if she has ever heard of a “neuro.” HM hasn’t, and Jane is pretty sure that they’re not supposed to know what it is.

DOA at the DEA — The next day, we learn from another one of Jane’s tough-girl voiceovers that she isn’t a “by the book kind of gal,” which is why she’s enlisted an IT nerd from the DEA to help her try to figure out what Andre and his neuro fetish are all about. This gets her dragged into the principal’s office – or as the G-men (and women) like to call him, the Deputy Director. (Remember in The X-Files how Mulder and Scully were always getting dragged into Assistant Director Skinner’s office for their spankings? It’s kind of like that, but without the thinly veiled subtext of Skinner digging Scully. Or the one of me digging Scully.)

Anyway, Jane’s boss is all business, and he tells her that her investigation has been “terminated” (heh), and her entire service record has been “red-flagged” by the Pentagon. And that can’t be good.

Later that night, Jane has a secret meeting with Andre No. 1 (I’m assuming). He chides her for trying to hack their database before launching into his pitch for why she should join his special unit.

Andre: Your school records indicate that you were suspended 22 times in a four-year period. Jane: That’s a lie. It was 23, actually.
Great. Jane is the Jo Polniaczek of the DEA set.
Andre: Reasons included everything from fighting and swearing to feigning an epileptic seizure. Jane: Yeah, my bad. Andre: Hospital records show that when they refused to let you visit your dying mother, a nurse found you holding her in the middle of the night. Somehow you’d been living in her room for three days.
Jane tries to storm out, and we’re treated to another one of her childhood flashbacks. This time it’s of Jane at her mother’s funeral. Andre interrupts the flashback and tells her that he knows she’s made a life of “living outside the box” and that he could use her on his team. She wants to know what it is that his team does, but he won’t tell her until she comes aboard. (I guess that whole lame conundrum about how you can’t get a job without experience and you can’t get any experience without a job thing goes for secret agents too.)

She tells him that she loves his “chain-of-command charm” and thanks him for the job offer — whatever it is. As she walks away, she stumbles back into him in a fumbling move that seems very, well, un-Jane. Then she makes a lame comment about not being able to put one foot before the other. He helps her back to her feet, and then tells her to stay out of his “business.” As she walks away, she whips out a little gadget that appears to be a tracking device, kind of like the ones Ripley et al used to find the creatures in Alien. So Jane took the fall to plant one on him, and I’m not talking about a kiss.

Jane ducks around a few ratty corners, trailing Andre to his secret underground headquarters. Andre has enlisted a crack team of IT dorks (the PKJ version of The Lone Gunmen?) to help him do whatever it is he’s doing. Yet despite all their fancy gadgetry, they don’t notice that Jane has breached their perimeter until she is practically on their doorstep delivering their Avon order! Unfortunately for Jane, the old “I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you” rule is in effect in The Secret Location. Only instead of killing her, they’re going to keep her there as their prisoner (aka “new employee”). Predictably, Jane takes the “Oh hell no!” approach to being the newest member of the Geek Squad, but a quick phone call to her boss at the DEA confirms that she has indeed been “reassigned.” Still, she sees herself to the door.

Jane’s pad — Jane answers her phone as she’s walking into her apartment, and it’s Heartbreaker Maureen. She’s just found out that Jane got the boot from the DEA (plus, I think she’s worried about who she’ll have to sit with at lunch in the DEA cafeteria now that Jane’s gone). Heartbreaker Maureen tells Jane that she’s getting a bad reputation, and adds: “Get a good lawyer. When the DEA files drug possession charges against one of their own agents, it’s serious.”

The possession charge is news to Jane (after all, her nickname is Painkiller Jane, not Dimebag Darryl), and she sets out to kick the ass of whoever is responsible for it.

Underground again — Jane goes back to Andre’s lair to confront him about the drug charges, but he’s not budging. He assures her that “in time” she’ll be cleared of the charges, but only if she joins his team. It’s a crappy choice, but like Mae West, when Jane is forced to choose between two evils, she picks the one she hasn’t tried before.

 

Beauty and the geeks — Andre introduces Jane to her new partners. There’s Special Agent Steve Ford, communications expert (aka the IT guy) Riley Jensen, Special Agent Connor King (Jane remembers him as “the ugly one” from the botched drug bust at the nightclub earlier in the episode), and subway expert (WTF?) Joe Waterman. There’s also Dr. Seth Carpenter, who is working some super sassy girl hair. (I call him McDorky because he is clearly the Patrick Dempsey of nerds.) We know he really is a doctor because he’s wearing a white lab coat, and we know he’s a potential love interest for Jane because he’s the only one who doesn’t grimace or clench his jaw in her general direction when they’re introduced.

The Ugly One is pissed that “another woman” has joined the team, despite Andre’s assurances that Jane is “more than qualified.” Andre et al finally let Jane in on their super-secret mission. They hunt “neuros,” or “neurological aberrants,” which is what they were doing in the nightclub when they met Painkiller Jane and Heartbreaker Maureen.

Before Jane can get the lowdown, the Ugly One randomly asks her, “Is your partner straight?” Yes, while it’s true that Heartbreaker Maureen does have a spiky coif, it’s a completely random question. Jane doesn’t answer; she just smiles at him like she’s very impressed by his witty repartee.

Ugh. Whatever.

Andre: Six years ago, the government became aware of a genetic aberration appearing in the population. Dr. McDorky: Despite their differences, we’ve discovered a definable pattern in their gene code. This aberration seems to effect the neurological pattern in their cerebral cortex. Andre: What Dr. Carpenter means, in English, is that those with the aberration possess the unique ability to influence others.
Andre tells her that the neuro Jane “experienced” in the club had the ability to induce hallucinations, but that different neuros possess different abilities. Jane asks how many neuros they’ve identified, and Andre tells her, “almost 200.”

I wait for him to add the words “hundred thousand,” but no, just 200. Apparently in the PKJ world, 200 “aberrants” are enough to get you your own special ops team and some pimped-out secret headquarters. (Which, by the way, is total bull. I hang out with at least 200 aberrant types on any given Saturday afternoon at The Fiesta Cantina in West Hollywood, and the most I’ve ever gotten out of it is a two-for-one drink special.)

Jane is troubled to learn that Andre et al still haven’t figured out what causes the aberrations to occur. And it gets worse: McDorky thinks that the aberrations might interfere with the brain’s ability to differentiate right from wrong. Super. A bunch of amoral, mind-controlling jerks running amok and abusing their power and influence. Just what we need.

The lack of information about the neuros, Andre tells us, is why the government is keeping their investigation secret. Andre et al use “intel” from local law-enforcement agencies to help them locate and contain the aberrants. “Containing,” in case you’re wondering, means chipping them. Andre says that the microchip helps short-circuit the problem, and then they brandish their fancy chipping weapons for Jane’s viewing pleasure.

The latest development in the investigation is that someone is “dealing substandard medication” on the black market, and they think that a neuro is behind it. The company that is manufacturing the bad meds? Vonotek – the folks that occupy the “Emerald City” building of Jane’s childhood fantasies. No, cynics, Andre isn’t implying that a ruthless pharmaceutical company would intentionally produce defective drugs and feed them to the hoary masses. Au contraire! Vonotek slates the defective drugs for destruction, but someone is stealing them from Vonotek and dealing them on the street.

Jane asks why Team Andre thinks that a neuro is behind the operation, and the guys exchange worried glances. Finally, the subway expert (WTF?) tells her that they lost one of their agents to a “minder neuro.” Andre pipes up and helpfully adds, “It’s a neuro that can control people’s minds for a short period of time.”

Andre put the unlucky team member, Shannon Perry, inside Vonotek for a little reconnaissance mission, but before she could report back, she walked outside of the building and stepped in front of a truck. The Ugly One adds, “Women don’t last very long around here.”

Jane snarls, “Is it the sexual harassment or, uh … the size deficiency?”

They don’t know how Shannon’s cover was blown, but when it happened she was following Randall Hyde, Vonotek’s Head of Security. And anyone who wanted access to Vonotek’s “vaults” of crap meds would have to be able to control Hyde. Whoever controlled Hyde also controlled Shannon, and they did it from within the walls of Vonotek.

The Geek Squad solution? To reinfiltrate Vonotek. Andre wants to send Jane in, but not solo as with Shannon. Oh no, he wants a skilled professional to watch Jane’s back. That’s why he’s going to send her into Vonotek undercover as a new employee, with team member Steve nearby in costume as a repair man.

Working 9 to 5 – Jane reports to Vonotek the next day, mercifully stripped of the weird, Members Only-esque black leather jacket she’s been featuring for most of the episode. She’s greeted, as one always is, by the Human Resources Chick. But this HR chick is even creepier than the standard version. I think it’s her hair, which is a Liza Minnelli variation, landing somewhere between her Cabaret-era bat-bangs and her Liza With a “Z” shag. Yeah, it’s spooky.

Liza with a “V” (for Vonotek, of course) directs Jane to report to security, then she talks into her little video-clipboard and tells Security Head Hyde that Jane is on her way to see him.

Jane nabs a mail cart and pushes it around the building while tailing Randall until he dodges her by riding the elevator. Steve heads for the express elevator to find him, but Randall seems to have disappeared. Meanwhile, the Geek Squad learns that their ability to spy on Vonotek is suddenly screwed up. The IT guy babbles about a “subencrypted firewall,” adding “it’s nothing like I’ve ever seen before!” Jane and Steve gain on Randall, but just before she can tag and bag him, Steve turns on her. Some naughty neuro has directed Steve to kill Jane, and he does. His blows send her crashing through a window and plummeting to the ground, but she manages to take him with her. We cut to the exterior of Vonotek, where Jane and Steve are now plunging to their collective doom.

On her way down, Jane hallucinates or time-travels back to the day of her mother’s funeral, appearing there as an adult to tell her child self, “Don’t ever let them see you cry again.” How this is supposed to help the probably already screwed-up little Jane, I have no idea.

Back in real time, Jane’s battered corpse is bagged and tossed into an ambulance. And then she promptly comes back to life.

Reanimated — Andre et al are more than a little freaked out when they see the Frankenstein monster version of Jane stumbling toward their secret headquarters. She’s limping, she’s shivering, she’s moaning unintelligibly — and yet somehow she still looks pretty damn good for a zombie.

On the slab in the lab — Jane comes to (life) and asks McDorky why she isn’t dead yet. It’s a question he can’t answer. In the other room, Andre and McDorky discuss the fact that Jane just survived a 46-story fall without any internal (or serious external) injuries. And no, McDorky assures Andre, she is not a neuro. Jane limps out of the lab and releases herself on her own recognizance. She goes home.

Home is where the thinly veiled lesbian subtext is — Jane lives in some kind of apartment complex decorated in industrial ugly-chic that resembles an abandoned warehouse-slash-Soviet-era bunker.

Vasco V.O.: The thing about most women is that they can’t accept someone wanting to be left alone in a time of crisis. Especially if it’s another woman. Especially if it’s another woman they consider damaged. And if they just happen to have a key to that damaged woman’s apartment, well …
I know the show suddenly sounds really, really gay, but they don’t go there. At least not yet. Jane comes home to find Heartbreaker Maureen grieving in her living room. Maureen ecstatically embraces the supposed-to-be-dead Jane, who emits a loud grunt of pain. She doesn’t have internal bleeding, but she’s still not quite up for a lesbian subtext-laden bear hug.
Maureen: At the agency, they told me you fell off of a building. Jane: Drunks fall off buildings. I was pushed. Ugh. I need a drink. Maureen: Jane, you shouldn’t have left the hospital. Jane: I didn’t. I left the morgue. You know how I hate the cold. Maureen: What the hell is going on? Jane: I don’t know. I just fell 40 stories and now I’m looking for a glass I should have washed a week ago. Maureen: 40? No, no, no. They said it was four. Four is a … Jane: Possibility? Maureen: This is about neurons, isn’t it? Jane: Neuros. And you just stay out of this.
But Heartbreaker Maureen is already way in. She tells Jane that she ran a check on the checks Jane bribed the IT dork into doing on Andre et al, way back when she was still alive and still a DEA agent.
Jane: Why the hell would you do that? Maureen: Because covering your ass is a habit!
Jane accidentally shatters the glass she was holding, then watches in amazement as the fresh gash on her hand heals right before her eyes (like Wolverine in the X-Men comics, but without all of that nasty body hair). Jane tells Maureen that she has no idea what she’s just gotten herself into. Emerald City, Part Deux — In another one of her voiceovers, Jane tells us that McBride “recruited” Heartbreaker Maureen just as he had “recruited” her.
Vasco V.O.: I tried talking myself into believing that she had it coming, that it involved caring too much, covering my ass. The truth is, I would have done the same for her. Only … I wouldn’t have been so damn dramatic about it.
Jane is so butch.

Jane and Team McBride are watching the surveillance footage as the newly recruited Maureen enters Vonotek. Jane wants to know if there’s a way that a “minder neuro” can control people when they are not in close proximity to them. The Ugly One suggests “remote control,” and his dumb answer sparks Jane to think of a smart one.

Jane recalls that everyone she saw at Vonotek was wearing a snappy little Bluetooth-esque earpiece (aka “com set”), and through her superior (and perhaps zombie-enhanced) powers of deduction, Jane realizes that Liza with a “V” is probably controlling everyone at Vonotek — including Security Head Hyde — via her pimped-out headset.

That’s when Team Andre notice on their monitors that Heartbreaker Maureen has just gotten a call from Liza. They try to intercept the transmission, but they have to hack into the system on an unsecured line. This means that Liza can listen in on whatever they try to tell Maureen. On the unsecured line, Andre reminds Maureen that she is a DEA agent on assignment. But Heartbreaker Maureen is pretty much oblivious to all of it. Her eyes have gone all black and weird, which tells us that Liza is now running the show in Maureen’s head. As puppet master, Liza is instructing Maureen to head for the nearest window and jump. She reacts by charging toward a window with her mail cart. (Why does Andre always get his team members undercover jobs in the mailroom? Can’t they be assistants or something?)

Jane takes over, trying to tell Maureen that she is being controlled.

Jane: Dammit Mo, for once in your life, listen to me! Stop. This. Second. Who’s gonna be there to watch my back? Maureen! Maureen!
Jane’s codependent plea doesn’t seem to work. The team watches in horror as Maureen’s mail cart smashes through the high rise window as Jane screams her name. Miraculously, Maureen stopped herself from following the cart out the window. She smoothes her short skirt, loses the crazy look in her eye, and goes after Liza with a “V.”

Hoofing it — Liza with a “V” runs outside of Vonotek and makes a beeline for the local police department. Team Andre is hesitant to follow her in because (1) the cops don’t know who they are; and (2) Liza has the ability to control the police. But what choice do they really have?

Liza tells one of the officers, “They’re coming soon,” and he obediently draws his gun and opens fire on Team Andre as soon as they walk through the station doors.

Vasco V.O.: There are all kinds of decisions in life. Some more difficult than others. For the sake of the team, I knew the one I was about to make was one I couldn’t avoid. For the record, I knew something else: It was gonna hurt like hell.
Employing her handy status as indestructible, Jane draws the fire of all the cops in the station as she charges at the neuro. The mind-controlled police unload round after round into her, but she stays on her feet long enough to point her special gun at Liza with a “V” and pop a chip in her ass. Team Andre scoops up Jane and gets her back to the lab. Back to life, back to reality — Jane comes around back at the secret headquarters and begs McDorky to figure out why she can’t die. And then she spins off on another one of her damnable voiceovers.
Vasco V.O.: When my mother died, it hurt. It hurt a lot. Something in me had changed. I realized that pain was going to be my friend, that it would sustain me and make me stronger. I just didn’t realize how much stronger “stronger” would be. Or just how changed I would become. I don’t know what happened to me or what it means. No one does yet. Right now, I’m just trying to stay focused on the job, taking one day at a time, putting one foot in front of the other.
And you thought your job sucked — Later, IT nerd Riley tells Andre that he thinks he’s figured out where the Vonotek Head of Security dude went when he disappeared off their radar that day. But Andre tells him that this particular mystery falls outside the parameters of their investigation. In other words, he tells Riley to drop it.

Cut to a secret floor in the Vonotek building, where rows of humans in unflattering, white gym clothes are suspended from the ceiling by a series of tubes. And they aren’t moving. The Vonotek Head of Security strolls by row after row of their creepy, lifeless bodies. Right about now, I’m betting their lousy old work cubicles are looking pretty good.

Next time on Painkiller Jane: Jane fights a neuro that can raise the dead and Heartbreaker Maureen still seems pretty gay.

The first episode is currrently available to watch online at video.scifi.com

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