For those who were privy to the last review, I’d like to formally apologize. I’d like to apologize to the readers for making such a freshman mistake. I’d like to apologize to the creators of Charlie Jade for heaping scorn upon what I’d assumed was a blunder fest of a pilot episode. And finally I’d like to apologize to fans of the Sci-Fi channel for possibly not being able to see this show again.

But first, a recap.

Charlie Jade is a private investigator. His specialty is missing persons. He’s on the trail of someone when we meet him and his remote partner Mona. She triangulates positions, runs access codes, and gives him guff - typical partner stuff. Charlie is also narrating about the place in which he lives. He’s in Alphaverse; Cape City to be precise. Cape City looks like Los Angles from Blade Runner – it’s very green and dingey with most of the municipal budget allocated for flaming smoke stacks and floodlights. Charlie tracks his quarry to a bad part of town. He changes his coat, loads a gun and goes a-hunting. When the plan doesn’t go well and Charlie is left under a neon fridge full of twitchy arms, a Cape City police officer is there to give him crap about it.

Meanwhile, the rest of the plot is revealed deep in an underground facility. The world is run by a few major corporations, the biggest being Vex-Cor. The Chairman of the Board at Vex-Cor is Essa Rompkin. She’s overseeing what appears to be the penultimate step in a lengthy project. Charlie, in his narrations, mentions that “they” have lied to us about the possibility of parallel dimensions. Vex-Cor seems to be in the business of finding them, and exploiting them.

Which leads to our second Verse (not the same as the first), Betaverse. Betaverse seems much like our world. It’s slightly blue but the technology isn’t as advanced and people seem to wear regular clothes and drive normal cars. There’s a scientist who’s made it out of The Company, but is in some kind of danger because he knows too much and is not quiet about how wrong and deadly The Company is.

Alphaverse is now pulling water from another universe. I’m no quantum theorist, but they appear to be sharing some singularity with each other at the end of a deep tunnel, something like a CERN installation. The impression is the water is a gift. I’m also not sure where it’s going.

Back to Charlie, who’s had a runaway/missper dumped on him by a cop he doesn’t like. This lady describes a man and some hot and heavy activities, but then comes to the meat of her dilemma; she’s lost and doesn’t know where she is. She’s from Cape Town not Cape City and while things look the same, they aren’t. Charlie doesn’t believe her so she runs away and is hit by a car. The cop later shows him the body which has no implant in it, like she doesn’t exist. In Alphaverse, everyone has a wrist chip that holds IDs and links to your bank account (and probably more, that’s all they showed.) Her not having one starts to link to her story about not being from her so Charlie decides to follow up.

Charlie is also taking pills for visions. He sees things that look and sound real but aren’t and he’d rather they go away. He stops off on the way home to visit an old flame/enabling pusher to pick up his happy pills. However, we start to piece together that these aren’t visions, but some other Verse leaking into this one. For some reason he can see it.

Gammaverse is a lush Hawaiian paradise, or at least the parts we see are. In it are Reena and her lover/husband/partner who are not going to let “them” do “that thing.” This was the only dicey part of the show for me. I’m making an educated guess that Alpha is stealing water or something from Gamma and these cats are environmental activists trying to stop them. They also happen to have a bomb.

Charlie is now in pursuit of the last guy to have seen the dead Jane Doe. He finds out who he is with help from Mona and narrates about this man named 01 Boxer and his Class 1A citizenship. Charlie is a C2, was a C3. C1A is above the law. 01 Boxer is the son of the Vex-Cor founder and somewhat of a loon. Charlie tracks him to a rundown town with shifty denizens and then the show has one of the oddest moments I’ve seen yet. Charlie’s in the bar, making small talk with some skeevy folk, asking questions, when all of the sudden he’s in a fight taking them all out, then he’s immediately back at the bar ordering a beer. Now, either there was a poorly edited deleted scene in the version I saw, or he’s channeling JD from Scrubs. I couldn’t tell if it was a vision or just him daydreaming about beating some ass.

Back in the control room in Alphaverse, the scientists/chairmen are now ready to activate the Stargate. Sorry, expand the portal to Gammaverse. But something’s wrong and now there’s lighting and the Warped screen saver.

In Betaverse, the scientist is at the guard gate near the facility screaming that they need to let him in, that it’s all wrong and he can fix it but they have to hurry. Security says they’re in lockdown and can’t let him in.

01 flees on a helicopter and Charlie tracks him to what appears to be an abandoned facility. His visions are getting worse and he sees the same facility, but three different ways. One is lush with vegetation, another with blue skies, and then his own desolate and gray/green tinted Verse. Each pulses like the aftershock of a bomb blast. He’s also seeing Reena and her partner fleeing the facility. Reena’s partner is shot by the guards, but she makes it away with a gun. The scientist sees the trauma at the facility in the distance and gets back into his car and lays some rubber. As Charlie tries to clear his vision(s), Reena’s escape takes her up to his perch and as the Verses are falling in on each other, they see each other. She holds her gun up but then the both look aside as the facility goes ker-plow!

Next thing we see is Charlie laying on a sand dune as a small native girl pokes him with a stick. (And thus the recap seen here previously.)

All I can say is, “Wow, does it pay to watch the shows in order!” Now that I’ve seen the first one, the second one makes SO MUCH SENSE. It’s like they were meant to be watched this way. All kidding aside, had I seen “Big Bang” first and THEN “Sand,” I would not have graded the second episode so harshly. This episode firmly establishes a great many things, not the least of which being that Charlie Jade is a noir style detective show. Yes it’s sci-fi (dare I say science fiction) but at its heart it’s a 1950’s Sam Spade movie. The main character narrates everything, he has a plucky computer hacker instead of a secretary, and instead of crime bosses and missing bags of loot, he’s solving quantum mechanical mysteries. Even the tilted camera and patchy dialog really lends itself to this style and I can see a lot of people not getting that right off – it’s a risky move. It may seem as though the creators were trying to give it a Matrix meets Brazil type look and feel, but it’s much older and simpler.

That being said, it did have its problems. Jeffery Pierce is quite enjoyable. He’s good looking, believable and a fairly decent actor, but he’d be the only one. No one else really had much screen time, but I know I’d be alright not hearing Patricia McKenzie speak again. Her presence is captivating and carries such weight, but she’s got the voice of a 14 year old girl from Malibu and I just can’t see myself believing anything she says.

There were also some gaps in even the first story’s explanation of things, which seems now that I’ve seen them both, more of a pattern than a quirk of a single episode. The creators seem to make you want to put two and two together yourself and that feels…odd. I don’t know if it’s the quality of show I’ve been watching in the last five years, but this level of suggestive writing is nearly dull and unentertaining. It’s almost artsy, as though in lieu of a meaningful script I’m expected to find a deeper message.

But then I realize this is on the same channel as wrestling and I snap out of it.

Still, it’s a very good start, better than most. While the second episode stills struggles with its aimless writing and scene movement, the first episode did not. I’ll easily give it 3 ½ blue stones and change “Sand” to 3. I’ll now go watch episode 5, then 7, then 3.