I am a science fiction fan...  well, some would probably classify me under the heading of "junkie", but now we are fiddling with semantics, and that is never fun for anyone.  Any way you cut it, I enjoy science fiction - especially visual representations of it.  Unfortunately, the television channels I have access to have been remarkably devoid of any decent scifi for quite some time now - Battlestar Galactica is on hiatus until 2008 (oh God...), Babylon 5 has been absent for years, Firefly never made it out of the starting blocks, and good Star Trek has not existed since the Next Generation.  Sure, there are reruns...  but when I am reduced to watching reruns of Enterprise just to get my fix, there is a problem.  And, yes, both Stargate and Stargate Atlantis are nominally science fiction shows, but they are so damnably boring these days, and so very much a glorified soap opera in space (and so very thankfully in their death throes as we speak) that they are hardly worth the time.  Both of their stories played out about five years ago, and Atlantis did not even exist then.  Hell, I am down to scouring all the sources I can to turn up Eureka episodes, just because they are both decent science fiction and funny as hell. 

As such, I was somewhat thankful for the advent of a new series, by the name of Painkiller Jane - and off-the-wall name if there ever was one, and yet another case of comic-gone-big-ish-screen, but these days, I take what I can get.  The basic premise is that the main, titular character has a gift - relative indestructability.  Somewhat like Wolverine of X-Men history, minor wounds (such as her slitting her own forearm, just to test it) only take a few seconds to heal, while somewhat more major wounds (such as falling 40 stories) only take a few minutes.  The unfortunate omission to her powers is that everything continues to hurt her just as much as it would hurt anyone else - hence the name.  Regardless, her and her merry band of government agents are tasked with tracking down "neuros" - people gifted with extraordinarly abilities, such as thought-theft, mind-control through audio waves, and necromancy, to name a few of the more interesting ones - and there you have a weekly story.  Pretty straightforward, if not unfortunately so. 

The real gem of the series, however, is the writers (Yes, yes, I know Kristanna Loken is the main character, but I never really found her to be that attractive, and the most recent episode had her running around in her skivvies, and... *shrug*).  Anywise, the writers squirm between atrociously bad (which may, actually, be the fault of the actors delivering the lines, but that part is rather consistent, whereas the lines themselves to fluctuate in quality), to attempts at thought-provoking (mostly in the forms of Jane's monologue with herself), to outright hilarious.  The latter prompted me to write this particular post: 

Like I said, appearances are deceiving.  What makes people special is not always what you see on the outside... unless you're a nudist... but that's not the point. 

And that is just an example of what the authors have to offer: 

Andre (her boss):  Burns healed?  (Referencing an instance earlier in the episode wherein Jane successfully grounded a 50,000 volt security system... with herself.) 
Jane:  Almost... which is more than I can say for every stitch of clothing I had on... you know, I go through a lot of clothes in this job.  Maybe the Agency might think of comp...
Andre:  No. 
Jane:  ...ensating...  Just throwing it out there, see if it stuck. 

I guess to normal people, these comments would not appear to be all that amusing, but I just about fell out of my chair after hearing each one.  No, it is not Shakespear, but they kept me entertained. 

... Yes, I am that bored.  Hush you.