The Charlie Jade rewatch: Episode 2, 'Sand'

“Back then, I could tell he was even more lost than I was” - Reena

The second episode of Charlie Jade is predominantly a character introduction piece, as well as the set-up of the protagonist’s main goal that will drive him throughout the show; to get home to his universe and to be with Jasmine again.

The episode starts with a heavy focus on the small blue stones that the little girl collects, the importance laid on these stones would of course become something that the show never got a chance to explain, due to its cancellation (and that Sawyer won’t even reveal the meaning of now, since he is hopeful that the show will return at some point).

Odd, askew (often diagonal) camera angels are here even more prominently used; I believe as a symbol (and subconscious effect) that everything in the Betaverse is not quite right for Charlie, and as he expected it to be (him of course expecting the Alphaverse and not knowing there was anything but). Again we have various hues of blue, importantly clearly distinguishing the Betaverse from the other universes by simple colour separation.

Several main players to the show are introduced here properly; 01 Boxer is shown to not only be a rapist, but also (possibly) a killer, Reena a complete innocent thrown into what she perceives as hell (reinforced by the flashback of her dead friend reading a biblical-like passage about these alternate universes), Essa and her hate filled relationship with 01 (Essa: “You’re a self indulgent sociopath who should be imprisoned”), Galt and his willingness to let 01 treat him in demeaning ways (often sexually playful; to add further degradation?), Lubinsky as the kind and unappreciated helping hand and guide to Charlie’s struggle.

Here, Charlie is shown to have a more vulnerable side to him than we saw in the pilot; at the loss of Jasmine, when he finds their empty and changed apartment, he breaks down on the spot and cries out for her. He is a little too persistent and un-accepting in the way he probes and asks questions of people – the man at what was Papa Louie’s house, the other Jasmine (Paula) at the bar – but then, just when would you drop all inhibitions about believing something ‘crazy’ and accept that you must be in a parallel universe, only marginally different from your own? Surely many would think it a Truman Show-esque trick that everyone around them was playing on him before they would believe the former?

By the end of the episode we have Charlie standing, panting (after having had Reena outrun him), with the effects of what he has seen and lost in this place alien to him showing vividly on his face.



A very different episode to the pilot, in that it focused far more on character development than action and cool set pieces. The ever beautiful soundtrack playing in the background (surely beginning to become addictive to fresh viewers and ears at about this point?) adds to the elegance of it all. An important and well-established character episode.

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The Charlie Jade rewatch: Episode 1, 'The Big Bang'

To get my blog underway, I’ve decided to start by re-watching and dissecting, one episode at a time, one of my favourite SF shows, Charlie Jade. This is only the second viewing of this show for me, which with a show as complex and layered as Charlie Jade is sure to mean I’ll uncover many hidden gems and insights that I missed picking up on the first time around.

The pilot introduces us to a man who seems to have it all – an interesting job with no one to answer to but himself, and most importantly, he quite clearly already has the girl of his dreams. Yet he is haunted continually by ‘visions’ of things that seemingly aren’t there, and also quite clearly by things that are under the surface too – hardened by the street, by his job and by what he perceives as ‘this rat hole’ he is living in, we can clearly see that Charlie quite the loner. He is a man stood apart from the system and authority (even if he is notably tied to Vexcor in one respect: through the shares Jasmine persuaded him to buy).

Charlie’s deeper vices are left unexplored beyond the surface though, giving way to the plot of major and greedy corporation Vexcor, who are ‘prepared to gamble it all away’ in their experiment to link the universes and move natural resources between them, and a girl who has crossed over after having suffered at the hands of 01 Boxer, the spoilt son of Vexcor’s owner. It is clear that Charlie will at some point have to both do battle with Vexcor and catch up with 01 Boxer, and these scenarios are something I personally couldn’t wait to occur on my first viewing, due to these villains being so well realised and painted as so venomous from the off.

This is a pilot deftly handled and a great start to what we can tell will be a series aiming to turn SF conventions on their head. The likeness to Blade Runner, in the sense that we are presented with a run down, neon-infused dystopia and a wandering, slick soul investigating throughout the city is striking, yet it is clear this is a completely different and unique story being told.

It sets up far more than a crime story that crosses parallel universes and a protagonist cooler than any I’ve ever seen, and makes clear that we are going to be addressing such questions as how ethical it is for a superpower (Vexcor) to take advantage of a less powerful people and place (the Gammaverse) for its own gain (and even more topically, later on – as we shall see – under the pretence that it is doing it for the good of the people of the Alphaverse; sound familiar?).

Other things I noticed:

•The use of mirrors and reflections is something done several times throughout the episode, as a symbolic and subconscious hint at the parallel worlds we are soon to explore and perhaps the dual Charlies that wait in them? We are not only shown mirrors with multiple reflections of Charlie (note in the pictures below that we see three Charlies in each - signifying the three universes that the show deals with), but in these shots Charlie seems to be directly assessing his reflection, with that usual saddened yet curious look on his face. Should this be read into that Charlie is confronting his own vices momentarily?





•There are other nods to there being multiple copies of everything, such as Papa Louie’s “one of a kind” plant.

•Alongside the Blade Runner-like aesthetic of the show are also some astonishing shots at many fantastical angles, one ‘what might happen’-scenario scene (another hint at the many worlds theory and parallel universes, in the respect that a decision can take you down a different path?), and a wonderfully addictive and continually flowing score/soundtrack. Such things, especially nailed perfectly so early on, lend clear evidence towards this being a show of classic and genius calibre.

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