Tag: tv

When the internet was still in its early days, we had not perfected the fine art of masturbating to nerd shit. The will was always there, but the technology simply hadn’t caught up yet. While you waited twenty minutes for a low resolution screenshot of topless Teri Hatcher to download, you might just lose patience and settle for cranking one out to the spandex asses of shows like Black Scorpion. 

Black Scorpion aired on the Sci-fi Channel, and IMDB describes it as… “A female “BATMAN” with a strong story, intriguing characters, good action pacing… and several opportunities for sex.”

Several opportunities! 

It doesn’t promise sex, but there are definitely moments sex could have been had if characters were so inclined! 

Look, I’ve got another three hours before this zip file of Gillian Anderson BEST Sexy Shots (36) finishes downloading, so let us study… 

We are zero seconds in and already I can see I’ve fucked up. You might not know who Roger Corman is, and that’s difficult to explain. He makes sexy movies, but so badly that you’re always too distracted by his inept framing choices to get off to them. By the time you notice tits are out and get ready, Roger Corman has already moved on to shooting mismatched coverage of a cardboard robot and a man with too much mustache. Roger Corman movies are how Christians imagined pornography in the 1960s. Roger Corman is like a talentless Stephen Sommers if Stephen Sommers liked tits about 87% more than he already does. And Stephen Sommers likes tits! Roger Corman is like if Michael Bay got exactly the amount of respect his talent warranted. Plus this is Roger Corman PRESENTS. This show just has his endorsement. It’s like Carl’s Jr. recommending a specific racoon to eat. You’re getting the garbage that garbage likes. 

Black Scorpion isn’t based on a comic — it’s not actually based on anything but wild misunderstandings. Here’s Black Scorpion’s origin story as told by the pre-credit roll:

This is why you always explain the moral to children after the story. Kids are stupid and impressionable and if you don’t carefully deconstruct the metaphor you’ll wind up with a daughter dressed like a Scorpion, firing Scorpion themed machine guns from her modified Corvette Stingray, which she calls the Scorpion-mobile.

Damn it, you see what I mean? We came here to ogle ‘90s asses like it’s Tae Bo day at Bally Total Fitness, but Roger Corman’s influence sucks so much that I haven’t even mentioned the protagonist of this show makes her very first appearance dressed as a hooker.

I guess that’s pretty sexy. I mean, hookers do not typically wear two belts as a shirt — that’s more of a professional wrestler thing — but we’re not here to nitpick. I will point out that it’s not typically the goal of a sex worker to keep her boobs as tightly bound and far apart as possible, but I have to give Black Scorpion points: This is technically an opportunity for sex. It’s not a good one, and nobody takes it, but fucking was briefly on the table here.

Black Scorpion’s real name is Darcy Walker, and she’s supposed to be a serious police officer, but even on duty she only wears the kind of tamely sexy pencil dresses that shoot for femme fatale but wind up more “date night at a steakhouse.” Although look, there is something to the careful deliberateness of her transformation sequence that speaks of sex work. It’s like watching a dominatrix clock in for her shift. Her professional disinterest in doing it is definitely doing it for me:

Hold up, let’s pause to explain her powers: There are none. Let’s resume. 

That transformation sequence is so clearly magical it’s actually strange that she’s not spinning and yelling broken english while she does it, but no — the show insists Black Scorpion just has cool technology like Batman. But while Batman uses his tech companies and billions of dollars to create his gadgets, Darcy Walker uses Argyle:

Argyle would be the best if he didn’t suck so hard. He owns a run-down mechanic shop, has no money or educational background, and is very casual about inventing Black Scorpion’s technology which “rearranges atoms” to do “whatever the fuck.”  

Here’s the exposition for that Black Scorpion transformation sequence above: 

Argyle: “Hey if I can rearrange the atoms in your car, why not your clothes?” 

Darcy: “How much do I owe you?” 

She actually gets out her checkbook to write a personal check for magic. 

And his very next line after establishing he’s the single greatest scientist in human history?

Argyle: “Hey, no charge, if it wasn’t for you busting me I’d still be in jail with the rest of my gang.” 

His gang. 

Of 47-year-old eccentric scientists? 

Of middle-aged fabric lovers who can twist spacetime to their whims? 

What the fucking fuck is that, show? I know this was the ‘90s and there were two roles for black male actors — ‘Gang Member’ or ‘Magic Negro’ — but somehow it’s worse that you chose ‘both.’

Black Scorpion has the worst origin story ever written, and a superhero named Black Condor was just “raised by birds.” Black Scorpion did not suffer a curse from a scorpion god, no sting from a radioactive scorpion, no getting struck by lightning while drinking Scorpion brand malt liquor — she’s just a cop that busted a really smart black guy who could rearrange reality and then forced him to make her a space-warping thong. 

Aw man, it happened again. I forgot we were here to smack it like it’s 2001 — which is to say we spend a long time looking for wank material and then give up and settle for an episode of Charmed. Let’s get back to business with another of Darcy Walker’s sexy outfits:

Every time we see Darcy in her off-time, she’s dressed in workout gear. But her workout gear consists of baggy trunks and a generous tanktop, complete with sweat towel. And she’s doing a move I know all too well: The “this bar stool is an awkward height for leaning, I wish I would have pulled it out from under the counter before cramming myself in this weird gap and just kind of hovering around the conversation looking for safe landing spots for my feet and hands.” 

I would laud the show for its realism here — that is exactly how a human would dress for exercise and then behave if you unexpectedly barged in their house while they were exercising — but the way the camera lingers and frames her body in these shots it’s clear we’re supposed to be ogling this. Ogling what, Roger Corman-endorsed director Gwyneth Gibby, whose most notable other works include “Black Scorpion Returns” and “Sting of the Black Scorpion”? That uncomfortably bent knee? That weird wrist position? She doesn’t look like she wants to fuck; she looks like she regrets inviting the Cutco salesman in.

Dammit! Somebody set this masturbation to Nightmare Difficulty and here I am trying to solo it flawless. I’m in over my head. Let’s stop looking for Black Scorpion’s “several opportunities for sex” and throw it all the way back to oldschool Xena rules: Pause the tape during fight scenes hoping for an ass shot that doesn’t look like abstract pottery.

Nope. 

That ain’t it.

Those lines are a stunning example of the Chilean late Art Nouveau movement, but it’s barely a butt.

Pausing is the wrong move. Let’s look at a fight in action: 

It’s clear this is in the neighborhood of sexy. It once let sexy house-sit and now it can’t get the smell out of the drapes. Like I recognize the attempt here: lots of needless shots of buns-up climbing, a weird double-clothesline only there to highlight cleavage, followed by an ass somersaulting away, but it’s all too clumsy and disorienting. This isn’t Black Widow leg-grappling Scarlet Witch so that for a second it looks like they’re scissoring — this is like trying to ogle an introductory ballet class: It’s mostly just people discovering they can’t move like that and then falling over.

I give up on Black Scorpion. Maybe she isn’t even supposed to be the sexy focal point. It’s always the villains, right? Who’s our Harley Quinn?

Great. 

That’s Firearm. He looks like a cybergoth making fun of football. He looks like a drunk mother forgot about the costume contest so a sad child had to tape a Predator costume together out of hockey gear and lingerie. He stands like he’s been pushed into the frame after saying “no way in shit am I ‘just hitting my mark,’ Sharon; you promised I could sign off on the costume first.”

Although, I’ve got to say, he moves well.

I’m not going to pretend this is my first time masturbating to a haphazard Borg cosplayer learning to breakdance. But god damn it, I was hoping I’d already had my last.

Here, you all need to go now. I’ll let General Stryker see you out.