Dollhouse
Like geeks everywhere, I was on a roller coaster. Whedon doing another regular series starring Dushku! Yay! On Fox, whose capricious ministrations have doomed shows like Wonderfalls and Whedon’s last, Firefly. But it was really going to happen! Yay! But Fox hated the pilot and the show was postponed and finally put on Fridays. Boo.
And then, worst, the pilot was bad. Blatantly manipulative, it puts a little girl in the worst sort of peril. And while it succeeded in making me care about the girl’s situtation, not so much about everyone else. And I especially didn’t care about Echo, who goes back to blank at the end of the episode, and I really, really wondered how Whedon was going to pull off a character arc for someone with no character. Surely he’s got a plan — it’s not like he could miss the corner this structure paints you into.
But episode two rocked.
The most dangerous game element may be a blunt sort of plot, but it worked. And we’re introduced to Alpha. The asset that went composite, and possibly has access to all of the specialized training he ever had, synthesized into one. And he’s interested in Echo — he let her live while he killed those around her; he has apparently tracked down her home of origin and is watching her home movies amidst her parents’ corpses.
When Echo drinks from a canteen, the hunter tells her she’s been drugged. See sees other versions of herself. The hunter implied that the drug had just been what they used to knock out the ranger; I wonder if it was some cocktail designed by Alpha to start Echo down the path of going composite. The old superman wants a superwoman story.
The third episode, then, was vile, full of tight outfits and unmotivated actions (and those actions that were reasonably motivated then get explained to you slowly in small words.)
In an interview Whedon suggests it’ll get better after six epidodes.
It’s more that by episode six, people know the characters, they get it, now we can start to really mess with them.
If 4 and 5 are as bad as 1 and 3, I’m not sure I’ll make it to 6.
yeah. episode 2 was all kinds of fun. (also, matt the middleman getting more work!)
episode 3, not so much.
it needs to get good or else i'm going to lose patience with THE ADVENTURES OF THE MIND CONTROLLED HOOKER.
Posted by rmd
on
March 3 2009 04:57
Yeah, I meant to mention that. In the same interview, Whedon talked about how the network was weirdly puritanical, and they had to be downplay the human trafficking aspect.
I guess downplaying, here, means that there's actually been one episode in which they haven't depicted her screwing a client.
Posted by Zed on March 3 2009 07:13