Yeah, I know I promised to post it earlier, but I go by very liberal interpretations of the International Date Line so…moving along with the Dollhouse.
Shows that I am ecstatic and shocked about coming back cont’d:
To be honest, some of these devices left me drumming my fingers in sequence upon tables. I mean I like Eliza dressed in a leather bustier with garters and nylons like the next sci-fi perv, but I like my perviness with some meat and purpose. I wasn’t exactly compelled by Echo becoming more and more self-aware. I wanted to find out about the Dollhouse itself and see if Agent Paul Ballard, played by Helo himself, Tamoh Penikitt, would defeat the Dollhouse.
Pretty cut-and-dried. And then Whedon’s leash was taken off by Fox and his patented game-changer came to the fore.
For Whedon fans this is not new. Angel loses his soul to become Angelus and suddenly Buffy the Vampire Slayer reaches modern myth. Darla comes back to haunt Angel and Angel: The Series establishes its haunting epic tone about a soulled vampire’s seemingly hopeless quest for redemption. Firefly went to the Serenity crew’s origins and now not only did you understand this bunch of misfits, you discovered you love them.
In one episode Dollhouse’s scope expanded from the singular to the plural. Ballard found out the urban myth of the house(s) was real, and most painfully everyone might be a potential doll switched on at a moment’s notice, even comely and smitten next door neighbors.
But once Joss was let loose he ventured as far from his humanistic optimistic view as possible. Make no mistake, this show’s concept and theme is dark, unsettling, and wide-reaching. It reminds me more of a paranoia thriller like The Parallax View or the most appropriate example Seconds where you realize that identity-changing comes at a steep price and there is more going on here than at first appears. And that the ultimate goal for the Dollhouse and the powers that be that fund the place may be something even more dehumanizing and blasphemous than what we do know about the place.
And Whedon brilliantly tips us off in a throwaway moment that with every successive episode further underlines this seemingly random point. A gradual stripping away of humanity, potential immortality where you can plug a consciousness in a younger, fitter body. Cheating death but perverting being alive. Perverting the very act of living. In one scene, the head of security is discovered to be a spy and literally has his mind rent from him and plugged into an active doll. The realization on his face as he discovers what’s happened and begs for death gave me my favorite kind of queasy. I wanted more unsettled tummy.
And Fox learned its lesson by using common sense. Dollhouse aired on Fridays and most of the general public make plans away from the television set on Fridays. Bu they fire up the Tivo or DVR if they are compelled. And Dollhouse became very compelling in its second half. So much so that Fox gave Dollhouse what it didn’t give Firefly. A second season.
Dollhouse is one of those shows that sets up a bleak premise and promises more fascinating bleakness as you move along. Things are pitch black and getting blacker, yet you want to see where the journey takes you even if it is a brick wall at full speed. In the Dollhouse heroes make moral compromises and join the bad guys because they feel that in the end righteous justice will be visited upon the evil, and then selling their soul (or identity) will have been worth it. Villains are self-reflective, desperately delusional, and even partake in their evil…and immediately hate themselves if they think about the implications and what it means for humanity. Or themselves.
Ultimately, the Dollhouse is about the fight for individuality and what that means. Can outside forces own your soul? Do you even have one? And if you do, can it be taken from you or does your soul fight back? Can it fight back?
With all of these ideas and a new season, the occasional dressing up of Eliza Dushku in sexy lingerie is a nice little bonus. Even if seeing Echo being further stripped of her dignity and humanity causes a bit of guilty nausea. It’s all part of being a guest at the Dollhouse.
Chuck
Out of all the daisy pushing and Ibsen nods, there was one show I most rooted for to get a second season, so much so I purchased two foot-longs at Subway. I never go to Subway.
But this was a special case and it was for my favorite reason. Because I saw Chuck do the near impossible. It hit its stride.
In recent memory I only know of two shows that have done this: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica.
With Buffy most fans would say the second sesason really established Buffy’s pedigree, but I would argue that the third season actually cemented it because it was epic and complex in scope and it didn’t rely on what unfortunately has become a fall-back, melodramatic cliché with doomed forbidden lovers from two different worlds. Thank you so fucking much, Twilight.
Galactica for me really delivered with the Pegasus arc. Here’s where I got a clear sense of how far Ron Moore and David Eick were going to go. The New Caprica stuff just deepened these layers, but still props for making viewers see both sides of the issue something Galactica excelled at.
Chuck didn’t have such lofty ambitions, but try telling creators Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak that. It wasn’t that type of show. And, I’ll be honest, if Chuck didn’t have the second half of the season, I probably wouldn’t care if it was renewed or not. But it did and a funny thing happened. All the things it wasn’t supposed to be (lofty, ambitious) it became. And the result was gloriously compelling.
Tomorrow (or thereabouts): You’re a good man, Chuck Bartowski and why you can only be Heroes just for one season.
TallGent
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