Sunday, March 8, 2009
Shall I Go Now?
Dollhouse: Gray HourSeason 1, Episode 4
Considering that after three of the four episodes of this series, I would have been interested in wiping my memory of the episodes, should I just give up now?I ask that question knowing that, "Hey you watch Heroes, so there's no real reason to complain in this case, right?" and accepting that being a complete Whedon-whore, I'm dragging myself back incessantly. I figure I'd offer our reader(s) the chance to talk me out of this masochistic endeavor. But the fact of the matter, I did watch the show and this week's efforts again fall so short of expectations that it's just sad now. And we're not talking about the super-high expectations I have for a show from Whedon. We're talking about expectations for any type of normal non-crap television. Continue with the spoilers if you dare below the cut.
Hey it's Saturday night! Time for Echo to dress like a hooker, not to exploit Elisha Dushku (oh, no, never... not on a Joss Whedon show), not in a desperate grab for ratings (Fox?!... oh, no never), but as part of terribly developed plan within a plan. Doesn't it say there's something inherently wrong with the premise of your show if all the engagements need to have glitches to be interesting (and I use that term as loosely as possible)?
If the Dollhouse is really a multimillion dollar private enterprise that can avoid, alter and control the upper echelons of government and organized crime... should something really be going wrong every week?
On the plus-side this week we see Echo and Sierra (played by Dichen Lachman) both get loaded with the same character. It isn't a very positive sign that Sierra has in the last two weeks shown a significant more amount of range in her roles than the main character. Is it possible that Echo is playing the wrong parts just to get more screen time?
Agent Ballard and the Dollhouse plant Victor (Enver Gjokaj) get a couple scenes together and the main questions are WHY the Dollhouse continues to antagonize Ballard for no reason. Let's face it the absolute only connections to the organization he has is a picture of Echo (probably sent by Alpha) and the contact that they give him. Did they learn nothing from the Syndicate's failed attempt to partner Mulder and Krycek? If an opponents only source of information is... YOU... don't interact with him. C'mon people, it's Conspiracy 101!
I haven't talked many of the other employees of the Dollhouse like Topher (the tech guy played by Fran Krantz) because they just aren't all that interesting. As long as they're cogs in a machine that the writers and director are determined to keep shrouded with hidden bosses, hidden enemies and no real purpose besides turning a profit, I honestly couldn't care less. Well besides the fact it's nice the teacher from Rushmore found more work. The fact that Topher is an evil a Xander rip-off doesn't help his case.
I just don't want to watch entire hour-long episodes to get a couple scenes of BATTLESTAR! and a waste of Handler Guy. Oh, and three seconds of a scene that shows Echo pulling more shadows of a personality into her tabula rasa state. If the creators really wanted to have a slow burn on that plot, they should have built the show around more interesting characters for the first few episodes and had some more interesting assignments early on to fill the background of the show.
Final score: D-
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment