Trick r Treat

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Rating 2


Written and directed by Michael Dougherty

Starring Dylan Baker (Steven Wilkins), Anna Paquin (Laurie), Britt McKillip (Macy), Leslie Bibb (Emma), Tahmoh Penikett (Henry), Samm Todd (Rhonda), Jean-Luc Bilodeau (Schrader), Isabelle Deluce (Sara), Alberto Ghisi (Chip), Lauren Lee Smith (Danielle), Connor Christopher Levins (Billy Wilkins), Christine Willes (Mrs Henderson) and Brett Kelly (Charlie)


A series of bizarre and bloody events occur on Halloween, each one in some way connected.

...


‘Trick r Treat’ was written and directed by Michael Dougherty and produced by Bryan Singer. Dougherty co-wrote ‘X2’ and ‘Superman Returns’, two big-budget blockbuster films directed by Singer. The film, which had a $12 million production budget, was originally scheduled for release to coincide with Halloween 2007, but following a number of isolated one-off screenings from December 2007 onwards it was eventually released to DVD in October 2009. It has an 86% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 21 reviews.

The film is an anthology of several Halloween stories, each one in some way linked to the others. It has an almost dreamlike quality to it and plays like a kind of grisly comic fairytale. It is very cleverly put together, with some nice touches and attention to detail, and it has a recognisable and likeable cast. Such an inventive horror film with touches of black comedy set around the Halloween holiday should have been a real treat, but for some reason I just didn’t take to it. One reviewer, Bill Gibron, writing for PopMatters, suggests that, “A second viewing is definitely needed before confirming its almost masterpiece status.”

There already is a Halloween masterpiece, of course, and it’s called ‘Halloween’. All other Halloween-based horror films are destined to be compared to that John Carpenter classic. I don’t think this one compares, but perhaps I need to give it that second viewing sometime.

Review posted 15 November 2009


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Dollhouse: Epitaph One (season one, episode thirteen)

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Rating 2½


Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon, from a story by Joss Whedon

Directed by David Solomon

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo/Caroline), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Dr Claire Saunders/Whiskey), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Felicia Day (Mag), Adair Tishler (Iris), Chris William Martin (Griff), Zack Ward (Zone), Janina Gavankar (Lynn) and Warren Sweeney (Mr Miller)


The year is 2019 and Los Angeles is a post-Apocalyptic wasteland. A group of insurgents stumble across the abandoned but intact underground Dollhouse facility and begin to piece together the truth that the technology used in the Dollhouse became corrupted when it was allowed out of its controlled environment into the public domain and that it was then used by the Military as a way of creating instant armies, resulting in chaos and devastation.

…


The story goes something like this. It was announced that ‘Epitaph One’, the thirteenth episode of the first season of ‘Dollhouse’ would not be broadcast by the Fox network in the US. The reason subsequently given for this was that the network purchased thirteen episodes and these included ‘Echo’, the original pilot episode that was not broadcast and, instead, replaced by ‘Ghost’. Chunks of footage from that original pilot were eventually used in other episodes. However, so it seems, the Fox production company was required by contract to supply thirteen episodes for international distribution and include thirteen episodes on the DVD. Both Joss Whedon and consulting producer Tim Minear decided it was not appropriate to include ‘Echo’, so a new thirteenth episode ‘Epitaph One’ was made, with a lower production budget than the episodes that preceded it. This episode was broadcast by the Sci-Fi Channel in the UK as the concluding episode of the first season.

My first instinct having watched the episode was that Joss Whedon must have thought the show was not going to be renewed for a second season and used this additional episode as a way of providing a novel conclusion to the story, one that would undoubtedly give fans of the show plenty of material for discussion. This is pure speculation on my part, but if this was the case it would seem to have backfired because the Fox network has purchased another season. Alternatively, this episode might be an end point towards which the show will now take us in the season or seasons to come. I don’t believe this. The episode explains to us exactly how we get to this point and to do so again in protracted fashion would be a pointless journey with little or no dramatic resonance. It could simply be one of a number of different possible future scenarios. It is, after all, called ‘Epitaph One’. Or maybe it is just intended to be a kind of stand alone episode that will not necessarily feature in future storylines. The point is made that it does open up a number of different possibilities and perhaps this is where one of Joss Whedon’s great strengths as a storyteller lies. ‘Dollhouse’ in itself is not a complex narrative, but Whedon does have a knack of creating interesting tangled webs out of simple concepts. Whatever the full ins and outs of the reasons for the existence of ‘Epitaph One’, it has been the subject of some discussion amongst fans of Whedon’s oeuvre – and ‘Dollhouse’ has not as yet been universally taken to the hearts of all those who make up his core fan-base.

I disliked ‘Omega’, the twelfth and official concluding episode of season one, quite intensely. Although it was certainly not the weakest episode of the season, it seemed to sum up for me everything that I have disliked about the series so far. Although it has clearly improved following the shaky early episodes and it has a premise that I can fully understand some viewers becoming wrapped up in, I simply have not enjoyed it. I don’t find the premise interesting or thought-provoking enough to counteract my frequent loathing of the style of presentation, not that I struggled to get a grip on the sub-texts here. I had not planned to watch ‘Epitaph One’, but it was included in the “Watch This” section of the television guide in The Guardian newspaper, which I just happened to read a few minutes before the programme was about to start. It said, “It’s got to be one of the weirdest ways to end a first season… If you’ve had your doubts, this just might convince you to come back for more.” On the spur of the moment, I decided I would watch it, which perhaps suggests that I have not found the series quite as unappealing as I have claimed; I don’t know.

‘Epitaph One’ looks like every other post-Apocalyptic dystopian type television episode and film from ‘Bladerunner’ onwards. Rightly or wrongly, I was immediately put in mind of ‘Imposter’, the 2002 Gary Sinise film based on a Philip K Dick story. I am sure there are other better comparisons, but I am not an expert about these things.

Once the insurgents (if that is the right term for them) have found their way into the Dollhouse we begin to learn, through a series of retrieved memories, what happened. We observe a series of brief flashbacks to the regular cast of characters in the dying days of the Dollhouse when the technology is out in the open and out of control. There is nothing new here in the idea that technology in the wrong hands, particularly the hands of the Military, is a highly dangerous thing, especially when the motivation of those developing and owning it is greed for money and power and prestige. The concept of Topher Brink as a kind of Oppenheimer-like figure, an egotist who subsequently comes to agonise about the evil he has unleashed in the name of science worked better than I was inclined to suspect and this was certainly one of the more successfully presented episodes.

The episode makes good use of one of two regular characters, including a return for the old chief of security Laurence Dominic. I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the absence most of the time of Echo was not, from my point of view, in any way detrimental. In fact, I rather suspect the opposite is true, which perhaps is a clue to my generally very negative reaction to previous episodes. There is clearly a problem if I am not responding to the main character. Once again, as has been the case throughout, I was very impressed by Amy Acker. Her performance in this first season has been a highlight for me. Also amongst the cast here is Felicia Day, who featured in the seventh and final season of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ and also worked with Joss Whedon in his Internet musical ‘Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog’ (which I have not seen and remain somewhat vague about).

Sadly, even though I generally responded much more positively to ‘Epitaph One’ than I had done to ‘Omega’, I found the ending exceedingly cheesy and all it succeeded in doing was remind me why I have not been impressed with the series so far. Once the episode was over and I began to give it more thought, I found myself picking holes in this episode and concluded that it wasn’t as good as I was perhaps going to give it credit for.

Does ‘Epitaph One’ convince me to come back for more? I don’t think so. ‘Dollhouse’ definitely has something, but, whether through pre-existing prejudice or not, that something does not seem to be for me.

Review posted 13 August 2009



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Dollhouse: Omega (season one, episode twelve)

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Rating 0

Created by Joss Whedon

Written and directed by Tim Minear

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Dr Claire Saunders), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Alan Tudyk (Alpha), Angel Desai (Sophie Alvarez), Ashley Johnson (Wendy) and Mark Sheppard (Tanaka)

Alpha has infiltrated the Dollhouse and he escapes, taking Echo with him, also taking all of her old imprints. Paul Ballard is made an offer by Adelle DeWitt to work with Boyd Langton and help them to locate and rescue Echo.

...


There was a gap of thirty days between episodes eight and nine because I struggled to build up any enthusiasm to continue watching the show. I rather forced myself to watch the next two after that, but this time around, with just this last episode to go (not counting the thirteenth episode ‘Epitaph One’ – broadcast in the UK, but restricted to the DVD in the US), I was in danger of giving up altogether and not bothering to watch it. In the end, I had to really make myself to do it, two weeks after watching episode eleven. Clearly, I went into it with a biased outlook and there is no doubt that I am now reviewing my attitude towards the show, rather than the episodes themselves. I know this, but the fact remains that I simply have not enjoyed ‘Dollhouse’ very much and, whatever its merits, I really disliked this closing episode.

The story seemed to run out of steam before it even began and I found the final 25 minutes or so particularly excruciating to watch. The fractured narrative is now a clichéd and overused trick and the various twists and turns were so blatantly obvious and easy to guess in advance that I actually found them offensive. If I didn’t know better, I would think that Joss Whedon and writer/director Tim Minear were deliberately taking the piss out of their fan-base. I haven’t liked the acting of Dichen Lachman throughout the season and nothing changes here, although I wonder if it is the writing of her character rather than her acting per se. She wasn’t around for very long in this episode, so it didn’t really matter. Sadly, I thought Eliza Dushku’s performance was rotten much of the time, although generally speaking (the tenth episode aside) I think she has been okay in previous episodes, despite some reviews elsewhere to the contrary.

At one point, Adelle DeWitt says to Paul Ballard, “Yes, I thought that might wipe the smirk off your face.” I don’t know how she could tell, since that smirk seemed to be his default facial expression throughout all twelve episodes. To be fair, as annoying as I have found many of the characters from episode to episode, there are a some here that, over time, might develop in interesting ways - and Paul Ballard could be one of them.

I have not been impressed at all with some of the dialogue, but the very worst of it has been saved for this episode, including the truly horrible line, spoken by Echo, “I have 38 brains and not one of them thinks you can sign a contract to be a slave, especially now that we have a black president.”

Was the use of the Beck/Jon Brion version of ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime’ a deliberate nod to the obvious influence of ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’? I hope it was this and not just an indication that the show is so bereft of ideas that it is already resorting to becoming a pale carbon copy of its influences.

I struggled with ‘Dollhouse’ from the very start and although it did improve after the first few episodes, I found the final few increasingly annoying and difficult to watch. I didn’t find the premise particularly interesting or particularly clever. It certainly wasn’t difficult to comprehend and while I could follow the subtext with ease, I simply didn’t enjoy the episodes anywhere near enough to be bothered to give this much thought. Clearly, though, anyone who enjoyed the show and found the premise interesting would have got a lot more out of it than I did. My opinion is no more objective and trustworthy than the most zealous of Joss Whedon fans.

There is nothing particularly wrong with the show. I just don’t like it and I think it is a long ways short of the brilliance of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, Joss Whedon’s most obviously iconic work.

Viewing figures for ‘Dollhouse’ during its run on the Fox network in the US were not particularly impressive. The opening episode, broadcast on 13 February 2009, was watched by 4.7 million viewers. By the time of ‘Omega’, broadcast on 8 May 2009, this had dropped to 2.75 million. However, Fox announced rather unexpectedly that it had commissioned a second season of thirteen episodes, to premiere in September 2009. This is good news for fans of the show and Joss Whedon generally, but I cannot imagine at the moment that I will be watching.

Review posted 10 August 2009



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Dollhouse: Briar Rose (season one, episode eleven)

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Rating 1½

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Jane Espenson

Directed by Dwight Little

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Dr Claire Saunders), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Liza Lapira (Ivy), Aisha Hinds (Loomis), Hannah Leigh Dworkin (Susan), Judith Moreland (Renee) and Alan Tudyk (Stephen Kepler)


Echo is imprinted to help a young girl called Susan who is in a foster care programme. Paul Ballard tells Mellie (aka November) that he is leaving and then follows her when she is taken back to the Dollhouse, finally discovering its location. He goes to Stephen Kepler, an environmental architect who worked on the building when it was first being designed for construction, and forces him to help to gain entry into the “invisible” underground portion of it. An encoded memory stick is delivered to the Dollhouse for Laurence Dominic. Victor is imprinted with his memories to obtain the password to open it. Adelle DeWitt had supposed it to be from the NSA, but it is actually from Alpha, the rogue Doll. Sierra is imprinted with the memories of an FBI forensics expert and dispatched to Tuscan to investigate further.

...


Oh good, another boring fight scene. This one is between Paul Ballard and Boyd Langton and takes place inside the Dollhouse after Ballard has gained entry into the supposedly super top secret establishment, achieving this extraordinary feat with next to no difficulty whatsoever. Perhaps they allowed it to happen, although I can think of no reason for this at the moment. I have to admit that I was paying very little attention during this episode, constantly unable to keep my attention from wandering elsewhere. I found the whole thing decidedly uninvolving.

The episode opens with a metaphor, providing a parallel between the fairytale ‘Briar Rose’ (the Brothers Grimm variant of ‘Sleeping Beauty’) and what we are about to witness. It is delivered in such a heavy-handed and leaden manner that it is tempting to assume it must be joke. In fact, the writers (or writer, if Jane Espenson, who wrote some excellent episodes of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, is responsible alone for this) clearly could not even be bothered to think of a credible reason why Echo would be imprinted to help the girl suffering from traumatic experiences in her short life. So we have the ludicrous and wholly unconvincing conceit that it is the altruistic endeavour of Topher Brink, approved and authorised by Adelle DeWitt. It is never explained what Echo’s qualifications are supposed to be or how she comes to be working / helping out in the young children's care unit.

There is a neat twist towards the end when we discover that Alpha has infiltrated the Dollhouse and we encounter him for the first time. It held my interest for about 20 seconds, but then I lost interest again, perhaps because by this stage I had become increasingly irritated by the performance of Alan Tudyk, who had previously been excellent in Joss Whedon’s short-lived but much loved television series ‘Firefly’. Tudyk is undoubtedly a very talented actor, but I didn’t enjoy his performance here at all, although perhaps it is a reaction to the episode itself rather than his acting.

In one of the early episodes, the third one I think, I had guessed that Claire Saunders, the Dollhouse doctor, would turn out to be a Doll. Although not yet confirmed, I suspect I am right. There is a moment in ‘Briar Rose’ when Victor (imprinted as Laurence Dominic) refers to her as Whiskey, although there is a horribly clumsy piece of writing that attempts to deflect attention away from this, or perhaps direct us to it.

There is now just one episode to go, not counting the unaired and allegedly superior pilot episode and / or the thirteenth episode, one that was not broadcast by the FOX network, but was commissioned, I think, specifically for the DVD box set. I do not have access to these two episodes and, such is my rather negative response to the episodes I have seen, I do not feel that I am missing out on anything.

Review posted 26 July 2009



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Dollhouse: Haunted (season one, episode ten)

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Rating 1½

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Jane Espenson, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon

Directed by Elodie Keene

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Ian Anthony Dale (Jack Dunston), Gregg Henry (William Bashford), Jordan Bridges (Nicolas Bashford), Aisha Hinds (Loomis) and Rhea Seehorn (Jocelyn Bashford)


When Margaret Bashford, a close friend of Adelle DeWitt, dies, apparently in a tragic riding accident, her memories are imprinted into Echo to allow her to visit her own funeral and, so it turns out, investigate her murder. Back in the Dollhouse, Topher Brink is allowed to imprint memories into Sierra, supposedly for an important test of the system, but actually to create a friend he can share his birthday with. Paul Ballard attempts to find out the real identity of November/Mellie, getting an old friend and colleague to run her fingerprints on the FBI database, but the record is wiped the moment it is accessed.

...


I was, there is no doubt, biased coming into this series, but I did try to keep an open mind. I suspect I am more biased now, simply because I don’t like it very much and perhaps because I think that, despite some unenthusiastic reviews early on, it has been critically over-rated, something of a trend with Joss Whedon’s post-Buffy work.

The story of Margaret Bashford returning to her palatial home and stables and discovering some unpleasant home truths about the way her two adult children think of her is so clichéd that it would be tempting to assume the writers had their tongues firmly in their cheeks if the whole thing were not so determinedly flat-footed. The murder mystery is taken straight out of an episode of ‘Murder, She Wrote’ or the ‘Father Dowling Mysteries’, without the silly but not dislikeable verve of those shows. I have come to the conclusion that the writers must have an ongoing bet to see which one of them can include the most boring and unrealistic fight scene in their episode(s).

I am fast losing interest in Paul Ballard, who is going through all kinds of two-dimensional angst because, now that he knows that Mellie is actually an Active of the Dollhouse, something that she doesn’t know, he is turning into a client of the Dollhouse by proxy. As for the storyline in this episode revolving around Topher, it wasn’t interesting and I wasn’t interested.

There have been episodes in this first season that I think are worse than ‘Haunted’ and there have been episodes that I found a whole lot more objectionable, but this was such a mediocre and uninspiring 45 minutes or so. I got nothing out of it at all – I couldn’t even build up the energy to dislike it. However, it was the first time I came away thinking that Eliza Dushku’s performance was detrimentally below-par, having previously thought that the criticism of her acting in ‘Dollhouse’ by some critics has been a little unfair.

Review posted 24 July 2009



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Dollhouse: Spy in the House of Love (season one, episode nine)

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WARNING: Some spoilers

Rating 1¾

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Andrew Chambliss

Directed by David Solomon

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Amy Acker (Dr Claire Saunders), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Valerie Cruz (Selena Ramirez) and Liza Lapira (Ivy)


Adelle DeWitt, who heads up the Dollhouse, says she has been called to headquarters and leaves Laurence Dominic, the head of security, in charge in her absence. Victor is programme and dispatched from the Dollhouse on a regular “Lonely Hearts” assignment, even though Dr Claire Saunders has warned about repeatedly programming the Dolls with the same imprints, but the client is not who the Dollhouse think it is. November is reprogrammed as Mellie and returned to Paul Ballard, the former FBI agent on the trail of the Dollhouse. She has been secretly imprinted with a secondary programme and tells Ballard that she is an Active in the Dollhouse. Topher Brink discovers a small micro-chip in his elaborate equipment that could be used to corrupt and change the programming of the Dolls. He is unable to contact DeWitt and reports his findings to Dominic. Sierra is programmed to infiltrate the National Security Agency (NSA) building to obtain evidence of the identity of the spy. Echo once more shows signs of an evolving state by asking Topher to be programmed so that she can help, which allows her to reveal who the spy is.

...


Having decided that, despite some fairly major reservations, I was going to watch the whole of the first season of ‘Dollhouse’, there has been a gap of thirty days between episodes eight and nine, not because I wasn’t able to spare the time to watch this next episode, but simply because I could not build up any enthusiasm to do so. This isn’t a good thing and is more evidence that, whatever the quality and merits of the show, I am just not enjoying it very much. Episodes seven and eight had suggested definite improvement, but despite a few interesting moments, I found this latest episode extremely annoying and I had originally considered giving it a rating lower than the one I finally went with.

The episode opens with Echo returning from an assignment as a dominatrix. There is some fairly uninspired, unenlightening and unpersuasive talk about love and pain being the same thing and I rather suspect we are intended to read some kind of quasi-feminist subtext in here somewhere. To me, it just played out as nothing more than a lame excuse to have Eliza Dushku dressed up in bondage gear. Things do improve with the events unfolding inside the Dollhouse, but equally they continue to go downhill outside of it. I found the super-spy/espionage sequence when Sierra infiltrates the NSA building utterly awful. It was clichéd and silly and had all the suspense and excitement of being slapped in the face with a wet haddock. Even more tedious than this was the fencing match between Adelle DeWitt and Victor (programmed as “Roger”, some kind of super-smooth lover with a decidedly dodgy English accent – at least, I think it was supposed to be English). My finger was hovering over the off button on the remote. Undoubtedly, the revelation that DeWitt is secretly a client of the Dollhouse was supposed to surprise us and these scenes, in which she displays more emotion and feelings than her usual icily calculating and reserved manner, were intended to add more layers to her character. I guess I don’t care enough, because I didn’t register any surprise and it didn’t interest me.

The silliest moment is kept back until the very end when DeWitt is shot in her lower left side and acts as if she has just received a barely noticeably paper cut. A few stitches later, without an anaesthetic, she is perfectly fine again. If it turns out that she is, in fact, some kind of synthetic cyberbot this will explain it!

The structure of this episode, moving back and forth within the story and slowly revealing the imprints of the various Dolls, each one in turn but not necessarily in sequence, felt more hackneyed than clever to me, although I am sure it was supposed to be the other way around. It is executed with some skill and there is quality here, but nowhere near as much inventiveness as it would like to think – or like us to think.

Review posted 21 July 2009



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Dollhouse: Needs (season one, episode eight)

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Rating 2¾


Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Tracy Bellomo

Directed by Félix Enríquez Alcalá

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Amy Acker (Dr Claire Saunders), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (November), Teddy Sears (Mike), Emma Bell (Tango) and Angel Desai (Sophie Alvarez)


Echo, Sierra, Victor and November (previously known to us as Mellie) awake with aspects of their true personalities somehow restored, although most of their memories are still just out of reach. They plot their escape from the Dollhouse, but at the last minute Echo stays behind, wanting to expose what the Dollhouse is doing and free the other Actives. Once the others have escaped from the complex, November goes in search of her daughter, while Sierra goes to confront the man who was responsible for her ending up in the Dollhouse, taking Victor with her. Elsewhere, Paul Ballard has a dream in which both Caroline (Echo) and Mellie (November) appear and realises that the Dollhouse has bugged his apartment.

...


‘Needs’, while I was watching it, put me in mind of the ‘Cube’ films and afterwards I thought of old episodes of ‘The Prisoner’ in which Number Six attempted to escape the Village, only to end up back where he started. It’s a very well constructed episode, certainly the most impressive one for me so far, but I still came away from it not caring as much as perhaps I should have done. Early on, we discover that the restored memories and successful escape have been orchestrated by Adelle DeWitt and while I momentarily wondered where this was leading, almost immediately I decided I simply could not be bothered to try to guess and just waited for the revelation to come. When it did, I will admit that it came as a surprise and it was quite clever, but it still did not arouse my interest in the show to any greater degree than my current state of slightly disinterested curiosity. I might have decided to stick with it until the end of the season, but I don’t feel any sense of anticipation about what is coming. This is a pity, really, because the show is clearly getting a lot better after a decidedly shaky start, as has been stated elsewhere.

Early on during the episode Laurence Dominic, the head of security, tells the minders that they should avoid becoming too emotionally attached to their Actives and should, instead, think of them as “pets”. However, we later discover that Adelle DeWitt would appear to have an even colder and morally indefensible attitude towards them and any earlier suggestions that she had an idealistic if skewed take on what the Dollhouse does would appear to be entirely inaccurate. Topher Brink, when confronted by Caroline/Echo, argues that he is just the science guy and therefore cannot be held accountable for what the Dollhouse does; the common argument too often put forward that scientists are not responsible for the appropriation of their scientific breakthroughs for purposes other than good.

I wasn’t very keen on the performance of Dichen Lachman here, although I am not sure that I know why. Once again, though, I was rather impressed by Amy Acker.

Review posted 28 June 2009



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Dollhouse: Echoes (season one, episode seven)

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Rating 2¼


Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain

Directed by James A Contner

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Brett Claywell (Matt), Mehcad Brooks (Sam Jennings), Josh Cooke (Leo Carpenter), Josh Fadem (Owen Johnson), Octavia Spencer (Professor Janack) and Philip Casnoff (Clive Ambrose)


Clive Ambrose, a high ranking executive in the Rossum Corporation, the world’s biggest drug company and a major funder of the Dollhouse, approaches Adelle DeWitt for help when an experimental mind-control drug finds its way onto a college campus, resulting in the violent death of a student named Owen Johnson. All Actives are programmed to work on the assignment, posing as NSA and CDC agents, except Echo, who is already on an assignment as the fantasy figure of a regular client. When she sees a television news report from the Rossum Building she experiences an immediate compulsion to go there and momentary flickers of her former life begin to flash through her memory.

...


‘Echoes’ contains several comic scenes, with horribly unfunny lines like, “I could eat that word,” which, were I to find the prospect of an extremely painful haemorrhoidectomy humorous, might have made me laugh. I didn’t laugh. I thought these scenes, in which we observed previously humourless characters like Adelle DeWitt and Laurence Dominic behaving with drug-induced childishness, completely missed the mark. Presumably, more humour was intended by showing us Topher Brink behaving in exactly the same manner whether under the effects of the drug or not, but this simply acted to heighten the realisation that this character is becoming increasingly irritating without the counter-balance of becoming in any way more interesting.

Ignoring this and the ridiculous outfit Eliza Dushku is required to wear (making Echo a clichéd fantasy figure of clients of the Dollhouse so that Dushku can presumably be a fantasy figure of viewers of the show is becoming increasingly wearisome), ‘Echoes’ certainly pushes the story along a bit further. It has some merit and is cleverly constructed, if a little obvious. However, the whole ‘giant multi-national pharmaceutical corporation acting in a dangerous unethical manner that threatens us all’ conspiracy angle reached its apex at the time of ‘The X Files’. It has become rather stale and over-familiar since then and it is all too tempting to make a negative comparison to that show. ‘Dollhouse’ is no more convincing than ‘Fringe’.

In one scene in the episode Adelle DeWitt tells Topher Brink that she believes in what the Dollhouse is doing and it would appear that she means so in almost an idealistic way. Buying into the Dollhouse because of the power or influence or money is one thing, but it seems inconceivable that anyone could have any idealistic view of its function. Echo, to use her as an example, is more or less a human sex toy, constantly farmed out to be violated by clients, something that is an irrefutable fact, irrespective of how she is treated by them. She has no control over what happens to her. This aspect of the show’s premise is certainly its most interesting feature and I do wonder how it will expand on and argue the apparent idealism of Adelle DeWitt.

The misfiring comedy aside, this was one of the better episodes so far and probably a match for ‘Man On The Street’, which has been identified as one of the high points of the season, although I am not altogether convinced that it is not over-rated, admittedly having only watched it once. In the end, apart from anything else, ‘Echoes’ is undoubtedly a lot better than the previous episode written by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, the risible ‘Gray Hour’.

Review posted 21 June 2009



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Dollhouse: Man on the Street (season one, episode six)

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Rating 2¼


Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Joss Whedon

Directed by David Straiton

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Kevin Kilner (Joe Hearn), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Liza Lapira (Ivy), Mark Sheppard (Tanaka), Aisha Hinds (Loomis) and Patton Oswalt (Joel Mynor)


Paul Ballard suspects that Joel Mynor, a very rich and successful businessman, is a client of the Dollhouse and interrupts an engagement involving Echo. Sierra starts acting strangely and it is discovered that she has had sexual intercourse inside the Dollhouse. Suspicion points to another Active, Victor, although it should be impossible for an Active who has been de-programmed to act in this way. Ballard continues to get closer to his next door neighbour Mellie and confides in her about his investigation.

...


Many fans have pointed to ‘Man on the Street’ as the moment when ‘Dollhouse’ makes a giant leap forward and begins to genuinely compare to Joss Whedon’s best work. Whedon himself has pinpointed it as an important step up in quality in this first season. It is well done and has many of the hallmarks of a typical Joss Whedon scripted episode, with the action interspersed with soundbites of (actors playing) people on the street, interviewees in a television news exposé, expressing a variety of different opinions about the Dollhouse, whether it exists or not and how they view the service it is alleged to provide to its clients. I didn’t really engage with this, although I guess it is a clever enough conceit.

Paul Ballard gets much closer to the Dollhouse in this episode, actually encountering Echo (or Caroline, as he knows her) and also getting to interrogate, after a fashion, one of the clients, with an excellent performance by the stand-up comedian Patton Oswalt as Joel Mynor. This was all fine, except that it indulged a tedious fight scene early on when Ballard takes on several of Mynor’s bodyguards and security team. However, this paled into insignificance when compared to the truly dreadful fight scene involving Ballard and Echo later in the episode. It was utterly ridiculous and embarrassingly asinine and it went on and on and on for a mind-numbingly interminable length of time. Maybe this would not have bothered me so much if I was not already somewhat less than impressed with the show generally, but it definitely took this episode down several notches for me.

Could it be that this fight scene was supposed to be comic in nature and its setting, in the kitchen of a Chinese takeaway, alerts us that it is a parody of martial arts films? Maybe I am just not in on the joke, although if there is any possibility at all that this is what was intended, which I don’t really believe, it would make it even more awful.

A twist involving one of the regular characters, occurring near to the end of the episode, did not come as a surprise to me. I had already guessed this. Equally, I also knew the identity of the person responsible for having sex with Sierra before it was revealed, although in this case I think perhaps I must have inadvertently read about it at some point previously. The character Topher Brink is starting to become increasingly annoying, without becoming any more interesting.

Once again I found some of the dialogue clunky. In one scene Paul and Mellie have just had sex (he, of course, gives her an orgasm) and he says, jokingly, “So... can I borrow a cup of sugar?”, to which she replies, “I don’t think I’ve got any sugar left.” This is quite a typical Joss Whedon line, but it had me cringing.

I cannot deny that this was a good episode, the fight scenes excepted, and the unfolding story is beginning to throw up some interesting twists and turns, but while I can watch it, I don’t really care, which I would think rather defeats the point of it all.

Review posted 14 June 2009



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Dollhouse: True Believer (season one, episode five)

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Rating 2


Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Tim Minear

Directed by Allan Kroeker

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Miracle Laurie (Mellie), Brian Bloom (Jonas Sparrow), David Alpay (Seth), Brad Hunt (Jesse), Rebecca Field (Kris), Aisha Hinds (Loomis) and Mark Totty (ATF Agent Lilly)


Echo is made (temporarily) blind and implanted with some kind of imperceptible high-tec camera and sent in to infiltrate a religious sect in Arizona as part of an ATF operation to gain access to the cult’s compound and find out what they are really up to. FBI agent Paul Ballard continues to try to identify the mysterious young woman named “Caroline” in the photograph he was sent and now receives a disc containing a piece of film of Caroline.

...


This fifth episode was a vast improvement on the previous two, or at least I did not find it anywhere near as irritating and dislikeable as those episodes. However, I still struggled with it, perhaps because my generally negative reaction to the show so far is making me increasingly biased against it. While I would be hard pressed to admit to having enjoyed the episode, I certainly did not find it as tedious as previous ones.

For once, Echo was not called on to be full-on fantasy fodder and that made a pleasant change. The excellent and often insightful Charlie Brooker, writing a negative review of the show for the Guardian newspaper, said, “You’re supposed to want to screw the lead character, because the lead character is the impossibly gorgeous Eliza Dushku.” This comment caused some reaction when fans of Joss Whedon discussed it amongst themselves, with Brooker being accused of, amongst other things, being anti-feminist. That is one thing I do not think he can be accused of, although I don’t especially agree with what he writes here. However, I did very quickly get profoundly bored in previous episodes watching Echo riding a motorcycle very fast while looking hot, huntin’ and fishin’ and screwin’ while looking very hot, being hunted while looking very hot, breaking into a high-tec vault while looking very hot, ad infinitum. As Gareth McLean had suggested, it was teen boy fantasy fodder and I am obviously attracted to other forms of fantasy fodder.

Eliza Dushku’s acting has been commented on a great deal, with the suggestion that she doesn’t have the necessary range needed to successfully pull off this role. Lucy Mangan, also writing in the Guardian, in her weekly ‘Cable Girl’ article, was generally favourable towards the show, but asked, “Can Eliza Dushku act? As the alternative vampire slayer Faith, she was always the weakest link in Buffy – an ass-kicking sexbomb, yes, but in scenes that required her to do more than scissor-kick, toss her hair or undulate suggestively, she was agonising to watch.” I personally don’t think Dushku has been a problem so far, even though she has been hamstrung by some terrible writing, or at least very up and down writing, and horribly hackneyed storylines.

To return to episode five, we were invited to note the parallels between the Dollhouse and the religious sect. It wasn’t exactly subtle. In both cases, people have their individual identities taken away and are programmed to behave and conform to the wishes and demands of those whose motivations are unclear and highly suspect. I got the symbolism of Boyd Langton carrying Echo out of the burning building at the end, although it was surely hardly very helpful to the apparent super-secrecy of the Dollhouse that he walked straight towards television news teams and camera crews.

I noted the various twists, as I have done in all the previous episodes to date, although I still struggle to build up any great interest in them. The Dollhouse is a hotbed of intrigue and double-dealing, but the show is still not interesting enough to me to care about it all that much at the moment. Part of the problem, apart from the style of the show, which just isn’t my thing, is that I have next to no interest in any of the characters. On the plus side, I have been impressed by the performance of Amy Acker in a recurring role that is not guaranteed to continue into season two, because of possible budget constraints, although I believe that Joss Whedon wants her back.

‘True Believer’ was okay, if still not convincing enough to me to indicate that this is anywhere near the quality of Whedon’s best work. However, for all my complaints, I am still watching, so there must be something here that is keeping me onboard.

Review posted 7 June 2009



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Dollhouse: Gray Hour (season one, episode four)

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Rating ½


Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft

Directed by Rod Hardy

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Enver Gjokaj (Victor), Lisa Lapira (Ivy), Andrew Bowen (Scott), Anson Mount (Vitas) and Mark Ivanir (Cyril)


Echo is programmed to lead a daring art heist, but her programming is wiped remotely before she has completed her mission, leaving her helpless and putting the Dollhouse in danger of being exposed, unless she can be rescued or eliminated.

...


In his review of the third episode, ‘Stage Fright’, for the Guardian newspaper, Gareth McLean wrote, “The jury’s out on whether Dollhouse is an intriguing interrogation of the nature of identity or just teen-boy fantasy fodder.” To me, it feels like the latter pretending to be the former, or perhaps it is simply trying too hard to have its cake and eat it – or maybe it is neither. Whatever it is, I am enjoying it less and less and since I did not exactly enjoy it in the first place that is quite some feat.

I had hoped and expected that the third episode would be the low point and that the quality would now begin to improve, but I disliked this fourth episode intensely. As with the previous episodes, the twists in the story proved to be a conceit that singularly failed to impress me and left me feeling bored and increasingly irritated. More so than that, it was just badly done, whether as a result of the writing or the direction, or maybe a mixture of the two.

Once Echo had been remotely wiped, Sierra was programmed to become the person that Echo should have been, but to no purpose whatsoever. She got to be smug and condescending and made a phone call to Echo that achieved nothing, before having her personality wiped again. When Echo and her accomplices found themselves locked in the vault they were, so we were encouraged to believe, trapped with next to no possibility of escape and yet Echo, who was supposedly completely helpless, was ultimately able to do just that, escape without trace with an absolute minimum of effort. This is just two examples of what I can only describe as the shoddy quality of the episode, which was as shallow as it was slick.

I probably should give up on the show now, because whatever its merits, I am simply not getting anything out of it at all.

Sarah Fain and Elizabeth Craft, who previously worked with Joss Whedon on ‘Angel’, were the creators / executive producers of ‘The Women’s Murder Club’, a short-lived series based on characters created by the writer James Patterson, which I did enjoy, even though it never quite gelled during its brief thirteen episode run.

Review posted 6 June 2009



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Dollhouse: Stage Fright (season one, episode three)

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Rating 1

Created by Joss Whedon

Written by Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon

Directed by David Solomon

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders), Enver Gjokaj (Lubov / Victor), Kevin Kilner (Joe Hearn), Jaime Lee Kirchner (Rayna Russell), Jim Piddock (Biz) and Graham Norris (The Fan)


When the life of singer Rayna Russell is put in danger by an obsessive fan, her manager, an old acquaintance of Adelle DeWitt, looks to the Dollhouse for help. Echo is programmed to be Rayna’s new backing singer and is also programmed with a sub-conscious need to protect her at all costs. A second “Active”, Sierra, is programmed to be the winner of a “Rayna’s Number One Fan” competition, allowing her to meet the singer and spend time with her.

...


I was not particularly impressed by the first two episodes of ‘Dollhouse’, although I found the second one marginally more engaging than the opener, but I thought this third episode was, in the main, absolutely dreadful. I really did not like it at all.

Presumably, there is a little external message here about the nature of celebrity and also a twist on the old clichéd celebrity / obsessive fan relationship. I didn’t find it remotely interesting. We are also invited to view Echo’s life through that of Rayna, a trick that was used with much more élan in the season two ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ episode ‘Inca Mummy Girl’.

I am not quite sure what the purpose of the second “Active” Sierra was in all this, except that it was a rather heavy-handed way of continuing the storyline that is establishing an increasingly close link between her and Echo (thus the little secret sign between the two of them at the end of the episode, indicating an evolving consciousness outside of their programming). There is a scene in which Boyd Langton is talking to Sierra’s “minder” Joe Hearn, who tells him, “My girl only comes into play in an extreme scenario.” How extreme, exactly? Presumably, more extreme than being kidnapped by a deranged and seemingly homicidal stalker; more extreme than seeing Rayna’s life apparently being threatened, not only by this stalker, but also by Echo, in her guise as Jordan, the backing singer. It all seemed a bit naff and cack-handed to me.

At present, Topher Brink, the scientist who programmes the Actives, would appear to be a kind of watered-down mixture of Warren Meers and Andrew Wells from ‘Buffy’, personality wise. I am not able to get past that as yet, although he has the potential to be one of the more interesting characters. Claire Saunders is also quite an interesting character, and nicely played by Amy Acker, although I suspect I have already guessed where that storyline is going.

I think I am right in saying that ‘Stage Fright’ is generally deemed to be one of the season’s weaker episodes by a lot of fans. I am hoping it does not get any worse than this, because apart from a few vaguely interesting asides in the Dollhouse, I thought it was woeful, a real stinker. In the fullness of time, of course, it will probably be possible to re-appraise the episode in the light of a more complete picture of the overall narrative of the season, but at the moment this is all very poor and a long way below Joss Whedon’s best work.

Review posted 29 May 2009



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Dollhouse: The Target (season one, episode two)

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Rating 1¾

Created by Joss Whedon

Written and directed by Steven DeKnight

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Amy Acker (Claire Saunders) and Matt Keesler (Richard Connell)


Echo is imprinted to become the companion of a new Dollhouse client Richard Connell, joining him in a number of adrenalin-pumping activities out in the wilderness, but Connell plans to take things in an altogether more dangerous and terrifying direction. Paul Ballard continues to investigate the mysterious Dollhouse, despite the open antagonism of his FBI colleagues, and he receives an anonymous package containing a photograph of Echo, with her real first name “Caroline” written on the back. In a series of flashbacks we observe the aftermath of multiple violent deaths in the Dollhouse and the subsequent arrival of Boyd Langton as the personal “handler” for Echo, who survived the carnage without injury.

...


The first episode of ‘Dollhouse’, the latest television series by Joss Whedon, the creator of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, did not engage me and when I tried watching it for a second time I gave up half way through. My partner, who also watched it on this occasion, described it as “turgid”, which is a not entirely unreasonable one-word summing up of the episode. Having said all this, I don’t want to dislike the show and I was sufficiently intrigued to take an early look at ‘The Target’, the second episode of this first season.

The writer and director here, Steven DeKnight, has worked with Joss Whedon previously, on both ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’. As such, I had some familiarity with his work, particularly via ‘Buffy’, including one of the most discussed and debated episodes of that show, ‘Dead Things’, from its sixth season.

‘The Target’ is constructed in a series of interconnecting scenes cutting back and forth between the past and the present; so that we constantly learn a little bit more as the episode progresses about how certain characters have arrived at this point in time. It’s a very familiar tried and tested formula and one that is executed adequately enough here.

I found that large chunks of it didn’t hold my attention and I became quite bored a lot of the time. This was particularly true of the action scenes out in the wilderness, which I have no doubt were intended to keep us on the edge of our seats, but almost had me reaching for the off button on the remote control. The various twists and turns were so easy to guess in advance that I began to wonder if I should be shouting at the television, “He’s behind you! ... No, don’t drink the water!”, etc, in traditional Christmas pantomime fashion. I should mention at this point that, when watching ‘Buffy’, a series I adore, I generally found the fight scenes least interesting, so it is not necessarily the episode that is at fault here, although it did all seem a little hackneyed.

Of greater interest was the unfolding of some more titbits about the ethical and moral issues surrounding the existence and activities of the Dollhouse. If more time is given over to this in future episodes and less time is spent on flashy, shallow, stereotypically genre-specific two-dimensional running around it would certainly make the series more interesting and enticing for me – more time spent inside the Dollhouse and less time spent out of it. At least Eliza Dushku’s last series ‘Tru Calling’ was quite fun to watch, something that I would not be able to say of ‘Dollhouse’ at this early stage.

I do wonder about the character Boyd Langton, who seems to openly express his qualms about the ethics of what the Dollhouse is doing. Given the nature of the organisation, why would they employ someone who is clearly not entirely on board with what they do? The possible argument that he is ‘the best at what he does’ does not wash, although that is all I can bring to mind at the moment. Also, for an organisation that appears to have enormous power and is able to remain invisible to anyone other than those it wishes to be known to, it seems to be all too easily fooled into accepting clients who are not what they say they are, suggesting abject incompetence or possibly just complacency. Undoubtedly more will be revealed in time.

I am not very convinced at the moment about Paul Ballard, the ‘Dollhouse’ equivalent of Fox Mulder, “the FBI’s most unwanted”, only with fewer quirks. It isn’t the character per se, just the ‘X-Files’-lite cliché of it all. Put simply, the “genius” of Joss Whedon is built up so much that it is constantly tempting to judge him, perhaps, more harshly, something I am sure I am guilty of, simply by comparing all of his subsequent work against the remarkably high standards of ‘Buffy’.

All in all, even though I was bored more often than not, I thought ‘The Target’ was a marked improvement on ‘Ghost’.

Review posted 25 May 2009



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Dollhouse: Ghost (season one, episode one)

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Rating 1½


Created by Joss Whedon

Written and directed by Joss Whedon

Starring Eliza Dushku (Echo), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J Lennix (Boyd Langton), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Dichen Lachman (Sierra) and Amy Acker (Claire Saunders)


General: The Dollhouse is a secret organisation that offers its services to the rich and powerful. “Actives” in the Dollhouse have their memories wiped and are then imprinted with memories and personality traits taken from various real life sources to create a perfect match for the requirements of individual clients. Once each assignment or engagement is complete, the Actives are wiped of these new memories and once again become a blank canvas ready to be programmed for their next assignment.

Episode specific: Echo is programmed to be a tough and highly experienced negotiator when the young daughter of a client is kidnapped and held to ransom. However, Topher Brink, the scientist responsible for programming her, incorporates flaws as well as strengths into the memories of the Actives to make them more real, more complete, and on this occasion it seriously compromises her assignment. Echo’s “handler”, Boyd Langton, seems to have some qualms about the ethics of what the Dollhouse does, but these are not shared by Adelle DeWitt, who runs the operation, or Laurence Dominic, the head of security. In the meanwhile, Paul Ballard, an FBI special agent, is investigating this highly secretive organisation, which some believe to be a myth and others, like himself, are convinced is real.

…


Joss Whedon was the creator of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, which began life as a 1992 feature film, released to generally unenthusiastic reviews and a comparatively uninspired box office gross. It was somewhat unexpectedly turned into a television series, initially on the now defunct WB network in America, for a total of seven seasons between 1997 and 2003. It is fair to say that ‘Buffy’, while it was not a huge ratings success, had a profound effect on many levels and it is widely regarded to be one of the best American television series of its time, if not of all-time.

In the aftermath of ‘Buffy’, Whedon was now established as one of the most talented and creative forces working in television. His previous credits included the acclaimed television series ‘Roseanne’ (he wrote four episodes during season two of the show) and the Academy Award nominated 1995 Disney film ‘Toy Story’ (he co-wrote the screenplay). He had also worked as a “script doctor”, contributing to films like ‘Speed’, ‘Waterworld’ and ‘Twister’. His subsequent work has included the ‘Buffy’ spin-off show ‘Angel’, which ran for a total of five seasons, and the acclaimed but short-lived ‘Firefly’, the premature cancellation of which caused considerable criticism of the Fox network.

In the days when ‘Buffy’ was still in production I considered myself to be a fan of Joss Whedon, but in recent times I think it would be more accurate to call myself a lapsed fan. While I consider ‘Buffy’ to be probably the best television series ever made and certainly one of my all-time favourites, I am not as fond of his other work. I quite enjoyed ‘Angel’, but not unduly so. There are very few episodes of that show I have watched more than once and a few I am still yet to see. I didn’t particularly like ‘Firefly’ and I actively disliked its feature film spin-off ‘Serenity’, which I actually watched three times, hoping to understand why it received such effusive praise. I failed. I also found myself feeling at odds with what I thought was over-zealous and sometimes counter-productive efforts by some fans to promote that film and sing its praises.

Whedon has a very loyal and active core fan-base. On the plus side, it is a tight-knit community in which countless lasting friendships have been formed and a quite considerable amount of effort has been put into not only finding novel ways to promote his work but also support causes that are close to his heart, meaning for example that the international human rights organisation Equality Now has benefited from the concerted efforts of those fans. Less commendable, perhaps, is the rather superior attitude displayed by some of them towards anyone who chooses not to watch Whedon’s television shows or dares to be in any way critical of his work – or is simply unaware of it. As an example, when discussing the relatively disappointing viewing figures achieved by the first season of ‘Dollhouse’ during its run on the Fox network, there was some criticism of “the ignorant masses” (to quote an expression used), including those who chose to watch the television series ‘Ghost Whisperer’. It was suggested that Joss Whedon’s fans belong to a select few who would have the necessary intellectual superiority needed to fully understand and appreciate his work. It is not so much the sentiment, as arrogant and impolite as it is, as the manner in which it is expressed that makes me find this attitude, which has also been present in relation to discussion of ‘Firefly’ and ‘Serenity’, rather offensive and ill-informed and not just because I count myself amongst the ignorant masses. I sometimes watch ‘Ghost Whisperer’ and while I make no great claims for it, I enjoy it – and I am perfectly capable of identifying both its merits and flaws.

As a result of feeling, perhaps, slightly disenfranchised by these opinions, I was undoubtedly biased before even watching ‘Dollhouse’. While I had tried not to read too much about it, I was aware of the basic premise and it did not especially tempt me. I was also aware of the mixed reaction the series received in America. The early episodes were, generally speaking, not that well received, although it was widely agreed that the series improved dramatically later on during the season, especially from episode six onwards, with a few people going as far as to claim this might be Joss Whedon’s best show yet, although the concluding episode of this first season was greeted with mixed reviews.

Just over three months after the first episode aired in America the show has now arrived in the UK via the Sci-Fi Channel. The weekly average percentage share of total television viewers for this channel is around 0.2%, meaning that ‘Dollhouse’ is not destined to reach a wide audience over here at present. Out of mild curiosity and a residue of fondness for Joss Whedon, I watched the episode, expecting very little from it, particularly in response to some fairly mediocre reviews. One British critic, writing in the free London newspaper Metro, called it, “A bizarre marriage of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Grand Designs,” which made me laugh. In the event, although I almost switched off right at the very beginning in response to the unutterably naff motorcycle race scene, it was not as bad as I feared it might be. I wasn’t wowed by it by any stretch of the imagination, finding some of the dialogue decidely clunky (“Ever try to clean an actual slate? You always see what was on it before.”), and it certainly did not stretch my avowedly unexceptional intellect to make sense of what was happening! I cannot pretend that I liked it much, finding it bordering on the tedious simply because it did not engage me, but within the constraints of its given genre, which it seemed to conform to rigidly, there are the seeds of what might be a potentially interesting concept.

Some observers have questioned whether Eliza Dushku, who has worked with Joss Whedon before in ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’, possesses a sufficiently honed acting range to successfully take on the lead role of a character who must constantly change and can never really develop instantly recognisable personality traits week in and week out. I thought her performance in this opening episode was okay. None of characters made a huge impression on me and the same would have to be said of the acting, which was clearly competent across the board. I do feel that Whedon occasionally has a tendency to write “English” characters in rather stereotypical two-dimensional terms and that feeling presented itself again whenever Olivia Williams was on the screen. This is strange in many respects, not least because Whedon lived in Britain and attended school here in his youth. However, I guess the character will develop as the episodes progress.

Had this not been a Joss Whedon show I think it very unlikely I would have watched this opening episode. Nothing I’ve seen so far makes me excited about watching future episodes, although I might try to at least check out the next one or two. I am not sure, however, that I will make it as far as the second half of the season, when, so it seems, things start to get interesting. In truth, there are other things I could be doing that, in all likelihood, will entice me more. We shall see.

It just remains to say that the Fox network has announced that it is renewing the show for a second season of thirteen episodes; good news for fans of Joss Whedon and of ‘Dollhouse’.

Review posted 20 May 2009 - minor changes made on 24 May 2009 after watching (part of) the episode for a second time



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