I Have Seen Another Episode of Dollhouse
When I screened the pilot of Joss Whedon's upcoming sci-fi series about humans with erasable memories, the subsequent post got picked up and eagerly pored over within the Whedonverse. So I feel a kind of obligation to my public, and to my traffic reports, to note that Fox has sent me a second episode.
I'm going to be a bit of a tease this time, though, and not really review it or give away details. I'm in the middle of writing my actual honest-to-God Dollhouse review for TIME and I want to get straight just what exactly I think about this series first. But it is worth noting that, where the pilot seems to promise a more self-contained, mission-of-the-week approach to the series, with serial elements woven in, the second episode gets serial with a vengeance: there's another "assignment" for Echo the Active (Eliza Dushku), but this one ties in intimately with Echo's history and the backstory of the Dollhouse, where she's kept (semi-voluntarily) and rented out. A backstory which could potentially get very bendy indeed.
You probably have more questions and I probably won't answer them right away. But it's looking like, whatever problems there may or may not be with Joss Whedon's new series, a lack of ambition is not going to be among them.
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1
Huh. And things get curiouser and curiouser at the Dollhouse. Still sounds interesting. Friday the 13th you said, JP?
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Fox is really impressing me this season. Too bad about the News channel. -
2
Is may be just me, but it sound like your walking on eggshells whenever you talk about this new Whedon project. Are you scared of the whedonites? It's okay if you are.
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3
Thanks for the update/teaser. I'm superpsyched about the premiere.
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4
I'm not really a Whedon fan, but I'm enough of a tv watcher to make sure I Tivo Dollhouse. I do want to echo the sentiment of mcmagnus, but apply to not just James, but pretty much all tv critics on the internet. I keep coming across faint praise and statements wrapped up in "Whedon deserves the benefit of the doubt and I will wait and see if such and such gets better" It reminds me a lot of Studio 60 and Sorkin, where people didn't want to come out and be clearly negative because they are were all fans of past work.
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I hypothesize it has something to do with fearing the retribution of the browncoats. I know I'm always very careful these days when talking about how horribly written the Serenity movie was. -
5
@Ashman, mcmagnus, etc.: In the case of this particular post, it was mainly that I don't particularly want to definitively "review" the show in a post I was writing in about five minutes. I know there's interest in Dollhouse here, though, so I figured--especially after my post about the pilot--it was interesting to note that the second episode was not nearly as procedural as the first. But I wanted to leave it at that--since I'm in the middle of writing my actual, considered review, with the pluses and minuses taken together. Because if I do that, it's the knee-jerk nutshell I blog here, and not the review I spend more time on, that will become the "review."
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I know the Internet rewards the fastest and most extremely stated opinion, but I don't think that makes for the best criticism.
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There's also the fact that I *do* give Whedon some benefit of the doubt. When I go back and look at the brief review I wrote of Firefly--based on the re-shot pilot--it was pretty accurate about that disappointing episode, but wholly inaccurate about the series as a whole.
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The thing is, reviewing TV series from early episodes is about more than just assessing "is this hour of television good or does it suck?" It's also about intuiting the show's voice and its potential to grow. One of the reviews I'm most proud of was for the American version of The Office, which a lot of critics panned, but I think (immodestly) I saw from those early episodes where Greg Daniels was going with it: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1037661,00.html
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As for Studio 60, if you want to see how reticent I was about offending Sorkin, you might look here:
http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2006/10/03/aaron_sorkin_the_shyamalan_of/ -
6
Just for clarification, I wasn't questioning your general objectivity, nor the quality and accuracy of your reviews, which delightfully, tend to be very similar to my own tastes, which is why I read this particular blog instead of oh, the other 08942350934875 available online. Nor was I calling you a chicken or something like that, the whole browncoat thing was meant for levity. Rereading my original comment I feel I was a little unfoced.
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I was just commenting on an overarching trend concerning this one particular show. A tendency which seems to afflict even sites reknown for their general harshness, like twop. What does this tell us? That virtually every tv critic is a big Whedon fan, or, more plausibly (well equally plausibly, people do love the Joss), the show contains honest to goodness story telling potential that has people reservedly optimistic.
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Doesn't seem to be getting a lot of commercial time though. Is the saturation of reviews, and interviews a signal that Fox is changing the way they promote new content? -
7
@Ashman, No, not at all, and sorry to sound defensive. Just trying to explain myself... at great length. I think you're right about Joss getting cut slack. But there's also the specific factor that Whedon does have a history: that Firefly had a lousy first episode (and frankly I think Buffy's was nothing amazing either), which gave little indication how good the series would end up being.
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Short answer: I AM scared, I guess, but scared of too glibly summarizing a show that has negatives and potential. So I am wussing out--but out of principle!
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In the meantime it looks like I may get a THIRD episode of the show before I have to file my review. -
8
Man, I loved Studio 60, until it turned into "ohmygod make stuff happen every week so that we pleasepleaseplease don't get canceled."
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That was atrocious. But until then, I loved it.
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My irony sensor is tingling, I should stop talking. -
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[...] James Poniewozik | Comments (0) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This In the comments under my Dollhouse post from yesterday, there's an interesting (well, to me) discussion about one of the things that make [...]
- poniewozik Loved the season. Mrs Tuned In wd have put u on the main list RT @boredtodeath Thank u for incl us in Time's Top 10. We'll take hon mention. - 5 hours ago
- poniewozik @carr2n Virgin is the best, LAX-JFK - 5 hours ago
- poniewozik Did NPR interview abt multiscreen multitasking. After, automatically reached for iPhone in pocket. Like don draper wd have for cigarettes. - 7 hours ago
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