Tuning back in
Peter has indicated some ambivalence about committing to the new Joss Whedon series, Dollhouse, for fear that it will be canceled. Other reasons for ambivalence were surely that early word on the show was lukewarm at best. Eliza Dushku as some weird operative who’s had a personality-ectomy played into a few too many existing prejudices, and early episodes seemed to confirm those prejudices. And the show seemed to raise deeper questions about selfhood and identity and them gloss over them in an atmosphere of pervasive ditz. But, beneath the episodic trappings, some interesting serial-tv things were percolating, and now, over the last two installments, those things have surfaced with a freaking explosion, and, at the same time, Dollhouse has begun treating those deeper questions with both gravity and imagination. The episodic elements, which seemed cheesy and pat early on, have become mainly the handmaiden of the longer-form storytelling, and, suddenly, Dollhouse is a fabulous sci-fi series, and concerns about it being canceled need to be re-grounded from the worry that it isn’t good enough to survive to the better-justified suspicion that it is too good – too adventurous, too patient, too dauntingly focused, too weird – for network television.
Damn you Feeney. Now I’ll HAVE to watch it.
— Peter Suderman · Mar 22, 10:11 PM · #
The last two episodes to air are worth watching — you’ll need the earlier episodes to get enough background, but they’ll make you want to give up, too.
My main contention is that the series is actually too fraught with subtexts that are going to bother the crap out of viewers, now that the series seems to actually wrestle with them. My wife made an excellent point, right before vowing to never watch it again: “It’s basically child porn with adult bodies.” And it’s true. You can’t forget that you’re basically watching people who’ve been deliberately mentally stunted sold for sex by a really high-class pimp.
Now that Joss Whedon is actually on-board to do the writing, hopefully he can strike the balance between sci-fi ninja action and complex storytelling the premise requires. But it’s a fine line, and Fox tends to be hit or miss with supporting that sort of thing.
— James F. Elliott · Mar 23, 06:19 PM · #
JFE…you have to admit that declaring something someone has just praised to be “basically child porn” is a fairly incendiary gesture. But, instead of bursting into flames, I will rather point out that, since you seem to be watching the show yourself, you don’t, deep down, find it a particularly apt comparison either. And using the occasion of a show finally hitting its subtexts with a degree of intelligence as an occasion to lament the unlikeliness of such a thing strikes me as excessively pessimistic.
— Matt Feeney · Mar 23, 11:02 PM · #
Really glad to read see Dollhouse praised on this blog. Couldn’t agree more, the last two episodes take the show where old Joss fans were hoping it would go, and where new viewers could be enticed to watch. Let’s hope this does not turn into a Firefly type casualty of the Fox axes.
— chyatt · Mar 23, 11:48 PM · #
Matt, I’m sorry if you felt like I was trying to be incendiary. Comparing the show to child porn is, I contend, apt, in the sense that it is exactly what is happening: The dolls are made to be as children in order to be more compliant and accepting of their situation, and then pimped out for fantasy fulfillment. It is the trafficking of people with the minds of children. I’m not trying to say that we’re meant to be all titillated by this — in fact, I think it’s meant to be quite the opposite once we get past the Eliza Dushku is Hot factor and realize what’s going on.
It’s not that I don’t think the premise can be pulled off — if anyone can, it’s Joss Whedon — it’s that Fox has a penchant for taking promising shows and dumbing them down or giving them the axe.
Professionally, I do crisis intervention for the developmentally delayed. 80% of all DD people are the victims of sexual abuse in their lifetime. Far from making me angry, I’m thrilled that Dollhouse discusses issues of consent in such a subversive fashion.
— James F. Elliott · Mar 24, 07:07 PM · #