by the way ...

[calimac]

I'm still watching Dollhouse (which unlike a new movie doesn't require an expensive theatre ticket or 3-D glasses), for the same reason I watched the last season of Buffy*, but I find I hardly have a damn thing to say about it. Last week's episode seemed to consist in varying proportions of:

1. The Matrix;
2. The ending of Brazil;
3. The destruction of the Initiative from Buffy;
4. The joke about Shawn Fanning stealing the idea for Napster.

WTF?

* The mind-set that keeps one watching increasingly pointless television is best expressed by Shakespeare: "I am in blood / Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er" (Scottish Play III:4)

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's a really interesting response. We seem to have watched those episodes in entirely different alternate universes or something.

I saw an intensely and interestingly dramatic next step in the story arc. I've noticed the analogies between Dollhouse and The Prisoner; well, the episode set in the Attic was an analog of "Fall Out," though unlike "Fall Out" it's not the final episode of the season—there are issues left to be resolved. The Matrix-like aspects was there, yes, but unlike The Matrix, it had an explanation for why the human components were needed that actually made sense. And the longer-term plot turns on the dramatic question of where the loyalties of the Dollhouse staff lie. This is an "Either/Or" plot, like the middle section of Atlas Shrugged, where characters who think they can find a middle ground between A and B discover that B is, in fact, not-A (or null-A?) and the middle is excluded. In other words, it's a story about moral choices being made be a bunch of people who are pretty severely compromised.

There is also the extremely clever bit that the physical action in one of the fear scenarios, the one set in a future Los Angeles fallen into civil war, exactly mirrors the physical action at the start of "Epitaph One," raising the question of whether that episode is an actual future, or a prophetic vision of the future, or a recurrent scenario that the Attic keeps playing out.

To my taste, this is one of the most interesting things Whedon has ever done. Most television science fiction has amazing inventions that don't actually change the world, because the serial format requires that everything be set back to zero after each episode or each season; but Whedon has put an sfnal premise into a world almost like ours, and is now showing that it changes everything, irreversibly, and not necessarily for the better. At best, this might turn out to be "Solution Unsatisfactory" with cognitive science instead of nuclear physics; at worst, it will be the apocalypse forecast in "Epitaph One."

Now, does any of that make any sense to you, or are you about to say to me, "We seem to have watched those episodes in entirely different alternate universes or something"?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

No ... the image that comes to my mind is of you digging through a giant pile of manure determined to find a pony in there somewhere. Rossum is just Wolfram and Hart all over again, though I hope the eventual explanation for it will turn out to be different, and the whole "not-A ... excluded middle" philosophical construct is simply a function of Rossum insisting on unquestioning obedience from its employees. Unless it doesn't.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Well, (a) I like that sort of plot; it produces dramatic moments of moral choice, (b) the setup for it is a much more serious sfnal treatment of a Single Fantastic Assumption than anything we ever saw on Buffy or Angel, and (c) that assumption brings in some questions of social philosophy that I find interesting and important.

Or, in sum, I feel as if I were saying, "But . . . but . . . the damn pony is right there in front of you!" But if that's not how it looks to you, no amount of critical discussion is likely to change your mind. So I will try to resist the impulse to go on at tedious length. It's ultimately a question of subjective reactions: I watched Friday night's two episodes in fascination and excitement, and you looked at the screen and shook your head and reflected that you couldn't have your two hours returned to you. . . .

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"and reflected that you couldn't have your two hours returned to you..."

Oh, it's not that bad. Did you ever read Ebert's review of M. Night's The Village? (A movie whose cast included the guy who plays Topher, by the way.) The last two paragraphs ... now that's the mightiest denunciation of wasted time I've ever read.

This is nothing like that. This is not about the moral choice, either. It's just about the squeezing and the manipulation. Expediency and misapprehension, rather than morality, control the flow of events. Now you remind me of the people who were trying to convince us 25-30 years ago that Star Wars was really profound.

Whedon can do better than this. Remember the extremely brief but wickedly deflating parody of Sophie's Choice in the "War Stories" episode of Firefly? I've been waiting without success for anything as clever or witty or ingenious or anything as Firefly or Buffy at their best.