Sunday Media Review: Dollhouse Epitaph One

Okay, I know I promised last Sunday that I'd go TV Free, and for the most part I have. I admit that I fudged on Tuesday and watched Warehouse 13...but I didn't like it much so I won't be fudging this week. However I fudged one other time...but it was for a good cause.

It's no secret that I'm a Joss Whedon fan(atic). I was psyched when he returned to TV. Not so psyched that he returned to Fox. But that decision had more to do with his desire to work with Eliza Dushku than Fox. Anyway. The idea of Dollhouse intrigued me from the outset. Granted, the first five episodes were pretty crap. The ideas where there, but Fox meddled with the formula and demanded homogenized, easily digestible episodes. Finally at episode six, they gave up and let Joss be Joss. Episode six is where everyone universally agrees that the show hit its stride. Against the odds (and horrendous ratings) Fox renewed it for a second season. Yay for us.

Anyway, the main complaint I heard about Dollhouse was that they had this tech that allowed you to imprint people with personalities, and yet the were using it to essentially make high class prostitutes. They said that the tech was boring and had no real applications and just blah!

Well Joss made a 13th episode titled Epitaph One. It was made to fulfill his contract to produce 13 episodes, though Fox declined to air it. I was given a copy and I was blown away. The story takes place 10 years in the future. It's basically like someone said to Joss, "Hey, hookers are great, but what's the point of all this Dollhouse crap?" And Joss went, "Well the end of life as we know it, of course," 'cause Joss likes ending the world. Buffy ended it like 4 or five times. Angel sent it to hell. In Firefly he killed multiple planets.

The thing about season one of Dollhouse is that people didn't get what the stakes were. Epitaph One takes time out to show what's going to happen when the technology for imprinting personalities gets into the wrong hands. Enemy countries are going to use it to remotely turn whole sections of our population into killing machines, radios are going to be used to wipe anyone who hears their signals. Want to disable a city? Make a phone call. Want to live forever? Keep moving your imprint from one body to another....forever.

The episode was tense and dense and dark and freaky. The episode basically put up a signpost that says, "Hey, this is where I'm going. This is where this story is taking us. The ride's gonna be awesome, want to come along?" And yes. I do. I really, really do.

Unfortunately it's likely that Dollhouse won't see a third season. I'll watch it and buy the DVD's and support anything and everything Joss does, but I think the show just isn't for the general public. But if you watched the first couple of episodes and dropped out, get the DVD's and watch Epitaph One, then go back and watch the season. It casts EVERYTHING in a whole new light. It gives everything an urgency that freaks me the heck out. It would have been an amazing pilot.

And speaking of the pilot, I got a chance to view the original pilot "Echoes." The same pilot Fox Execs told Joss he needed to reshoot. All I'm going to say about it is that if Fox had kept their collective noses out of the show and let Joss do his thing, based on this original pilot, this show wouldn't have taken until episode six to really get started.

Next week I've got a buttload of music to review.

Humans Good, Cylons Bad

Changes, they are a comin'.

I've avoided posting anything because I have very little to post…book-wise. I initially intended this to chronicle my journey from blank paper to published book. While that's still the goal, I've learned that publishing moves glacially. Thus, if I'm going to continue to write shit, I'm going to have to branch way out.

So the first thing I'm going to write about is Dollhouse.

I'm a Joss Whedon fan. Have been since Buffy. I remember the first time I saw an episode of Buffy. I was getting ready to go clubbing for the night and I flipped it on. They fought vampires…with a bazooka. I was hooked after that. Whedon has this ability to take you places you never thought you'd go, and Buffy before clubbing became a routine.

I missed out on Firefly when it came out (due to being poor) but I found it on DVD and love it. So I was wicked excited about Dollhouse. Like most other good fanboys, I kept hearing the grumblings from the intermawhozits about Fox meddling - something they promised not to do. And that scared me. It's also why the first episode was pretty blech. But the second episode…well that's a whole 'nother story.

It had all the trademark Whedon wit, the complex morality, and the story that took me somewhere other than where I'd expected. And I expect that it will only get better from here. Joss is a man whose best work revolves around complicated people and their complicated relationships. Those things take time to develop. And develop they will. So it comes as a shock when casual viewer and fanboys alike are deriding this show. And I think I know why.

Morally questionable. That's what the show is all about. No one knows who to root for. There isn't anyone to root for. Every character is dirty somehow. Echo's the active, being sent on missions, some of which involve sex. We could root for her, but not only does she not have a personality, but she has a past, a reason she became a doll, a reason that may not be on the up and up.

The dollhouse is obviously not something we root for since, they obviously work in some shady and downright despicable areas or morality. Places normal people don't want to have a light shined on.

Echo's handler is someone we want to root for but he's an enabler. He protects her, yes, and he's a semi-father figure, yes, but he also takes her to and from the engagements, thus he's complicit in every morally gray thing that she does and is done to her.

And we simply don't know enough about the FBI Agent to root for him yet. He wants to find the dollhouse, but why? Hopefully we'll find out.

So people watch an hour of this show and they feel dirty, they feel complicit. No matter who they relate to, they're forced to question their own morality. Would THEY ever pay for an doll? Who hasn't thought about it? And there's no moral center on the show for them to cling to. No sane voice in the darkness.

Take another morally gray show: Battlestar Galactica. Over its run, every character has done questionable things. Ron D. Moore took us to all those dark places - airlocking Cylons, secret tribunals, insurgency, etc - and we let him because at the end of the show, we can cling to one simple fact: humans are good and Cylons are bad. At the end of the day, the series began with the wholesale extermination of the human race, so no matter how far they've come or how much the fleet realizes they're similar, the Cylons are grayer than the humans. Cylons bad, humans good.

Dollhouse, so far, has no overriding moral anchor. And that's okay. It's okay because life rarely has such an anchor. People will argue that they would do the right thing, but Dollhouse questions that statement. Would you do the right thing? If you were Echo's handler, should you take a moral stand and leave? Possibly leaving her to a worse fate? Are you a sicko for buying a doll? Even though they became dolls of their own free will?

They're all questions I wish I could answer. They're questions I'd like to explore more with Whedon. I hope he gets the chance. Unfortunately the ratings suck and Fox has an itchy cancellation finger AND a terrible track record with Whedon. I guess only time will tell. Until then, I'll keep watching. I just hope it will keep making me squirm.