Disappointed by Dollhouse
Last Friday was the premiere of Fox’s Dollhouse, the new Joss Whedon project. It was … OK. I’m afraid that the show’s science fiction aspects will only be used to set up run-of-the-mill “Good guy vs. bad guy” plots. Don’t take my word for it. The ratings were dismal.
Brazilian diamond heisters? Quick, imprint the hottest barely-legal agent with the mind of a tough-as-nails, loose canon beat cop on the edge of the law!
I’m going to give it another chance (rumor has it the show picks up with episode 5), but for now I’ve got my phaser set to “skeptical.”
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Ged here with some quick thoughts on the Dollhouse premiere. Overall I did enjoy the series opener, but that’s not to say I wasn’t disappointed in it. Quite frankly I expected more from Joss especially since the pilot has been re-worked at least once. Someone on Twitter said that pilots need to hook you big time (like “33″ did with BSG), and Dollhouse just didn’t do that. Part of the problem are the unoriginal elements of the show which seem to be taken from all over. I can see aspects of Ghost In the Shell, Alias, Total Recall and more in Joss’ Dollhouse which doesn’t bode well for him creatively. I’m willing to watch a couple more episodes, but unless it picks up quickly I fear there won’t be more to watch. Of course, I’ve talked about this vicious cycle before, and I’ll probably talk about it again. At any rate, time to step things up Joss, the clock is ticking.
Did you miss the show? Here it is, via the power of the Internet.
I’m a huge Whedon fan, and came away interested but not sold.
My problem with it? It feels like Whedon trying to do J.J. Abrams. It’s going to be tough to make a connection with the main character, echo, if she only has a “character” when imprinted. I’m sure the back story will be revealed that makes us root for her arc and not just her episode.
The final two minutes seemed to be setting the stage for the grand mythology. The rogue FBI agent, the mysterious Alpha. It’ll get there, I can trust the Whendon, but will the ratings let it survive?
Jim:
My thoughts exactly. I trust Whedon to create an engaging arc. I also imagine echo will start to get little hints about her day job, and that will make things interesting.
I think it’s going to go all Blade Runner on us, and we’re going to find out that some character(s) are actives and they don’t know it. Maybe the FBI agent?
Bladerunner, BSG … been done! Let’s hope for something fresh. What was that show with Jessica Alba?
The Jessica Alba show was called Dark Angel (watched it, but didn’t last long). It’ll be interesting to see where Whedon takes us. I kept thinking of Robocop myself when watching. Murphy’s memories resurfacing throughout the movie. Although, none of these memories seem to be Echo’s so far. Also, the pulling from other TV and movies is similar to how her “personalities” are generated. Piecemeal from dead and possibly living people. Time will tell if this series lasts longer than Firefly.
In this day and age it’s rather difficult to establish the basics of the show.
I don’t think it’s appropiate to compare this pilot to BSG’s “33″, remember that 33 continued the story, one we all knew very well because we knew the premise of the show (survivor fleet running away from cylons after complete holocaust).
Whedon had to balance the show between his fans (geeks that know all kind of sci-fi shows/movies/books) and a regular audience that only been in contact with sci-fi through Demolition Man kinda movies.
I hated the cheesy opening and I don’t know where it’ll all go with the “character imprint” idea, but definitely i’ll keep checking the show because of the last minutes of the pilot (Alpha and the rogue Helo FBI agent
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