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Dollhouse S1E1
Feb. 25th, 2009 08:51 amWell, that was probably the weakest pilot for a show that Joss has made, but then considering the rewrites that Fox made him do I suppose that was inevitable. It wasn't bad bad, but it did highlight a problem with the concept at play here, and not in a "I'm setting up storylines down the road that will have major ramifications!" kind of way. Taking people, wiping their memories, letting them walk around a controlled environment in a stupor, then periodically loading them up with other personalities and skill sets and sending them out in the world to do good deeds for really rich people who can be counted on to be discreet and not expose them to law enforcement agencies, then after their job is done bring them back in and wipe those memories.
Why?
This was the main problem I had watching the episode, the rather baroque method of... well, I'd say fighting crime but it would seem that this bunch of human traffickers aren't out for doing good but even for a bunch of selfish mercenaries, it seems a rather ornate means of doing business. And I wonder if Joss has a reason for this worked out, or whether we're just going to get Eliza Dushku in the shower and Amy Acker looking pensive until we forget all about it. Where does it go from here? We might have Quantum Leap without the time-travel, where each week Echo takes on a new personality but, having pulled the 'someone from the personality's past' trick with episode one, I can't see the personal stake plot being used each week and it's hard to care about the characters if, at the end of it, the central actor doesn't have a personality. If Echo starts to remember her 'real' life or previous personalities then I can't see how that won't break the show, as you're moving away from the central premise of the show. It could go all Dark Skies, Echo could remember who she really is and go on the run, but Dark Skies was rubbish, lone vigilante against mighty organisations stories are so silly by their very nature and again, premise-breakage.
I'm prepared to give the show a while to settle in because it's Joss and, when he works, he works, but the omens from the first episode are not good. The curse of Fox... again?
Why?
This was the main problem I had watching the episode, the rather baroque method of... well, I'd say fighting crime but it would seem that this bunch of human traffickers aren't out for doing good but even for a bunch of selfish mercenaries, it seems a rather ornate means of doing business. And I wonder if Joss has a reason for this worked out, or whether we're just going to get Eliza Dushku in the shower and Amy Acker looking pensive until we forget all about it. Where does it go from here? We might have Quantum Leap without the time-travel, where each week Echo takes on a new personality but, having pulled the 'someone from the personality's past' trick with episode one, I can't see the personal stake plot being used each week and it's hard to care about the characters if, at the end of it, the central actor doesn't have a personality. If Echo starts to remember her 'real' life or previous personalities then I can't see how that won't break the show, as you're moving away from the central premise of the show. It could go all Dark Skies, Echo could remember who she really is and go on the run, but Dark Skies was rubbish, lone vigilante against mighty organisations stories are so silly by their very nature and again, premise-breakage.
I'm prepared to give the show a while to settle in because it's Joss and, when he works, he works, but the omens from the first episode are not good. The curse of Fox... again?