Sunday, September 27, 2009

All the People Can't Be All Right All the Time

Dollhouse - Season 1 (2009)
created by Joss Whedon
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

While patiently enduring the infamous first five or six episodes of Dollhouse - which, I was warned, play like a bad police procedural - I realized that there's a difference between the great shows you watch alone and the mediocre shows you watch with other people. Like most of what I write in St. Peter's name, this is a half-baked theory I refuse to be held to, but Dollhouse wouldn't be nearly as enjoyable if I couldn't make fun of it half the time. Nor would I be curious about the second season if there wasn't something in the first 13 episodes that caught my attention.

I'll never like science fiction to the degree that I like fantasy, but the best science fiction incorporates the same supernatural element that makes fantasy so appealing: the eerie monolith in 2001, say. So, while no one in Dollhouse ever casts a spell, or opens a Hellmouth, or finds a ring that lets vampires go out in the sun, the show does use memory as both a tangible commodity and - as in "Epitaph One" - a ghost. One of the strengths of the supernatural as narrative device is letting plot lines skew towards old dark house horror a good part of the time, instead of the unsurprising parable of unchecked technology and power one would expect.

Inevitably, Helo will continue to curl his upper lip in frustration, and Eliza Dushku will try and try to top the Buffybot for glassy-eyed style. Dushku - no Smidge - will not succeed, and Dollhouse will not return after these next 13 episodes. An altogether manageable number for low expectations met, all in all.