Change Your Image
GuentherB
Reviews
Dollhouse (2009)
Hard to believe this is actually a JW show
I have been a Buffy-Fan right from the beginning - I liked even the movie which came out long before the well-known show.
I also enjoyed most episodes of Angel and liked Firefly/Serenity very much.
When Dollhouse was announced, I just looked at the "Created by Joss Whedon"-tag and assumed "I have to watch this": So far, everything I have seen created by JW has been worth watching.
But after watching the first episode, I was sorely disappointed: "What the heck was that? That can't be a JW show!" My complaints are not on the technical level, nor about the cast.
The problem of the show is the script; more specific the basic storyline.
In Buffy/Angel/Firefly, the shows featured interesting characters which you could love or hate; some were funny, others tragic.
But in any case you cared about the characters.
After all, JW's signature as a writer are well-designed characters with distinct and often strong personalities the audience will care about, and he always creates interesting situations how those characters interact with each other.
That, combined with a usually far-stretched plot arc and incremental story line from episode to episode makes JW shows so much pleasure to watch.
But all that is totally different in Dollhouse - at least in the first three episodes I have watched so far.
There are no characters you could care about - except perhaps that FBI agent, but he has not got any significant amount of screen time so far.
The other characters, especially Echo, are dumb stereotypes which do not seem to develop even a bit between episodes.
IMHO, the most tragic character is Echo herself: Although she does gain experience in each episode which might be used to develop her character further in interesting ways - all that experience is taken from her at the end of each episode, when her memory is wiped clean again.
Although the idea of selectively erasing human memories by itself is an interesting SciFi-concept which has been exploited in films like "Project Brainstorm", it is not a good concept for a show.
At least not when the main character of the show is directly affected by it! If, for instance, Echo were the FBI guy's partner or something, and the two of them would team up in order to hunt down and destroy an illegal secret organization known as "Dollhouse", the script might actually have worked.
But so - what is each episode good for if Echo has the same level of experience at its end as she had at the beginning? Any progress in personal development brutally taken away from her? That's a really *sad* concept, in my opinion. Not to mention that she's frequently abused as a prostitute without even knowing it.
Echo is not a hero in this show, she's a victim. Without any chance of escaping her misery. (Except perhaps being saved by that FBI guy at some undetermined point in the future.) It's much like a prison movie where it is known that none of the convicts will ever be released. They endure a miserable existence. Just depressing to watch! Much in the story setup reminded me of "Le femme Nikita", but with the notable difference that Nikita had to develop a very strong personality in order to survive her daily work for "Section 1". Nikita learned to survive and gained additional experience with every episode, which made the show fun to watch. Nikita was a really strong woman and everything else than a doll.
Echo in Dollhouse, on the other hand, lacks all the possibilities Nikita had to develop.
Echo is trapped in the rather sterile environment of the doll house (unless temporarily programmed and sent out for a specific mission), and actually has no chance of ever escaping that hopeless cycle of gaining experience and being wiped of that experience at the end of each episode.
So, comparing Dollhouse to all the other JW shows I have watched to date, I can hardly believe that Dollhouse is actually a WD show! And... when I look at the credits here at IMDb: I do not see JW credited as a writer! In fact, all the episodes seem to be written by Maurissa Tancharoen, who is married to Jed Whedon, who in turn is somehow related to JW.
JW is only credited as creator and producer, but not as writer or even director.
So it seems to me, JW might had the overall idea of the plot arc and storyline, but he had nothing to do with the actual script writing and the details of character development.
That is, he might basically have put his good name on the show in order to promote it, but have little to do with it otherwise.
Of course, I might be wrong with that.
But for me as part of the audience, "Dollhouse" does not *feel* like a JW show, and there are no elements of previous JW shows I could recognize by comparison.
Nothing except the strong female lead perhaps; but even that related poorly due to the fact that the character is doomed to never gain experience due to the memory wiping.
I feel very sorry about only giving a "3" to this show, because I really like to see Eliza Dushku in a show and also the rest of the cast performs quite well. There is also nothing to complain about the director's work.
But all that is not worth much if the script sucks. And that it does.
Lunarcop (1995)
One have to see it twice
When I saw Lunarcop the first time, I just thought "Hmm another Mad Max clone" and would have rated it only 1 or perhaps 2. But once I've seen it and thus knew the truth about Thora, I looked at it in a completely different way when I saw it the second time: The focus shifted from a moderately bad action movie to a hopeless love story between Joe and Thora - and in this regard the film was rather good. It then resembles Blade Runner rather than Mad Max to some extent.