Dollhouse - (Maybe) Final Thoughts
Apr. 2nd, 2010 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupYou know what, I take it back. I can sum up my thoughts on Dollhouse now.
IMO, Dollhouse had four really stellar, top-of-the-line episodes (A Spy in the House of Love, Alpha, Vows, and Belonging) and a few more that, if they weren't great, at least had interesting elements (Man on the Street, Epitaph One, Epitaph Two). This isn't to say it didn't have other memorable moments - there's no Victor!Topher in that list, nor any Bennett Halvorsen - but those were moments, not wholes.
In fact, even those first-rate eps are only fragments, the shiniest scraps of a show that could never decide what it wanted to be. Creepy procedural? Critique of society's fantasies? Morality tale on Teh Evol of human trafficking and mind control? Post-apocalyptic romp?
(Not saying I don't enjoy post-apocalyptic romps, mind you, nor that certain elements of Epitaph Two didn't make my Topher-lovin' heart go squee [I told you! From the very beginning, I told you!], but to me it felt a whole lot more like chummy fan service than a serious canon exploration of the DH future.)
I leave you with Abigail Nussbaum, who expresses my thoughts on S2 way better than I could:
IMO, Dollhouse had four really stellar, top-of-the-line episodes (A Spy in the House of Love, Alpha, Vows, and Belonging) and a few more that, if they weren't great, at least had interesting elements (Man on the Street, Epitaph One, Epitaph Two). This isn't to say it didn't have other memorable moments - there's no Victor!Topher in that list, nor any Bennett Halvorsen - but those were moments, not wholes.
In fact, even those first-rate eps are only fragments, the shiniest scraps of a show that could never decide what it wanted to be. Creepy procedural? Critique of society's fantasies? Morality tale on Teh Evol of human trafficking and mind control? Post-apocalyptic romp?
(Not saying I don't enjoy post-apocalyptic romps, mind you, nor that certain elements of Epitaph Two didn't make my Topher-lovin' heart go squee [I told you! From the very beginning, I told you!], but to me it felt a whole lot more like chummy fan service than a serious canon exploration of the DH future.)
I leave you with Abigail Nussbaum, who expresses my thoughts on S2 way better than I could:
Dollhouse's first season showed us the rationalizations through which ostensible villains like Topher and Adele tolerated and even justified their monstrous actions, drawing pencil-thin lines between different shades of rape and slavery in order to be able to place themselves on the right side of those lines, while alleged good guys like Ballard and Boyd, who claimed to abhor the dollhouse, ended up enabling and participating in it. The second season sweeps away this complexity, dividing the cast into heroes and villains (though perhaps the initial failure was in the transition from a story about people who are cogs in the machine to one that has heroes and villains to begin with).
