childish thing

wow! is this thing a stinker!

the premise is neither interesting nor new(can anyone say "my own worst enemy"?). there is not a single compelling character & no room to develop the existing duds. the writing is flat, not funny, & w/o the ol' whedon panache. as a consequence, the pacing is leaden & the plot wildly preposterous. the underlying theme of female objectification & identity seems absurd when the screen is filled w/pouty, busty babes in low-cut blouses & skin-tight pants.

"what happened to joss?," ann asked this morning. well. who knows? i imagine several things:
1)unlike the good old days of buffy, i suspect whedon wasn't really on his own here. in other words, i think a lot gets delegated in joss' world these days.
2)however, he's lost most of those folks from the good old days to whom he delegated things. all the old hands who "got" whedon aren't there to "get" him anymore.
3)i think writers who live by the zeitgeist, die by the zeitgeist. in other words, a writer who draws so much of his inspiration from pop culture has to stay "plugged into" it. in fact, i think the time for being "plugged in" is probably terminal. whedon's connection definately seems terminated.
4)it could be(& i'm serious here)that comic book writing & its particular set of skills has thrown off is tv writing chops. he's been away from television for a while at this point. for there NOT to have been one spark of whedon magic in the 60minutes of the first episode of "dollhouse" was, for me, the most shocking aspect of my viewing experience. this thing could have been written by one of the "stable" writers over at the csi franchise.

or none of these things.

this thing is so bad i don't care. when david milch's, "john from cincinati" was on, i tried harder than i probably should have to make sense of what he was up to & why he was failing at it. each episode had moments of what i'd come to expect from the man responsible for "deadwood." those moments made my efforts seem worthwhile(at least to me).

the rumor mill had reported this thing was going to be d.o.a. for months now. the fact that the network dropped it into the friday night graveyard slot pretty much confirmed the rumors. unlike, say, david milch's flabbergasting mess, "dollhouse" didn't have one second of inspiration or promise. not one second. that's almost amazing, even for television.

for several very different points of view on the show, check this out.