My thoughts on Dollhouse, let me show you them
I was home sick yesterday, so I caught up on Dollhouse out of boredom and throughadoor's insistence that if I pretend it's a shitty 2 AM show on the VS. network, I'll like it more. That didn't work though, and let me tell you why by talking about my deep, nerdy passion for alt-rock:
In 1994, the band Weezer released their first album (aka The Blue Album). I loved that album; I woke up to it in the morning, I listened to it while I did homework, I rocked out to it in my room. Then, 2 years later, Weezer released Pinkerton, which remains one of my top 10 favorite albums of all time. (Being really honest, it's more likely in my top 3.) I love the unholy fuck out of every song on that album, with the exception of the first one, which I decided I didn't like on first listen and which I've never listened to all the way through ever again. I think track 1 on Pinkerton exists to remind me that all things in life are imperfect, which just makes me love the album more. In 2001, Weezer released their second self-titled album (aka The Green Album), and it sucked balls. Really. The singles from the album stank, the whole thing was meaningless and lazy and I hated it in a "but, but. But Rivers Cuomo, how?! PINKERTON WAS SO GREAT!" kind of way. I started having to ignore the doings of Weezer to save myself pain, and then one day I heard what I thought was a Weird Al Yankovic parody of a Weezer song on the radio, but which turned out to be an actual Weezer song, "Beverly Hills." (true story) And that's when I broke up with Weezer.
IN CASE YOU COULDN'T ALREADY ADAPT THIS METAPHOR:
Dollhouse:Joss Whedon::"Beverly Hills":Rivers Cuomo
I can't pretend it's another show made by someone other than Joss because ALL OF THE SHITTY PARTS ARE SO CLEARLY JOSS PARODYING HIMSELF. The nerdy, quippy guy goes by the last two syllables of his first name? Really?? The FBI agent's next door neighbor is a shy, affable size 12 girl?! REALLY, JOSS?!? REALLY??? [murder]
So as I was telling people at my "surprise" birthday dinner (moral of that story: never try to hide things from me), El and I have been watching Outlaw Star, an anime series from 1998. It's done by the same team that did Trigun, I believe, and it's bitchin'. It's relevant to this story because in the pilot of the series, part of the merry rag-tag crew that eventually forms (of the space ship they travel around in to take contracts and move cargo and do odd-jobs throughout the known universe) ends up with this Mystery Box that people are looking for and shooting at them to get. Someone opens the box, and lo and behold, there is a girl in stasis in the box! At which point I turned to El and said, "I have the oddest desire to watch Firefly right now." (Which we've been doing, and I will say that at least on Dollhouse, I don't have to actively ignore the entire existence of one of the characters ([coughInaracough]) due to her shitty, shitty acting unless you count Eliza herself, so it has that going for it.)
This makes me fairly confident that this is how Joss's development process went:
Joss: Hey, so I have an idea for this show. It'll be all about human beings, but they'll be wiped of their personalities, and they can be imprinted with new ones...but see, one of them had a dangerous imprint, and they've gone rogue! It'll be a poignant examination of what it means to be human, and whether something like the soul exists, but framed in a fast-paced, high-tech sci-fi story!
Someone, anyone, who has ever operated a TV: Uh, they, um. Did that already. It was called Ghost in the Shell.
Joss: Oh. Well. Well, um. What if it's also about the missions these people get sent on, but they have a "normal" handler too, as a partner, and so there are all kinds of trust bonds that are formed, and Dramatic Life Saving, and one of the agents is a competent, active girl who does hand-to-hand fighting and dresses up in sexy outfits and disguises, but who also does lots of different complex mental tasks.
SAWHEOATV: J-Joss? They made that one, too. Alias, remember?
Joss: ...Fuck it, let's just make them all sex objects.
And thus, my new title for the show: Cum-Dumpster: The Series.
(Seriously, when you find yourself thinking, "Hey, next I'll watch How I Met Your Mother, that might have a plot I'm not able to predict in its entirety within the first half of the episode!" ...Dramatic Storytelling: You're Doing It Wrong.)
(Also, for the record, anyone who ever wondered what El's bitchface ex-girlfriend, who dumped him brutally, is like? She is Karin from HIMYM. ENTIRELY AND FULLY, except for the aversion to beer. We were DYING. Heiress to the Massingill fortune INDEED, Dear Readers.)
In 1994, the band Weezer released their first album (aka The Blue Album). I loved that album; I woke up to it in the morning, I listened to it while I did homework, I rocked out to it in my room. Then, 2 years later, Weezer released Pinkerton, which remains one of my top 10 favorite albums of all time. (Being really honest, it's more likely in my top 3.) I love the unholy fuck out of every song on that album, with the exception of the first one, which I decided I didn't like on first listen and which I've never listened to all the way through ever again. I think track 1 on Pinkerton exists to remind me that all things in life are imperfect, which just makes me love the album more. In 2001, Weezer released their second self-titled album (aka The Green Album), and it sucked balls. Really. The singles from the album stank, the whole thing was meaningless and lazy and I hated it in a "but, but. But Rivers Cuomo, how?! PINKERTON WAS SO GREAT!" kind of way. I started having to ignore the doings of Weezer to save myself pain, and then one day I heard what I thought was a Weird Al Yankovic parody of a Weezer song on the radio, but which turned out to be an actual Weezer song, "Beverly Hills." (true story) And that's when I broke up with Weezer.
IN CASE YOU COULDN'T ALREADY ADAPT THIS METAPHOR:
Dollhouse:Joss Whedon::"Beverly Hills":Rivers Cuomo
I can't pretend it's another show made by someone other than Joss because ALL OF THE SHITTY PARTS ARE SO CLEARLY JOSS PARODYING HIMSELF. The nerdy, quippy guy goes by the last two syllables of his first name? Really?? The FBI agent's next door neighbor is a shy, affable size 12 girl?! REALLY, JOSS?!? REALLY??? [murder]
So as I was telling people at my "surprise" birthday dinner (moral of that story: never try to hide things from me), El and I have been watching Outlaw Star, an anime series from 1998. It's done by the same team that did Trigun, I believe, and it's bitchin'. It's relevant to this story because in the pilot of the series, part of the merry rag-tag crew that eventually forms (of the space ship they travel around in to take contracts and move cargo and do odd-jobs throughout the known universe) ends up with this Mystery Box that people are looking for and shooting at them to get. Someone opens the box, and lo and behold, there is a girl in stasis in the box! At which point I turned to El and said, "I have the oddest desire to watch Firefly right now." (Which we've been doing, and I will say that at least on Dollhouse, I don't have to actively ignore the entire existence of one of the characters ([coughInaracough]) due to her shitty, shitty acting unless you count Eliza herself, so it has that going for it.)
This makes me fairly confident that this is how Joss's development process went:
Joss: Hey, so I have an idea for this show. It'll be all about human beings, but they'll be wiped of their personalities, and they can be imprinted with new ones...but see, one of them had a dangerous imprint, and they've gone rogue! It'll be a poignant examination of what it means to be human, and whether something like the soul exists, but framed in a fast-paced, high-tech sci-fi story!
Someone, anyone, who has ever operated a TV: Uh, they, um. Did that already. It was called Ghost in the Shell.
Joss: Oh. Well. Well, um. What if it's also about the missions these people get sent on, but they have a "normal" handler too, as a partner, and so there are all kinds of trust bonds that are formed, and Dramatic Life Saving, and one of the agents is a competent, active girl who does hand-to-hand fighting and dresses up in sexy outfits and disguises, but who also does lots of different complex mental tasks.
SAWHEOATV: J-Joss? They made that one, too. Alias, remember?
Joss: ...Fuck it, let's just make them all sex objects.
And thus, my new title for the show: Cum-Dumpster: The Series.
(Seriously, when you find yourself thinking, "Hey, next I'll watch How I Met Your Mother, that might have a plot I'm not able to predict in its entirety within the first half of the episode!" ...Dramatic Storytelling: You're Doing It Wrong.)
(Also, for the record, anyone who ever wondered what El's bitchface ex-girlfriend, who dumped him brutally, is like? She is Karin from HIMYM. ENTIRELY AND FULLY, except for the aversion to beer. We were DYING. Heiress to the Massingill fortune INDEED, Dear Readers.)