Dollhouse - A Review

While I was handling computers throughout, I managed to catch the premiere of Joss Whedon's new outing, Dollhouse, Friday night. As I've said before, Joss Whedon simply doesn't do it for me - I'm starting to wonder if it's a generational thing; most of Whedon's rabid fanbase is young. I don't have any numbers, but I suspect few of his true fans are over 30. Dollhouse falls firmly into that pop-cultural arena termed "Whedonesque" - and that, in my opinion, is to its detriment.

I can describe "Whedonesque" with a simple phrase: "spinning tires." It's simply spinning wheels at 90MPH, and I'm not the only one who thinks this; one reviewer said, "the show lacks something for viewers to grab onto." That really is its primary flaw, but let me go deeper:

Whedon is one of the many new talents who has a very loose (if any) grasp of the "mystery" concept. For these creators, leaving the audience out of the show is their inept way of inducing suspense and managing mystery. Except that it doesn't work because nothing is ever explained.

Let's compare it to Frank Miller's Elektra: Assassin, in which little is explained in the early chapters and much is left to the audience to infer throughout. While many elements and concepts are introduced without the reader knowing their significance, Miller includes them at every point along the way, so that you make the connections yourself. As opposed to simply telling you what the elements mean or how they relate to the story (especially in some grandiose, "arc-ending" revelation), and far from simply throwing them out there as some obtuse "challenge" to the audience, the concepts and elements are integral to the story - they really are the story, itself - and you are compelled to learn more.

Elektra: Assassin is a very challenging piece, due largely to its unconventional, non-linear progression, but is ultimately satisfying because it comes together in retrospect; when you reach the end of the book, literally everything falls neatly into place and you realize what was happening at every point along the way. The story, on its own - in and of itself - is the revelatory "arc" ending! That is how stories are supposed to be told and the only thing on TV these days that even comes close is Supernatural.

While you might not realize what is going on as you read it, when you reach the end, you see that the story was clear the entire time, the structure of the storytelling simply made it harder to see; had it been told more traditionally, the story is still remarkable, but the overall product would have lost some of its thrust because the non-linear progression heightened the suspense and wonderment and became as much a part of the story as the content itself.

Presentation counts - especially in, like, sequential art (you know, comic books and TV shows).

Shows like Dollhouse go from one "mystery" to another, hinting all the while that THERE IS MORE TO THIS THAN MEETS THE EYE, but without ever truly developing any of these things or connecting them, except in the most tenuous of ways. The entire time, it leads you to think there is something there you are missing and could get, if you just tried a little harder - except there really isn't! Far from being developed beforehand, Whedon is just going by the seat of his pants - making it up as he goes along - and all that "mystery" and obfuscation is nothing more than misdirection; he doesn't know wtf is going on! The structure isn't the issue, it's the actual content. Furthermore, every time you think you've figured something out, the show makes certain to let you know it was just a red herring; far from drawing you further in, it actually pushes you out! By the time this happens four or five times, who frigging cares what's "really" going on?

The younger generation is... I don't know if it's "competitive" or cynical, but if it's the former, it's certainly a twisted misconception. Joss Whedon is what the younger gamers call a "cheating GM" - a concept we older gamers are all but unfamiliar with. After all, a GM can't really "cheat," since he is the final arbiter; an example best illustrates:

A GM writes-up an encounter for the party which includes a trapdoor and a monster. One of the players gets incredibly lucky with his dice rolls, handily dispatching the monster, and another figures out how to disarm the trapdoor. Instead of improvising the rest of the encounter and moving on with the game, the GM decides to change the stats involved on the fly, making the encounter more difficult and the players' well-deserved success worthless. He may feel stupid or he may just not know where to go from there because he expected the encounter to take far longer and be more difficult, but - for whatever reason - he breaks a cardinal rule and sets himself up as the players' foe, as opposed to the (somewhat) objective arbiter.

Dollhouse didn't do well in the ratings game, but FOX expected a soft launch. I hope the series continues and picks up along the way, but one of the key elements is lacking: stop jumping from faux "mystery" to red herring and let the audience in on what's really going on. I can already give you the rundown: this agency is blah-blah, but THERE IS MORE GOING ON, which leads to another agency which is blah-blah and has MORE GOING ON, and both pale in comparison to another agency - proving that THERE IS MORE GOING ON everywhere... but who cares?

Set some things in stone and allow the mystery to come from there. If we don't know anything about anything, then there is no mystery - it's all just opaque nonsense going nowhere!

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles came on right before it and that was a fun view. I liked The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but only caught a few episodes because it was on against Chuck, which just kills; this is a great move for the Terminator series.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009