I spent most of the weekend not feeling too good so I couldn't get out and see any new movies which is a shame cause I have some cool stuff to say about Observe and Report but have to actually see the movie to see if it's relevant. Oh, I suppose I could just make stuff up. Very few people saw it so it's not like anyone could call me a liar but no, I'll wait. Until then, what oh what will I talk about?
Odds are that neither Dollhouse nor Sarah Connor Chronicles will be back next season. Fan written postmortems for these shows will go on for years but I can tell you right now that the reason for their low ratings is that each week, after watching them you feel like slashing your wrists. Sarah Connor has the most clinically depressed cast of characters in television history. Schindler's List had more happy people in it. I fully understand that they're trying to prevent a nuclear war while also trying to fend off nearly unstoppable machines from the future who have the opposite goal and that all this makes it very difficult to crack even the occasional smile. Understanding the show, however, does not make the show entertaining. Sarah Connor does have a saving grace that makes me root for its return, a little bit anyway. Week after week, they find ways to surprise me. Sometimes they'll even completely shake up the board and make me suddenly realize that things are completely different from how I thought they were. In one episode, what you thought was real was a dream and what you thought was a dream was real. In another, what was thought to be a tumor heralding Sarah Connor's eventual death turned out to be an implanted transmitter. Those twists and turns have kept the show interesting and kept me as an audience.
Dollhouse has more humor and light hearted moments but the premise itself is even more depressing. Each week I have to watch these poor people having there very selves stripped away and forced to be fighters, assassins and whores. It's especially disturbing to see them being turned into compliant sex objects to be the playthings of various types of creeps. I held out a bit of hope the week they had to deal with an airborne pathogen that caused them to lose their inhibitions. This caused Adelle DeWitt, the uptight and ruthless leader of the Dollhouse, to say things like, "I don't understand lentils." (It's funnier in the context of the episode. Just trust me in the likely event that you didn't see it.) That made me think that finally creator Joss Whedon was going to start giving us the fun times he has given us in everything else he's ever done but no. The next week we had to watch Eliza Dushku's Echo think that she was finally going to be free only to find out that it was merely an experimental scenario run by the Dollhouse itself. This reminded me of one of my favorite shows of all time, The Prisoner. Patrick McGoohan's Number Six was constantly given tantalizing tastes of freedom only to have it snatched away at the last minute. The difference between The Prisoner and Dollhouse is that Prisoner was made in England which meant that a total of 17 episodes was just fine by them whereas what Echo and her fellow Dolls are going through could last for years. I think you're awesome, Joss Whedon, but even you can't make me watch five years of this crap.
It's unfortunate that two shows that had such promise failed, in one case failing so utterly. I'm assuming the network, especially in Dollhouse's case, had a great deal to with it because the network always has a great deal to do with a television show's failure. Businessmen who know as much about the creative process as they do about dark matter always think they can march in and tell the most creative people on the planet what they're doing wrong and it's always something akin to the time in Amadeus when the Austrian emperor approached Mozart and made the nonsensical complaint that his music had too many notes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
On an unrelated note, I always like it when know-it-alls are proven wrong which is what happened this week. Everyone was predicting that Fast and Furious would once again be #1 while Hannah Montana and Observe and Report would fight it out for #2 with similar 20 million dollar openings. Instead, Hannah Montana opened in the #1 position with a 34 million dollar showing while Observe and Report's 11 million dollar 4th place opening has likely driven Seth Rogen into a Ben and Jerry's frenzy that will put back on all the weight he's been publicly celebrated for having lost. Miley Cyrus, on the other hand, gets to celebrate by not having illegal sex with her 20 year old boyfriend which means she will also probably be putting away pint after pint of Ben and Jerry's to deal with the frustration. All in all, it's a good week for me and my Ben and Jerry's stock.
No comments:
Post a Comment