![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatotherpervso, this past Friday was the first episode of Dollhouse where I was really transfixed.
dude, how stellar was Alan Tudyk's performance as the neurotic engineer guy? I was...man. Wash was a character that grew on me slowly in Firefly...or at least, one I didn't bond to instantly as I did all the others. so I've never felt a particular affection for that actor, but in this case, my eyes were glued to him.
though it's almost like he left it all out on the field with the fakeout. I was so heavily invested in that performance that by the time he was revealed as Alpha, I didn't find him nearly as frightening and psychotic as I suppose I was meant to.
and I'm not at all certain I'm on board yet with this whole Bonnie and Clyde thing. but that's another thing altogether.
the way I felt about the Alpha-in-sheep's-clothing just kind of highlighted for me the source of my discontent with Dollhouse so far. I mean, there are probably several levels of discontent with that show, but the reason I feel so ambivalent about even tuning in each week is that the pace with which I've been made to care about these characters has been SO SLOW.
pretty much the only people I was on board with from day 1 were Echo's handler and the FBI dude (and maybe 'day 1' is giving them too much credit...more like day 3 or 4, and I only stuck around that long because it's *Joss*). and speaking of it being Joss, the fact that the most connectable characters for me were both men, both conventional authority figures, is interesting in itself. but in the beginning, there wasn't a lot to love about the female characters, imo. the dolls were either fabricated or blank, Mellie was a pitiful little spaniel waiting by the door for FBI dude, Queen Bitch wasn't revealed to have a heart until recently, and the little Asian lab chick is kinda forgettable.
we know that there are female handlers in theory, but they've hardly been more than bit parts in practice.
so after the first few eps I scaled my expectations back, and since then, the characters have won me over slowly. I can't say I'm really in love with any of them, but I felt acute sympathy for Queen Bitch Boss Lady during her one ep, and even Topher—who I found entirely too Marty Stewish to respect at first—finally endeared himself to me when he brought his friend back to life and made the facility a playground.
and the dolls are...I mean, it's kind of hard to be so attached to characters that have no real agency themselves, you know? we've gotten teases of that here and there and I *have* somehow grown to *like* all the dolls, but even I'm not sure *why*.
aside from the fact that Victor is pretty. (and oh noes, he's gonna be all *scarred* now. eep!)
maybe the only reason any of this is so noteworthy to me is that I've always found Joss to be spectacular at creating characters you can bond to quickly and irrevocably. it's hard for me to remember how I felt about the cast of Buffy when it began to air...I was 15 and the show was right up my geeky alley at the time (biiiig X-files fan) so I loved it, but in that mindless teenage way that makes it hard to analyze why or how.
Angel began when I was older, and though most of the characters were crossovers and therefore don't count, I do know that I was *so fucking attached* to Doyle from Day 1, Moment 1, that when they killed him, I quit watching the show for 4 years.
yeah, really. this is why I was not involved in fandom when the show was airing. I held a grudge that lasted until I saw a marathon on TNT. my attachment to Doyle *overwhelmed the hotness that is David Boreanaz*. that's some serious business.
(similarly, I quit Buffy when she took a nosedive off that construction equipment. apparently character death was a very traumatic thing for me in my teen years. contrast that to now...whenever a Winchester has died, I've been all...*yawn* he'll be back)
Firefly was sort of the shining example of Joss's character mojo to me, though. I put off watching Firefly for a long damn time. mostly because everyone described it to me as 'cowboys in space' and I was massively unimpressed by the concept. when I finally did give it a crack, it was mostly to shut everyone up, especially my RL geeky friends.
so I went in skeptical. and I think I fell in love with every character within 3 minutes of their arrival on-screen. they were 3D and vibrant and just...bam, straight out the gate. I fell in love with the concepts later, but the people had to come first.
Dollhouse has kind of been backwards, which is probably the reason I feel so...underwhelmed. they had me sold on the premise before the show even came out, and while I think they took a little longer getting to the interesting implications than they should have (ie, eternal life via imprinting technology, the tricky/sad/masochistic abuse of power of Boss Lady's affair with Victor), the premise still strikes me as nifty. but the premise doesn't really hold much more than 'nifty' if the characters aren't there to flesh it out, and for the first 4 or 5 episodes, they were all pretty flat.
so in conclusion, [insert conclusion here]. ....it's 1:30 in the morning and I just ran out of steam on the topic. hahaha. I probably babbled long enough anyway. NIGHTY NIGHT.
dude, how stellar was Alan Tudyk's performance as the neurotic engineer guy? I was...man. Wash was a character that grew on me slowly in Firefly...or at least, one I didn't bond to instantly as I did all the others. so I've never felt a particular affection for that actor, but in this case, my eyes were glued to him.
though it's almost like he left it all out on the field with the fakeout. I was so heavily invested in that performance that by the time he was revealed as Alpha, I didn't find him nearly as frightening and psychotic as I suppose I was meant to.
and I'm not at all certain I'm on board yet with this whole Bonnie and Clyde thing. but that's another thing altogether.
the way I felt about the Alpha-in-sheep's-clothing just kind of highlighted for me the source of my discontent with Dollhouse so far. I mean, there are probably several levels of discontent with that show, but the reason I feel so ambivalent about even tuning in each week is that the pace with which I've been made to care about these characters has been SO SLOW.
pretty much the only people I was on board with from day 1 were Echo's handler and the FBI dude (and maybe 'day 1' is giving them too much credit...more like day 3 or 4, and I only stuck around that long because it's *Joss*). and speaking of it being Joss, the fact that the most connectable characters for me were both men, both conventional authority figures, is interesting in itself. but in the beginning, there wasn't a lot to love about the female characters, imo. the dolls were either fabricated or blank, Mellie was a pitiful little spaniel waiting by the door for FBI dude, Queen Bitch wasn't revealed to have a heart until recently, and the little Asian lab chick is kinda forgettable.
we know that there are female handlers in theory, but they've hardly been more than bit parts in practice.
so after the first few eps I scaled my expectations back, and since then, the characters have won me over slowly. I can't say I'm really in love with any of them, but I felt acute sympathy for Queen Bitch Boss Lady during her one ep, and even Topher—who I found entirely too Marty Stewish to respect at first—finally endeared himself to me when he brought his friend back to life and made the facility a playground.
and the dolls are...I mean, it's kind of hard to be so attached to characters that have no real agency themselves, you know? we've gotten teases of that here and there and I *have* somehow grown to *like* all the dolls, but even I'm not sure *why*.
aside from the fact that Victor is pretty. (and oh noes, he's gonna be all *scarred* now. eep!)
maybe the only reason any of this is so noteworthy to me is that I've always found Joss to be spectacular at creating characters you can bond to quickly and irrevocably. it's hard for me to remember how I felt about the cast of Buffy when it began to air...I was 15 and the show was right up my geeky alley at the time (biiiig X-files fan) so I loved it, but in that mindless teenage way that makes it hard to analyze why or how.
Angel began when I was older, and though most of the characters were crossovers and therefore don't count, I do know that I was *so fucking attached* to Doyle from Day 1, Moment 1, that when they killed him, I quit watching the show for 4 years.
yeah, really. this is why I was not involved in fandom when the show was airing. I held a grudge that lasted until I saw a marathon on TNT. my attachment to Doyle *overwhelmed the hotness that is David Boreanaz*. that's some serious business.
(similarly, I quit Buffy when she took a nosedive off that construction equipment. apparently character death was a very traumatic thing for me in my teen years. contrast that to now...whenever a Winchester has died, I've been all...*yawn* he'll be back)
Firefly was sort of the shining example of Joss's character mojo to me, though. I put off watching Firefly for a long damn time. mostly because everyone described it to me as 'cowboys in space' and I was massively unimpressed by the concept. when I finally did give it a crack, it was mostly to shut everyone up, especially my RL geeky friends.
so I went in skeptical. and I think I fell in love with every character within 3 minutes of their arrival on-screen. they were 3D and vibrant and just...bam, straight out the gate. I fell in love with the concepts later, but the people had to come first.
Dollhouse has kind of been backwards, which is probably the reason I feel so...underwhelmed. they had me sold on the premise before the show even came out, and while I think they took a little longer getting to the interesting implications than they should have (ie, eternal life via imprinting technology, the tricky/sad/masochistic abuse of power of Boss Lady's affair with Victor), the premise still strikes me as nifty. but the premise doesn't really hold much more than 'nifty' if the characters aren't there to flesh it out, and for the first 4 or 5 episodes, they were all pretty flat.
so in conclusion, [insert conclusion here]. ....it's 1:30 in the morning and I just ran out of steam on the topic. hahaha. I probably babbled long enough anyway. NIGHTY NIGHT.
