(Sort Of) End Of Season Review: Dollhouse

::Disclaimer - It's hard to write a definitive End of Season Review for a show that, technically, has not aired all of its episodes. The thirteenth episode of Dollhouse has been held back for DVD release as a result of Fox's meddling with the original pilot, with the hint that it would be shown in foreign markets. That means England, right? And it's on Sci Fi UK? Hence my tardiness with this, waiting to see if it would air on UK TV. Of course, I won't know until Sci Fi updates its website, which is still saying they're only showing nine episodes. Well done, website.::

When I was trying to figure out how to begin writing about the almost completed season of Dollhouse, the only approach that seemed to give the proper background seemed to be the "Harry Knowles Approach", where I recount a long and disjointed series of anecdotes (linked by ellipses, of course) proving that whereas you, the reader, for example, might think that you are the biggest Joss Whedon fan, in fact it is I who is the biggest fan, and have the most Whedon-related memorabilia, and so I am more qualified than anyone to take on this task so there. If you don't believe me about Knowles, this is just one example of his weird impulse to be the biggest expert on every subset of fandom going. Or the man who has the biggest obsession with oral sex and defecation.


Of course, I'm not the biggest Whedon fan in the world, as I have yet to stalk him or name one of my children Xander or Illyria. I do have a cat called Zoe, named after Gina Torres' character from Firefly, but naming cats after TV characters, products, concepts, or smells is not weird or stalkery. However, I would not be here writing this blog about various TV shows if it wasn't for Whedon. Who knows, I might be doing something more constructive, like snowboarding, or rock-climbing, or being an alcoholic. So I owe my bones and my liver to Whedon, at the very least. At the very most, there is my immersion in the TV-obsessed corner of the internet, which has given me good friends, lots of interesting chatter, and a wonderful wife [who is also obsessed with Whedon -- Canyon].

I'd long been excited whenever a show ventured into long-form territory, but before Buffy, DVRs, and DVD boxsets, it was rare to see it in anything non-soap opera. Star Trek: TNG did it every so often, and of course there was Murder One, which was pioneering and unpopular. Buffy was lucky enough to have it both ways, with your monster of the week format plus a close-ended arc running through the season. Around the time that I fell in love with Buffy (a few years after smarter people than I had already figured out how good it was), 24 came along with the same approach to season arcs, and with The Sopranos mopping up awards everywhere, the format finally got enough critical, popular, and nerd acceptance to become the next big thing. N.B. Babylon 5 did it as well, with a five-year plan not dissimilar to that of Lost. I'm aware of that. Despite its rabid fanbase, it never captured the popular imagination. Though Buffy was a show with only a cult audience, it is still referenced by popular culture maven in a way J. Michael Stracsynski's show isn't. By the way, "maven" is the plural of "maven", right?


However, it's been a long time since Whedon did any TV stuff. Angel was cancelled about five/six years ago, and since then I've become obsessed with a number of different shows, some of which are more "respectable", but less fun. I've also been bitten by the Lost bug, a show that has become so complex and ambitious that almost everything else feels like Dallas in comparison. Happy though I was about Whedon's return, I felt a certain amount of ambivalence, partly because of concern that his style of show would seem clunky after experiencing the scope and eccentricity of Lost, but also, of course, because of the Curse of Whedon. A high-concept sci-fi show on Fox? As soon as the pilot was reshot and the show was relegated to a Friday night slot, in an echo of the way Firefly was treated, it was obvious that getting attached to it was a really bad idea.

To make things worse, the pilot left me totally cold. As part of the infamous Fox Fuck Five episode stretch, with Whedon apparently spaying his show at the behest of Fox executives, it looked cheap and poorly conceived, a world away from his last major directorial effort (Serenity), and in terms of audience satisfaction, not a patch on his last "minor" directorial effort (the epoch-shattering masterpiece Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog). The next four episodes were worse, with episodes two and five vying for worst of season. Or is it two and three? Or four and five?

What was so bad about them? Many of the negative points of that opening stretch of episodes have been picked at for months now, but I have to say I agree with pretty much all of them. Dushku-as-lead was never going to work out, even with the formidable Sexy Faith Dance on her side (she cracked that bad boy out in the pilot, just for sexiness fans everywhere). As a dramatic guest star she worked wonders on Buffy, but with zero range and saddled with the part of an identity-shifting woman of many faces, several early scenes felt like pranks being played either on us or on Dushku herself.


As Canyon said many times while we were watching Dollhouse, Sarah Michelle Gellar was no Streep (hell, she was no Jennifer Garner), but at the very least she was appealing and could sell a joke, and even had a few stand-out episodes (I think she did some great work in Buffy seasons five and six). Dushku has an even more difficult job: making the audience care about someone who has no personality for us to empathise with. There are some skillful actresses out there who might have stood a chance, but Dushku does a terrible job. From what I gather, we weren't the only viewers who tuned out whenever she appeared.

She wasn't the worst thing about that opening stumble. For a while the show feels like some kind of bizarre hybrid of Alias and Joe 90, an adventure show about secret operatives operating secretly, doing various odd jobs around LA. As we're to assume our characters will be working for some benevolent organisation, it's jarring to see the Dollhouse staff doing things that are morally repellent. With Boyd Langton (the ever-excellent Harry Lennix) representing the conscience of the show by questioning the motives of the Dollhouse, we realise we're meant to be rooting for the Dolls, not their bosses, but the show doesn't go far enough with that at first. We just get a sense that this is something the show will address in good time, once the benevolent adventurey stuff slows down a bit. Though Whedon does a good enough job of introducing some of that moral complexity in the pilot, the next four episodes are so formless that our disgust over the concept of removing the "self" from a person and replacing it with another isn't allowed to crystallise earlier. It didn't help that the first thing we see is Dushku willingly signing herself over to the Dollhouse. If that's the way it works, then it can't be that bad, right?


The "monster" of the week concept didn't work either. With Echo traipsing off to do various good things (such as saving a hostage, or infilitrating a cultist compound), we get hints that there is a bigger story to be told, especially as we see FBI loser Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) investigating the mysterious organisation. Perhaps it's because we also tuned out whenever Penikett and his Scrunched Up Face Of Impotence lumbered onto set [with his Constipated Ken Doll Walk, no less - Canyon], but this thread felt malformed as well. Hints and winks were one thing, and it was great to know the show was obviously building to something, but I got the sense that Whedon, after years of watching Battlestar Galactica and Lost gain the nerd fanbase he once owned so completely, realised that the old format, of a large amount of MotW episodes sprinkled with liberal amounts of long-form soap operatics and season-arc revelations, was due for a spruce up. Dollhouse's greatest early flaw was that it didn't get the season arc moving fast enough, which we can lay at the feet of Fox.

With only thirteen episodes, Whedon needed to get cracking, and instead we got museum robberies and bodyguard duty for some obnoxious singer. Fringe was luckier with more episodes, and still squandered about 65% of the season on nonsense. Dollhouse didn't get that luxury, and yet for almost half of its run it danced on the spot. That episodic format was a poor fit from the outset, a piss-poor attempt to attract viewers who enjoyed the week-by-week simplicity of pre-Buffy TV, which is why I couldn't help but compare early episodes with Bionical Woman (please forgive me for that, but it's true).

Sadly, Fox didn't realise that we're not just post-Buffy now: we're post-Lost. That show has rewritten the rules for what audiences are willing to tolerate. Yes, the show has lost a lot of the viewers it had in its first season, but as Cuse and Lindelof have said in interviews, Lost was never meant to be a ratings-crusher. And yet, despite that shrunken audience, it's still a bona-fide hit, watched around the world by millions, and discussed and debated more than any other show on TV. The likely audience for something as wilfully peculiar as Dollhouse has been watching Lost and Galactica for years and is not interested in that old way of telling a tale any more. Dollhouse could have been setting itself up for the long haul right away, and would have retained its modest initial audience. Instead, the show felt outdated and slight straight away, and that loyal audience departed in droves. A singularly depressing outcome for those of us who were still hoping the show would come good.


And yet there was hope. Early on in promotional interviews, there was talk of the mythical Sixth Episode, the game-changer that would make us all feel bad for doubting Whedon. This made me feel very uncomfortable, coming as it was from people involved with the show. In addition to thinking that playing up chatter about how the network had finally stopped meddling with the show was, to put it mildly, ballsy and suicidal, I just couldn't see how the show could pull itself out of its tailspin. Whedon had always managed to weave comedy and drama brilliantly, but Dollhouse's first five episodes were clunky, lifeless and laughably unmoving.

And yet it was I who was the fool, as Whedon -- who, I should never forget, is one of my five favourite writers in any medium ever for the very good reason that he's a trillion times smarter and funnier than me -- slapped me in the face with that sixth episode like a fish (though a fish with Patton Oswalt attached to it), and showed us all what the show was supposed to be after all. Viewers had several criticisms of the show, and after Man on the Street, almost all of those criticisms blew away like the chaff they were. Here's a quick rundown of what I thought were the failings of the show, and how they were addressed in the second half of the season.

1) You can't care about the Actives because they are just shells.

This was, for the first half of the season at least, a major concern, and seemed like the major dealbreaker for the series. Whedon may have started the pilot with Caroline giving herself up to the Dollhouse, but this glimpse into who she is before having her personality extracted isn't enough to create a bond with her. Dushku's flat performance certainly doesn't help. If anything, prior to episode six, the only real reason to give a damn about her is because Boyd does, and Lennix nails that caring mentor role so well we want Echo to prevail just so Boyd's day isn't ruined. As for Sierra, Victor, and the others, they're shit out of luck. For instance, Victor's affection for Sierra just seems creepy, especially as we realise how she is being abused.


The miraculous second half of the season solves that brilliantly, but not straight away. Episode six makes Echo seem like even more of a puppet, and episode seven adds confusing detail to Caroline's past, but episode eight, Needs, shows the core attributes of each Active and finally generates that empathic core we need in order to care for these people. Echo was heroic already, Victor was caring and traumatised, November was unable to cope with grief, and Sierra was defiant, though it was this trait that doomed her to a horrific fate.

That episode was so strong, and so brilliantly conceived, that from that moment on it was impossible not to root for these characters, but just to make sure, we see that the "soul" of the Active can bleed through the construct downloaded into their brain, as both Alpha and Echo become what they were always meant to be in the final episode. And yet people still complained about not caring about the characters by the end! I find this utterly baffling.

2) The show doesn't seem to be about anything, or know what it's about.

In an interview conducted after the show began its rise, Whedon uncharacteristically and undiplomatically carped about the interference with his show while it was still airing (he usually waits for his work to be finished and released before complaining). Even more surprisingly, he admitted that he was upset that some episodes of the show hadn't been about anything, and singled out Tim Minear's True Believer, saying it wasn't about anything. He later explained that his quote was taken out of context, and said he had to apologise to Minear, but even so, he hit the nail on the head, albeit inadvertently.

Up until the sixth episode, Dollhouse ironically suffered from an identity crisis. It wasn't just that the show had turned out to be a hodge-podge of action/adventure sub-genres (she's a bodyguard! She's working with the ATF! She's a cat burglar!), though that was confusing. It also had an ill-defined core idea. For the first five episodes it was a caper show that left a bad taste in the mouth, hinting at the ethical and scientific ramifications of Dollhouse technology but burying that enquiry under A and B plot business, as well as using up valuable TV real-estate setting up hints about the future. A lot of effort was being expended, but with the empathy gap listed above, Dollhouse needed to grab the mind while the heart was out of reach. Sadly, the first five episodes were unfocused and over-complicated, and without a sense of conceptual continuity from week to week, it felt as unsatisfying as late-series Battlestar Galactica, except with the added narrative complication of trying to get Dushku into as many fetishy costumes as possible.


Again, the sixth episode saved the day. With unusual but welcome directness, Whedon used a series of vox pops in which people discuss the urban myth of the Dollhouse, and its ramifications for society and humanity. Even though we had seen the Dollhouse through the disgusted eyes of Ballard, we're seeing his reaction, and therefore have our own reaction to his reaction. Is he just in this because of a fixation on Caroline? How much of his search for the Dollhouse is motivated by a need to prove his superiors wrong? With the sixth episode, we get context to realise that the Dollhouse truly is an awful place, and the tech is evil, to the extent that it could possibly poison the human condition irrevocably. Such a thought is available if you ponder it long enough, but having a fictional scientist say, out loud, that this is the worst thing in the world, and will ruin everything, is a sobering moment. Of all of the things I loved about this first series, it was that moment I remember most clearly. It shook me up.

3) Hold on. So, the Dollhouse is actually evil?

It's inevitable that sci fi action/adventure shows on network TV will focus on the heroics of a bunch of photogenic ladies and gents, as that is the acceptable story we identify with the most. Though villains and anti-heroes have their place, it's rare to see something from the point of view of the bad guys. Of course, Whedon has, in the past, explored dodgy morality in his heroes. Angel in particular explored the pros and cons of doing business with evil, and former show producer Shawn Ryan based an entire show (The Shield, obvs) around a bad man, and that resulted in seven brilliant seasons of TV.

However, the seemingly incomplete explanation of what the Dollhouse does meant we were never really sure if the Dollhouse was doing something good or bad. I'm not sure if this was intentional or an unwanted side-effect of the pilot reshoot. Ballard might maintain, from the very beginning, that the Dollhouse is a bad place, but he's such a self-righteous blowhard that it's difficult to side with him. Plus, Tahmoh Penikett has one facial expression -- extreme disgust -- so for all we know, he thinks PopTarts or living room furniture or friendly neighbourhood hotties are sickening.

Over time we begin to understand that the Dollhouse almost certainly is evil, but that jibes with the idea that we're watching an action adventure series, certainly in the early episodes. Thankfully, with the sixth, the action adventure format mostly drops away, leaving us with a fascinating moral puzzle to unravel. Brilliantly, the show keeps pulling the rug out from you, making sure the viewer remains unsure about those motives in a way that would make Lost showrunners Cuse and Lindelof proud. Painting ostensibly evil characters like Adele and Topher as lonely souls who use the Dollhouse to connect with other people humanises them, making it harder to see them as carton villains, though Fran Kranz' performance is so irksome that I only "sympathise" with Topher at a remove. Olivia Williams' performance is so much more nuanced that it genuinely becomes hard to see her saddened in later episodes.


Other characters are shown to have weaknesses. Dr. Saunders is obviously a tragic figure, disfigured by Alpha and seemingly appalled by much of what goes on in the Dollhouse, though later revelations about her character call some of those feelings into question, not to mention the actual workings of the Dollhouse tech (I'm trying really hard not to spoil here). As for Ballard and his relationship with Mellie, you can see that the writers had great fun making Ballard as big a douchebag as possible. Even though Angel was a character capable of good and evil, he always had a nobility, even when he became Angelus. Ballard is just a sleaze. For those who have yet to see the entire series, there is a great fight scene coming up. If you dislike Ballard as much as I do, you'll enjoy it greatly.

So, our notions of good and bad are tossed up in the air on a weekly basis, but even then, I cannot get Needs out of my head. When I found out why Sierra is in there, it settled something for me. No matter what the purpose of the Dollhouse is, I want to see it burn to the ground just for what they've done to her. Of all the things I've seen on TV this year, even including the finale of The Shield, nothing has upset me as much as that revelation. Fuck the Dollhouse, and fuck Adele for going along with it.

4) Is this actually going anywhere?

More than anything else I've said here so far, it hurts to admit that, in the first five episodes, I got the distinct feeling that the show had no plan for the future. It wasn't just the confusing concept, either. Even Whedon admitted in those interviews linked to earlier that he had not come up with a good enough reason for people to hire Dolls when they could just hire normal people. I remember fanwanking that, in the pilot, someone would want not just a good hostage negotiator but the bestest negotiator EVAH, but midwives? That just made no narrative sense, other than to have an action adventure show with a greater variety of possible scenarios, instead of just a spy show (how many times can we see Sydney Bristow trying to recover a MacGuffin of some kind? Hence, double-triple-agents and Rambaldi devices).


After episode six, the episodic format pretty much faded away, not just to provide some momentum heading into the season finale, but also to show that the Dollhouse writers were telling a different story. Instead of Bionical Woman resets at the end of each episode, it became apparent that a mythology was being created, with clues being littered everywhere. Things that seemed ambiguous early on began to be addressed, such as the revelation of the mole's identity, the reasons why the main Actives are in the Dollhouse, and what Alpha is. Even though we don't get the answers to everything, we now get the sense that things will be revealed at a pace somewhere between Fringe-fast and Lost-slow, especially as the introduction of Omega suggests that this season was merely prologue to the real story.

5) Is this format too much for Eliza Dushku?

Upon hearing about the concept behind the show, many people joked that Dushku would not be up to the task of playing multiple characters, as much of her work had shown she had minuscule range. Regrettably, the first five episodes did nothing to dissuade viewers' fears, with Dushku playing the various personalities with little tweaking other than changes to the level of sassiness or concern on her face. Thankfully, the sixth episode came along and...


...Sorry, don't know what I was thinking there. Not even that episode could fix her performance, which continued to be the weakest link in the show. What it could do was allow the other actors on the show to take up some of the slack.


Sadly, this is a mixed blessing. Scenes involving Tahmoh Penikett and Miracle Laurie are painful to watch, with her line readings garbled and his face scrunched up in eternal anger. Fran Kranz' Topher starts out obnoxious and overplayed, and continues to be obnoxious and overplayed right to the end. Dichen Lachman has difficulty projecting anything other than half-hearted sexiness or vulnerability a la Dushku, which is annoying and limiting especially when Needs reveals her tragic backstory.

Thankfully there are some terrific actors onboard who save the day. The ever-dependable Harry Lennix is superb as Echo's handler, effortlessly projecting machismo, authority, and tenderness. Olivia Williams' performance as Adele starts out well and becomes more and more compelling as new and unexpected character traits are layered on. Reed Diamond's Dominic has less to do at first, with some peculiarly broad villainy early on, but by the time Needs rolls around, he is firing on all cylinders, and is the only cast member who walks out of the egregious "comedy" episode (Echoes) with his head held high.


The real revelations are the performances by Enver Gjokaj, as Victor, and Amy Acker, as Dr. Claire Saunders. I was always a fan of Acker on Angel, even during her early, unsubtle hours with the broad accent. Though her character, Fred, annoyed many (including Canyon, who has never been able to fully accept Fred into her heart [she's not Jesus! -- Canyon]), Acker silenced a lot of her critics in the final episodes of Angel, as she became Illyria. Sadly, she only had a few episodes to show what she could do, but in Dollhouse she does excellent work as the agoraphobic medic. It's depressing to see her paired up with the fidgety and "quirky" Topher, though her sour stillness is a nice contrast. She particularly shines in the final episodes of Dollhouse's first season, as we find out more about Saunders and how Acker's character came to be the way she is.


And where the hell did Gjokaj come from? His laughable accent in the first couple of episodes made me ignore him whenever he appeared onscreen, but with the third-episoode reveal of his Dollhood, Gjokaj began to pretty much own the show, especially in Needs and Omega. As for his "impersonation" of another actor on the show, all I can say is wow. Of all the Dolls, Gjokaj is the only actor who has figured out how to make them sympathetic and distinct even though he is required to play different people each week. It's always a pleasure to see someone break out, and if Dollhouse had failed to get a second wind, I would still have been grateful to it for alerting me to the presence of this actor. Let's hope that, if the show only manages one more season, we get to see a lot more of Gjokaj.

There is another terrific actor on the show, though not for long. I shall keep quiet about that, even though the majority of the Internet knew about his casting about four seconds after it happened. Suffice to say, Mutant Enemy fans in the UK will be thrilled out of their minds when they see him.

6) Is this show going to be worth sticking with?

If the points above don't convince you that I think it is, then nothing will. I cannot deny that, even after the sixth episode, there is some shakiness. Echoes is embarrassing to watch, and desperately misconceived. Whedon fans know that he likes to challenge his actors and make them do things they wouldn't normally, but we don't know these characters well enough to respond to their "wacky drunk" selves. Other than Reed Diamond's unexpectedly funny turn, I'd much rather that episode didn't exist. Tim Minear's finale is also disappointing, with only the memorable scene showing Alpha's "Frankenstein's monster"-esque birth working well. Though it is packed with fascinating revelation and intriguing set-ups for the second season, there is some unforgivable reliance on cliche and coincidence, much of which neuters the drama. Also, Dushku is forced to share the screen with two actors who make her look even more foolish than usual.

However, this is nothing to be concerned about. The second half of the season features at least three instant classic episodes, filled with philosophical enquiry, rug-pulling narrative trickery, and action. Though all of Whedon's shows have had depth, this could turn out to be his deepest and most thought-provoking show yet. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that it's going to be worth the effort, because months ago, I was despairing. Considering how I once unironically compared this to Bionical Woman and Knight Rider, it's testament to Whedon's formidable storytelling and showrunning skills that I now think that -- if allowed to continue for more than one season -- Dollhouse has the best shot of replacing Lost as the smartest and most challenging sci-fi show on TV. Let's hope it stays around long enough to prove me right.

End Of Season Review: Fringe

While futilely attempting to catalogue the weekly TV events of the 2008-2009 season, I spent a long time agonising over Fringe, the wacky science fiction show from J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. As mentioned in my In Treatment review, there were many other shows on our to-watch list, some of which were actually reliably good (Friday Night Lights and The Shield spring to mind), and yet I felt compelled to keep watching this first, much to Canyon's bafflement. Much of this I can put down to my nerd heritage, but it was also a consequence of the imminent end of Lost. With that show on the final stretch, I need something to replace that, something with a needlessly complex mythology that is filled with Easter Eggs for me to feel good about spotting. Dollhouse looks to be building some interesting ambiguity, certainly about the history and purpose of the Dollhouse itself, but the clues about all of that are being introduced with actual narrative force, making these revelations story beats instead of just getting the prop department to mock up a poster for Massive Dynamic with a phone number on it.


The loss of Lost will leave a hole in my life that will be absurdly big for something as trivial as a TV show, but when Fringe turned out not to be just a procedural but just the kind of batshit sci fi continuity smorgasbord as Lost, I rejoiced. Could this patchy show fill the hole? Would it settle down and provide the brain fodder that Lost did? By the time the season finished, it was sadly still a long way off, with Dollhouse providing the mental workout. More on that some other time.

Of all the shows I watched this season, Fringe was probably the most exasperating. A lot of shows turned out to be just as good as I had hoped (returning shows such as FNL and Big Love), some surprised me (Party Down, Leverage, and Sons of Anarchy are currently making me very happy, though I had expected to be disappointed), and some were terrible from the get-go and never recovered (Knight Rider, Eleventh Hour, and The Unusuals deserve their ignominious cancellations). Dollhouse was the show I was desperate to love, started out hating, and then ended up adoring, but Fringe was one that tested my patience throughout. More than once I considered dropping it, until the episode Safe came along and showed that the glacial pace of Lost was not going to be replicated. At the midpoint of the season, everything kicked off, and it seemed like Fringe was going to be my favourite new show of the year. Except that Fox kept taking it off the air for months at a time, wrecking any narrative momentum, made worse by some dire standalone episodes that will be next to unwatchable when going through the season a second time. Lost's first season might not be a patch on later seasons, but it still maintained a higher standard than this.


It was foolish to assume the show would be Lost 2.0. For a start, ABC might not be the most daring network in the world, but they have been more than willing to give Cuse and Lindelof slack to create the oddest and most complex show on TV even as that oddness and dense narrative repels viewers who have lost patience with it. Fox are pretty much the opposite, as shown by their insistence on dumbing down Dollhouse long enough to put off any viewers who wanted something more intelligent than Bionical Woman. While Whedon seems to be incapable of creating anything that doesn't demand great attention from his audience, Fringe comes from the minds of a bunch of guys who are more than capable of creating challenging and entertaining TV, but also know that they have to play by the rules if they're going to avoid cancellation. The result is a show of dismay-inducing lowest-common-denominator standalone episodes that are filled with story beats that make absolutely no sense if you haven't seen every other episode. It's not quite the worst of both worlds, but it's close.

Compared to the first two seasons of Abrams' Alias (which had Kurtzman and Orci onboard as head writers), Fringe has been, at times, an appalling mess. Part of the failure is down to the main character, Olivia Dunham, who is nowhere near as compelling or consistently written as Sydney Bristow (and Anna Torv is no Jennifer Garner). Several episodes in, her mild-mannered responses to the death of her lover and revelation of his betrayal were obviously not working. At the time I thought Torv was underplaying great emotional pain, but in the sixth episode, The Cure, Dunham is suddenly a vengeance-crazed maverick, suggesting the character was rewritten to become more dynamic. Of course, it could also have something to do with her brain being invaded by the consciousness of her evil (or not evil) lover, but none of it felt like foreshadowing, merely tinkering.


As Masticator pointed out in another internet venue, the second half of the season saw her living with her sister and niece, probably in an attempt to make Dunham seem less like an unlovable career woman (can't have one of those on Fox!). If the network feels that's what Dunham needs, then fair enough. After all, Sydney Bristow lived with Francie Calfo and hung out with Will Tippin, and both of them allowed the writers to give Bristow more moments of vulnerability, as well as having a sounding board for her troubles.

However, Francie and Will were also used brilliantly to complicate her life, especially in the second season. For two characters that, at first, had seemed extraneous, the amazing second season finale would have been nothing without them. Dunham's sister Rachel (played by Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist scene-stealer Ari Graynor) adds nothing. She kinda flirts with Peter Bishop (the almost eternally smirking Joshua Jackson), and her daughter almost gets her brain melted by an improbable evil scientist in the desperately bad episode The No-Brainer, but other than that, there really is no purpose for them in the show other than to have a child around that Dunham can hug. Look! That woman is reading a story to a child before bedtime! I no longer hate and fear her. Good work, focus group.


Other characters have little or no purpose too. Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) is little more than a lab assistant with a wicked 'do, added just so Walter Bishop (John Noble) has someone to throw exposition at when Peter isn't around. Phillip Broyles (Lance "Intensity" Reddick) either gives Dunham some props or some earache depending on what is needed for each episode. He also seems to be simultaneously jaded by the mad science events in the show, and absolutely shocked by them. Happy though I am to see Reddick getting regular work, I wish he was given more to do. He needs to shoot a motherfucker or two in the second season.


Nina Sharp (Blair Brown) has proven to be significantly less interesting than Ben Linus, or even Charles Widmore. There's a bit of back and forth about whether she's a good guy or a bad guy, but compared to my endless pontificating about the alignment of Linus, I'm really not that bothered about her. When it's revealed on the show, I'll give a damn then. Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo) has proven to be such a disposable character that he has been fired and not fired with great rapidity. I have no idea what the showrunners are up to there, though it does strongly suggest that people shouldn't drink consolation rum and then go posting on Facebook. Or wear certain egregious hats.


With almost all of the characters leaving me cold, the mad science has to keep me occupied instead, and a lot of the time it fails at that too. For every amazing, creepy visual like The Sealant (which makes your orifices close up, suffocating you to death), or a weird worm crushing a man's heart, there is some stupid Chimera monster on the loose, or a syphilitic cat woman that drinks spinal fluid (what the hell were they doing that week? Someone should tell the writers that three bad ideas do not equal one good one.). The main arc of the show is the thing that saves it, with Walter's tinkering in parallel universes causing a war with a technologically superior version of humanity.


The moment that was revealed was when I mentally committed to the show through thick and thin, as it promised some mindblowing stuff later on, but even then, we find out that Dunham was once a test subject for Walter and William Bell (Leonard Nimoy, in one of the most heavily promoted, and utterly awesome, surprise cameo appearances ever), in order to prepare her for battle as a psychic soldier. Shades of Scanners and X-Files there, and not a problem, except that Sydney Bristow, in Alias, was also trained as a child as part of the absurdly named Project Christmas. It's one thing to complain about how shows by J.J. Abrams seem to focus a lot on father issues, which is kind of unfair as it's not something he is alone in doing, but having two shows feature two special agents who have had a mysterious childhood is really taking the piss. Though still, psychic super-soldiers are a lot more interesting than just your regular super-soliders. I love Captain America, but is he as cool as Michael Ironside and his ability to blow someone's head apart? Exactly.

So, most of the characters suck. Some individual episodes are horribly goofy and uneffective. It can be dismayingly derivative. The format means most episodes end with a race against time, with, at best, a chase sequence or, at worst, Dunham talking someone out of setting fire to her with their brain (didn't they do that twice?). The science is offensively bad, even when you assume a daft sci fi show is liable to fudge the details somewhat. There is far too much evidence of the showrunners playing it safe and doing what the network demands. Why bother with it?


Because JOHN NOBLE IS LOVE, bitches! I can take any amount of dreary Dunham home chat, or Peter Bishop-style smarm, because every so often John Noble wanders into shot, and takes even the stupidest dialogue - yes, even the endless digressions about various foodstuffs - and turns it into a heartbreaking, shocking, hilarious soliloquy (yes, all of those emotions at the same time!). What's best about that is that he actually gets the best dialogue on the show, so imagine how incredible that sounds. His performance as Denethor in Return of the King left me cold, but in Fringe he performs miracles. In the season finale, There's More Than One Of Everything, he has some scenes in an old beach-house during which he has a minor breakdown in front of Peter. Kudos to Joshua Jackson for stepping up to the plate, but the real genius is being displayed by Noble, who is alternately terrifying and vulnerable.



Next to Gabriel Byrne and Michael Emerson, he's the best thing on TV.

He's not the only reason I keep watching, though. That amazing series concept, so much more interesting than "FBI investigates odd science things, has great potential. The episodes that furthered that arc the most were the season highlights, showing up the standalones for the silly mistakes that they were. The ratio of good to bad episodes is tilted in the wrong direction, but even so, the bad episodes often featured some moment of trickery that justified them. The Easter Eggs, mostly involving Michael Cerveris' cameos as jalapeno-loving curio The Observer, are always fun to look for, though again, how much the show will reward rewatching will depend on whether there are even more clues than we thought, and even more future plot twists have been foreshadowed without us even knowing it. Of course, that excludes the heavily sign-posted revelation that Peter is actually Alternate Universe Peter, a twist that was blatantly obvious very early on in the season (though I have to give props to internetter Diane Court for putting her finger on that before me). So far, though, I'm not quite sure what the lens flares mean. Is it to do with crossing back and forth from one universe to the other? Or just a test run for Abrams' dazzlingly bright Star Trek?


Speaking of The Observer, just how cool is he? His introduction in The Arrival was the first hint that Fringe was up to something more than just solving a case a week, and captured my imagination just as I was beginning to think the show was a misfire. It's a good thing too, as the pedigree of the showrunners promised something better than the humdrum introduction. As I am human, I tend to be more disappointed than usual when something doesn't live up to expectations. Kurtzman and Orci get a lot of flack for their film work, and sometimes there is a point there. Their script for The Legend of Zorro was a depressing failure, and the controversy surrounding The Island is the most interesting thing about it. However, they wrote some of the very best episodes of Alias, and only someone with a heart of stone couldn't love their Star Trek revamp. I also didn't hate Transformers, and will not apologise for that, even if judged by God him-and/or-herself (though I reckon God loves Transformers as much as me and has also watched it four times in one week like I did last month).

I'm not sure how much input they have in the show (according to Orci's IMDb page, they're developing nine projects, and that's in addition to their work on the next Star Trek movie), but hats off to them for hiding the real arc of the show for about half of the season, and for gathering together a strong team of writers and directors. Though it was sad to see X-Files legend Darin Morgan depart the show after only a few episodes, the showrunners managed to get some terrific writers like Jeff Pinkner, Zack Whedon, and J.R. Orci, and talented TV directors like Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Lost veteran Paul Edwards, and Christopher Misiano, among others. They also got Brad "Transsiberian" Anderson to direct some of the best episodes (including that excellent season finale), and, in a surprising masterstroke, brought in Akiva Goldsman. For a long time he has been loathed by cinephiles and nerds the world over for writing some of the worst movies of our time, but Bad Dreams, the episode he wrote and directed, was a taut forty-five minutes filled with creepiness, humour, and horrifyingly effective shocks. He can be extremely proud, and I can ease off the urge to scream when his name appears in credits. Give him some better projects to work on, and he might surprise even more people in future.


In the end, I like the idea of the show far more than I like the actual show. It's extremely gruesome, which I always appreciate. It's full of truly awful TV science, but the showrunners have at least made the mad science machines look like real world instruments - all dials and switches and rheostats - which is a lovely touch. The cast is largely forgettable except for one acting titan (Noble) and a bona fide sci fi legend (Nimoy), but I don't really mind, even though that's often a deal-breaker. This is your actual "damned with faint praise" review, but even though the things I love about few and far between, I still do love the show. A surprising amount as well. I can't really explain it. Maybe it's because it's the sort of show I get a kick out of even when it fails, like when you buy a car against everyone's advice just because you like the shape of it, and you can forgive it when the seats aren't that comfortable, or there's a weird smell that never goes away, or the windscreen wipers don't work when they get wet. It doesn't matter. This is the car you wanted! Sometimes that's enough.

People used to say that Heroes was Lost for Dummies*, but in fact it is Fringe that, right now, feels like the low IQ version of Cuse and Lindelof's epic. I don't mean that as an insult, especially as I strongly believe that after this opening season of promising set-ups, quirky narrative experiments, and interesting concepts, the best is yet to come. Let's hope I'm right about that, because after Lost leaves us fans bereft, with Dollhouse unlikely to make it to season three, and Goyer and Braga's Flash Forward an unknown quantity, this might be all we have left to cling to.

* In case you were wondering, Heroes is actually Smallville for Dummies. True fact.

Why It Can Be Okay To Be A Hater

Since writing about Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, it has been released in America to a tidal wave of positive notices, with even less dissent than there was in the UK. While I would like to think some of that might be attributable to Anglophilia from some critics who consider the UK to be automatically culturally superior (a fallacious assumption if ever there was one), people I know and whose opinion I respect have chimed in with fulsome and uncompromised praise as well. Once more I feel like the curmudgeon who hates fun, even though I still maintain the movie is a wretched, hollow mess hiding behind a smug veneer of respectability.

However, this suspicion that I am out-of-step with the happier end of the cultural spectrum haunts me even more now that I've seen Mamma Mia!, the most successful Hollywood musical of all time. The DVD release has been the cause of much celebration by the UK press, who giddily recount tales of singalong screenings packed full of delirious fans who adore it, flaws and all. Though some outright hate it, I've heard many people say they thought it was dreadful, but couldn't hate it because it is so genial and determinedly jolly that picking on it seemed unfair.


I had a similar response at first, but it slowly turned sour, which convinced me to blog about it. That post is coming up, but while writing it I kept changing tack, eventually realising that my thoughts about it were rooted in my unspoken beliefs about criticism. This realisation came as I saw with some sadness that, as both Mamma Mia! and Happy-Go-Lucky have accidentally or intentionally generated a impregnable forcefield against criticism by dint of being celebrations of joyousness, writing negatively about them is tantamount to hating life, or proof, as Melanie Reid puts it in this column, that I “have missed the joke”. Maybe she’s right, as the only jokes I could see on display in Mamma Mia! involved bawdy comments about promiscuity and male genitalia, and they didn’t make me laugh. I must hate life!

This gets to the core of any film criticism (or, in my case, amateurish blogging about superhero flicks), that for any movie or book or album or comic or game, there is liable to be someone out there who thinks it's a joy-inducing slice of heaven, so what purpose does a dissenting voice matter? There are even those of us who think Speed Racer is a misunderstood classic, but as only twelve people seemed to like it, it's not quite the same thing. Mamma Mia! is the fastest selling DVD of all time, a record that is unlikely to be broken when The Dark Knight comes out, even though that movie made $440m more in theatres. Mamma Mia! isn't just loved by a few. Its fanbase seems to be monolithic. It makes millions of people deliriously happy. What's the point of bringing up the faults of this movie when millions of people either ignore those faults or think they they are actually the things that make it more real or honest?


This is the "If you don't like it, don't watch it," defence, employed by fans to bitch out anyone who dares to point out the flaws in the object of their affection. Talkbacks across the internet are littered with this mewling protest, not in the hope of saving someone from wasting their time on something they don't like or "get", but because they want the negative assessment eradicated. It's childish and conceited and hilariously thought to be the final word in these arguments, even though I'll watch whatever I fucking like and won't be told what to do by some weasel in a Save The Cheerleader t-shirt.


(To whoever created that image, thank you from the bottom of my heart.)

To clarify, I feel I have an insight into their mindset. Shamefully, I will admit to thinking Heather Havrilesky should just switch Lost off as it's obviously not the show she expects, and her constant frustration with it for not being a jolly romp every week is depressing to read, but that's in my crankiest moments. Obviously she should do what she wants to, or has to, what with her being a TV critic and all. That attempt at rationality on my part doesn't make reading her drubbings any less frustrating or upsetting, though. Why is my emotional response so visceral? Am I personally offended by it? Is it an unthinking and oblivious diss of my own opinion? Am I objectively wrong somehow, and Havrilesky has some insight into the show that I, a mere blogger and fanboy, am missing? Am I empathising so much with the creators of the show that I feel bad for them being insulted like this?


It's all very silly and solipsistic, and I try to subdue those feelings. While pretty much everything that happens on the internet is ephemeral and meaningless, I heartily believe raging ineffectually against a consensus opinion is necessary and almost worthwhile, and not just in an arrogant "Every Opinion Counts" way. It's the way of things that people are more likely to want to debate something that they enjoy above something they dislike, as most people will gladly not waste time on something they derive no pleasure from. As a result, fanbases grow and solidify, and any outsiders looking for information about a work of pop culture and/or art will come upon an uncritical consensus view that something has value. Sometimes it will, above and beyond the appeal it has to a fanbase, and sometimes it won't. However, as time passes these pop culture artifacts become considered classics, and their influence can be felt on other works that come later.

That's all well and good if they're original and personal and thought-provoking etc., but if they're poor but popular, it can be a problem. While I'm uninterested in anything that rips off Buffy or Angel, I'll happily give hours of my life to experiencing the work of people inspired by the Mutant Enemy team to stretch themselves to those heights of writing. It's likely to happen, as many writers on that show were insanely talented (Whedon, Espenson and Goddard particularly spring to mind), and to aspire to their level of excellence is commendable. The goalposts should be there, but if, over time, flat and lifeless writing is considered the height of achievement thanks to relentless praise from uncritical fans, those goalposts move, and we're stuck with Torchwood as the standard bearer. Yes, I’m aware that I’m describing a worst case scenario that is almost totally beyond belief, but the nightmares of a world in which that poo-wad of a show is revered have been keeping me up at night. I appreciate that there is a large element of over-reaction there. After all, no one would ever try to fuse the macho nonsense of Torchwood with the concept of Buffy.


Oh bollocks.

And no, I'm not one of these fusty old moaners who thinks that standards are in the toilet and TV and cinema are cultural toilets with nothing of merit on offer. If anything, things are better than ever, primarily because even those stereotypical suit-wearing, cigar-chomping movie moguls are realising that smarter movies can find an audience and even a profit (though I hate to admit it, you can credit the Weinsteins' ability to make Miramax such a success for that sea-change). What worries me is that, while blogging and talkbacks allow anyone's opinion to be voiced, a dissenting voice will be shouted down by the fans, who have more of a stake in supporting the object of their affection than the "hater" has in hating on it (the exception to this rule is Heroes, which seems to have a large audience, most of whom are having fun piling on).

Of course, that is not to say I’m patting trolls on the back for standing up to the consensus with random reflexive insults that are posted merely to be contrary or obnoxious. There is a middle-ground, and debate can be conducted on the internet with civility and courtesy. I’ve managed it in the bearpit that is the AICN talkback, and if it can be done there, it can be done anywhere. It’s easy. Just follow the simple rule, “Don’t be an asshole”, and, weirdly, people respond positively. It’s shocking but true. I'm also aware that yes, there are often sites that go beyond the pale in chasing after an object of hate (I just stumbled across this baffling site obsessing about Kevin Smith), and while I return to the same few things I think represent the ass-end of pop culture, I do try to praise the stuff that makes it all worthwhile.

Before I forget, when I mentioned to Canyon that I was going to write this post, she made a good point, that often pop culture artifacts that receive a uniform critical drubbing or blanket praise do so because those with an opposite opinion feel cowed by the wave of consensus, and it's only after a dissenting voice speaks up that some people feel bold enough to voice their doubts. I'm not sure how often this happens, but Canyon mentioned the Titanic backlash, and The Dark Knight certainly went from high praise to fevered criticism pretty quickly. One anti-Torchwood post I wrote received comments about how relieved people were that the show wasn't just accepted as a quality production by everyone, as several media outlets were acting as if it was must-see TV, when in fact it was an ongoing car crash. It can be a real Mugatu/Crazy Pills experience when you're a lone rebel (oh God, get me!), so if even my carping, which is read by something like twelve people on a regular basis, is aimed at something everyone likes and gives others the courage to say how they feel, then I feel much better about being a mean-spirited jerk making fun of Eve Myles' berserk facial expressions.

Okay, that’s enough navel-gazing and justificating and preening and stating of the obvious. Consider this my huge caveat whenever I get all mean and start to complain about something that has a loyal fanbase. Though it might not seem like it, I'm criticising something beloved out of a sense of duty to mankind, and I also temper that with love. There should be garlands strewn at my feet or something.

ETA: Oddly enough, Noel Murray's penultimate Popless post at the AV Club has seen him pondering what is the point of criticism, and this paragraph chimed:

Throughout the year, I've been wondering: What is the responsibility of a critic? Is it to respond openly and enthusiastically to whatever an artist is trying to do? Or is it to nitpick it in the name of maintaining some authority? For most of my career, I've leaned toward the former, but I'm starting to see the value in the latter. Everything looks flawed to me these days—even the music, movies, TV shows and books that I love. When I review Mad Men or Lost for The TV Club, I often take pains to note the flaws even as I'm raving about what those shows do right, but whenever I do that, I wonder if I'm unnecessarily bumming out fans who came to The TV Club merely to celebrate the good. If I'd reviewed The Shield finale—one of the best TV endings of all time—would I have been persnickety enough to point out that some of the dialogue was strained and the ending rushed? If so, would that have served a purpose? I'm honestly not sure.

Of course, I think he has a duty to pick faults with the finale of The Shield which, while dwarfing everything else on TV all year, had its problems, though minor. His concern that the fans would be upset is off the mark. Fans with thin skins should know better than to expect blanket praise from a site written by such thoughtful people, and everyone else would appreciate the back-and-forth in the comments section. Also, if people are to trust your opinion, you have an obligation to be honest with yourself, especially if you're contributing to a larger dialogue. The man needs to be fearless, as do we all. Be sure to read the articles he links to in the first paragraph. The Pop Matters post is especially bracing, especially this:

Most reviewers are similarly in it for the self-definition, seeking to prove to themselves that their tastes are unique or trying to secure tangible proof of their influence on the world. The parasitic positive review is as much a will to power as the nihilistic negative one.

It's funny makes me feel kinda queasy because it's true.

Dr. Emma Frost, I Presume

The trailer for X-Men Originals: Wolverine and Sabretooth Snarly Snarly FightyMuch has been leaked onto the internet since its first showing at Comic-Con (which, once more, I have been unable to attend ::sniff::), and I have to say, even though Wolverine bores me greatly, it looks pretty nifty. Things explode, mutants pose in front of carnage and yet seem unmoved by it due to their utter coolness, and Liev Schrieber, my sworn enemy, gets knocked through some windows. To quote Jean-Claude Van Damme, dat's gotta hurt!

Much as I would much rather have a Kieślowski-esque decalogue exploring the psychology of my favourite childhood X-Man Cyclops (what??!?), I guess this will be fun too. I may not be berserker crazy about Wolverine, but I really enjoy Hugh Jackman's interpretation of him (even though, seriously, stop crying in every movie, Logan). Whether David "Mr. Amanda Peet" Benioff's script is better than his work on Iliad-Lite aka Troy, or Gavin Hood's direction extends beyond the growling-into-the-camera or walking-away-from-'splodey shots we saw littered through that trailer, we'll have to wait and see. However, I do have one question. Who the hell is this?


Yeah, I get that it's meant to be Emma Frost, everyone's favourite bitchy psychic who isn't Miles from Lost. She's been in a holding pattern waiting to turn up in an X-Men movie, and now is her chance, and I really hope she gets more of a shot than Colossus or Jamie Madrox, because she is a fantastic character, especially when written by Joss Whedon or Grant Morrison. However, who is the actress? IMDb has no listing for her right now, and she looks really familiar, a bit like Julie Benz, except not (her Marvel involvement so far begins and ends with a part in the surely unnecessary Punisher: War Zone). Can someone help me out? It's been driving me out of my mind. Not unlike what would happen if Emma Frost herself were to use her incredible brainpowers to attack me.

So yeah, I'm glad she's in the movie, and is being played by someone who visually fits the part (i.e. an attractive blonde woman), yet though I understand this is an early leak, and it's a crappy YouTube copy of a mobile phone video, but seriously, this...


...looks like an effect discarded from the Roger Corman Fantastic Four movie. Please let her diamond transformation look better in the finished version. Still, that irked me, but at least I'm not an obsessive Deadpool fan angered to the point of insanity by the casting of a non-disfigured Ryan Reynolds, or a Gambit fan stamping his or her feet at the inclusion of that card-flinging dickhead in the wrong context ("Waaaah! He was never in Weapon X! How is he supposed to fall in love with Anna Paquin now?"). I can handle a potentially improvable effect, and might even overlook the casting of Dominic Monaghan as a featherless Barnell Bohusk (though I love that character, I can understand the reluctance to keep him the same as in the comics). Besides, check this out.


It's Keamy! Playing The Blob! And, from that crappy screen-cap, about to fight Ray Liotta. OMG YAY! I love The Blob. I guess the Kevin Durand fans who checked this blog out a month ago (::waves at Kevin Durand fans::) will be very upset to see the great man obscured by even more latex than Vinnie Jones as the Rubbernaut in X-Men 3: The Last Straw, but hey, it's still terrific news. Consider me excited over yet more mutant shenanigans.

HORRIBLE!!!

Beware: Mild Dr. Horrible spoilers (but surely you've watched it by now; the final part's been up for about 45 minutes!)


If you're wise, you will already have been following the wonderful web experiment of Joss Whedon and his Mutant Enemy cohorts known as Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, which has been amusing us greatly this week. In a fit of Whedon-love we stayed up to catch the third and final part of his musical masterpiece that isn't Once More With Feeling or the theme to Firefly, and if the previous two installments were hilarious, this was hilarious and heart-breaking. Really heart-breaking.


This year we've only seen a couple of Whedon projects come out, and both featured tragedy. The final issue of Astonishing X-Men was gut-wrenching, with Whedon giving his favourite character, Kitty Pryde, a heroic moment that dooms her to eternal torment, and Dr. Horrible ends on a note that echoes the final scenes of both De Palma's Blow Out and Coppola's The Godfather. (Yes, I'm comparing Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog to The Godfather. What of it?)

So, I ask this seriously. Mr. Whedon, if you accidentally wander across this blog post on your journeys through Netland, I'm offering to come to LA and give you a really big hug and a blueberry muffin if you will, just once, not have one character in your work suffer horribly. I understand that it adds a lot to the impact of the story, and with Dr. Horrible it was a nice play on that awful Women in Refrigerators device lazily used in comics, but really, you're killing us here with your beautifully structured sadism. You big, brilliant, disgustingly talented meanie you. (P.S. Thank you for 45 minutes of genius.)


ETA: And by Whedon, I of course mean the Clan Whedon, including his brothers Jed and Zack, and honorary Clan member Maurissa Tancharoen. You're all wonderfully evil, and I simultaneously thank you and damn you. Mostly thank you, especially for the Thoroughbred of Evil joke which has delighted us so much this week.

TOUCHDOWN!

We have to shout from the rooftops; Friday Night Lights is coming back for a third season of 13 episodes, all of which are guaranteed. Just as with Veronica Mars I have been holding two thoughts in my head in a kind of DoubleThink mode, loving it and yet not wanting to commit to it too much because shows this wonderful rarely last long. Mars, Firefly, Journeyman, Deadwood, Dollhouse (we all know it, let's not kid ourselves that Fox will suddenly surprise us); we've been burned before. But finally, some good news!


Yes, 13 episodes is not the amount I would like (can 365 installments a year be managed somehow?), but I'd rather have an HBO-size season than nothing at all. More Smash! More Riggins! More Landry! Best of all, more wonderful Coach and Mrs. Coach sparring! Where's my booze and pompoms? It's go time!

Shades of Caruso Free Pass: David E. Kelley

It's sad to admit that within our culture there are far more perpetrators of crime against quality than there are reliable purveyors of art (and by art I mean high art or pop art or trash art or any kind of brilliance that can be considered art no matter whether it satisfies high, middle or low brow tastes). For every Lost there is a CSI: Miami, Chuck, and Torchwood. For every There Will Be Blood there is a Good Luck Chuck, The Hottie and the Nottie, and I Know Who Killed Me. For every David Foster Wallace there is a James Patterson, John Grisham, and Tom Clancy. (Confession: I've read a lot of his books and will probably read more, because I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, but I would never defend his writing, which is appalling.)

However, some creators whose work I am often indifferent to sometimes accidentally make something I love, and any conversation I then have about their work is often derailed as I start to defend them on just one point, ignoring the other stuff almost completely. So, in the interests of streamlining any future discussions about certain artists with one or two interesting or entertaining projects behind them, I'm introducing the Shades of Caruso Free Pass, to be awarded to any entertainer or artist who would otherwise mean nothing to me, but for one shining moment made me think they were the shit despite other crimes they have been responsible for.


David E. Kelley should just be the guy who made The Law a wacky funhouse filled with ethical debates illustrated with James "Vic Reeves lookalike" Spader and William "King of Everything" Shatner in drag, or Calista Flockhart and Lucy Lui singing a lot of karaoke, or other such frivolities. I remember liking The Practice while it was being shown on UK TV (ITV once broadcast it during primetime for five weeks and then took it off, and then BBC1 showed thirteen episodes a few years later before similarly hiding it from view), but even an ostensibly serious show like that had a couple of characters (I'm thinking of those played by Camryn Manheim and Michael Badalucco) that were sometimes the subject of jokey storylines. Other than that, though, he will probably be most famous for creating Ally McBeal.


I despised that show, as evidenced by the fact that I searched for the most absurd, photoshopped cast montage to garnish this post, and would consign it to the depths of the Marianas Trench alongside Northern Exposure and Scrubs (though I'd save the first couple of seasons as Canyon is a fan), all for the crime of being self-consciously wacky and incessantly winking at the camera at how clever and post-modern it all is. I'm a fan of the pomo, but lazy third-wall breaking tripe like this gives it a bad name. Plus, it helped kick-start the Bridget Jones klutzy-working-woman-who-needs-a-man trend that even a clueless dope of a man like me thinks is an abomination. And it's not just me.

Sckanaday asks: What is the big threat Ally McBeal poses to old school feminists? I'm amazed at the backlash against a young, well-educated woman with choices who opts to live by her own agenda, not someone else's! Isn't that part of what feminism has stood for?

Ginia Bellafante: I think feminism worked long and hard to erase stereotypes of women as neurotic incompetents unconcerned with matters of public life. Ally McBeal, in my humble opinion, is helping undue [sic] that work.

Phyllis Chesler: I agree with her. And I would say that if Monica Lewinsky goes to law school and continues to behave in the same fashion, she will turn into Ally McBeal -- obsessed with men and sex and love and short skirts, and not with children being beaten to death in their own homes and not with women losing child support. These are not Ally McBeal's fantasy concerns.

Actually, my main criticism of it is that it was horribly unfunny, but I'm willing to quote some hardcore feminists discussing its embarrassing portrayal of working women to help my case against the whole horrid enterprise if need be. This is before we get into the shady rumours that Kelley encourages female cast members to lose lots of weight, which are probably just rumours, but a quick IMDb search brings up a worrying amount of news relating to eating disorders on set. I have no idea how culpable or not Kelley is, so I don't feel comfortable passing judgement on him (it's not like his shows are the only ones with emaciated performers in them), but it looks bad. So, when even employing the incomparable Robert Downey Jr. doesn't make me want to see his TV shows, why give the guy a free pass?


Because Lake Placid is superb. It was on Sky Movies recently and I happily rewatched it for the billionth time, and it was while watching it that I realised it made me forget all of the negativity his work usually awakens in me. If all you know about it is that it's a Jaws rip-off with a crocodile in it, you don't know the half of it.


For a start it's a very funny and genial comedy that just happens to have a big deadly animal in it, though many thought it was an unscary horror film with too many jokes, which meant some critics were unbelievably harsh about it. Once you see it as a comedy, it works much better. Director Steve Miner totally understands how best to film Kelley's smart-ass script, making the sporadic suspense scenes work well and getting the sarcastic tone right, editing and filming the comedy scenes for maximum effect. He also does a good job of making Bill Pullman and Bridget Fonda work well together; their pissy chemistry carries a lot of the movie. If only Joss Whedon's early screenplays had been filmed by someone so in tune with the tone of his work, the world would be a different place right now (one where Whedon gets to make whatever he wants with enormous budgets, which is a better world than this one, oh yes).


The rest of the heavy lifting is done by Oliver Platt and Brendan Gleeson, who spend the whole (very short) film bickering. They do the job well mostly because they're hugely endearing and talented actors, with special praise to be heaped on Gleeson like an extra helping of mashed love potatoes. He'd get into any list of my all-time favourite performers just for his role in John Boorman's underrated classic The General (also recently shown on Sky Movies), and he's similarly great here, verbally sparring with Platt over pretty much everything (though they kind of love each other by the end). It's as if Kelley's favourite parts of Jaws were Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw arguing and he decided to make a whole film like it. I could happily watch a 10 season series documenting them living together, Odd Couple style.

As great as they are, they'd be nothing without Kelley's wonderful dialogue to work with. On his shows this kind of glibness riles me something fierce, but in Lake Placid it works perfectly, either because Miner is better at translating his work to the screen or because the presence of a giant murderous crocodile adds a frisson to the proceedings that undercuts the relentless sass. Even if there is a mysterious extra element that makes this work better than his other stuff, I really do love Kelley's script anyway. He has fun with the genre, gets in quick, sets everything up elegantly, delivers a ton of laughs (plus Betty White saying cocksucker a lot), and gets out with a superhappy ending in about 80 minutes. And if that hasn't sold you on it, check this scene out.



Giant crocodile versus deadly kodiac bear plus punching! If you still don't want to see it, we are obviously diametrically opposed, whatever that means. So, Mr. Kelley, enjoy your free pass. Go crazy making wacky legal dramas for the rest of your career. I don't care, because for 80 minutes, you rocked.

This Week in TV: Week 11 (Part 1)

Considering there were less shows on TV this week, I actually have more to wonk on about than usual, what with the "volume" finale of Heroes, the reunion of To Live and Die in LA legends Billy Peterson and Billy Friedkin, and two episodes of Ugly Betty (not because two were aired, but because we missed one). So, I'm splitting this in two, so I can finish the rest of it tomorrow and get to bed (I have no choice; Man-Thing is on Sky Movies and I can't find the remote). Anyway, let's get this out of the way right now, because I bet the suspense is killing you.

Grin of the Week:

Ray Wise!


That's never changing. Get used to it.

Canyon's Highlight of the Week:

Reaper has gone from being our favourite new show of the season to a show we greatly enjoy but tend to forget about not long after, but this week saw all of the elements fit together pleasingly, with the non-female cast at their best, the female cast finally getting suspicious of Sam and his reaping buddies (though it took a ridiculously long time to happen, at least it finally is), Donavon "Ted the douche" Stinson getting a finger broken by an angry bookie (funnier than it sounds), and an interesting new plot element coming into play; Sam's new girlfriend Cady, played by Jessica Stroup.


Is she the Devil's daughter? As she seems to kill everything she touches, including the doomed goldfish shown above, it seems like that might be the case. It's hard to say too much about the show most of the time, as what it does well is play off the chemistry of the leads, with a lot of the heavy lifting done by Tyler Labine. Sock is one of the most appealing characters of the new season, a cross between Shaggy and Jack Black, which is enough to make many people stay away. A shame, as his timing and delivery is pitch-perfect. As good as Bret Harrison and Rick Gonzalez are (and even though they're improving every week), they are still straight men to Labine, who controls the screen every time he's around.


Only Ray Wise is more lovable than him, but that goes without saying.

My Highlight of the Week:

Controversially, it was the "volume" finale of Heroes, which was packed with plotholes and tonal errors and silly dialogue and silly deaths and all sorts of nonsense, but was much more propulsive than the rest of the season put together, and managed to make the first season finale look even worse than it already did. Though the show is seemingly broken beyond repair (unless a new writing team is brought in, and sharpish), this did have its good points. Hiro's revenge on "Adam Monroe" was excellent, Sylar's Popeye moment was hilarious, and Elle's realisation that she can be a good person if she tries hard enough was nicely handled. It's the first time this entire season that I've been glad Kristen Bell has been around.


Partially, my heightened enjoyment was attributable to my new relaxed approach to watching it. Knowing it will probably suck has made it a more entertaining viewing experience, as I have now stopped trying to compare it to season one's highpoints (which, as Canyon pointed out during this episode, were actually fewer than I remember). It's a fun show, but it's not ever going to compare with our real favourites. I remain fond of it, though. Canyon, on the other hand, seems to actively dread it now, and while my mocking is affectionate, hers has become ruthless. She even dissed Matt and Peter's think-off, which I loved, silly expressions, fish-eye lenses and all.


Bzzzzzzt! I'm thinking the hurty words at you! With my face!


Zzzzzzzzzzzzzing! I'm thinking them right back, two times! To the bridge!

Lowlight of the Week:

Due to our trip to the US, we dropped the ball on what was screened each week, meaning we missed an episode of Ugly Betty (this strike isn't helping matters. With The Office gone for a while and other shows reaching the end of their runs, we don't know what's going on). Upon realising this we were overjoyed. Ugly Betty! We love it! Silly transitional wipes and all! And then we watched the missed episode, and our hearts sank. Truly, this was a fresh hell. How bad? Trying to make Alan Dale the comic relief. He's a fun serious actor, but even The O.C. knew not to do that.


Though it might sound like I've completely lost all perspective and entered the world of the Internet Crazies when I say this, it is scary when a beloved show misfires so completely that there are no saving graces left. Case in point: Alias was, for two seasons, one of the best shows on TV. It had some problems, but often they were fixed quickly, and each week offered something of quality. The first season was especially good, as good as any network show I've ever seen. Even the show reboot that happened midway through the second season worked well, and was kicked off by possibly the best Alias episode ever, Phase One. And then the third season started with a two-year leap forward that removed all dramatic tension from the show, added a multitude of dreary questions, and changed every character into a blander version of themselves. It was catastrophic, and even though I tried, I just couldn't muster any further interest in the show. (I know, I was talking about Ugly Betty. This will all make sense soon, I promise.)

There were no warning signs that Alias was about to spin off the tracks, but suddenly it was a shadow of its former self. Did the show fall asleep next to a pod and wake up with no emotions? What's scary is that this can obviously happen to any show we like, and this episode of Ugly Betty, filled with dead lines, shameless mugging, desperate plotting, obvious tricksiness, and Dirty-Sexy-Money-level writing, made us fear for the worst. I just checked the credits of the horrid episode again, after IMDb conflicted with my memory. The show credits say the writer is Charles Pratt Jr., a veteran soap writer who worked on General Hospital among others, but IMDb is telling me it was Bill Wrubel. Whoever it was, I can't imagine them wanting to own up to having written this. Joke after joke fell flat, to the point that we could barely watch actors we enjoy trying to find the laugh. It even unfunnyised Amanda. Amanda for God's sake!


It was so wrong and Bizarro-World inept that it made us think the show was broken. Stupid really, considering the writer's strike has meant they're dragging in producers to write episodes (the same thing happened with the dreadful Wicked advert they aired a few weeks ago), but for a moment, it was as if the show was never going to get back to its normal self. And it upset us. Yes, there are far worse things in the world than a show going bad, but one of the things I love about TV shows is realising the showrunners, the producers, the writing staff, and sometimes even the network execs, have reached a point where they know exactly what kind of show they're making, what stories they can tell, what points they can make.

Suddenly a show that's good reaches the next level, with jokes and plots written for the actors, arcs clicking into place, continuity increasing in complexity; it can be really satisfying. Classic example: the arrival of Spike and Angelus in Buffy turned it from a diversion to the best show on TV (EVER!!!). Journeyman started off okay, but when Dan's stash of stolen money started to play a bigger part in the show, it leapt to that next level, and became our favourite new show of the season. Pushing Daisies has done the same recently, and is a huge joy.

Sadly, the opposite is also true. A good writer leaves, a new producer comes on, cast members fall out or get big heads, networks start to fiddle with the format. When Bryan Fuller left Heroes, it hobbled it. When Ron Moore began developing Caprica, his focus left Battlestar Galactica and the show began to fall apart. When Josh Schwartz began developing new shows for Fox (on their say-so, the big jerks) and took his best writers to help him out, The O.C.'s third season became an endurance test, haemorrhaging viewers and good will. Goddamn, that show sucked for 25 whole weeks, improving only once Marissa died a horrible death, and that was in the very last scene of the whole season. Dammit Fox, just let your showrunners do one show at a time! Slavedrivers!!!

So, was this the beginning of the end for Ugly Betty? Can you bear the suspense? Of course not! The following week, written by reliable writers Jon Kinnally and Tracy Poust, was not the best episode ever, but it had some amazing moments, tons of laughs, and a paintball sequence that featured Rebecca Romijn-Stamos-O'Connell dressed like a cross between Barbarella and Tina Turner in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It was top notch.


So I worried for nothing. And wrote about it at length. Please believe me, I do have some perspective on things. I'm not one of the Crazies. For instance, I do not wish death on Jennifer Garner. This exempts me. Because I say so.

Performance of the Week:

Not much to say, really, other than that Jesse Plemons is bringing it every week, and the murder storyline, created by the showrunners to showcase his talent, is justified for that reason alone. He has been staggeringly good.


And Glenn Morshower, as his father, has been every bit as good. That said, no one else on TV this week has done anything as heartrending as Plemons' final scene, with Landry not charged for the murder of the evil rapist, but still haunted by his guilt. Impressive stuff.

Most Badass Moment of the Week:

Striding into Primatech Paper HQ, Pisspoor Peter Petrelli and Sark (sorry, David Anders is so linked to that role in Alias that I can't separate him from it) chewed bubblegum and kicked ass, sans bubblegum. Peter fired lightning bolts and telekinetically hurled previously unseen Company henchmen around, and Sark tripped some guys up with Hiro's sword. Even the potentially moment-ruining sight of a stuntman ineptly bracing himself for a telekinesis-caused somersault for a good few seconds before leaping into the air didn't ruin things.


In the scheme of things it was not the most nerdcool moment ever, but it did what this show should always be doing; having the superpowered people do superpowered things. As a kid I would despair when Lou Ferrigno only got a couple of minutes screentime in The Incredible Hulk, or KITT didn't even do a big jump in Knight Rider. Now that I'm older I understand about budget constraints and how cool moments mean nothing without good writing and well-developed characters, but my God, we're talking about a show with about a dozen superpowered navel-gazers moping about. Surely one or two of them could do something fun or badass each week. I'm not even talking about my previous rant, where I called for more heroics (though that's still a valid complaint). If you can't have the characters saving others or helping them out, just have them doing wacky powery stuff. This action sequence was hardly the most complicated thing to shoot. Just throw a couple of people at a wall, blow up a couple of small objects, add a CG effect or two, and the viewers will be happy. Damn, if a little thing like that can make Milo Ventimiglia and David Anders look like the coolest motherfuckers on the planet, it's worth the expenditure and effort.

Worst Guest Star of the Week:

Who was your favourite Slayer? Buffy? Hell no, go to the back of the class and suck an egg. Kendra? Nice try, but WRONG! The correct answer, of course, is Faith, the bad Slayer who tortured Wesley, killed a human, got stabbed by Buffy prior to throwing herself off a roof onto a barrel on the back of a moving truck, and begged Angel to kill during a fight in the rain in the finest moment of Angel season one. Eliza Dushku was so good in that role that it's probable she'll never get out from Faith's shadow. Though Buffy and Angel were shows that handled both drama and comedy brilliantly, she was almost exclusively asked to do drama. During the series-worst episode of Ugly Betty we found out why.


She cannot do comedy. At least, she can't do broad comedy. It was as if I'd finally achieved my dream of making my own film, and had kindly cast a good friend of mine for a lark, only to find that they thought the key to being funny is flapping their arms, rolling their eyes, and screaming their dialogue as if their vocal cords were on fire and only expelling a lot of air would put it out. I've slated Samaire Armstrong's obnoxious comedic performance in Dirty Sexy Money before, but Dushku made her look like Groucho Marx. Hopefully Whedon will be able to fix this, play to her strengths, and harness some snarky humour talent out of her in his new show Dollhouse, coming to a TV screen near you in a million years when the strike is over (blame the producers, who are assholes just like Will Graham said).

Nearly The Worst, But Ultimately Very Funny Guest Star of the Week:

When James Carville turned up to give Alec Baldwin advice on how to stay together with Edi Falco on 30 Rock, it felt like obnoxious and unfunny stunt casting, especially with his laboured and overused catchphrase "Cajun style!" Canyon has recently expressed some frustration with the show, thinking it a bit laboured, and this appearance threatened to make me agree with her.


Cut to the next scene, with Toofer and Frank imitating each other in a war of identity, and I had forgotten it already. And then, to my immense displeasure, Carville and his cadaver face walked past, and that catchphrase came up again and again, going from mildly funny to unfunny to desperate and then (thank Neo!), back to funny, and with his final shot, hand deep inside a vending machine, all the way up to hilarious (at least in my humble opinion).


Canyon did like Pete's special lunch treat to himself, though. Bento box, the lesbian scene from Mulholland Drive, and the office to himself. Until Kenneth invites his kids around.


Screen capture. Cajun style.

Best Guest Star of the Week:

As if to make up for making us temporarily hate Eliza Dushku (which, along with every other flaw in that terrible episode, ensured that episode of Ugly Betty gets onto the Worst of the Year Caruso Award shortlist), the next episode featured an inspired appearance by Betty White, playing off her positive public profile and gay fanbase by screwing over Wilhemina, bitching about Golden Girls lesbian fanfic, and fighting a rat for her severed finger (offscreen, sadly, but the imagination works wonders).


She was so natural and funny and charming it made Dushku's appearance seem even more wrong. Damn, I really hated that episode.

Okay, tomorrow, the best directed scene of the week, the most over-directed scene by a notoriously arrogant director of the week, and a glimpse at a sight no human can ever forget. And I'm not talking about Viggo Mortenson's balls (that's old news. Keep up, granddad).