i kid, i kid. (sort of.)

regardless what anyone thinks about the show, everyone has to agree that it has certainly sparked a very wide variety of responses. i’m endlessly surprised by what facets people seemed to have latched onto and either liked or disliked. some people loved eliza’s childlike state, others hated it. some people love topher, some people hate him. i don’t know, the variety in responses seems much more broad than i’ve seen in other show. but the one thing everyone seems to agree with is that they’re kind of dissatisfied overall. they don’t hate it, but they’re not wowed. at all. that’s the scariest thing.

i don’t know. i’m hoping it will improve. i have faith that it will. i’m finding myself really anticipating the episode tonight and i don’t quite know why. let’s hope i stay pulled in.

There’s always going to be shows that are ‘inspired’ or ‘reminiscient’ of others before them but I’ve had great experiences regardless. However, with this show, it doesn’t invite me to invest my time, I would think the whole story could have been incorporated into an arc and not a stand-alone series. Some people have pointed out the similarities that points out the unoriginal and overall bland-city premises:

Nip/ Tuck – the opening just reminds me of this show’s commercials
Alias – different covert identities/ assignments every week (complete with Handler!)
Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind – oh, the painful memories, please help erase it all
Chobits – cute and expensive persocoms that bend to your desire with memory wipe functions (by the way, I didn’t buy the blank/ childlike-state scene with Eliza for a second)

More power to you if you do happen to enjoy it; it just means that different people each have their own interests. Keep in mind, I am speaking off of only the pilot and kind of hope to be proven wrong later. Lastly, I want to say that the Dollhouse facilities were gorgeous, I wish I had a house like that!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

You make a good point about the dialogue – it’s definitely a 2-way thing between the writers and the actors.

I share your frustration regarding the stereotypical aspects of the show. It felt diluted of so much of the charm that it had when I first heard the premise.

Like you, I’m still looking forward to seeing what comes next – my expectations have been shot to sunshine, but there were some positive elements that will keep me coming back for more.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

I think you’re right about the pressure to slap together a new pilot. As a non-insider in the TV biz, it seems to me that the pilot should always be very well-written because it’s the one episode that the writers have had for-freaking-ever to write. I mean let’s face it, the series was announced a year ago and debuted a week ago, so that episode should have been air tight. However, as you say, the original was tossed and they obviously scrambled to get a replacement pilot in place. So, thanks for that, FOX.

I must say, though, that Miss Penn’s glasses were not thick framed by my definition. Drew Carey’s glasses would fit that bill, but hers were just basic wire frames.

It wasn’t as bad as a lot of people expected and i quite enjoyed the distraction. Of course this ghostly episode answered a lot of what, who, where but many why need yet to be solved and i can only hope Fox will allow this to happen. My gut feeling is that yes, the show will improve and move away from being a crazy revisiting of The Pretender (Echo meet your brother Jarod!). Hence it won’t jump the shark as quickly has my reason is telling me it will.

Roco> you did a very good critic of the episode. I won’t go into more details (actually i was going to by my comp went ‘disco’ and i am too tired and jetlagged to redo my 800 words comment which involved notoire references to the Legion, Besson’s Nikita and Ibsen’s play! What can i say, French are lazy )

Bekki> I agree with your comment on the caricature of the librarian. If Echo is going to be anyone the scenarii requires, i do hope we don’t end up with the average vision of what a butcher, a firefighter, a guru, a dancer, a doctor is! Could be fun but might just be plain boring!

Overall though i was caught. Toxic seems to be this show. You want to know more once you’ve passed the oh-so-terribly-clichesque ©Honda race. Precisely, ‘toxic’ meaning here that there is a tangible potential which can turn anyone into a DH addict. There is Whedon’s wittiness and hopefully there is Fox understanding and Dushku’s improving (um…) and a lot of things we aren’t even aware of

I want to see episode 2. I can’t completely judge the show on it’s ghostly cover.
And this time i will comment on TextEdit to avoid frustration!
(If i didn’t want to make a super bad joke, i would say my comp has been wiped away Sierra style!)

Oh and by the way… very good blog you have here! Merci!

i’m a douche and spelled your name rocco above.

so sorry.

great article. i’m also a huge eliza dushku fan, too, but i honestly agree with your assessment. people shouldn’t be so hard on you for stating your opinion. personally, i think she did a good job, but i’ve seen her do better so i was left feeling a little disappointed. i mean, i know she can act. i just didn’t feel like she had gotten into the grove yet here.

that being said, i do think bad writing was part of it. one thing that makes shows great (and usually makes joss great) is that they can write for their actors and measure their dialog to the tones and measure of their actor’s natural speech patterns. this was very lacking in the miss penn scenes. but it was just the pilot so i think that can change over time as everyone adjusts into their roles – both cast and crew.

and, honestly, the thing that was most stupid to me about the miss penn role was how they dressed her. i mean, she looked like a stereotypical librarian (which annoys me because i AM a librarian) than she did a hostage negotiator with those thick glasses and the hair in a bun and overly severe suit. i mean, yes, i understand that the viewer is supposed to go ‘holy hell! THAT’S not eliza dushku!’ but i think wardrobe was trying a wee bit too hard here. i ended up thinking that miss penn looked so unlike eliza dushku that i stopped focusing on her acting and the dialog and more how uncomfortable she looked. they could’ve given her a nice clipped ponytail or left her hair down, a less severe yet still professional suit and not as thick framed glasses and she would have been so much less jarring as a character.

and i felt like i had to suspend my belief several times for all the reasons mentioned above. particularly about about echo JUST HAPPENING to be imprinted with a girl who had JUST HAPPENED to have been molested by THAT EXACT dude. i mean, it really felt like everyone involved in making the show went ‘wait, what? fox just sent back the original pilot? so we don’t have a pilot?! ACK! we don’t have a pilot! quick! throw together the most stereotypical Fox pilot EVER and maybe they’ll let us slide later on…’ it was weak, but i am interested in seeing where it goes. from what i’ve heard the next episode sounds like it’ll be much better.

I was pretty underwhelmed by the show–didn’t seem like a Whedon product to me, but I’m willing to give it a few episodes to find its feet. It felt a little generic and I missed a lot of that trademark dialogue that he usually brings in spades.