Sadly I could not find a nothing video for today. There were a few nearly nothings, but nothing truly nothing-like that would truly waste your time for having watched it.
Instead I will thrill you with tales of my television watching.
Now that Battlestar Galactica is wrapped up and we are only getting a little taste of Caprica with a DVD kickoff later in April (the series is starting sometime in 2010 from what I gather) the great hope for something new to fill the cathode dream machine was Dollhouse. For those not entirely in the know Dollhouse is the new series from Joss Whedon, producer and creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly.
It stars Eliza Dushku as Echo, a young woman whose identity and personality has been "wiped," creating of her a blank slate that can be imprinted with any combination of attributes desired by a client who hires her. She is referred to as a "Doll," one of many offered up by the "Dollhouse." This company is a bit of a grey ghost, and their "actives" are rented out to the very wealthy for tasks that range from hostage negotiation to being straight-up playthings. So there's that. Because it's a Whedon show there are several backstories slowly simmering behind the action.
There is, for instance, the wildcard FBI agent (played by Battlestar alum Tahmoh Penikett) who is the only one outside who seems to believe the Dollhouse exists, and an ex-Doll called Alpha who malfunctioned and is at large, seemingly with his sights set on Echo and with some super-ninja programming in place.
I admit to being overly onboard to Whedon projects (I have all the seasons of Buffy, Angel and Firefly on DVD, for example), but after seven episodes I'm getting a little worried. He seems to be aiming closer to the center... and the unfortunate whiff of Alias hangs fragrantly in the air. The trademark irony and sardonic wit is dialed way down on this one... as is the team dynamic that informed all of his previous work. And the backstory is parceled out very sparingly, leaving unfortunately ho-hum lead stories to fill the time.
Dushku is doing ok, but the character is a little problematic. What might seem like a dream job, being able to play a new role every week, is undercut by the fact that, at the root she has no character at all. That element is well played, but hard to get behind as an audience straining to build a relationship with her. Whedon seems to be building on some grander statement about identity and will, but that has only been made rather obliquely so far.
The other characters have the job of advancing the arc, and that has it's high and low points. Harry Lennix plays Echo's "handler" Langton. His job is to oversee and return her at the end of her assigned task. He plays the outsider... our viewpoint into the situation... and someone not entirely invested in the company, which works fairly well. The aforementioned FBI agent, Ballard, is a little stereotypically misunderstood and lone wolf-y. Though he is starting to flesh out a little. Whereas the head of security character Laurence Dominic is barely two-dimensional... he is a company man, and not much else at this point. Olivia Williams plays the oh-so-properly British Miss Dewitt... sort of the Giles to the Dolls I suppose, but she too remains underdeveloped. Finally there is Fran Kranz as Topher, who is the youthful wisecracking genius brain chemist and computer nerd who programs the Dolls. He is the "zany" character, a Xander/Andrew (from the Buffyverse) composite here to provide "magic" solutions and comic relief to the precedings... and he's very very very annoying. What made Xander and Andrew work was their outsider status and struggles to gain a place in the world. Topher is already "in" so his quirks are more like an overextended SNL Tech Support sketch.
When Firefly met its premature demise one of the story threads Whedon confessed to have been running in the background was the "Blue Sunshine" corporation, ostensibly a company concerned with the manufacture of junk food and soft drinks. Here he is developing the notion of a corporation that may or may not be evil running another service which may or may not be immoral with someone on the inside trying to undermine things to an end that also remains unrevealed. It's a whole lot of opaque to deal with.
So... I'm going to stay with it and hope for the best. If it goes balls up I'll go back to Life (which I've gotten behind on watching and so have been putting off catching up until the season is over). Otherwise there's always reading, right?
In related news this was linked on IMDB, sadly.
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