#202: 'Night of Desirable Objects'
Wr: Jeff Pinkner & J.H. Whyman
Dr: Brad Anderson
Synopsis: The Fringe team travels to Pennsylvania to investigate an underground tunnel full of human remains. Meanwhile, Walter experiments using frogs to travel between realities.
Review: Fringe treads water for the second week running with 'Night of Desirable Objects', which sees the show return more explicitly to the formula it adopted in the early stages of its first season. Once again, we take a trip down X-Files lane as the gang investigate an unusual occurrence in a sleepy town, and any mythology elements, any movement in the progression of the ongoing story arc, are relegated to the narratalogical second division. In theory, there's nothing wrong with this set-up; some of Chris Carter's show's greatest achievements are to be found in its stand-alone hours, but it doesn't seem that the Fringe writing staff have yet discovered how to make their 'curiosities of the week' actually hold the viewer's attention for the duration of the programme's forty five minutes.
Too often, as here, the plot feels like it's stretched thin, lacking the sort of substance and intrigue that pushes the need to advance the ongoing plot to the back of our minds. The central conceit, that people are going missing 'on the spot' (so to speak) in Lansdale, may be deftly executed – Brad Anderson uses long shots, pregnant silences and disconcerting set pieces (the scarecrow, the train) to manufacture a potent level of eeriness – but it's regrettably predictable. The 'human mutation' storyline has been done so many times in the show already – some successful ('Inner Child'), some not so much ('The Transformation') – that it feels tired; it no longer surprises us and as such, it's a struggle for the viewer to invest in it, to be as apparently psyched as Walter by the whole thing. Worryingly, it also becomes obvious from the moment that we first see Hughes's boots trawling through the underground 'tunnel' that he has a distinct emotional investment in the case, and it's only a few beats later before we put two and two together and realise that his apparently dead son is still alive and (very much) kicking. Consequently, the ultimate pay-off in the graveyard falls depressingly flat: the fact that the boy is not in the coffin is built up as if it's the most shocking of revelations when actually, it couldn't be any more signposted if it tried. This sort of thing smacks of lazy writing; it really wouldn't take much to expand the scope of the plot, to incorporate further minutiae to help disguise these developments.
Even more problematically, it becomes clear at various points in the episode that Whyman and Pinkner are struggling to keep their script afloat. There are a number of disposable scenes included that, in more complex and interesting hours, would undoubtedly end up on the cutting room floor. The most notable of these is Olivia and a fellow agent discovering the body of Mr. Hughes in a sequence that opens the act immediately following the depiction of his suicide. It adds absolutely nothing of relevance to the plot as the viewer is already privy to all of the intricacies. Seeing Olivia connect the dots is superfluous; the same effect would be created if she was simply informed by someone else, or if we returned and she was already in acquisition of the knowledge. Curiously, the converse is true of the narrative's denouement; there is simply not enough here, as we spend all of two minutes with the creature before it meets its ungainly end by being speared by a police car. There is a minor scuffle between it, Peter and Olivia and hilariously, that's it. While the 'monster' had previously secreted paralytic venom to ensnare its prey and clearly has the geographical and psychological upper hand in the situation, it decides to sit back and rest on its laurels when faced with our protagonists, just jostling them about a bit and dragging Dunham off for a tet a tet or something. Ergo, the story's resolution is completely anti-climactic and far too sudden. Could we not have learned more about the creature's genetic make-up, something about what makes him tick or simply spent more time involved in the struggle?
It's somewhat frustrating that too little time is spent on important sequences like this one, and the development of the mythological elements of the narrative (we still don't know the specifics of Olivia's encounter with William Bell), when Whyman and Pinkner manage to incorporate pointless rehashes of previously established minutiae, such as the inclusion of a scene in which Walter tells the audience about the existence of parallel universes; you know, just for those who have forgotten or have only just joined the show. 'A New Day in the Old Town' tried this trick too and frankly, it's irritating; would it really hurt the production staff to give their audience some credit, or to leave the recapping to the 'previously on Fringe' segment?
Naturally, there are elements of 'Night of Desirable Objects' that are somewhat more successful. Aside from the superlative execution of the more macabre portions of the narrative, there's also much to be gained from the character beats too. It's good to see Olivia suffering the after effects of her car accident. All too often, television sacrifices believability for the sake of re-establishing the status quo, but thankfully, not here; Anna Torv is excellent at depicting Dunham's fatigue, the fact that she's run down, and it really helps the viewer to invest in the story. Elsewhere, Walter and Peter's burgeoning relationship continues to provide a number of decidedly sweet moments, particularly Peter's offer to take his father fishing which could have seemed mawkish in the hands of lesser actors but is actually rather moving here. And finally, Agent Francis's transformation remains thoroughly entertaining; it's great to see the mysterious 'back room' again, with its typewriter-to-another-world, and kudos to Kirk Acevado for choosing to underplay the character's new-found evilness instead of hamming it up.
Once again, Fringe decides to slam the brakes on rather than speed down the highway. The writing staff have abandoned the forward momentum they initiated towards the close of last season in favour of returning to the bog standard 'monster of the week' formula from which the show began. There are minor developments in the ongoing narrative but they simply aren't enough, especially when one considers the wafer thin nature of the remainder of the plot. While 'stand alones' can often prove more successful than the big, revelation-heavy episodes, they have to contain enough meat and a weighty enough concept to keep the viewer engaged. Sadly, 'Night of Desirable Objects' has neither of these: the 'human mutation' trope is highly unoriginal and its execution is mired in predictability – the viewer figures out the 'mystery' and can piece together the denouement within the first fifteen minutes. With a little more work and an amping up of the plot, this could've been a triumph but as it is, it's distinctly average. 6.3
Sunday 27 September 2009
Saturday 26 September 2009
Album review: Flood of Red: 'Leave Everything Behind'
FLOOD OF RED: 'Leave Everything Behind' (Dark City)
Flood of Red are a difficult bunch to pin down. Their penchant for the tenants of post-hardcore, marrying riff-splattered lead and choppy rhythm guitars with introspective and melodic vocals, tends to find them sitting comfortably next to scene dahlings like We Are The Ocean and The Blackout, but debut album 'Leave Everything Behind' is a far more complex and diverse listening experience than such comparisons suggest. As with many who hail from the murky mists of bonny Scotland, their sound seems to have a grounding in the social climate from whence they came; like the Biff, Twin Atlantic, Idlewild, Sucioperro and about a dozen others, they just can't seem to escape the innate melancholia and dereliction of their surroundings.
This eerie undercurrent runs through the course of the record, and it's manifested in the unusually scuzzy nature of much of the music. While the guitars are certainly heavy enough to give your head a good seeing to, they also sound distinctly wayward, as if they've been swept up in a hurricane before being unleashed on your poor, unsuspecting ears. Tracks like 'The Harmony' and 'A Place Before the End' threaten to envelop you in their windswept, Glasvegan sonics, but the process is a distinctly delicate one: Jordan Spiers's lilting, wailing vocals feel rather like a friendly hand guiding you through this cruelly melancholic world, the bitter chill and unforgiving winds of a Glasgow winter, and it seems all the more welcoming and fascinating for it.
Flood of Red have a fondness for the playful too: current single 'Home Run (1997)' starts life as a marathon sprint, a jaunty, slightly punky slice of the anthemic, before hitting the wall and transforming into an aggressive behemoth of noise, standing stock still but shattering all of our earlobes. Then there are the more multi-layered moments - 'Like Elephants' and 'I Will Not Change' are colossally epic slow-burners that build and build before exploding in a haze of fuzzy noise rock. The band centre the tracks on low-key piano pieces that sound highly evocative; 'Elephants'' is haunting and disconcerting, while '...Change' has a more heartbreakingly gentle motif that complements the track's negative metaphors very well. In fact, it's essentially Brand New's 'Daisy' (the song, not the album) writ even larger.
At fourteen tracks, 'Leave Everything Behind' does sometimes feel a little bloated; by the time we get to '...Fell Point' and 'Hope Street', things become rather familiar, but on the whole, this is a highly assured piece from a band who are quite clearly light years ahead of the majority of their peers. There's intensity, diversity and a surprisingly skilled grasp of evocation; at times, you can feel the weight of the band's experiences bearing down on the record, like a millstone slung heavily around its neck. It's a highly fulfilling recipe and one that Flood of Red would do well to hold on to; definitely ones to watch out for. (8/10)
Flood of Red are a difficult bunch to pin down. Their penchant for the tenants of post-hardcore, marrying riff-splattered lead and choppy rhythm guitars with introspective and melodic vocals, tends to find them sitting comfortably next to scene dahlings like We Are The Ocean and The Blackout, but debut album 'Leave Everything Behind' is a far more complex and diverse listening experience than such comparisons suggest. As with many who hail from the murky mists of bonny Scotland, their sound seems to have a grounding in the social climate from whence they came; like the Biff, Twin Atlantic, Idlewild, Sucioperro and about a dozen others, they just can't seem to escape the innate melancholia and dereliction of their surroundings.
This eerie undercurrent runs through the course of the record, and it's manifested in the unusually scuzzy nature of much of the music. While the guitars are certainly heavy enough to give your head a good seeing to, they also sound distinctly wayward, as if they've been swept up in a hurricane before being unleashed on your poor, unsuspecting ears. Tracks like 'The Harmony' and 'A Place Before the End' threaten to envelop you in their windswept, Glasvegan sonics, but the process is a distinctly delicate one: Jordan Spiers's lilting, wailing vocals feel rather like a friendly hand guiding you through this cruelly melancholic world, the bitter chill and unforgiving winds of a Glasgow winter, and it seems all the more welcoming and fascinating for it.
Flood of Red have a fondness for the playful too: current single 'Home Run (1997)' starts life as a marathon sprint, a jaunty, slightly punky slice of the anthemic, before hitting the wall and transforming into an aggressive behemoth of noise, standing stock still but shattering all of our earlobes. Then there are the more multi-layered moments - 'Like Elephants' and 'I Will Not Change' are colossally epic slow-burners that build and build before exploding in a haze of fuzzy noise rock. The band centre the tracks on low-key piano pieces that sound highly evocative; 'Elephants'' is haunting and disconcerting, while '...Change' has a more heartbreakingly gentle motif that complements the track's negative metaphors very well. In fact, it's essentially Brand New's 'Daisy' (the song, not the album) writ even larger.
At fourteen tracks, 'Leave Everything Behind' does sometimes feel a little bloated; by the time we get to '...Fell Point' and 'Hope Street', things become rather familiar, but on the whole, this is a highly assured piece from a band who are quite clearly light years ahead of the majority of their peers. There's intensity, diversity and a surprisingly skilled grasp of evocation; at times, you can feel the weight of the band's experiences bearing down on the record, like a millstone slung heavily around its neck. It's a highly fulfilling recipe and one that Flood of Red would do well to hold on to; definitely ones to watch out for. (8/10)
Friday 25 September 2009
Album review: Bowling For Soup: 'Sorry For Partyin''
BOWLING FOR SOUP: 'Sorry For Partyin'' (Jive)
The popular consensus about Bowling For Soup is that they're a bit of a one-trick pony; a band stuck perpetually in adolescence, forever making wise-cracks about their personal ineptitude, but never delving any deeper, never daring to peel away the mask created by their penchant for humour. Such a notion is complete nonsense, of course, as it presupposes that there's something less artistic and less worthwhile about making people laugh; but why should there be? Why should it be any more meritable to write allegorical lyrics than comedic ones? Why are we embarrassed by the fact that Bowling For Soup generally manage to do what their remit (as outlined on 2007's 'I'm Gay!') says: 'make [us all] feel better on a really shitty day?' Such an achievement is admirable, not risible, and sure, their music may be bog-standard, three-note pop punk, and their albums might all sound exactly the same, but admit it, every time they worm their way onto your stereo, a great big smile runs rampant all over your face.
So yes, 'Sorry For Partyin' WILL make you laugh your socks off. There are the usual pointed snipes at the musical Zeitgeist: 'I Gotchoo' tries its hand at a sort of Kid Rock-esque fusion of country, hip hop and rock and ends up quoting the Fuzzy Bear song, while 'A Really Cool Dance Song' takes the same approach as 'Punk Rock 101' in its rip on the current popularity of electronica, littering the track with the various trappings and conventions of the genre and admitting to the listener (or rather, pretending) that it's the band's attempt at having a number one hit. The utterly shameless chorus - 'this song sounds like a dance song/Cos dance songs are cool now/So shake what your momma gave ya' - is just genius, but even this is topped in the final thirty seconds when the track falls apart because the drum machine stops working, leading Jaret to admit that 'it doesn't sound good anymore.' There are several rather more crass moments too: lead single 'My Wena' takes a thinly-disguised metaphor and runs a marathon with it (a woman called Wena? Who cries herself to sleep at night? Hur hur), while 'Hooray For Beer' is just plain ridiculous, a three minute paen to the delights of alcohol, delivered in the kind of overly verbose language usually reserved for love letters. It's this sort of linguistic playfulness that allows the band to get away with being purile, because they rarely lapse into cliche and when they do, it's designed to be ironic.
It's also worth pointing out that, for all their supposed immaturity, there's actually a poignant emotional core to many of the tracks on offer here. Bowling For Soup often wear their hearts on their yellow polka-dot sleeves: for all 'Only Young' seems to be a bit of a mickey-take of contempo pop punk bands like Boys Like Girls, with its over-abundance of keyboards and sacharrine lyrics about staying sixteen forever, the message is still fairly endearing. 'I Don't Wish You Were Dead Anymore', meanwhile, derives its comedy from its bluntness, but the song remains heartfelt - the kind of thing you might say to your ex if you were forced to tell the truth. And then there's 'BFFF', probably the best moment on the whole record, in which Jaret delivers a laugh-out-loud celebration of the joys of bromance. It's effortlessly sweet, giving a series of amusing anecdotes ('I accidentally chopped your finger off your writing hand, oh well/Now you get disability' etc.), before crescendoing with a brilliant tell-all chorus of 'I'm just trying to say I love you in a heterosexual way.' This is Bowling For Soup's power: to have you simultaneously rolling around on the floor in hysterics, and celebrating the beauty and absurdity of the everyday minutiae of existence.
Most critics will probably write off 'Sorry For Partyin' as a record with little artistic merit and shame on them. Sure, this isn't the most intellectually fulfilling or emotionally complex album of the decade, but it doesn't have to be. Writing good comedy is one of the hardest literary tasks there is, and the fact that Bowling For Soup are able to make you laugh out loud so many times over the course of forty minutes just demonstrates the depth of their skill. We need no further justification for their existence than that they make us feel so much better... so guys, don't be sorry for partyin', it freakin' rocks, man. (7/10)
The popular consensus about Bowling For Soup is that they're a bit of a one-trick pony; a band stuck perpetually in adolescence, forever making wise-cracks about their personal ineptitude, but never delving any deeper, never daring to peel away the mask created by their penchant for humour. Such a notion is complete nonsense, of course, as it presupposes that there's something less artistic and less worthwhile about making people laugh; but why should there be? Why should it be any more meritable to write allegorical lyrics than comedic ones? Why are we embarrassed by the fact that Bowling For Soup generally manage to do what their remit (as outlined on 2007's 'I'm Gay!') says: 'make [us all] feel better on a really shitty day?' Such an achievement is admirable, not risible, and sure, their music may be bog-standard, three-note pop punk, and their albums might all sound exactly the same, but admit it, every time they worm their way onto your stereo, a great big smile runs rampant all over your face.
So yes, 'Sorry For Partyin' WILL make you laugh your socks off. There are the usual pointed snipes at the musical Zeitgeist: 'I Gotchoo' tries its hand at a sort of Kid Rock-esque fusion of country, hip hop and rock and ends up quoting the Fuzzy Bear song, while 'A Really Cool Dance Song' takes the same approach as 'Punk Rock 101' in its rip on the current popularity of electronica, littering the track with the various trappings and conventions of the genre and admitting to the listener (or rather, pretending) that it's the band's attempt at having a number one hit. The utterly shameless chorus - 'this song sounds like a dance song/Cos dance songs are cool now/So shake what your momma gave ya' - is just genius, but even this is topped in the final thirty seconds when the track falls apart because the drum machine stops working, leading Jaret to admit that 'it doesn't sound good anymore.' There are several rather more crass moments too: lead single 'My Wena' takes a thinly-disguised metaphor and runs a marathon with it (a woman called Wena? Who cries herself to sleep at night? Hur hur), while 'Hooray For Beer' is just plain ridiculous, a three minute paen to the delights of alcohol, delivered in the kind of overly verbose language usually reserved for love letters. It's this sort of linguistic playfulness that allows the band to get away with being purile, because they rarely lapse into cliche and when they do, it's designed to be ironic.
It's also worth pointing out that, for all their supposed immaturity, there's actually a poignant emotional core to many of the tracks on offer here. Bowling For Soup often wear their hearts on their yellow polka-dot sleeves: for all 'Only Young' seems to be a bit of a mickey-take of contempo pop punk bands like Boys Like Girls, with its over-abundance of keyboards and sacharrine lyrics about staying sixteen forever, the message is still fairly endearing. 'I Don't Wish You Were Dead Anymore', meanwhile, derives its comedy from its bluntness, but the song remains heartfelt - the kind of thing you might say to your ex if you were forced to tell the truth. And then there's 'BFFF', probably the best moment on the whole record, in which Jaret delivers a laugh-out-loud celebration of the joys of bromance. It's effortlessly sweet, giving a series of amusing anecdotes ('I accidentally chopped your finger off your writing hand, oh well/Now you get disability' etc.), before crescendoing with a brilliant tell-all chorus of 'I'm just trying to say I love you in a heterosexual way.' This is Bowling For Soup's power: to have you simultaneously rolling around on the floor in hysterics, and celebrating the beauty and absurdity of the everyday minutiae of existence.
Most critics will probably write off 'Sorry For Partyin' as a record with little artistic merit and shame on them. Sure, this isn't the most intellectually fulfilling or emotionally complex album of the decade, but it doesn't have to be. Writing good comedy is one of the hardest literary tasks there is, and the fact that Bowling For Soup are able to make you laugh out loud so many times over the course of forty minutes just demonstrates the depth of their skill. We need no further justification for their existence than that they make us feel so much better... so guys, don't be sorry for partyin', it freakin' rocks, man. (7/10)
Television review: Heroes #402: 'Jump, Push, Fall'
#402: 'Jump, Push, Fall'
Wr: Adam Armus & Kay Foster
Dr: Ed Bianchi
Synopsis: Claire discovers her roommate has been killed. HRG asks Peter to help him and ends up in a difficult situation. Hiro tries to undo his wrongdoing from the past and Matt finally decides to use his powers again.
Review: With ‘Jump, Push, Fall’, the season four premiere continues to perch its foot delicately on the accelerator, taking care not to go too wild and, you know, actually do something surprising with the plot. Adam Armus and Kay Foster take a leaf out of Tim Kring’s book and cling to the brakes, making sure they maintain the rather depressing averageness that plagued ‘Orientation.’ The run-of-the-mill plots, predictable tropes and blasé character beats are still mostly present and correct, ensuring that Heroes continues to feel like a watered down version of its own second season. On the up side, however, a number of narrative threads begin to move the show’s characters in rather more interesting directions, suggesting that there may be promise for the future success of the volume.
Frustratingly, Claire’s Creek: The College Years isn’t one of them. Following the most barefaced product placement sequence in the history of television, in which the words ‘guitar’ and ‘hero’ are uttered 6,732 times and we actually waste precious screen time watching Claire and Gretchen attempt to play some Jimi Hendrix, Armus and Foster bump off the irritatingly smug and self-serving roommate stereotype in a plotline straight out of Murder, She Wrote. Oh wait, that’s too generous… Diagnosis Murder, yeah, that’s it. So, what happened to the poor algebra-loving, trajectory-obsessed girl, huh? Well, she simply had to go, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to service the burgeoning friendship between our budding heroine and the awkward flares-wearer. Just look at the two of them now, bonding over conspiracy theories and cod-psychoanalysis, conspiring to steal crash test dummies and throw them out of Ms Bennet’s window. That’s the kind of storyline that really gets the ratings soaring. Who cares about what actually happened to Little Miss Overconfident when we get to see Gretchen realising that Claire, shock of shocks, has healing powers? Well fancy that! Who would’ve thunk? Sigh. It really feels like the entire ‘mysterious death’ trope exists solely for the purpose of creating this moment of discovery and frankly, it’s lame. You would think that after having been caught in the act so many times in the last four seasons, Claire would just stick to her new-found mantra and come straight out with the truth the moment she meets anyone new; ah, but then the production crew wouldn’t be given the opportunity to gross us all out with shots of Claire’s disfigured body being shunted back into place (props to the effects guys here, by the way, that was truly sickening), so no, tiresome predictability it is. And it’s hard to decide whether or not this moment is satisfactory in terms of the ‘murder mystery’ too; Claire’s dialogue suggests that perhaps her roommate did commit suicide, although you suspect that this is something of a red herring. However, it would probably be a darn sight more interesting if this were the case, since it would give the character an additional dimension; she would cease being a cipher, and develop a complexity to which we weren’t previously privy. On the other hand, it would also draw this narrative to a close and we’d be forced to watch Gretchen and Claire playing BFFs for the next three or four weeks, until the other heroes required the (ex) cheerleader’s services. So perhaps it’s better if the enigma continues and the two play Scooby Doo for a while, although the jury’s out on whether this will be any more engaging than the codswallop we’ve had to endure for the last two episodes.
Hiro and Ando’s narrative generates a similar degree of ambivalence. After an episode of pussy-footing around, we finally get to the heart of their story and it’s certainly refreshing: having our comedic, ever-reliable protagonist knocking at death’s door, resigned to his fate, is a marvellous conceit that gives Masi Oka a chance to demonstrate that he’s more than just a catchphrase machine. He’s particularly good when he’s forced to be aggressive, as in his conversation with Ando about the morality of time travel. It’s also good to see the Carnival weaving its way into the wheels of the central narrative, even if it is a little convenient that it just so happens to be the place where Hiro’s mission to be a superhero started, so the writers have an easy route into connecting the two apparently disparate strands. Still, we can forgive this since Robert Knepper continues to be just about the best thing in the show at the moment, beguiling you with his refusal to be pigeonholed into black or white, good or bad, and he and Oka have an instantaneous chemistry that bodes well for the future, since it appears that the writers are throwing them together in a sort of dysfunctional ‘master/pupil’ relationship that will undoubtedly have disastrous consequences. It’s nice to see Hiro making decisions that are human rather than moral, thinking with his heart instead of his head, and, on the face of it, his new-found Quantum Leap-esque mission to ‘right the wrongs’ of his past seems promising. Unfortunately, it also relies on a frustratingly paradoxical interpretation of time travel that, while consistent with the show’s representation of the trope from as far back as season one, still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The idea that Hiro is ‘out of time’, that he somehow exists outside of causality and is aware of the myriad changes and redundant timelines that he has produced, contradicts the fundamental physics of the process: if Hiro goes back in time and alters the past so that Ando and his sister fall in love, then this is what will always have happened, and Hiro will remember it as such. Here, while everyone else acts like nothing has changed, Nakamura remembers the redundant timeline, which, frankly, is preposterous. Now, to be fair, we could discuss the concept of time travel all day and never reach a satisfactory conclusion about its minutiae since it’s all speculative, but this sort of thing just demonstrates why it’s probably best to stay away from it, or at the very least to avoid using it to adversely affect the lives of the central characters.
Elsewhere, we get a not-entirely-subtle delineation of the parallels between loner Peter and, um, loner Noah as they work together to retrieve the Carnival’s missing compass, and while the idea is sound, the execution falters somewhat. The occasional flashes of Bennet’s home life are a nicely underplayed touch and his phone call to Sandra is genuinely heartbreaking, but when he starts waxing poetic to Peter about the need to surround yourself with people and the counterproductive nature of isolation, it comes across as rather forced and heavy-handed. Armus and Foster would’ve done better to illustrate the analogy rather than make it explicit, as the dialogue feels grafted on when it should be organic. There are other problems too: Noah acquires the key far too quickly; in fact, it’s almost as if he knows where to look, which certainly doesn’t seem to be the intended reading. In fact, his analysis of the body – that the nature of the wounds suggest it was not a vengeance killing – is dubious enough without this little slice of convenience, so it ends up smacking of lazy writing. Would it really hurt to have it take a little longer, for them to have popped down to a medical lab to give Danko an X-ray or something? Oh wait, yeah, that would’ve intruded on the Guitar Hero product placement time… sorry, my bad, stick to the deux et machinas. Peter’s need to extract himself from what he sees as the ‘destructive’ nature of the heroes, while fairly mature in concept, is rather frustrating in practise: we all know that the gang is going to come bounding back together within the space of a few weeks because it always happens, so these feel more like backward steps than logical progression (come on, would he really leave Noah with the compass after having been confronted by knife-wielding maniac? That’s just plain malicious!) And then there’s Tracey Strauss, who has magically transformed from ruthless, revenge-obsessed killing machine to caring, sharing, Noah-comforting sweet pea in the space of eighty minutes. She ends the episode by the bedside of the man she tried to drown meagre hours ago, and is she strangling him while he sleeps? Stuffing his mouth with the fluids he may or may not have been fed intravenously? No, she’s keeping him company, making sure he isn’t alone, and offering glances that can only be described as ‘suggestive.’ (Don’t think it couldn’t happen… remember Matt and Daphne?) Now call me reactionary if you like, but I don’t really think this sort of antithetical character swerve can believably occur overnight. It’s just silly, and it betrays the simple fact that the writers really don’t know what to do with Ali Larter’s somewhat redundant character. Here guys, I’ve got an idea: make a bold decision and actually keep her dead! No? Oh well.
Speaking of characters that refuse to snuff it, Zachary Quinto’s Sylar has more of a role in this one although, refreshingly, the writers manage to do something a little creative with him. Armus and Foster play to the actor’s strengths and pitch the character as Matt’s self-deprecating conscience, delivering cuttingly insightful and vindictive dialogue that really gets to the heart of Sylar’s malice. This is the sort of thing that made him such a potent menace in Heroes’ first season, that gave viewers throughout the globe the opportunity to love such a loathsome individual; instead of being bombastic and over-the-top, Gabriel is cutting and heartless, psychoanalysing instead of proselytising. Greg Grunberg plays well off him too, demonstrating Parkman’s inner turmoil with suitable aplomb, and never veering too far into the excessive. The only lamentable element of this storyline is the inclusion of Roy; while Armus and Foster clearly need something to cause Matt to finally break, the ‘jealous lover’ trope is so hopelessly over-used in televisual narratives that its essential beats (misinterpretation, over-reaction, discovery, impasse, rift) frustrate rather than engage. Here’s hoping we don’t see any more of the long-haired plumber from… um, somewhere other than Liverpool (see what I tried to do there? No? Okay…) and that Janis never finds out about Matt’s little indiscretion; I just can’t cope with playing the cycle of martial strife any longer.
‘Jump, Push, Fall’ steps up a little from the lethargic pace of the season opener, but the series still feels like it’s running on auto-pilot. The narrative progression remains fairly slow and this hinders the episode’s success. Armus and Foster do attempt to introduce some fresh conceits and some of them are quite engaging – Sylar’s game of wits with Matt Parkman is superbly handled and Hiro’s dalliances with the Carnival give his character refreshingly new dimensions – but unfortunately, a great many problems remain. Claire’s narrative continues to be about as interesting as watching paint dry, relying on the sort of beats that were out-dated when they tried them in season two, and the Peter/Noah/Tracey storyline is fraught with problems and inconsistencies, not the least of which is Strauss’s sudden about turn which is frankly risible. This is an improvement on ‘Orientation’ but it still doesn’t feel like Heroes is really trying hard enough, and when your show is on as icy ground as this one, that really isn’t a good sign. 6.2
Wr: Adam Armus & Kay Foster
Dr: Ed Bianchi
Synopsis: Claire discovers her roommate has been killed. HRG asks Peter to help him and ends up in a difficult situation. Hiro tries to undo his wrongdoing from the past and Matt finally decides to use his powers again.
Review: With ‘Jump, Push, Fall’, the season four premiere continues to perch its foot delicately on the accelerator, taking care not to go too wild and, you know, actually do something surprising with the plot. Adam Armus and Kay Foster take a leaf out of Tim Kring’s book and cling to the brakes, making sure they maintain the rather depressing averageness that plagued ‘Orientation.’ The run-of-the-mill plots, predictable tropes and blasé character beats are still mostly present and correct, ensuring that Heroes continues to feel like a watered down version of its own second season. On the up side, however, a number of narrative threads begin to move the show’s characters in rather more interesting directions, suggesting that there may be promise for the future success of the volume.
Frustratingly, Claire’s Creek: The College Years isn’t one of them. Following the most barefaced product placement sequence in the history of television, in which the words ‘guitar’ and ‘hero’ are uttered 6,732 times and we actually waste precious screen time watching Claire and Gretchen attempt to play some Jimi Hendrix, Armus and Foster bump off the irritatingly smug and self-serving roommate stereotype in a plotline straight out of Murder, She Wrote. Oh wait, that’s too generous… Diagnosis Murder, yeah, that’s it. So, what happened to the poor algebra-loving, trajectory-obsessed girl, huh? Well, she simply had to go, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to service the burgeoning friendship between our budding heroine and the awkward flares-wearer. Just look at the two of them now, bonding over conspiracy theories and cod-psychoanalysis, conspiring to steal crash test dummies and throw them out of Ms Bennet’s window. That’s the kind of storyline that really gets the ratings soaring. Who cares about what actually happened to Little Miss Overconfident when we get to see Gretchen realising that Claire, shock of shocks, has healing powers? Well fancy that! Who would’ve thunk? Sigh. It really feels like the entire ‘mysterious death’ trope exists solely for the purpose of creating this moment of discovery and frankly, it’s lame. You would think that after having been caught in the act so many times in the last four seasons, Claire would just stick to her new-found mantra and come straight out with the truth the moment she meets anyone new; ah, but then the production crew wouldn’t be given the opportunity to gross us all out with shots of Claire’s disfigured body being shunted back into place (props to the effects guys here, by the way, that was truly sickening), so no, tiresome predictability it is. And it’s hard to decide whether or not this moment is satisfactory in terms of the ‘murder mystery’ too; Claire’s dialogue suggests that perhaps her roommate did commit suicide, although you suspect that this is something of a red herring. However, it would probably be a darn sight more interesting if this were the case, since it would give the character an additional dimension; she would cease being a cipher, and develop a complexity to which we weren’t previously privy. On the other hand, it would also draw this narrative to a close and we’d be forced to watch Gretchen and Claire playing BFFs for the next three or four weeks, until the other heroes required the (ex) cheerleader’s services. So perhaps it’s better if the enigma continues and the two play Scooby Doo for a while, although the jury’s out on whether this will be any more engaging than the codswallop we’ve had to endure for the last two episodes.
Hiro and Ando’s narrative generates a similar degree of ambivalence. After an episode of pussy-footing around, we finally get to the heart of their story and it’s certainly refreshing: having our comedic, ever-reliable protagonist knocking at death’s door, resigned to his fate, is a marvellous conceit that gives Masi Oka a chance to demonstrate that he’s more than just a catchphrase machine. He’s particularly good when he’s forced to be aggressive, as in his conversation with Ando about the morality of time travel. It’s also good to see the Carnival weaving its way into the wheels of the central narrative, even if it is a little convenient that it just so happens to be the place where Hiro’s mission to be a superhero started, so the writers have an easy route into connecting the two apparently disparate strands. Still, we can forgive this since Robert Knepper continues to be just about the best thing in the show at the moment, beguiling you with his refusal to be pigeonholed into black or white, good or bad, and he and Oka have an instantaneous chemistry that bodes well for the future, since it appears that the writers are throwing them together in a sort of dysfunctional ‘master/pupil’ relationship that will undoubtedly have disastrous consequences. It’s nice to see Hiro making decisions that are human rather than moral, thinking with his heart instead of his head, and, on the face of it, his new-found Quantum Leap-esque mission to ‘right the wrongs’ of his past seems promising. Unfortunately, it also relies on a frustratingly paradoxical interpretation of time travel that, while consistent with the show’s representation of the trope from as far back as season one, still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The idea that Hiro is ‘out of time’, that he somehow exists outside of causality and is aware of the myriad changes and redundant timelines that he has produced, contradicts the fundamental physics of the process: if Hiro goes back in time and alters the past so that Ando and his sister fall in love, then this is what will always have happened, and Hiro will remember it as such. Here, while everyone else acts like nothing has changed, Nakamura remembers the redundant timeline, which, frankly, is preposterous. Now, to be fair, we could discuss the concept of time travel all day and never reach a satisfactory conclusion about its minutiae since it’s all speculative, but this sort of thing just demonstrates why it’s probably best to stay away from it, or at the very least to avoid using it to adversely affect the lives of the central characters.
Elsewhere, we get a not-entirely-subtle delineation of the parallels between loner Peter and, um, loner Noah as they work together to retrieve the Carnival’s missing compass, and while the idea is sound, the execution falters somewhat. The occasional flashes of Bennet’s home life are a nicely underplayed touch and his phone call to Sandra is genuinely heartbreaking, but when he starts waxing poetic to Peter about the need to surround yourself with people and the counterproductive nature of isolation, it comes across as rather forced and heavy-handed. Armus and Foster would’ve done better to illustrate the analogy rather than make it explicit, as the dialogue feels grafted on when it should be organic. There are other problems too: Noah acquires the key far too quickly; in fact, it’s almost as if he knows where to look, which certainly doesn’t seem to be the intended reading. In fact, his analysis of the body – that the nature of the wounds suggest it was not a vengeance killing – is dubious enough without this little slice of convenience, so it ends up smacking of lazy writing. Would it really hurt to have it take a little longer, for them to have popped down to a medical lab to give Danko an X-ray or something? Oh wait, yeah, that would’ve intruded on the Guitar Hero product placement time… sorry, my bad, stick to the deux et machinas. Peter’s need to extract himself from what he sees as the ‘destructive’ nature of the heroes, while fairly mature in concept, is rather frustrating in practise: we all know that the gang is going to come bounding back together within the space of a few weeks because it always happens, so these feel more like backward steps than logical progression (come on, would he really leave Noah with the compass after having been confronted by knife-wielding maniac? That’s just plain malicious!) And then there’s Tracey Strauss, who has magically transformed from ruthless, revenge-obsessed killing machine to caring, sharing, Noah-comforting sweet pea in the space of eighty minutes. She ends the episode by the bedside of the man she tried to drown meagre hours ago, and is she strangling him while he sleeps? Stuffing his mouth with the fluids he may or may not have been fed intravenously? No, she’s keeping him company, making sure he isn’t alone, and offering glances that can only be described as ‘suggestive.’ (Don’t think it couldn’t happen… remember Matt and Daphne?) Now call me reactionary if you like, but I don’t really think this sort of antithetical character swerve can believably occur overnight. It’s just silly, and it betrays the simple fact that the writers really don’t know what to do with Ali Larter’s somewhat redundant character. Here guys, I’ve got an idea: make a bold decision and actually keep her dead! No? Oh well.
Speaking of characters that refuse to snuff it, Zachary Quinto’s Sylar has more of a role in this one although, refreshingly, the writers manage to do something a little creative with him. Armus and Foster play to the actor’s strengths and pitch the character as Matt’s self-deprecating conscience, delivering cuttingly insightful and vindictive dialogue that really gets to the heart of Sylar’s malice. This is the sort of thing that made him such a potent menace in Heroes’ first season, that gave viewers throughout the globe the opportunity to love such a loathsome individual; instead of being bombastic and over-the-top, Gabriel is cutting and heartless, psychoanalysing instead of proselytising. Greg Grunberg plays well off him too, demonstrating Parkman’s inner turmoil with suitable aplomb, and never veering too far into the excessive. The only lamentable element of this storyline is the inclusion of Roy; while Armus and Foster clearly need something to cause Matt to finally break, the ‘jealous lover’ trope is so hopelessly over-used in televisual narratives that its essential beats (misinterpretation, over-reaction, discovery, impasse, rift) frustrate rather than engage. Here’s hoping we don’t see any more of the long-haired plumber from… um, somewhere other than Liverpool (see what I tried to do there? No? Okay…) and that Janis never finds out about Matt’s little indiscretion; I just can’t cope with playing the cycle of martial strife any longer.
‘Jump, Push, Fall’ steps up a little from the lethargic pace of the season opener, but the series still feels like it’s running on auto-pilot. The narrative progression remains fairly slow and this hinders the episode’s success. Armus and Foster do attempt to introduce some fresh conceits and some of them are quite engaging – Sylar’s game of wits with Matt Parkman is superbly handled and Hiro’s dalliances with the Carnival give his character refreshingly new dimensions – but unfortunately, a great many problems remain. Claire’s narrative continues to be about as interesting as watching paint dry, relying on the sort of beats that were out-dated when they tried them in season two, and the Peter/Noah/Tracey storyline is fraught with problems and inconsistencies, not the least of which is Strauss’s sudden about turn which is frankly risible. This is an improvement on ‘Orientation’ but it still doesn’t feel like Heroes is really trying hard enough, and when your show is on as icy ground as this one, that really isn’t a good sign. 6.2
Thursday 24 September 2009
Television review: Heroes #401: 'Orientation'
#401: 'Orientation'
Wr: Tim Kring
Dr: David Straiton
Synopsis: Our heroes are trying to find ways to cope with recent events. Some (Claire, Matt) trying to find normality and others (Hiro, Ando, Peter) trying to use their abilities to do good. Angela worries about Sylar, and a new threat arrives in the form of a mysterious carnival.
Review: Four months after the curtain fell on a thoroughly lacklustre third season of Heroes, in which characters abandoned their well-established histories to service gimmicky, flash-in-the-pan plots and the narrative shunted from relentless over-indulgence to repetitive mundanity over the course of two volumes, Tim Kring is unleashing his ‘Redemption’ on us and he’s absolutely, undeniably determined to get it right this time. This is ‘back to basics’, ‘new beginnings’, the return of what supposedly made the deliciously creative, potential-fuelled monolith such a phenomenon in its freshman year… only, therein lies the fundamental problem. Going backwards to move forwards is a flawed endeavour at best, and one that it’s notoriously difficult to pull off. Heroes is such a different show now, such a well-established show, that it seems fruitless to deny it; what we need, Tim, is originality, fresh blood, an injection of something that we haven’t seen a hundred or so times before. A pity, then, that from the evidence of ‘Orientation’, our season four opener, Kring seems hell bent on recreating season two… only without that troublesome Mohinder Suresh to have to slot into the story somewhere.
So we start, ladies and gentlemen, with the question, ‘what do heroes do when forced to return to normality?’, the answer to which can be found in the first few hours of ‘Generations’: bore the audience to death. This penchant for pressing the reset button on the protagonists’ complicated, evil-fighting, end-of-the-world-preventing lives may seem appealing at first glance, given that it tends to avoid the sort of out-of-character repositioning that littered, and somewhat spoiled, last year’s ‘Villains’, but it quickly becomes dry and uninteresting, especially when you consider that, having spent so many years getting to the point where everyone was seemingly quite comfortable with their special abilities, we really just want them to get on with it already and become the extraordinary people that they really are, not retreat into themselves and deny their inherent heroism. Yet again, we find the ‘collective’ disbanded, going their separate ways, living their own lives, but you just know that in the space of five or six episodes, they’re all going to be reunited, working together to prevent some as yet undisclosed catastrophe or getting at each other’s throats in an endless cycle of pointless deceit and double cross. It’s just such a repetitive formula, and it’s bloody difficult to swallow.
We really have seen it all before. How many times is Kring going to have Matt Parkman renounce his ability before he realises it’s getting old? How many new educational institutions does Claire have to frequent before she gets an interesting story? When will Noah actually right his wrongs and stop lapsing into the same mistakes two seconds later? These are simply the same frustratingly banal character beats that we seem to spend a good chunk of every successive volume of the show deliberating over and you would think that by now, by year bleeding four, the production staff would realise that they are as predictable as day turning to night. But no, sadly; Kring clearly thinks that having Peter be a paramedic again, complete with uber-friendly everyman best mate, obligatory loner complex and a nifty penchant for rescuing the helpless just in the nick of time, is tantamount to innovation. In reality, it’s just tiresome. He also seems to be obsessed with showing us every baby step in Claire’s educational career; this year, she’s in college, making a vow (somewhat refreshingly) to tell the truth. Woo hoo! How thoroughly engaging! And look, there’s a caricature, straight out of Stereotype 101, of an annoyingly over-confident and over-enthusiastic roommate, designed to provide cheap laughs and guide young Claire towards her real college destiny… realising that popularity and academic super-stardom are nothing compared to the integrity and true friendship you’ll find by befriending the awkward outsider. Euck, this story is so moralistically archetypal, it’s almost sickening. Claire’s roomie is completely unbelievable, a one-dimensional cipher whose ludicrousness increases and increases with each passing scene. You just know she’s going to get her comeuppance; in fact, she’s there for precisely that purpose. If I were being generous, I’d say that Kring had been watching too much Joss Whedon, since the story is taken straight out of the first few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s fourth season, only without the added bonus of the irritating one actually being a demon (well, we presume at any rate.) However, unlike Whedon, Kring does nothing with the archetype, preferring instead to let it run its course in the laziest, most monotonous fashion possible (she’s got a trajectory? Really?); in fact, it’s essentially the West storyline all over again… I’m just waiting for Gretchen to start breathing fire or something.
As if these stale narratives weren’t enough, we also have Tracey Strauss’s killing spree to contend with, which gets all of about five minutes of screen time, despite seeming like a rather significant plot point when it featured in the small preview of volume five that we were treated to at the end of last year. It’s questionable whether Ali Larter should still be hanging around, given that she struggles to convincingly portray her myriad characters at the best of times, but at least it does give us the chance to witness the rather nifty attempted murder of Noah Bennet. Of course, it’s stopped by Zelkjo Ivanek’s Danko, who is still loitering like a bad smell, trying in vein to kill off, lock up or just generally get on the heroes’ nerves for no good reason. Really, what is his investment in all of this these days? Personal vendetta? Megalomania? Fetishism? No matter, we need him around to die a dramatic death at hour’s end that, rather depressingly, was spoiled by TV.com days before the episode aired. Sigh. Oh, and then we have poor Hiro and Ando, who Kring continues to bastardise by lumbering them with a bunch of lacklustre comedic beats. ‘Dial A Hero’ might raise a smirk or two but it’s complete fluff, and only actually shows signs of beginning to go somewhere about ¾ of the way into the episode. The strand is saddled with some hopelessly clunky dialogue too, as the need to re-establish Hiro’s sister as Ando’s unrequited love interest results in a chunk of unvarnished exposition being lumped into their diction. Ando essentially reminds Hiro that he’s in love with the woman, despite this being a well-known, well-established fact between the two of them. It would be rather like you having a conversation with your mother about the wallpaper in your bedroom, and stopping to tell her that the bedroom is the one at the top of the stairs, next to the toilet. It’s just completely unnecessary and, as such, it comes across as forced; as a function of the narrative rather than an organic part of the story. Regrettably, it happens at several other points in the episode too, and most memorably during Angela’s conversations with both Noah and Matt. They essentially recount the events that occurred at the close of season three, obviously for the benefit of the casual, forgetful or brand spanking new viewer, but it’s entirely pointless from a realist perspective since they were all there in the first place.
Tellingly, it’s when Kring bothers to do something new or out of the ordinary that ‘Orientation’ begins to gain momentum. The Carnival is probably the best thing about the show right now, beautifully depicted with its luscious cinematography, Batman-esque camera work and unusual, unnerving underscore. The new characters all seem interesting and fairly well rounded, with powers that are engagingly different: the use of ink for foresight, depiction and manifestation is a particularly fascinating trope. The strand has a feeling of complexity to it; the individuals we see here aren’t simply ciphers or determinable heroes/villains, they are people, with all their foibles and difficulties. Robert Knepper is just excellent as Samuel, bringing a real sense of uncertainty to the role, painting the character as simultaneously compassionate (the scene at the graveyard) and disturbing (his interactions with ‘knife-man’.) Speaking of acting chops, kudos to Cristine Rose, Adrian Pasdar and Zachary Quinto for some top notch work in the scenes between Nathan, Angela and ‘Sylar’ in the restaurant. This is really engaging stuff, with Quinto as deliciously eerie as he’s ever been and Pasdar showing a real talent for subtlety, taking care not to give too much away in Nathan’s minor lapses into Gabriel Gray. Rose finally gets a fresh set of character beats to play too; rather than depicting a maniacal power monger, here she gets to be a fragile, concerned mother, desperately trying to hold things together. Her subsequent phone call to Matt Parkman positively reeks of desperation and it’s all the more moving because of it. These elements bring a fresh emotional quotient into the mix, reliant on the events of volumes past, and it makes you wish that Kring would spend a bit more time trying something new instead of resorting to half-baked rehashes of former glories.
As an introduction to the fifth volume of Heroes, ‘Orientation’ disappoints more than it engages. Kring’s script is so keen to press the refresh button, so desperate to erase what the Zeitgeist perceives as past mistakes, that it ends up tripping over its own good intentions. The preoccupation with going ‘back to basics’ proves to be the episode’s undoing, as it results in a narrative littered with predictable story developments, lazy, one-dimensional characters and uninteresting motifs. A good chunk of the hour is spent rehashing the fundamental tenants of the show’s second season, which is far from a good thing, getting bogged down in the question of ‘how extraordinary people return to ordinary lives’, which is exactly what we don’t want to see in the show. There is some promise here, the most encouraging of which is the successful introduction of The Carnival, the show’s new blood, but, then, that’s rather telling in itself: when the production staff take the time to create something, to delve into that pesky pool of originality, to look forwards, they tend to come up trumps. It’s when they lock eyes on the past that things start to go astray and unfortunately, there’s just far too much reflection and navel-gazing in ‘Orientation’ for it to be considered anything other than decidedly average. 5.8
Wr: Tim Kring
Dr: David Straiton
Synopsis: Our heroes are trying to find ways to cope with recent events. Some (Claire, Matt) trying to find normality and others (Hiro, Ando, Peter) trying to use their abilities to do good. Angela worries about Sylar, and a new threat arrives in the form of a mysterious carnival.
Review: Four months after the curtain fell on a thoroughly lacklustre third season of Heroes, in which characters abandoned their well-established histories to service gimmicky, flash-in-the-pan plots and the narrative shunted from relentless over-indulgence to repetitive mundanity over the course of two volumes, Tim Kring is unleashing his ‘Redemption’ on us and he’s absolutely, undeniably determined to get it right this time. This is ‘back to basics’, ‘new beginnings’, the return of what supposedly made the deliciously creative, potential-fuelled monolith such a phenomenon in its freshman year… only, therein lies the fundamental problem. Going backwards to move forwards is a flawed endeavour at best, and one that it’s notoriously difficult to pull off. Heroes is such a different show now, such a well-established show, that it seems fruitless to deny it; what we need, Tim, is originality, fresh blood, an injection of something that we haven’t seen a hundred or so times before. A pity, then, that from the evidence of ‘Orientation’, our season four opener, Kring seems hell bent on recreating season two… only without that troublesome Mohinder Suresh to have to slot into the story somewhere.
So we start, ladies and gentlemen, with the question, ‘what do heroes do when forced to return to normality?’, the answer to which can be found in the first few hours of ‘Generations’: bore the audience to death. This penchant for pressing the reset button on the protagonists’ complicated, evil-fighting, end-of-the-world-preventing lives may seem appealing at first glance, given that it tends to avoid the sort of out-of-character repositioning that littered, and somewhat spoiled, last year’s ‘Villains’, but it quickly becomes dry and uninteresting, especially when you consider that, having spent so many years getting to the point where everyone was seemingly quite comfortable with their special abilities, we really just want them to get on with it already and become the extraordinary people that they really are, not retreat into themselves and deny their inherent heroism. Yet again, we find the ‘collective’ disbanded, going their separate ways, living their own lives, but you just know that in the space of five or six episodes, they’re all going to be reunited, working together to prevent some as yet undisclosed catastrophe or getting at each other’s throats in an endless cycle of pointless deceit and double cross. It’s just such a repetitive formula, and it’s bloody difficult to swallow.
We really have seen it all before. How many times is Kring going to have Matt Parkman renounce his ability before he realises it’s getting old? How many new educational institutions does Claire have to frequent before she gets an interesting story? When will Noah actually right his wrongs and stop lapsing into the same mistakes two seconds later? These are simply the same frustratingly banal character beats that we seem to spend a good chunk of every successive volume of the show deliberating over and you would think that by now, by year bleeding four, the production staff would realise that they are as predictable as day turning to night. But no, sadly; Kring clearly thinks that having Peter be a paramedic again, complete with uber-friendly everyman best mate, obligatory loner complex and a nifty penchant for rescuing the helpless just in the nick of time, is tantamount to innovation. In reality, it’s just tiresome. He also seems to be obsessed with showing us every baby step in Claire’s educational career; this year, she’s in college, making a vow (somewhat refreshingly) to tell the truth. Woo hoo! How thoroughly engaging! And look, there’s a caricature, straight out of Stereotype 101, of an annoyingly over-confident and over-enthusiastic roommate, designed to provide cheap laughs and guide young Claire towards her real college destiny… realising that popularity and academic super-stardom are nothing compared to the integrity and true friendship you’ll find by befriending the awkward outsider. Euck, this story is so moralistically archetypal, it’s almost sickening. Claire’s roomie is completely unbelievable, a one-dimensional cipher whose ludicrousness increases and increases with each passing scene. You just know she’s going to get her comeuppance; in fact, she’s there for precisely that purpose. If I were being generous, I’d say that Kring had been watching too much Joss Whedon, since the story is taken straight out of the first few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s fourth season, only without the added bonus of the irritating one actually being a demon (well, we presume at any rate.) However, unlike Whedon, Kring does nothing with the archetype, preferring instead to let it run its course in the laziest, most monotonous fashion possible (she’s got a trajectory? Really?); in fact, it’s essentially the West storyline all over again… I’m just waiting for Gretchen to start breathing fire or something.
As if these stale narratives weren’t enough, we also have Tracey Strauss’s killing spree to contend with, which gets all of about five minutes of screen time, despite seeming like a rather significant plot point when it featured in the small preview of volume five that we were treated to at the end of last year. It’s questionable whether Ali Larter should still be hanging around, given that she struggles to convincingly portray her myriad characters at the best of times, but at least it does give us the chance to witness the rather nifty attempted murder of Noah Bennet. Of course, it’s stopped by Zelkjo Ivanek’s Danko, who is still loitering like a bad smell, trying in vein to kill off, lock up or just generally get on the heroes’ nerves for no good reason. Really, what is his investment in all of this these days? Personal vendetta? Megalomania? Fetishism? No matter, we need him around to die a dramatic death at hour’s end that, rather depressingly, was spoiled by TV.com days before the episode aired. Sigh. Oh, and then we have poor Hiro and Ando, who Kring continues to bastardise by lumbering them with a bunch of lacklustre comedic beats. ‘Dial A Hero’ might raise a smirk or two but it’s complete fluff, and only actually shows signs of beginning to go somewhere about ¾ of the way into the episode. The strand is saddled with some hopelessly clunky dialogue too, as the need to re-establish Hiro’s sister as Ando’s unrequited love interest results in a chunk of unvarnished exposition being lumped into their diction. Ando essentially reminds Hiro that he’s in love with the woman, despite this being a well-known, well-established fact between the two of them. It would be rather like you having a conversation with your mother about the wallpaper in your bedroom, and stopping to tell her that the bedroom is the one at the top of the stairs, next to the toilet. It’s just completely unnecessary and, as such, it comes across as forced; as a function of the narrative rather than an organic part of the story. Regrettably, it happens at several other points in the episode too, and most memorably during Angela’s conversations with both Noah and Matt. They essentially recount the events that occurred at the close of season three, obviously for the benefit of the casual, forgetful or brand spanking new viewer, but it’s entirely pointless from a realist perspective since they were all there in the first place.
Tellingly, it’s when Kring bothers to do something new or out of the ordinary that ‘Orientation’ begins to gain momentum. The Carnival is probably the best thing about the show right now, beautifully depicted with its luscious cinematography, Batman-esque camera work and unusual, unnerving underscore. The new characters all seem interesting and fairly well rounded, with powers that are engagingly different: the use of ink for foresight, depiction and manifestation is a particularly fascinating trope. The strand has a feeling of complexity to it; the individuals we see here aren’t simply ciphers or determinable heroes/villains, they are people, with all their foibles and difficulties. Robert Knepper is just excellent as Samuel, bringing a real sense of uncertainty to the role, painting the character as simultaneously compassionate (the scene at the graveyard) and disturbing (his interactions with ‘knife-man’.) Speaking of acting chops, kudos to Cristine Rose, Adrian Pasdar and Zachary Quinto for some top notch work in the scenes between Nathan, Angela and ‘Sylar’ in the restaurant. This is really engaging stuff, with Quinto as deliciously eerie as he’s ever been and Pasdar showing a real talent for subtlety, taking care not to give too much away in Nathan’s minor lapses into Gabriel Gray. Rose finally gets a fresh set of character beats to play too; rather than depicting a maniacal power monger, here she gets to be a fragile, concerned mother, desperately trying to hold things together. Her subsequent phone call to Matt Parkman positively reeks of desperation and it’s all the more moving because of it. These elements bring a fresh emotional quotient into the mix, reliant on the events of volumes past, and it makes you wish that Kring would spend a bit more time trying something new instead of resorting to half-baked rehashes of former glories.
As an introduction to the fifth volume of Heroes, ‘Orientation’ disappoints more than it engages. Kring’s script is so keen to press the refresh button, so desperate to erase what the Zeitgeist perceives as past mistakes, that it ends up tripping over its own good intentions. The preoccupation with going ‘back to basics’ proves to be the episode’s undoing, as it results in a narrative littered with predictable story developments, lazy, one-dimensional characters and uninteresting motifs. A good chunk of the hour is spent rehashing the fundamental tenants of the show’s second season, which is far from a good thing, getting bogged down in the question of ‘how extraordinary people return to ordinary lives’, which is exactly what we don’t want to see in the show. There is some promise here, the most encouraging of which is the successful introduction of The Carnival, the show’s new blood, but, then, that’s rather telling in itself: when the production staff take the time to create something, to delve into that pesky pool of originality, to look forwards, they tend to come up trumps. It’s when they lock eyes on the past that things start to go astray and unfortunately, there’s just far too much reflection and navel-gazing in ‘Orientation’ for it to be considered anything other than decidedly average. 5.8
Tuesday 22 September 2009
Album review: New Found Glory: 'Not Without A Fight'
NEW FOUND GLORY: 'Not Without A Fight' (Epitaph)
It must be hard to be in a pop punk band; to be entrenched in a genre that allows so little scope for natural progression. Oh sure, you might find that, over time, your lyrics become less preoccupied with the girl who works behind the counter at your local record store and more concerned with little things like the meaninglessness of life and the pointlessness of existence (or, if your name's Billie Joe Armstrong, POLITICAL ISSUES MAAAAAN), but unfortunately, your genre of choice just won't let your music scream anything other than "look at me, look at me! See how simple, catchy and down right irritating my melodies and power chords are!" Yes folks, pop punk is one of the world's most straightforward musical styles and, to be honest, therein lies its charm. Problem is, when you've been in a band for over ten years and you've started growing facial hair and getting mortgages, its monochromatic palate starts to feel a little restrictive.
So what are your options? Well, you can do a complete swerve and abandon the D chords in favour of something different, but then you risk alienating your loyal, perpetually eighteen-year-old, audience (Brand New, we're looking at you... but of course, we love you for it.) Or, if you're New Found Glory, you can suck it up and pretend that change has passed you by, that you're stuck in a state of suspended animation, forever young, whiny and strung up on love; after all, why take the risk of doing something more representative of your current lives when you've got a formula that sells out amphitheatres all across America and gets you slots on Jay Leno (probably)? (Actually, they tried that a bit with 2006's 'Coming Home'... well,they slowed things down a little on, like, four tracks.)
So sixth album 'Not Without A Fight' is pretty much just more of the same: twelve tales of heartbreak and unrequited love set to a resolutely familiar and gloriously unoriginal verse-chorus/play chord, strum strings formula. So, we have forlorn song titles like 'I'll Never Love Again', 'Such A Mess', 'This Isn't You', 'Don't Let This Be The End' and 'Truck Stop Blues' (to name but a few), as well as a few galvanising numbers designed to emphasise the importance of your homies and their fastidiousness; the oh-so-subtle 'Listen To Your Friends' and, even better, 'Don't Let Her Pull You Down' spring to mind here. It's all completely ludicrous, utterly simplistic stuff and hell, NFG know it: the opening track's called 'Right Where We Left Off', for God's sake. Chad and co. aren't afraid to wear their shamelessly formulaic hearts on their sleeves and, in the end, that's why the album works. Unlike their younger, more trend conscious contemporaries, New Found Glory make no claim to be anything other than what they are, and thus they are about a million times more genuine (you get the feeling that a band like Youmeatsix would happily play skiffle music if their record label said it was popular.) Sure, the record probably isn't going to change lives and it certainly isn't going to stand alongside the all time greats, no matter how much producer Mark Hoppus might think it's a work of colossal artistic integrity - fine, so the guitars are a bit heavier and the vocals have more grit... it's still not bloody 'OK Computer'! - but as an example of how to marry the thrilling backbone of punk rock to the melodic sensibilities of pop, it's about as good as you can get. So just like all those other New Found Glory albums then... (7/10)
It must be hard to be in a pop punk band; to be entrenched in a genre that allows so little scope for natural progression. Oh sure, you might find that, over time, your lyrics become less preoccupied with the girl who works behind the counter at your local record store and more concerned with little things like the meaninglessness of life and the pointlessness of existence (or, if your name's Billie Joe Armstrong, POLITICAL ISSUES MAAAAAN), but unfortunately, your genre of choice just won't let your music scream anything other than "look at me, look at me! See how simple, catchy and down right irritating my melodies and power chords are!" Yes folks, pop punk is one of the world's most straightforward musical styles and, to be honest, therein lies its charm. Problem is, when you've been in a band for over ten years and you've started growing facial hair and getting mortgages, its monochromatic palate starts to feel a little restrictive.
So what are your options? Well, you can do a complete swerve and abandon the D chords in favour of something different, but then you risk alienating your loyal, perpetually eighteen-year-old, audience (Brand New, we're looking at you... but of course, we love you for it.) Or, if you're New Found Glory, you can suck it up and pretend that change has passed you by, that you're stuck in a state of suspended animation, forever young, whiny and strung up on love; after all, why take the risk of doing something more representative of your current lives when you've got a formula that sells out amphitheatres all across America and gets you slots on Jay Leno (probably)? (Actually, they tried that a bit with 2006's 'Coming Home'... well,they slowed things down a little on, like, four tracks.)
So sixth album 'Not Without A Fight' is pretty much just more of the same: twelve tales of heartbreak and unrequited love set to a resolutely familiar and gloriously unoriginal verse-chorus/play chord, strum strings formula. So, we have forlorn song titles like 'I'll Never Love Again', 'Such A Mess', 'This Isn't You', 'Don't Let This Be The End' and 'Truck Stop Blues' (to name but a few), as well as a few galvanising numbers designed to emphasise the importance of your homies and their fastidiousness; the oh-so-subtle 'Listen To Your Friends' and, even better, 'Don't Let Her Pull You Down' spring to mind here. It's all completely ludicrous, utterly simplistic stuff and hell, NFG know it: the opening track's called 'Right Where We Left Off', for God's sake. Chad and co. aren't afraid to wear their shamelessly formulaic hearts on their sleeves and, in the end, that's why the album works. Unlike their younger, more trend conscious contemporaries, New Found Glory make no claim to be anything other than what they are, and thus they are about a million times more genuine (you get the feeling that a band like Youmeatsix would happily play skiffle music if their record label said it was popular.) Sure, the record probably isn't going to change lives and it certainly isn't going to stand alongside the all time greats, no matter how much producer Mark Hoppus might think it's a work of colossal artistic integrity - fine, so the guitars are a bit heavier and the vocals have more grit... it's still not bloody 'OK Computer'! - but as an example of how to marry the thrilling backbone of punk rock to the melodic sensibilities of pop, it's about as good as you can get. So just like all those other New Found Glory albums then... (7/10)
Sunday 20 September 2009
Television review: Supernatural #502: 'Good God, Y'All!'
#502: 'Good God, Y'All!'
Wr: Sera Gamble
Dr: Phil Scriggica
Synopsis: Hunter Rufus Turner calls in Bobby, Sam, and Dean to deal with a demon infestation in his town, but they soon discover the truth is much more horrifying. Meanwhile, Castiel goes to seek the only entity that can defeat Lucifer.
Review: Well, this season’s turning into a right royal soiree, isn’t it? First we get Chuck, Castiel, Zachariah and age-old fan favourite Meg returning to our screens, fresh faced and raring to cause insurmountable bother for our brotherly leads, and now the hunters of years past are blazing a trail of destruction, intrigue and unfortunate misinterpretation right across the ongoing narrative, as Rufus, Ellen and Jo find themselves embroiled in a dastardly plot, woven with much malicious bravado by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Thankfully, unlike the clusterfuck rush job of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, in which dramatic developments unfolded in decidedly flat fashion, Sera Gamble’s script treats everything with the care and attention it deserves, taking time to meticulously construct scenarios and build up story tropes so that pay-offs develop significance; consequently, the return of the three characters feels much more organic (well, this is a hunt, after all) and acquires purpose. Oh, and naturally, it helps rather a lot that they’re all familiar faces and top notch actors, selling their lines with the appropriate levels of aplomb or reservation, whereas Meg has been given a new meat suit and the jury’s still out on the actress’ ability to portray the character.
‘Good God, Y’All!’ (great title) is also careful with its plot, taking time to establish the threat at the heart of the story and weave it intricately around the various character beats with which we are currently preoccupied. Gamble turns the pacing down several notches from last week’s effort and greatly simplifies the melting pot, throwing in a few choice ingredients rather than the entire contents of the kitchen cupboard. So, we are treated to what, at first, seems like a fairly conventional ‘demon infestation’ plot but this is certainly no bad thing. The orchestration is absolutely spot on: everything from Sam and Dean’s initial apprehensive walk into town, beautifully underplayed by the two actors and quietly directed by the wonderful Phil Scriggica (there’s barely a sound once ‘Spirit in the Sky’ stops playing, which is considerably unnerving), to the claustrophobic binarity of the narrative, in which the two warring factions are purposefully separated and only meagre glimpses of the supposed ‘demons’ are allowed, is designed to disturb and disquieten, to keep the viewer gnawing his or her nails to the bone. And as if all of this wasn’t delicious enough, the plot does a fascinating about-turn at the halfway mark, introducing a highly unexpected twist that bolsters the episode’s originality. The idea that there are no demons and that this is a piece of sadistic frivolity from a horrifically malevolent God, is brilliantly disturbing.
It certainly helps that the actor cast as the quite literally mesmerising Wart is a dab hand at the old cult television thang, and imbues the character with just the right levels of arrogance and black humour to accentuate his maliciousness. He plays it absolutely straight, despite the hints of comedy that filter through in the dialogue, and this perfectly sells the role, allowing the viewer to invest wholeheartedly in events. His two-hander with Sam is particularly brilliant, cutting to the heart of the warped psychology behind his ‘experiment’ and the unquestionably horrifying truth in the notion that we are this easy to manipulate and coerce. Supernatural is always at its best when its minutiae act as metaphor, speaking to the horrors of the human psyche with all its woes, faults and issues and this episode is no exception. Gamble uses the fantastical to illustrate our brutality, paranoia and fear of otherness and does a superlative job of delineating it in War’s disturbingly matter-of-fact, laconic dialogue: his references to ‘being there in Germany, then again in Germany, and then Vietnam’ hammer the point home without seeming ham-fisted or preachy.
There are a number of other strong character moments too, particularly in relation to Sam’s struggle to keep himself away from the ol’ demon blood. The scene in the supermarket is astutely shot in a deliberately understated way again, and Jared Padalecki sells the moment in which Sam is tempted exceptionally well. Of course, all of this is simply leading to the pay-off in the closing scene which is, hand on heart, one of the most melancholic and moving double-headers in the show’s history. Credit to Jared but also to Jensen Ackles for some fine, fine performances that use body language as well as vocal delivery to communicate the palpable rift between the brothers. Dean’s agreement with Sam’s assertion that they need to be apart is genuinely shocking and feels like the end of a relationship… which, in essence, it is. Again, Gamble and the crew manage to convey gravitas without bombast and that’s certainly no small feat.
‘Good God, Y’All!’ is a considerable improvement on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’; rather than throwing story developments at the plot and hoping they’ll stick, Sera Gamble takes a smattering of narrative threads and pores over them, giving them room to breathe and space to manoeuvre. By concentrating on a fairly simple conceit – the supposed take over of a town by several demons – the episode is able to provide some truly outstanding character development that feels natural rather than grafted on, and also deliver a thoroughly satisfying mid-narrative plot swerve. While Marc Pallengrino is nowhere to be seen and Castiel is left with minimal screen time in a rather odd teaser sequence that has no bearing on the rest of the episode, Gamble’s script still stands and head and shoulders above most other US television and sits comfortably next to some of Supernatural’s finest work. A real triumph and frankly, a bit of a relief. 9.1
Wr: Sera Gamble
Dr: Phil Scriggica
Synopsis: Hunter Rufus Turner calls in Bobby, Sam, and Dean to deal with a demon infestation in his town, but they soon discover the truth is much more horrifying. Meanwhile, Castiel goes to seek the only entity that can defeat Lucifer.
Review: Well, this season’s turning into a right royal soiree, isn’t it? First we get Chuck, Castiel, Zachariah and age-old fan favourite Meg returning to our screens, fresh faced and raring to cause insurmountable bother for our brotherly leads, and now the hunters of years past are blazing a trail of destruction, intrigue and unfortunate misinterpretation right across the ongoing narrative, as Rufus, Ellen and Jo find themselves embroiled in a dastardly plot, woven with much malicious bravado by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Thankfully, unlike the clusterfuck rush job of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, in which dramatic developments unfolded in decidedly flat fashion, Sera Gamble’s script treats everything with the care and attention it deserves, taking time to meticulously construct scenarios and build up story tropes so that pay-offs develop significance; consequently, the return of the three characters feels much more organic (well, this is a hunt, after all) and acquires purpose. Oh, and naturally, it helps rather a lot that they’re all familiar faces and top notch actors, selling their lines with the appropriate levels of aplomb or reservation, whereas Meg has been given a new meat suit and the jury’s still out on the actress’ ability to portray the character.
‘Good God, Y’All!’ (great title) is also careful with its plot, taking time to establish the threat at the heart of the story and weave it intricately around the various character beats with which we are currently preoccupied. Gamble turns the pacing down several notches from last week’s effort and greatly simplifies the melting pot, throwing in a few choice ingredients rather than the entire contents of the kitchen cupboard. So, we are treated to what, at first, seems like a fairly conventional ‘demon infestation’ plot but this is certainly no bad thing. The orchestration is absolutely spot on: everything from Sam and Dean’s initial apprehensive walk into town, beautifully underplayed by the two actors and quietly directed by the wonderful Phil Scriggica (there’s barely a sound once ‘Spirit in the Sky’ stops playing, which is considerably unnerving), to the claustrophobic binarity of the narrative, in which the two warring factions are purposefully separated and only meagre glimpses of the supposed ‘demons’ are allowed, is designed to disturb and disquieten, to keep the viewer gnawing his or her nails to the bone. And as if all of this wasn’t delicious enough, the plot does a fascinating about-turn at the halfway mark, introducing a highly unexpected twist that bolsters the episode’s originality. The idea that there are no demons and that this is a piece of sadistic frivolity from a horrifically malevolent God, is brilliantly disturbing.
It certainly helps that the actor cast as the quite literally mesmerising Wart is a dab hand at the old cult television thang, and imbues the character with just the right levels of arrogance and black humour to accentuate his maliciousness. He plays it absolutely straight, despite the hints of comedy that filter through in the dialogue, and this perfectly sells the role, allowing the viewer to invest wholeheartedly in events. His two-hander with Sam is particularly brilliant, cutting to the heart of the warped psychology behind his ‘experiment’ and the unquestionably horrifying truth in the notion that we are this easy to manipulate and coerce. Supernatural is always at its best when its minutiae act as metaphor, speaking to the horrors of the human psyche with all its woes, faults and issues and this episode is no exception. Gamble uses the fantastical to illustrate our brutality, paranoia and fear of otherness and does a superlative job of delineating it in War’s disturbingly matter-of-fact, laconic dialogue: his references to ‘being there in Germany, then again in Germany, and then Vietnam’ hammer the point home without seeming ham-fisted or preachy.
There are a number of other strong character moments too, particularly in relation to Sam’s struggle to keep himself away from the ol’ demon blood. The scene in the supermarket is astutely shot in a deliberately understated way again, and Jared Padalecki sells the moment in which Sam is tempted exceptionally well. Of course, all of this is simply leading to the pay-off in the closing scene which is, hand on heart, one of the most melancholic and moving double-headers in the show’s history. Credit to Jared but also to Jensen Ackles for some fine, fine performances that use body language as well as vocal delivery to communicate the palpable rift between the brothers. Dean’s agreement with Sam’s assertion that they need to be apart is genuinely shocking and feels like the end of a relationship… which, in essence, it is. Again, Gamble and the crew manage to convey gravitas without bombast and that’s certainly no small feat.
‘Good God, Y’All!’ is a considerable improvement on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’; rather than throwing story developments at the plot and hoping they’ll stick, Sera Gamble takes a smattering of narrative threads and pores over them, giving them room to breathe and space to manoeuvre. By concentrating on a fairly simple conceit – the supposed take over of a town by several demons – the episode is able to provide some truly outstanding character development that feels natural rather than grafted on, and also deliver a thoroughly satisfying mid-narrative plot swerve. While Marc Pallengrino is nowhere to be seen and Castiel is left with minimal screen time in a rather odd teaser sequence that has no bearing on the rest of the episode, Gamble’s script still stands and head and shoulders above most other US television and sits comfortably next to some of Supernatural’s finest work. A real triumph and frankly, a bit of a relief. 9.1
Friday 18 September 2009
Television review: Fringe #201: 'A New Day in the Old Town'
#201: 'A New Day in the Old Town'
Wr: J.J. Abrams & Akiva Goldsman
Dr: Akiva Goldsman
Synopsis: Olivia returns from the alternate reality and Peter tries to get information about her visit. Walter makes some custard for his son's birthday, while Broyles deals with the threat of a government shutdown of the Fringe Division.
Review: And the award for the most ironically appropriate episode title goes to... This is 'the old town' indeed, as virtually everything about Abrams and Goldsman's script feels incredibly familiar, and not always in a good way. While the ease with which the writers and actors slot back into the show's central characters is certainly commendable, the same cannot be said of the intricacies of the narrative, which are often frustratingly low-key and predictable. When we left Broyles, Dunham and the Bishops at the end of season one, things had gone to hell in a handbasket with the shooting of Nina Sharp, David Robert Jones's ill-fated attempt to cross over into the alternate reality and Olivia's actual successful trip there, in which she came face to face with the one, the only, William Bell himself, who turned out to be Spock in a three piece suit. The show was riding the crest of a decidedly addictive wave, propelling its central storyline forward with considerable momentum. Now, after being deprived of any developments for four long, drawn out months, we return to find the writers stalling for time, working extremely hard to prevent anything but the barest scraps from being given away, essentially playing silly buggers with their audience. Oh look, we return to the story once Olivia's come back from her oh-so-important meeting with Bell and don't get to experience it first hand. Well, okay, maybe they couldn't get Nimoy back for another round, perhaps he was too busy filming the Star Trek DVD commentary or something. Fine. But to have her not remember anything about the encounter other than that something is being hidden? And that the information she acquired is 'imperative to the survival of everyone'? Sigh. These water-treading tactics just become frustrating; sure, they set up key mysteries to be resolved later in the season, but would it really hurt to give us some sort of juicy morsel now? To treat us to something, anything, that would make the episode feel like it had any sort of point?
Of course, the die-hard supporters among Fringe's ever-burgeoning fanbase will probably point to the shapeshifter storyline as evidence of fresh intrigue being imbued into the show. This is a fair point, as the concept is certainly an interesting one and it is introduced to the narrative in a superlatively macabre way. The teaser sequence (as always, it seems, with this programme) is just superb, playing all sorts of mind games with the viewer before the horror of what is actually going on eventually becomes clear, and the effects used within the actual transformation process are actually pretty nifty. It's good to see gadgetry being incorporated into the process too; while the technology is evidently science fiction, at least there is an attempt being made to maintain the illusion of reality. The scene in the miscellaneous back alley store is also wonderfully mysterious: the 'typewriter conversation between realities' is quite simply a genius idea, directed in a beautifully understated, matter-of-fact way by Goldsman. Where this strand begins to fall down is in its lapses into predictability. The shapeshifter's jumps between bodies are never surprising, and while this works to a certain extent with its acquisition of the nurse's countenance, since the tension in the scene is essentially predicated on our dramatic irony as we anticipate the reveal, or Olivia's realisation, it proves rather less than successful when the focus is turned to Agent Francis. The poorly placed cut away in their confrontation nullifies any ambiguity whatsoever, practically screaming "he's dead!" at the viewer, and so the final scene, the big, shocking reveal, falls flat on its sorry arse. Of course, it doesn't help that his departure from Fringe was made public knowledge a month or so ago, so those viewers who keep up with the show's news spend every moment after he first appears in the episode waiting to see how he's going to snuff it.
There are many other distinctly calculable narrative developments too, which make the episode's composition feel depressingly lazy. The manner in which the Bishops uncover the truth behind the mysterious deaths recalls the frustrating penchant for the old deux et machina that plagued many episodes in the early stages of Fringe's freshman year. Fair enough, Walter has an established, significant history in the field he is investigating but come on... would it hurt to present him with something he hadn't seen before? Does he always have to have postulated about the existence of the mysterious science that features in the 'curiosity of the week', or have some convenient piece of exposition on hand to magically provide all the answers? The girl on the video tape provides far too succinct an explanation of events; so much so that it makes the previous steps taken in the investigation seem utterly pointless. Then there is the bizarre custard-making C-storyline, which is entirely throwaway and superficial, and the closure of the Fringe Division itself, which is rendered completely ineffectual by essentially being resolved by the end of the episode. Look guys, if you're going to rip-off The X Files, at least do a respectable job of it (the inclusion of a sequence from the 'Dreamcatcher' two parter was far more satisfying...); Chris Carter's show got it right by actually keeping Mulder and Scully apart, at least in job title, for almost half a season. It gave us consequence and realism; here, the trope's entire function appears to be to give Joshua Jackson some ludicrously hyperbolic bravado to spout at Lance Reddick. His assertion that 'we're not reacting any more!' (paraphrased, that) is hopelessly hamfisted and somewhat negates the effect of the plot thread that it is paying off: Broyles and Peter's beautifully scripted two hander in the admittedly wonderful first act, which concentrates on the effects of Olivia's supposed death on each of the characters.
Speaking of characters, how about Meghan Markle as brand spanking new Junior Agent Amy Jessup, huh? Well, wasn't she just a peach, eh? Didn't we all just immediately warm to her wonderfully rounded, highly complex and thoroughly believable character? Oh, okay, I jest. Jessup wins the award for most transparent cipher yet to be introduced to the show, as her one-dimensional treatment and lack of virtually any character development whatsoever exposes her central function: to replace Agent Francis and make the number of people in love with Joshua Jackson increase to 7,452. Oh sorry, and provide a form of interpretative transference for casual or first-time viewers. The vast majority of her dialogue, and the conversations she takes part in, function to reiterate facts about the history of the show that we already know, the most blatant of which is her introduction to the Harvard University setting, in which Peter essentially guides the audience around Fringe's basic premise. It's as if the network called Abrams, panicking about whether viewers would be able to follow the show given its penchant for ongoing narratives, or even remember what they'd seen last year, and insisted he had to retread everything before he could get on with the actual plot. To be fair to the writers, the character's introduction is at least a more organic way of solving this problem - all too often, regular cast members suddenly start telling each other facts that they are all too familiar with - but it does make her feel rather useless. Her willingness to accept the bizarro world of Fringe Division is suspicious too. The conspiracy nut in me reckons there's more going on here, that perhaps she's going to turn out to have more involvement with 'The Pattern' (unusually enough, not mentioned once in the hour) than at first thought, but perhaps this is just wishful thinking. Maybe I don't want to acknowledge that actually, this amounts to little more than a careless, quick-fire way of getting on with the story.
All of this criticism makes 'A New Day in the Old Town' sound like something of an atrocity; in actuality, it's a reasonably enjoyable episode, provided you don't think too much about its composition, or expect too much from its narrative. There are some excellent orchestrated scenes and character beats, particularly Peter and Broyles in the bar, Olivia and Charlie in the hospital, and everyone's reactions to Dunham's potential death in the first act. Goldsman does a delicate, sophisticated job of directing the piece and the actors all slot back into their personalities perfectly. Where the episode falls down is in its predictability; none of the reveals actually surprise you, and the central plot feels underwhelming when one considers the gravitas of events that occurred in season one's top notch finale. What Fringe really needs right now is to keep the momentum going and this one, sadly, is a bit of a slow burner. 6.5
Wr: J.J. Abrams & Akiva Goldsman
Dr: Akiva Goldsman
Synopsis: Olivia returns from the alternate reality and Peter tries to get information about her visit. Walter makes some custard for his son's birthday, while Broyles deals with the threat of a government shutdown of the Fringe Division.
Review: And the award for the most ironically appropriate episode title goes to... This is 'the old town' indeed, as virtually everything about Abrams and Goldsman's script feels incredibly familiar, and not always in a good way. While the ease with which the writers and actors slot back into the show's central characters is certainly commendable, the same cannot be said of the intricacies of the narrative, which are often frustratingly low-key and predictable. When we left Broyles, Dunham and the Bishops at the end of season one, things had gone to hell in a handbasket with the shooting of Nina Sharp, David Robert Jones's ill-fated attempt to cross over into the alternate reality and Olivia's actual successful trip there, in which she came face to face with the one, the only, William Bell himself, who turned out to be Spock in a three piece suit. The show was riding the crest of a decidedly addictive wave, propelling its central storyline forward with considerable momentum. Now, after being deprived of any developments for four long, drawn out months, we return to find the writers stalling for time, working extremely hard to prevent anything but the barest scraps from being given away, essentially playing silly buggers with their audience. Oh look, we return to the story once Olivia's come back from her oh-so-important meeting with Bell and don't get to experience it first hand. Well, okay, maybe they couldn't get Nimoy back for another round, perhaps he was too busy filming the Star Trek DVD commentary or something. Fine. But to have her not remember anything about the encounter other than that something is being hidden? And that the information she acquired is 'imperative to the survival of everyone'? Sigh. These water-treading tactics just become frustrating; sure, they set up key mysteries to be resolved later in the season, but would it really hurt to give us some sort of juicy morsel now? To treat us to something, anything, that would make the episode feel like it had any sort of point?
Of course, the die-hard supporters among Fringe's ever-burgeoning fanbase will probably point to the shapeshifter storyline as evidence of fresh intrigue being imbued into the show. This is a fair point, as the concept is certainly an interesting one and it is introduced to the narrative in a superlatively macabre way. The teaser sequence (as always, it seems, with this programme) is just superb, playing all sorts of mind games with the viewer before the horror of what is actually going on eventually becomes clear, and the effects used within the actual transformation process are actually pretty nifty. It's good to see gadgetry being incorporated into the process too; while the technology is evidently science fiction, at least there is an attempt being made to maintain the illusion of reality. The scene in the miscellaneous back alley store is also wonderfully mysterious: the 'typewriter conversation between realities' is quite simply a genius idea, directed in a beautifully understated, matter-of-fact way by Goldsman. Where this strand begins to fall down is in its lapses into predictability. The shapeshifter's jumps between bodies are never surprising, and while this works to a certain extent with its acquisition of the nurse's countenance, since the tension in the scene is essentially predicated on our dramatic irony as we anticipate the reveal, or Olivia's realisation, it proves rather less than successful when the focus is turned to Agent Francis. The poorly placed cut away in their confrontation nullifies any ambiguity whatsoever, practically screaming "he's dead!" at the viewer, and so the final scene, the big, shocking reveal, falls flat on its sorry arse. Of course, it doesn't help that his departure from Fringe was made public knowledge a month or so ago, so those viewers who keep up with the show's news spend every moment after he first appears in the episode waiting to see how he's going to snuff it.
There are many other distinctly calculable narrative developments too, which make the episode's composition feel depressingly lazy. The manner in which the Bishops uncover the truth behind the mysterious deaths recalls the frustrating penchant for the old deux et machina that plagued many episodes in the early stages of Fringe's freshman year. Fair enough, Walter has an established, significant history in the field he is investigating but come on... would it hurt to present him with something he hadn't seen before? Does he always have to have postulated about the existence of the mysterious science that features in the 'curiosity of the week', or have some convenient piece of exposition on hand to magically provide all the answers? The girl on the video tape provides far too succinct an explanation of events; so much so that it makes the previous steps taken in the investigation seem utterly pointless. Then there is the bizarre custard-making C-storyline, which is entirely throwaway and superficial, and the closure of the Fringe Division itself, which is rendered completely ineffectual by essentially being resolved by the end of the episode. Look guys, if you're going to rip-off The X Files, at least do a respectable job of it (the inclusion of a sequence from the 'Dreamcatcher' two parter was far more satisfying...); Chris Carter's show got it right by actually keeping Mulder and Scully apart, at least in job title, for almost half a season. It gave us consequence and realism; here, the trope's entire function appears to be to give Joshua Jackson some ludicrously hyperbolic bravado to spout at Lance Reddick. His assertion that 'we're not reacting any more!' (paraphrased, that) is hopelessly hamfisted and somewhat negates the effect of the plot thread that it is paying off: Broyles and Peter's beautifully scripted two hander in the admittedly wonderful first act, which concentrates on the effects of Olivia's supposed death on each of the characters.
Speaking of characters, how about Meghan Markle as brand spanking new Junior Agent Amy Jessup, huh? Well, wasn't she just a peach, eh? Didn't we all just immediately warm to her wonderfully rounded, highly complex and thoroughly believable character? Oh, okay, I jest. Jessup wins the award for most transparent cipher yet to be introduced to the show, as her one-dimensional treatment and lack of virtually any character development whatsoever exposes her central function: to replace Agent Francis and make the number of people in love with Joshua Jackson increase to 7,452. Oh sorry, and provide a form of interpretative transference for casual or first-time viewers. The vast majority of her dialogue, and the conversations she takes part in, function to reiterate facts about the history of the show that we already know, the most blatant of which is her introduction to the Harvard University setting, in which Peter essentially guides the audience around Fringe's basic premise. It's as if the network called Abrams, panicking about whether viewers would be able to follow the show given its penchant for ongoing narratives, or even remember what they'd seen last year, and insisted he had to retread everything before he could get on with the actual plot. To be fair to the writers, the character's introduction is at least a more organic way of solving this problem - all too often, regular cast members suddenly start telling each other facts that they are all too familiar with - but it does make her feel rather useless. Her willingness to accept the bizarro world of Fringe Division is suspicious too. The conspiracy nut in me reckons there's more going on here, that perhaps she's going to turn out to have more involvement with 'The Pattern' (unusually enough, not mentioned once in the hour) than at first thought, but perhaps this is just wishful thinking. Maybe I don't want to acknowledge that actually, this amounts to little more than a careless, quick-fire way of getting on with the story.
All of this criticism makes 'A New Day in the Old Town' sound like something of an atrocity; in actuality, it's a reasonably enjoyable episode, provided you don't think too much about its composition, or expect too much from its narrative. There are some excellent orchestrated scenes and character beats, particularly Peter and Broyles in the bar, Olivia and Charlie in the hospital, and everyone's reactions to Dunham's potential death in the first act. Goldsman does a delicate, sophisticated job of directing the piece and the actors all slot back into their personalities perfectly. Where the episode falls down is in its predictability; none of the reveals actually surprise you, and the central plot feels underwhelming when one considers the gravitas of events that occurred in season one's top notch finale. What Fringe really needs right now is to keep the momentum going and this one, sadly, is a bit of a slow burner. 6.5
Thursday 17 September 2009
Album review: Muse: 'The Resistance'
MUSE: 'The Resistance' (Warner Bros)
A little over ten years ago, three snotty-nosed, fresh-faced young upstarts from Teignmouth, the actual arse end of the real nowhere, quietly nudged a record into the hands of indie's (spit) makers and shakers. 'Showbiz', as it was modestly titled, was met with much indifference and bemusement (pardon the pun) from an unforgiving, self-obsessed media, who likened it to 'Bends-era Radiohead and brushed the band aside in favour of pretentious nobodies like Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Add N to (X). Well, more fool them. Right from the start, the potential for world domination has always been within Muse's grasp: from the impassioned colossus that is 'Muscle Museum' to the tender dramatics of 'Unintended', you just had to open your eyes, to bother to look a little closer. Naturally, less than a year later, the band were making some of the most outstandingly gargantuan noise to ever have come out of a studio. In subsequent records 'Origin of Symmetry' and 'Absolution', Muse provided us with the kind of music that makes you feel stoked to be alive, that makes life an enriching, emboldening experience. All that from just three men, their guitars, drums, a piano and the occasional satellite (have you seen their live shows? Geez!) With such an impressive resume, what do we now expect from Teignmouth's finest, ten years on? Well, more, to put it bluntly. Loads more. Bigger. Harder. Faster. Stronger. Taking over the multiverse instead of just this poxy little universe. Music that it doesn't feel right to listen to unless you're surfing naked on the back of a comet or watching a million-strong battle from atop the highest mountains on Mars. Got that guys? Good. Well get on with it then.
And to be fair to the boys, they pretty much did. 'The Resistance' is an unquestionably grandiose record, full of outrageously big and ludicrous ideas and pompous, hyperbolic sounds. It's a massively gaudy work that proudly wears its stark splashes of primary colour on its sleeve; from the almost tacky brashness of its cover to the forty orchestral musicians put to work on the symphony (yes, you read that right) that closes it, everything about the album is bold, dramatic and wonderfully obvious. Muse embrace their campness rather than shying away from it and as such, they harness the same sort of genius-in-stupidity that propelled Queen to mega stardom. Indeed, at times, they don't sound too far removed from Freddie Mercury's band of merry men: 'United States of Eurasia' has shades of 'Flash' in its fantastically OTT chorus, and the closing whoosh of an aeroplane flying overhead is just the kind of stupendously dumb gimmick that Mercury would've loved.
Interestingly, while there is a rather paranoid political allegory running rampant all over the record - just listen to the brilliantly euphoric call to arms of the title track and the Goldfrapp meets 'Supermassive Black Hole' stomp and swagger of first single 'Uprising' for proof - Muse temper its apocryphal naysaying through personalisation, telling a delightful little love story at the same time. As a motif, this implies that love saves and redeems, thereby offering us a solution to the bleak proselytising that begun with 2003's 'Absolution.' It's hard not to be moved by the simplicity of the message, especially in lieu of the complexity of the album, and it produces some truly beautiful moments, not the least of which is 'I Belong To You' which, despite featuring a rather dodgy beginning, quickly morphs into a paradoxically monumental, yet tender, musical maelstrom.
There really is no doubt that this is a technically excellent record. You cannot help but be over-awed by the depth of skill and craftsmanship that has gone into its quite superb construction: 'Exogenesis', the symphony, provides perhaps the best example of this, clocking in at eleven minutes of absolutely mind-bending, breathtaking over-indulgence. However, at times, 'The Resistance' does have a tendency to feel a little cold, as if heart and soul have been temporarily sacrificed in the quest to be sonically impressive. It's certainly the band's most focused album but this threatens to be its downfall: Muse are at their best when they're messy and sprawling, not concentrated and thought-out. 'Absolution' and 'Origin of Symmetry' work so well because they're out of control, whereas 'The Resistance', for all its bombast, feels distinctly refined. Some have criticised its lack of guitars, but this is not necessarily the cause of the problem; too often, Muse seem to be checking themselves, making sure they don't give too much away, and do so by quite literally ripping themselves off. The aforementioned 'Uprising' is not only 'Supermassive Black Hole' but the mid-section of 'Knights of Cydonia'; 'MK Ultra' is the less interesting cousin of 'Exogenesis' and 'Assassin' and 'Unnatural Selection', heralded as the most Muse-like song on the album, is disappointing for precisely that reason (it's effectively just 'New Born' crossed with 'Dead Star', and not as good as either.) Regrettably, when they do try something dramatically different, as in the softly, softly R 'n' B stylings of 'Undisclosed Desires', they end up sounding like Craig David which is certainly no good thing.
Perhaps Muse are simply trying too hard; while the musicianship and production here are second to none, the album sometimes feels a little over-thought. Certain tracks lack the passion that usually imbues their work, and as such they feel rather tame in comparison to virtually anything on 'Origin' and 'Absolution.' When they get it right, of course, they blow you away: the gargantuan 'Exogenesis' is phenomenal, 'United States of Eurasia' is deliciously camp and 'I Belong To You' is painfully beautiful; indeed, 'The Resistance' is quite a brave record. The band's sound is evolving in an interesting way and the piano-centric route they seem to have adopted is actually quite welcome, as it further embraces the unashamed bombast that has always been at the heart of their genius. It's just that, while the pomp and circumstance sweep you along, once the dust has settled, you're left feeling unsure rather than amazed. (7/10)
A little over ten years ago, three snotty-nosed, fresh-faced young upstarts from Teignmouth, the actual arse end of the real nowhere, quietly nudged a record into the hands of indie's (spit) makers and shakers. 'Showbiz', as it was modestly titled, was met with much indifference and bemusement (pardon the pun) from an unforgiving, self-obsessed media, who likened it to 'Bends-era Radiohead and brushed the band aside in favour of pretentious nobodies like Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Add N to (X). Well, more fool them. Right from the start, the potential for world domination has always been within Muse's grasp: from the impassioned colossus that is 'Muscle Museum' to the tender dramatics of 'Unintended', you just had to open your eyes, to bother to look a little closer. Naturally, less than a year later, the band were making some of the most outstandingly gargantuan noise to ever have come out of a studio. In subsequent records 'Origin of Symmetry' and 'Absolution', Muse provided us with the kind of music that makes you feel stoked to be alive, that makes life an enriching, emboldening experience. All that from just three men, their guitars, drums, a piano and the occasional satellite (have you seen their live shows? Geez!) With such an impressive resume, what do we now expect from Teignmouth's finest, ten years on? Well, more, to put it bluntly. Loads more. Bigger. Harder. Faster. Stronger. Taking over the multiverse instead of just this poxy little universe. Music that it doesn't feel right to listen to unless you're surfing naked on the back of a comet or watching a million-strong battle from atop the highest mountains on Mars. Got that guys? Good. Well get on with it then.
And to be fair to the boys, they pretty much did. 'The Resistance' is an unquestionably grandiose record, full of outrageously big and ludicrous ideas and pompous, hyperbolic sounds. It's a massively gaudy work that proudly wears its stark splashes of primary colour on its sleeve; from the almost tacky brashness of its cover to the forty orchestral musicians put to work on the symphony (yes, you read that right) that closes it, everything about the album is bold, dramatic and wonderfully obvious. Muse embrace their campness rather than shying away from it and as such, they harness the same sort of genius-in-stupidity that propelled Queen to mega stardom. Indeed, at times, they don't sound too far removed from Freddie Mercury's band of merry men: 'United States of Eurasia' has shades of 'Flash' in its fantastically OTT chorus, and the closing whoosh of an aeroplane flying overhead is just the kind of stupendously dumb gimmick that Mercury would've loved.
Interestingly, while there is a rather paranoid political allegory running rampant all over the record - just listen to the brilliantly euphoric call to arms of the title track and the Goldfrapp meets 'Supermassive Black Hole' stomp and swagger of first single 'Uprising' for proof - Muse temper its apocryphal naysaying through personalisation, telling a delightful little love story at the same time. As a motif, this implies that love saves and redeems, thereby offering us a solution to the bleak proselytising that begun with 2003's 'Absolution.' It's hard not to be moved by the simplicity of the message, especially in lieu of the complexity of the album, and it produces some truly beautiful moments, not the least of which is 'I Belong To You' which, despite featuring a rather dodgy beginning, quickly morphs into a paradoxically monumental, yet tender, musical maelstrom.
There really is no doubt that this is a technically excellent record. You cannot help but be over-awed by the depth of skill and craftsmanship that has gone into its quite superb construction: 'Exogenesis', the symphony, provides perhaps the best example of this, clocking in at eleven minutes of absolutely mind-bending, breathtaking over-indulgence. However, at times, 'The Resistance' does have a tendency to feel a little cold, as if heart and soul have been temporarily sacrificed in the quest to be sonically impressive. It's certainly the band's most focused album but this threatens to be its downfall: Muse are at their best when they're messy and sprawling, not concentrated and thought-out. 'Absolution' and 'Origin of Symmetry' work so well because they're out of control, whereas 'The Resistance', for all its bombast, feels distinctly refined. Some have criticised its lack of guitars, but this is not necessarily the cause of the problem; too often, Muse seem to be checking themselves, making sure they don't give too much away, and do so by quite literally ripping themselves off. The aforementioned 'Uprising' is not only 'Supermassive Black Hole' but the mid-section of 'Knights of Cydonia'; 'MK Ultra' is the less interesting cousin of 'Exogenesis' and 'Assassin' and 'Unnatural Selection', heralded as the most Muse-like song on the album, is disappointing for precisely that reason (it's effectively just 'New Born' crossed with 'Dead Star', and not as good as either.) Regrettably, when they do try something dramatically different, as in the softly, softly R 'n' B stylings of 'Undisclosed Desires', they end up sounding like Craig David which is certainly no good thing.
Perhaps Muse are simply trying too hard; while the musicianship and production here are second to none, the album sometimes feels a little over-thought. Certain tracks lack the passion that usually imbues their work, and as such they feel rather tame in comparison to virtually anything on 'Origin' and 'Absolution.' When they get it right, of course, they blow you away: the gargantuan 'Exogenesis' is phenomenal, 'United States of Eurasia' is deliciously camp and 'I Belong To You' is painfully beautiful; indeed, 'The Resistance' is quite a brave record. The band's sound is evolving in an interesting way and the piano-centric route they seem to have adopted is actually quite welcome, as it further embraces the unashamed bombast that has always been at the heart of their genius. It's just that, while the pomp and circumstance sweep you along, once the dust has settled, you're left feeling unsure rather than amazed. (7/10)
Tuesday 15 September 2009
Television review: Supernatural #501: 'Sympathy for the Devil'
501: 'Sympathy for the Devil'
Wr: Eric Kripke
Dr: Robert Singer
Synopsis: Sam, Dean, and Bobby must deal with the aftermath of the Devil's escape from Hell, and receive startling news from the Prophet Chuck.
Review: So Lucifer has arisen and the apocalypse is nigh as the fifth season of the CW's superlative Supernatural begins. After having bowled over just about every critic under the sun with a truly monumental 2008/09 year, which saw the programme transform itself from occasionally insightful guilty pleasure to dark, twisted, mature, considered, absolute-must-see television, Eric Kripke is now faced with the unenviable task of maintaining the momentum, surpassing all of our lofty expectations and providing the mother of all pay-offs to the season-spanning narrative of the decade. The writing staff essentially spent year four laying the foundations for what is to come, moving the players into position for the 'final showdown', if you will, so they really have one hell of a lot to live up to. And on the evidence of 'Sympathy for the Devil', the series five premiere (neat pun, by the way), it seems a little like they may already be buckling under the pressure.
The episode is by no means a bad one. Kripke's script is a roller coaster ride of quick thrills, dramatic tension and fan-pleasing 'squee!'s that keeps you glued to the screen throughout, waiting for the next revelation. The interplay between Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki is absolutely spot on once again, demonstrating that no amount of time apart can negate the very palpable chemistry that exists between the two. Sam and Dean's two-handers, however brief, steal the show, and all parties do a highly impressive job of subtly delineating the undercurrent of unspoken tension that now permeates their relationship. While Dean's ultimate rebuttal of Sam comes as no surprise, it is a thoroughly logical result of the younger Winchester's actions and fits in perfectly with our perceptions of the characters. The scene is beautifully underplayed by both parties; there are no raised voices or aggressive tones, simply resignation and disappointment. Consequently, the emotional gravitas of the situation is greatly amplified, and one is left with the ambivalence of Dean's rightful moral indignance, weighed against the horror and remorse that Sam so evidently feels. It's a messy dilemma and one that the viewer experiences with just as much investment as the characters.
Kripke also demonstrates his masterful command of suspense by making the very bold, and wise, decision to slowly and methodically introduce Lucifer to his audience. While his name has been bandied about since the early hours of season three ('Sin City', to be precise), his actual identity has always remained a mystery; however, season four's concentration on the attempt to free him from Hell has positioned the character on such a lofty pedestal that a quick reveal would arguably fall rather flat. Instead of presenting us with an actor and asking us to buy into his representation, Kripke cautiously feels his way around the issue, using the concept of the 'human vessel' to lengthen the process of his incorporation. Such a move sells the character as a threat to the stability of the show's world to a far greater extent than if he were simply to pop out of Hell, say a few "hello"s and asphyxiate the nearest homo sapien. The process makes him all the more frightening, since he needs our permission to use one of us and, evidently, this requires the subtle use of persuasion. The individual that Lucifer has targeted is expertly characterised by Kripke as a fairly run-of-the-mill guy who has been struck by the most horrifying tragedy, which gives considerable credence to his ultimate decision to let the angel in. The viewer is able to understand his reasons, to feel his pain, to empathise with him, and this, in turn, makes the narrative strand's denouement all the more terrifying and tragic. Cleverly, this will impact upon our perception of Lucifer in the weeks to come, as the preface will make our emotional responses to the character highly ambiguous. Lost's Marc Pallegrino is predictably fantastic in the role too; his casting is a stroke of genius as the actor's considerable versatility and ability to maintain an air of underlying mystery will undoubtedly pay dividends in the future. And it's worth also giving a mention to Bellamy Young, who does a stellar job as Lucifer manifesting himself as Nick's deceased wife Sarah, delivering her lines with chilling calmness and serenity. This entire sequence of scenes is just wonderful, quietly and meticulously creating something deliciously unnerving.
Unfortunately, the decision to hold back on Lucifer's inauguration into society, to be narratalogically calculated rather than abrupt, seems to have had an adverse effect on the rest of the episode. In refusing (rightfully, this reviewer believes) to get straight down to brass tacks, Kripke essentially robs Sam and Dean of a plot with which to entertain themselves; the logical thing for them to do, in the wake of Lucifer's ascension, would be to smite the bastard. To have him searching for a vessel for an entire episode requires that the Winchester brothers be side-lined, or at least given some other form of distraction to deal with. However, rather than have them concentrate on one plot development, Kripke bogs them down in a veritable quagmire of swerves and revelations which simply aren't given the time and attention that they deserve. It feels rather like he suddenly realised that he had no story to tell, panicked and began throwing things at the narrative in the hope that they would stick. So, Sam and Dean are magically whisked onto a plane to escape the explosion caused by Lucifer's ascension, and then, within seconds, it's hurtling to the ground because of this. Cut to title card (nowhere near as good as season four's by the way, but then, it was never going to be, was it?) and once we come back, the brothers are in the Impala, practically unscathed. The jump is too great and the cut too intrusive, which damages the flow of the story. Then we have the illustrious Michael sword which is introduced and then brushed to one side within the space of a few scenes, as we learn that Dean himself is the object (or rather, Michael's vessel). This reveal should be absolutely huge as it has the potential to greatly impact upon the ongoing narrative, but its significance gets lost amongst the bravado and bluster of the character's interactions with Zachariah (all the insults and quips feel overwrought through the whole episode, grafted on rather than arising naturally from the plot) and later, Castiel's miraculous resurrection. Now sure, this clearly has implied significance that is ripe for explanation in a future episode (is God himself responsible?) but it really does feel like something of a deux et machina, however ironic that may be. Throw in Bobby's demonic possession, which feels far too hurried and is far too conveniently overcome, Meg's abrupt, practically throw-away return, a case of 'blink and you'll miss it' when it should be afforded significant fanfare, and the highly unnecessary 'fangeek' (really guys, does every representation of a 'fan' of a television show have to be this cumbersome, ludicrous and insulting?) and you've got an over-abundant recipe, trying too hard to please.
'Sympathy for the Devil' certainly has much going for it. Kripke's script deftly sets the scene for the season, introducing the much-lauded 'biggest of all bads' into the Supernaturalverse in a pleasingly methodical and terrifying fashion. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles return to their roles with the greatest of ease and the episode's emotional drama between the two brothers is both moving and believable. The plot generally moves along at a satisfyingly brisk pace, maintaining the tense momentum generated by the concept of the apocalypse, but this also seems to work to its detriment. At times, it feels like there is simply too much going on, that there are too many revelations and developments being thrown at the viewer, and as such they threaten to lose their dramatic impact. Sequences like the re-introduction of Meg, the 'Michael sword' explanation and Castiel's resurrection feel fleeting when they should be shocking, and as a result they fall a little flat. Nevertheless, this remains an enjoyable instalment and one that demonstrates much promise for the future. 7.7
Wr: Eric Kripke
Dr: Robert Singer
Synopsis: Sam, Dean, and Bobby must deal with the aftermath of the Devil's escape from Hell, and receive startling news from the Prophet Chuck.
Review: So Lucifer has arisen and the apocalypse is nigh as the fifth season of the CW's superlative Supernatural begins. After having bowled over just about every critic under the sun with a truly monumental 2008/09 year, which saw the programme transform itself from occasionally insightful guilty pleasure to dark, twisted, mature, considered, absolute-must-see television, Eric Kripke is now faced with the unenviable task of maintaining the momentum, surpassing all of our lofty expectations and providing the mother of all pay-offs to the season-spanning narrative of the decade. The writing staff essentially spent year four laying the foundations for what is to come, moving the players into position for the 'final showdown', if you will, so they really have one hell of a lot to live up to. And on the evidence of 'Sympathy for the Devil', the series five premiere (neat pun, by the way), it seems a little like they may already be buckling under the pressure.
The episode is by no means a bad one. Kripke's script is a roller coaster ride of quick thrills, dramatic tension and fan-pleasing 'squee!'s that keeps you glued to the screen throughout, waiting for the next revelation. The interplay between Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki is absolutely spot on once again, demonstrating that no amount of time apart can negate the very palpable chemistry that exists between the two. Sam and Dean's two-handers, however brief, steal the show, and all parties do a highly impressive job of subtly delineating the undercurrent of unspoken tension that now permeates their relationship. While Dean's ultimate rebuttal of Sam comes as no surprise, it is a thoroughly logical result of the younger Winchester's actions and fits in perfectly with our perceptions of the characters. The scene is beautifully underplayed by both parties; there are no raised voices or aggressive tones, simply resignation and disappointment. Consequently, the emotional gravitas of the situation is greatly amplified, and one is left with the ambivalence of Dean's rightful moral indignance, weighed against the horror and remorse that Sam so evidently feels. It's a messy dilemma and one that the viewer experiences with just as much investment as the characters.
Kripke also demonstrates his masterful command of suspense by making the very bold, and wise, decision to slowly and methodically introduce Lucifer to his audience. While his name has been bandied about since the early hours of season three ('Sin City', to be precise), his actual identity has always remained a mystery; however, season four's concentration on the attempt to free him from Hell has positioned the character on such a lofty pedestal that a quick reveal would arguably fall rather flat. Instead of presenting us with an actor and asking us to buy into his representation, Kripke cautiously feels his way around the issue, using the concept of the 'human vessel' to lengthen the process of his incorporation. Such a move sells the character as a threat to the stability of the show's world to a far greater extent than if he were simply to pop out of Hell, say a few "hello"s and asphyxiate the nearest homo sapien. The process makes him all the more frightening, since he needs our permission to use one of us and, evidently, this requires the subtle use of persuasion. The individual that Lucifer has targeted is expertly characterised by Kripke as a fairly run-of-the-mill guy who has been struck by the most horrifying tragedy, which gives considerable credence to his ultimate decision to let the angel in. The viewer is able to understand his reasons, to feel his pain, to empathise with him, and this, in turn, makes the narrative strand's denouement all the more terrifying and tragic. Cleverly, this will impact upon our perception of Lucifer in the weeks to come, as the preface will make our emotional responses to the character highly ambiguous. Lost's Marc Pallegrino is predictably fantastic in the role too; his casting is a stroke of genius as the actor's considerable versatility and ability to maintain an air of underlying mystery will undoubtedly pay dividends in the future. And it's worth also giving a mention to Bellamy Young, who does a stellar job as Lucifer manifesting himself as Nick's deceased wife Sarah, delivering her lines with chilling calmness and serenity. This entire sequence of scenes is just wonderful, quietly and meticulously creating something deliciously unnerving.
Unfortunately, the decision to hold back on Lucifer's inauguration into society, to be narratalogically calculated rather than abrupt, seems to have had an adverse effect on the rest of the episode. In refusing (rightfully, this reviewer believes) to get straight down to brass tacks, Kripke essentially robs Sam and Dean of a plot with which to entertain themselves; the logical thing for them to do, in the wake of Lucifer's ascension, would be to smite the bastard. To have him searching for a vessel for an entire episode requires that the Winchester brothers be side-lined, or at least given some other form of distraction to deal with. However, rather than have them concentrate on one plot development, Kripke bogs them down in a veritable quagmire of swerves and revelations which simply aren't given the time and attention that they deserve. It feels rather like he suddenly realised that he had no story to tell, panicked and began throwing things at the narrative in the hope that they would stick. So, Sam and Dean are magically whisked onto a plane to escape the explosion caused by Lucifer's ascension, and then, within seconds, it's hurtling to the ground because of this. Cut to title card (nowhere near as good as season four's by the way, but then, it was never going to be, was it?) and once we come back, the brothers are in the Impala, practically unscathed. The jump is too great and the cut too intrusive, which damages the flow of the story. Then we have the illustrious Michael sword which is introduced and then brushed to one side within the space of a few scenes, as we learn that Dean himself is the object (or rather, Michael's vessel). This reveal should be absolutely huge as it has the potential to greatly impact upon the ongoing narrative, but its significance gets lost amongst the bravado and bluster of the character's interactions with Zachariah (all the insults and quips feel overwrought through the whole episode, grafted on rather than arising naturally from the plot) and later, Castiel's miraculous resurrection. Now sure, this clearly has implied significance that is ripe for explanation in a future episode (is God himself responsible?) but it really does feel like something of a deux et machina, however ironic that may be. Throw in Bobby's demonic possession, which feels far too hurried and is far too conveniently overcome, Meg's abrupt, practically throw-away return, a case of 'blink and you'll miss it' when it should be afforded significant fanfare, and the highly unnecessary 'fangeek' (really guys, does every representation of a 'fan' of a television show have to be this cumbersome, ludicrous and insulting?) and you've got an over-abundant recipe, trying too hard to please.
'Sympathy for the Devil' certainly has much going for it. Kripke's script deftly sets the scene for the season, introducing the much-lauded 'biggest of all bads' into the Supernaturalverse in a pleasingly methodical and terrifying fashion. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles return to their roles with the greatest of ease and the episode's emotional drama between the two brothers is both moving and believable. The plot generally moves along at a satisfyingly brisk pace, maintaining the tense momentum generated by the concept of the apocalypse, but this also seems to work to its detriment. At times, it feels like there is simply too much going on, that there are too many revelations and developments being thrown at the viewer, and as such they threaten to lose their dramatic impact. Sequences like the re-introduction of Meg, the 'Michael sword' explanation and Castiel's resurrection feel fleeting when they should be shocking, and as a result they fall a little flat. Nevertheless, this remains an enjoyable instalment and one that demonstrates much promise for the future. 7.7
Monday 14 September 2009
Album review: The Cribs: 'Ignore the Ignorant'
THE CRIBS: 'Ignore the Ignorant' (Wichita)
They really are the unlikeliest of rock stars. With their thick-as-pig-shit Yorkshire accents, down and out, cut and paste dress sense and sensible, mum-approved haircuts (well, Ryan's at any rate), the Jarman brothers have always seemed destined for the scrapheap, consigned to the history books as a band that just didn't get it. Even the addition of former Smiths guitarist and all round cool as fuck cultural icon Johnny Marr appears to have done little to improve their image; hell, if anything, Marr seems to have adapted to their environment, blending into the background and letting the longer-serving band members stick their ragged, over-long vest tops further into the faces of the general public. The Cribs are still very much the band that awkwardly ingratiated themselves into the dubious world of indie rock around six years ago, refusing to compromise their unique blend of scuzzy, punked-up guitars and glorious, soaring melodies for the sake of a few column inches in the NME Cool List. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why they're probably the greatest, most subversive, indie band that we have.
On the face of it, 'Ignore the Ignorant' feels very much like familiar territory. This is no band thing, of course; the band have honed their sound to perfection over the years. Through the raw aggression of 'The New Fellas' and the anthemic splendour of their 2007 magnum opus 'Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever', The Cribs have developed a style that is unquestionably their own, that sets them apart from the nondescript nobodies that tend to precede and succeed their music in indie clubs. To stray too far from this formula would arguably be a betrayal of the band's ethics, their very heart and soul. If the Jarmans had replaced their guitars with synthesisers, we really would've been up shit creek without a paddle... but then, that would never happen. Instead, they add another guitarist to the mix - the aforementioned Marr - to give even more muscle to their music. Johnny's influence is subtle but significant, accentuating Ryan's abrasive chops and ramshackle riffs without overpowering them. He largely sticks to rhythm guitar, providing the bulky power chords that transform 'Nobody' into an uncontrollable rock beast and give 'Last of the Snow' such a curiously pretty air of melancholia; the sort of ambivalence that made The Smiths such a potent force.
As is to be expected, 'Ignore the Ignorant' oscillates between bouts of ear-bleedingly aggravated bile and more reflective, nay introspective, numbers. The opening one-two salute of 'We Were Aborted' and current single 'Cheat on Me' perfectly encapsulates the album's power; the former quite literally spits and snarls its way out of the starting block, decrying the nation's apathy with accusatory lines like 'the mid-shelf masturbation leaves a smear on half the nation' and the rallying chorus cry of 'it's the same things that we're saying all the time!', while the latter takes a more resigned approach, working its rather miserable tale of self-deprecation around the best twinkle toes guitar work this side of an R.E.M. album. Still, while the track eschews the cacophonous rage of 'We Were Aborted', Gary's frightfully pained vocals ensure that the raw, almost sinister, edge remains, which in turn provides a through-line that unites the two styles.
This duality produces some of the record's most delectable moments: the juxtaposition of the unrepentant whirlwind of noise that is 'Emasculate Me' with the jaunty funk pop of the title track creates a deliciously playful dynamic, enriching the album's palate and forcing the listener to pay attention. The epic 'City of Bugs', meanwhile, manages to perform this feat by itself, morphing from exuberant indie pop to head-fucking noise rock and back again all within the space of six rather unforgiving minutes. The track seems to stick out like a sore thumb at first, interrupting the flow of the record between the sumptuous lethargy of 'We Share the Same Skies' and the unashamed ridiculousness of 'Hari Kari' but after a few listens, and a twist of the volume dial to maximum, it quickly becomes apparent that it's one of the best things that the band have ever recorded. As with the Lee Ranaldo-led weirdness of 'Be Safe' on the last album, it just takes a little time to acclimatise to its somewhat unorthodox charms.
'Ignore the Ignorant' sees The Cribs consolidating the success of 'Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever', taking advantage of the addition of one absolutely superlative guitarist in order to intensify their sound. The album doesn't exactly traverse pastures new; Marr's contributions tend to complement rather than diversify, but this is arguably its greatest asset. Instead of panicking about their position in the indie Zeitgeist, worrying about whether they'll sell records in the current electronica-obsessed climate, The Cribs remain steadfast, doing their own thing, on their own time, on their own terms. The record is a cornucopia of the band's strengths, an aggressive and unkempt cyclone of calamitous guitars, awkward vocals and contradictory melodies. Is it a match for 'Men's Needs...'? The jury's still out, but it's a damn fine record all the same. (8.5/10)
They really are the unlikeliest of rock stars. With their thick-as-pig-shit Yorkshire accents, down and out, cut and paste dress sense and sensible, mum-approved haircuts (well, Ryan's at any rate), the Jarman brothers have always seemed destined for the scrapheap, consigned to the history books as a band that just didn't get it. Even the addition of former Smiths guitarist and all round cool as fuck cultural icon Johnny Marr appears to have done little to improve their image; hell, if anything, Marr seems to have adapted to their environment, blending into the background and letting the longer-serving band members stick their ragged, over-long vest tops further into the faces of the general public. The Cribs are still very much the band that awkwardly ingratiated themselves into the dubious world of indie rock around six years ago, refusing to compromise their unique blend of scuzzy, punked-up guitars and glorious, soaring melodies for the sake of a few column inches in the NME Cool List. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why they're probably the greatest, most subversive, indie band that we have.
On the face of it, 'Ignore the Ignorant' feels very much like familiar territory. This is no band thing, of course; the band have honed their sound to perfection over the years. Through the raw aggression of 'The New Fellas' and the anthemic splendour of their 2007 magnum opus 'Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever', The Cribs have developed a style that is unquestionably their own, that sets them apart from the nondescript nobodies that tend to precede and succeed their music in indie clubs. To stray too far from this formula would arguably be a betrayal of the band's ethics, their very heart and soul. If the Jarmans had replaced their guitars with synthesisers, we really would've been up shit creek without a paddle... but then, that would never happen. Instead, they add another guitarist to the mix - the aforementioned Marr - to give even more muscle to their music. Johnny's influence is subtle but significant, accentuating Ryan's abrasive chops and ramshackle riffs without overpowering them. He largely sticks to rhythm guitar, providing the bulky power chords that transform 'Nobody' into an uncontrollable rock beast and give 'Last of the Snow' such a curiously pretty air of melancholia; the sort of ambivalence that made The Smiths such a potent force.
As is to be expected, 'Ignore the Ignorant' oscillates between bouts of ear-bleedingly aggravated bile and more reflective, nay introspective, numbers. The opening one-two salute of 'We Were Aborted' and current single 'Cheat on Me' perfectly encapsulates the album's power; the former quite literally spits and snarls its way out of the starting block, decrying the nation's apathy with accusatory lines like 'the mid-shelf masturbation leaves a smear on half the nation' and the rallying chorus cry of 'it's the same things that we're saying all the time!', while the latter takes a more resigned approach, working its rather miserable tale of self-deprecation around the best twinkle toes guitar work this side of an R.E.M. album. Still, while the track eschews the cacophonous rage of 'We Were Aborted', Gary's frightfully pained vocals ensure that the raw, almost sinister, edge remains, which in turn provides a through-line that unites the two styles.
This duality produces some of the record's most delectable moments: the juxtaposition of the unrepentant whirlwind of noise that is 'Emasculate Me' with the jaunty funk pop of the title track creates a deliciously playful dynamic, enriching the album's palate and forcing the listener to pay attention. The epic 'City of Bugs', meanwhile, manages to perform this feat by itself, morphing from exuberant indie pop to head-fucking noise rock and back again all within the space of six rather unforgiving minutes. The track seems to stick out like a sore thumb at first, interrupting the flow of the record between the sumptuous lethargy of 'We Share the Same Skies' and the unashamed ridiculousness of 'Hari Kari' but after a few listens, and a twist of the volume dial to maximum, it quickly becomes apparent that it's one of the best things that the band have ever recorded. As with the Lee Ranaldo-led weirdness of 'Be Safe' on the last album, it just takes a little time to acclimatise to its somewhat unorthodox charms.
'Ignore the Ignorant' sees The Cribs consolidating the success of 'Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever', taking advantage of the addition of one absolutely superlative guitarist in order to intensify their sound. The album doesn't exactly traverse pastures new; Marr's contributions tend to complement rather than diversify, but this is arguably its greatest asset. Instead of panicking about their position in the indie Zeitgeist, worrying about whether they'll sell records in the current electronica-obsessed climate, The Cribs remain steadfast, doing their own thing, on their own time, on their own terms. The record is a cornucopia of the band's strengths, an aggressive and unkempt cyclone of calamitous guitars, awkward vocals and contradictory melodies. Is it a match for 'Men's Needs...'? The jury's still out, but it's a damn fine record all the same. (8.5/10)
Sunday 13 September 2009
Television reviews: Dollhouse season one
#101: 'Ghost'
Wr: Joss Whedon
Dr: Joss Whedon
Synopsis: Echo is one of the "Actives" in the elite and illegal Dollhouse. Through different personality downloads, she plays the role of a lovestruck girl on a romantic weekend, and then a ruthlessly efficient kidnapping negotiator. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Paul Ballard is struggling with his assignment to uncover information on the Dollhouse. The chase has destroyed his marriage and is wrecking his career, and it doesn't seem that he'll stop until he uncovers the truth.
Review: Joss Whedon returns to our screens for the first time since the curtain prematurely closed on the hugely underrated Firefly and the jury is most certainly out. The much-discussed Dollhouse premiere is a mixture of the fascinating and the banal, a curious pot pourri of ideas that don’t always seem to gel. The script tries to do too much at once: introducing the audience to the concept of ‘dolls’, outlining the rules and procedures of the imprint process, delineating the power structure of Miss DuWitt’s facility, counterpointing the Paul Ballard character against the central plot and, most importantly of all, demonstrating the malleability of Eliza Dushku as Echo, our plucky young protagonist. The result is that some aspects of the plot suffer from a lack of development or, worse still, rather lazy writing; Ballard’s introduction through the medium of the highly clichéd ‘boxing metaphor’ being perhaps the worst offender. Still, there is much to enjoy here: inevitably, Dushku brings a pointed believability to both of her roles within the episode, selling the character of the ‘ransom expert’ exceptionally well and imbuing her rather less graceful doll self with enough charm and intrigue to acquire the viewer’s allegiance. Whedon does a beautiful job with his supporting cast too, presenting us with a number of apparently one-note characters whose dialogue and mannerisms quickly hint at many more hidden depths: Amy Acker’s Dr. Saunders is fascinatingly resigned, while Topher’s stereotypical ‘aloof genius’ persona is just crying out for further exploration. It’s worth noting, too, that the basic premise of the show is one of the most original to have come out of the LA film lots since well, God only knows when, and has absolutely bags of potential. It’s a shame that the implications of the process aren’t explored in much detail here – although its morality is certainly well discussed, and quite refreshingly left without decisive comment, allowing the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions – and that the central drive of the narrative is ultimately a rather flat game of cat and mouse between Echo and a young girl’s kidnapper. Still, there’s plenty time yet for the show to grow into itself and as a preface to the season, this sets the necessary pieces into place satisfactorily. It’s just, well, we know Whedon’s capable of so much more… 6.8
#102: 'The Target'
Wr: Stephen S. DeKnight
Dr: Stephen S. DeKnight
Synopsis: Echo becomes the ultimate outdoorswoman when she is is hired by a handsome young client named Richard, but it may turn out that neither of the pair is what they seem to be. Meanwhile, Agent Ballard receives a clue about Echo's past, and we learn about Dr. Saunders' scars and the rogue active "Alpha".
Review: Things improve slightly this week but the essential problem illustrated so prominently in 'Ghost' still remains: the writing staff turn the attention of their stories to the minutiae of the actives’ missions when actually, the most interesting element of the show is the concept of the Dollhouse itself. We’d rather turn the microscope inwards, examining the possibilities of the imprint process and the intrigue that seems to bleed from the walls of DuWitt’s facility, than plod along with Echo as she tries to fulfil the fantasy of whichever multi-millionaire has hired out her services this week. To be fair to Steven S. DeKnight, he does add a considerable amount to the show’s burgeoning mythology, hinting at the rather more sinister side of the Dollhouse equation through the character of the demented, mysterious and elusive Alpha. The idea of a ‘rogue’ active is a superlative one as it automatically pervades the narrative with a sense of apprehensive tension: the viewer is aware that the character could return at any time, and in any aspect, since his identity is carefully and cleverly left to our collective imagination. DeKnight does a wonderful job of cementing his position as a formidable foe too, coating the dialogue that references him in fear, anxiety and the laconic, and providing a shocking and rather repulsive explanation of the excellently realised scars on Dr. Saunders’s face. It’s a brave move to disfigure a central character and keep the injury consistent, especially in the rather glossy, picture-perfect and pristine world of American television. Good on you Whedon, good to see that your penchant for the horrific didn’t end at a few episodes of eye-less Xander in season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Elsewhere, the A-storyline is passable if rather predictable; Dushku and Conlen play the roles of hunted and hunter perfectly admirably, but it’s obvious from the moment that the crazy SOB turns on her that she’ll escape from his clutches in the end and more than likely have some sort of epiphany about her status as a doll. It’s a shame, again, that the show insists on concentrating on this sort of conventional, tried-and-tested plot when it has a wealth of untapped narratalogical gold at its fingertips. Come on Whedon, show us something daring. 7.0
#103: 'Stage Fright'
Wr: Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen
Dr: David Solomon
Synopsis: Echo becomes a backup singer to watch out for a female singing sensation with a very overzealous fan. Agent Ballard's investigation takes a turn for the worse.
Review: One step forward, six steps back; 'Stage Fright' is a decidedly lacklustre offering, based on a premise that lacks any semblance of imagination or creativity. Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen’s script is essentially a dot-to-dot of televisual storytelling that feels like it was cobbled together on the back of a cigarette packet as a last ditch resort to come up with something before the impending deadline. Really, this couldn’t be more of a snooze fest if it tried. ‘Famous singer is targeted by crazy fan and needs protection, so in comes Echo to save the day but whoops! Singer doesn’t want to be saved really; she’s a tortured soul so she sabotages her aide’s efforts until finally, Echo uses her super-duper pre-programmed psychological intuition to tap into the celebrity’s psyche, to the lost, scared, humble child within’. Obviously, she saves the day and the superstar with a death wish comes down off her whine-horse, fully appreciative of the wonderful life that she leads. Bravo Echo, another soul saved, another moral lesson dutifully delineated; and another woefully treated audience, battered around the head with predictability and cliché. The ‘twists’ are telegraphed before the plot’s even had a chance to kick itself into gear, and the denouement just feels like one gigantic let down, a case of “yeah, well, is that it?” Interestingly, the production feels pretty half-arsed too, as if the crew were aware of the script’s glaring weaknesses and couldn’t bring themselves to even attempt to patch them up. The direction lacks flair, save for the performance sequences which, while not looking even remotely like any concert I’ve ever been to, are at least well choreographed and suitably glitzy, the support cast don’t really gel, and even Dushku appears to be going through the motions, as if aware that her considerable talents are being wasted. This is the first time we fail to get any further insight into the Dollhouse itself too, which, given that this is the most promising aspect of the show, really negates the episode’s impact. A bit of a waste of space. 4.5
#104: 'Gray Hour'
Wr: Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain
Dr: Rod Hardy
Synopsis: Echo becomes a burglar so she can perform a dangerous art heist. Meanwhile, Ballard challenges Lubov, and Adelle makes a disturbing confession.
Review: And in come Craft and Fain to save the day… Joss Whedon’s favourite old hands, those stalwarts of the Angel franchise, manage to resuscitate Dollhouse’s ailing carcass after last week’s disappointing effort. This is a much more well-rounded episode that sets up what appears to be a fairly run-of-the-mill heist plot and then takes a thoroughly gratifying swerve about a third of the way in. 'Gray Hour' does what no other episode has dared to thus far, and incorporates the minutiae of the imprint process into the central narrative, exploring the implications of an unexpected ‘shut down.’ This proves to be much more satisfying viewing than a simple ‘assignment of the week’, giving Dushku a chance to really demonstrate the horror of an active’s dual, conflicting existence, and reiterating, and indeed accentuating, the undercurrent of dramatic tension that is driving the show’s on-going narrative, as it becomes apparent that Echo is the victim of sabotage (Alpha, perhaps?) It’s a shame that this development is resolved so quickly, and that the impact on Echo appears to be fairly minimal, although it remains to be seen whether it will have implications in future episodes. Sierra’s involvement in Echo’s retrieval jars a little too, since Dichen Lachman is clearly still struggling to find her feet in the role, and delivers her lines rather clumsily. Nevertheless, this is a pretty enjoyable episode with an engaging foundation that advances the show’s mythology without requiring too much from the viewer. Promising. 7.2
#105: 'True Believer'
Wr: Tim Minear
Dr: Allan Kroeker
Synopsis: Echo becomes a blind woman so that she can infiltrate a very secretive and well-guarded cult.
Review: As if buoyed by the success of Craft and Fain’s episode last week, Whedon hires the services of fellow Angel veteran Tim Minear (one of the show’s executive producers, it’s worth noting) for this hour’s emotional tale of difference, faith and community, and the result is a distinctly average concept conveyed in an astutely above average way. The crux of the story, the infiltration of a religious cult through the introduction of a supposed miracle into their daily machinations, is fairly bog standard narratorial fare, and the turns within it - the testing of the ‘miracle’, a mistake that leads to the police team’s exposition – aren’t exactly shocking. Even the abrupt culmination of Esther’s ‘blindness’ is a guessable development, although the ensuing, hindering intervention of the slimy Mr. Dominic is rather less so. However, what sets 'True Believer' apart from other, bog standard Dollhouse fare is the successful marriage of script and production. Minear has a wonderfully keen eye for realism, and his dialogue manages to two-dimensionalise the range of characters within the story without ever seeming expository. His astute understanding of characterisation allows individuals like Jonas Sparrow and indeed Esther herself to acquire emotional layers that are often absent in the work of other writers. Importantly, this is complemented very well by a highly proficient cast; Dushku once again demonstrates how remarkably versatile she is by taking on an exceedingly difficult role and working wonders with it, while Brian Bloom turns in a superbly nuanced performance as Sparrow, and the remaining guest cast all sell their admittedly rather small roles as members of the cult exceptionally well. Of course, the episode is far from perfect: at the end of the day, the story is another fairly standard mission with little bearing on the overall mythology (save for Mr. Dominic’s surprising move), and what we do get in the way of action within the Dollhouse amounts to little more than time-filling sniggering (really… Topher and Saunders inspect Victor’s erections? Come on!) The show could do with upping the ante somewhat, but at least the production staff now appear to be on the right track. A good example of how to garnish the mediocre. 7.4
#106: 'Man on the Street'
Wr: Joss Whedon
Dr: David Straiton
Synopsis: Echo tries to help a client heal the ache of a lost love as a TV reporter prepares an expose on the Dollhouse
Review: This is Dollhouse’s much talked about climate change, Whedon’s mid-season shift in the direction of his latest project. It’s a bit of curious beast, feeling rather like an experiment in narrative divergence, and as such one is left feeling rather unsure as to whether the episode is successful or not. There are a number of highly memorable, skilfully executed set pieces around which the script seems to gravitate, not least of which is the dual one-two suckerpunch of Ballard’s physical encounter with Echo, in which she aides the agent by way of a piece of programming from within the Dollhouse, and the crushing revelation that Mellie is in fact a doll, and a decidedly kick-ass, scary one at that. While this twist was always on the cards, especially after we learned that Victor wasn’t actually a Russian millionaire, so the sequence is not entirely unexpected, the finer points of the scene are certainly far from what we might have anticipated for the character. November is a sleeper active, able to be transformed at DuWitt, or indeed anyone else’s, will through the utterance of a simple phrase… and boy, once those words are spoken, does she change. I’m still scraping my jaw off the floor following that headlock… geez. This sets up a wonderful slice of dramatic irony within the Ballard/Mellie dynamic, and also further illustrates the murky morality of the entire imprint process. There are other impressive moments too, such as Ballard’s heart-to-heart with Echo’s latest client, which offers a wonderfully human justification for the existence of the Dollhouse, and the series of vox pops that puncture the narrative, which serve to remind the viewer of the sheer size and scope of the implications of Topher’s work. Unfortunately, the narrative does feel rather like it is struggling to keep itself above water while traversing these points, and occasionally seems to wander aimlessly, filling screen time with unnecessary conversations between characters, where they deliberate about whether or not to do something. Still, at least the plot is finally given a shift in emphasis, from the intricacies of Echo’s missions to the intrigue of the world within which she inhabits. Whedon finally seems ready to harness the potential of his wonderfully rich concept, and if the rest of the season consists of episodes like this, we can only be onto a winner. 7.7
#107: 'Echoes'
Wr: Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain
Dr: James A. Contner
Synopsis: Echo abandons an assignment when she is drawn to a nearby college where the entire campus is being affected by a mysterious memory drug.
Review: 'Echoes' is an episode with the best of intentions but sadly, somewhere along the road, it loses its footing and descends into regrettably farcical whimsy. While comedy is certainly not a genre that Dollhouse should steer clear of – far from it, in fact, as the occasional bursts of humour that have peppered many of the preceding episodes have proved to be a more than welcome addition – it does take considerable skill to be able to make it work as a central motif, and unfortunately, for whatever reason, Craft and Fain fall well short of the mark here. Whedon’s track record with this sort of thing is largely spot on: some of Buffy and Angel’s finest work is to be found in the episodes with the highest comedic content (‘Smile Time’, ‘Band Candy’, ‘Storyteller’, anyone?), but crucially, they all use it as a backbone to the fundamental drive of the narrative. Humour is the medium through which character development occurs, or the allegory is expressed. Here, the only function that it appears to serve is in the audience’s temporary titillation. Sure, it’s fun to see Topher and DuWitt gradually removing their clothes and talking about the consistency of potato chips, and the sight of Mr. Dominic gesticulating madly with his gun is certain to raise the odd smirk or two, but these moments are too superficial to work without moderation. They produce a laugh but it quickly subsides, especially when the joke is basically repeated ad nauseum for the bulk of the episode. The sheer number of characters ‘wigging out’, for want of a better phrase, by hour’s end is just irritating, and the screwball element is distinctly over-egged, coming across like it’s trying far too hard to be funny. Unfortunately, this undermines the impact of the rest of the episode, which, at its heart, is actually trying to do something rather neat. Craft and Fain provide a glimpse into Echo (or rather, Caroline)’s past, detailing her reasons for signing up to the Dollhouse project. At first, they may seem a little underwhelming, but there are at least fairly realistic: the ‘political protest’ angle seems far more grounded than, say, a convoluted murder plot. The story itself t just about manages to keep itself afloat, although the idea that there are students and teachers running about on campus high as a kite, and that no outside forces would even deign to intervene when the Dollhouse operatives are ‘in da haus’, stretches credulity a little. The introduction of the Rossum Corporation adds an intriguing new layer to the show’s mythology though, giving it more room to breathe now that we are aware of the number of individual Dollhouses across the globe. It’s a bit of a shame that these positive developments are bogged down in light-hearted silliness when really, they should be given the careful attention that they so obviously deserve. 6.1
#108: 'Needs'
Wr: Tracy Bellomo
Dr: Felix Enrique Alcala
Synopsis: Awakening within the Dollhouse, with large parts of their original personalities having returned, Echo, Sierra and Victor plan an escape.
Review: While 'Echoes' was certainly something of a mixed bag, it has nonetheless had significant repercussions for the direction of the show as, with ‘Needs’, we are treated to the first almost entirely in-house narrative, a result of the glitches that befell the actives in Craft and Fain’s script. It is certainly good to see this issue being addressed, as the litany of things that have gone considerably wrong with the imprint process has become rather abundant of late, and it is entirely logical that DuWitt and co. would feel the need to resolve the issue before sending anyone else out into the big wide world. The execution of this process is largely commendable: the concept of a ‘brain wipe’, if you will, for the central protagonists, wherein they lose their Doll-like innocence but fail to remember who they really are, sets up an engaging dynamic, wherein the viewer feels the potential for his or her questions about the individual characters to finally be answered. In effect, our emotional responses are transferred onto Echo, Victor, Sierra and November, and thus, the drive towards the resolution of their respective enigmas becomes all the more captivating. It’s also rather refreshing to see the Dolls interact significantly with one another: outside of being imprinted, this is the first time the four characters have had a meaningful discourse (no, “I like art” does not count) and they complement each other well, the actors clearly having settled into their roles. The denouement is largely successful too: Sierra’s past proves suitably chilling, Victor’s expression of his attraction to the girl is a satisfying pay-off to the weeks of boners in the showers, November’s grief at the death of her child is considerably moving, and all the more poignant for the beautiful long-shot in which we follow her from a noisy, joyful playground full of kids to a quiet, sombre graveyard, and Echo’s need to seize control and ‘rescue’ the Dolls reinforces her position as the most important of our protagonists. The only real flaw in the whole thing is in the structuring of the explanation for their behaviour: the episode treats the notion that Dr. Saunders and DuWitt orchestrated the ‘wipe’ as if it is a major revelation, when in fact it becomes rather obvious as soon as no one appears to bat an eyelid in the face of some seriously un-Doll like behaviour. Nonetheless, this is a considerably solid effort and certainly the most satisfying episode to date. 8.1
#109: 'Spy in the House of Love'
Wr: Andrew Chambliss
Dr: David Solomon
Synopsis: When a traitor is discovered inside the Dollhouse, Echo and Sierra are programmed to root out the spy. Meanwhile, Paul receives surprising news from Mellie.
Review: Dollhouse continues its uphill climb with this highly engaging episode that quickens the pace of the ongoing narrative by presenting the viewer with a number of much-anticipated confrontations. Once again, the imprint process is used in a refreshingly inventive fashion, this time to provide the facility with an internal investigation into the possibility of a mole within their midst. Dushku does a great job as detective Echo, clearly relishing the opportunity to have the upper hand in her scenes with the characters that she normally has to act like a human vegetable around. Dichen Lachman is also good as the wigged, espionage-adept Sierra, and the sequences in which she infiltrates the CIA building are deftly executed. While the viewer is obviously aware of Mr. Dominic’s position as the traitor, the dramatic irony actually works to the story’s advantage as it is both rewarding to see how he handles the situation, scheming and squirming his way around the problem, and engaging to watch the missteps within the investigation, particularly the accusation of Topher’s ever-unfortunate assistant. Once the cat is out of the bag, we are treated to a number of delectable sequences, including a superbly choreographed fight between Echo and Dominic, and a marvellously understated two-hander involving him and DuWitt, which cleverly avoids providing any distinctly concrete answers for his behaviour, leaving the door wide open for further exploration of this angle. In the ‘real world’, per se, Ballard finally gets the chance to see Mellie, sorry November’s, true colours when another message from inside the Dollhouse plays out through the mouth of his girlfriend. Tamoah Penikett is excellent here, conveying the character’s surprise and horror without a great deal of dialogue. Only DuWitt’s sub-plot with Victor really falls anywhere near under par, as it seems a trifle intrusive when one considers the exhilarating thrust of the main narrative, although it certainly adds much welcome depth to her occasionally one-note character. And Enver Gjokaj's a bit of a hottie, so any opportunity for him to remove his clothes is fine by me… 8.6
#110: 'Haunted'
Wr: Jane Espenson & Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen
Dr: Elodie Keene
Synopsis: Echo is programmed with the memories of a dead woman in the hopes that she can help solve the woman's murder. Topher secretly prepares Sierra for an engagement, and Ballard looks into Mellie's past.
Review: Dollhouse does Quantum Leap as Echo is imprinted with the personality of an individual who was recently murdered in an attempt to uncover the truth behind her demise. It does seem like something of a step in the wrong direction following the revelations and developments that have occurred in recent weeks, but as an example of a ‘mission’ episode, it is able to hold its head up with the best of them (although, admittedly, they are hardly an illustrious bunch.) The story remains engaging by adopting the tried-and-tested conventions of the murder mystery; here we have a veritable litter of much-maligned individuals, each with their own respective motive for doing off with the poor head of the household, and as the script progresses, the intrigue builds and builds, with new layers of betrayal and double-cross exposed at every turn. This process enriches the believability of the narrative, carefully divulging the emotional conflicts within each of the characters and allowing the viewer the opportunity to empathise significantly with each of them. By episode’s end, we care enough about the family to be rather incensed by the culprit’s betrayal, even if all signs do seem to point to him once he starts fooling around in the stables after dark. Regrettably, the confrontation between mother and son falls rather short of expectations, seeming rather hurried and ham-fisted, although this may be more a fault of poor editing or direction than any flaw with the script. Still, Dushku and Jordan Bridges do their level best with what they’re given, and it’s testament once again to Eliza’s flexibility that she is able to make the viewer genuinely upset that Echo has to take the place of the dead woman once the mission is completed. It’s a stroke of genius to have the character be a friend of DuWitt’s too, since it lends the story a much more humanitarian undercurrent, ensuring the audience actually care about the ultimate outcome. We also get a neat little sub-plot with November and Ballard that carefully illustrates the cracks in their relationship now that he is aware of her status as a Doll (check out that angry sex scene man, ph-ew!), and a rather less than stellar C-storyline involving Topher and Sierra, in which the nerdy one finally gets a chance to unwind. It’s innocuous enough, and a welcome piece of character development, but one can’t help but wonder whether the time would’ve been better spent focusing on any number of the loose narrative strands that have been left dangling in recent weeks. An enjoyable side step before the inevitably mad end-of-season dash to the finish line. 7.7
#111: 'Briar Rose'
Wr: Jane Espenson
Dr: Dwight Little
Synopsis: Echo uses the story of "Sleeping Beauty" to help a young girl overcome a past trauma, but does the story foreshadow Echo's own future? Meanwhile, Ballard may have found the original designer of the Dollhouse, Adelle goes to an ex-employee for answers, and Alpha reveals himself and his endgame.
Review: And take that, all ye naysayers. Dollhouse ups the ante not once, not twice, but around about ten times with this rollercoaster ride of an episode that takes in Ballard’s infiltration of the facility and the re-emergence of Alpha as a threat to the lives of our protagonists. Espenson’s script is superbly crafted, beginning as a seemingly rather standard mission for Echo in which she helps a young girl come to terms with the advances of her predatorial father – a sub-plot that is handled with suitable delicacy and that introduces a terrific metaphor that permeates the hour – before morphing into a series of shocking plot developments that bombard the viewer with sequences that we’ve been awaiting for months. It’s good to see Tamoah Penikett getting such a considerable slice of the action, as he’s usually relegated to B or C storyline status, but here, it is his mission to rescue Caroline that provides the plot with its backbone, and, as is to be expected, he rises to the challenge. His counterpoint, the supposed Stephen Keppler, is an excellent foil too, striking just the right balance between fear and pathos to make their interplay suitably enjoyable. Espenson does a fantastic job of disguising the biggest twist of all, that Keppler is in fact Alpha, come to whisk Caroline away and cause all kinds of havoc to poor Victor’s face; the abundance of narrative strands, and the strength of the humour in Ballard and Keppler’s interaction, turn the viewer’s attention away from any distinct analysis of the situation. Indeed, Sierra’s mission to uncover the identity of the body in Tucson, which DuWitt identifies as being a potential victim of the errant Doll, even becomes something of a red herring: by making the Dollhouse occupants aware that Alpha is active once again, and addressing this within a C-storyline, it puts a distance between this concept and what is going on within the central thrust of the plot. There is no immediate association between Alpha and Ballard, and therefore the quick-fire moment in which Keppler turns into a face-disfiguring maniac provides one of the biggest fall-off-your-seat shockers of the year. Alan Tudyk is absolutely excellent in both of his roles, giving Dushku a run for her money in the versatility stakes, and it’s worth giving Amy Acker a mention too, since Dr. Saunders’s evident horror as she realises that the man who scarred her has returned essentially sells Alpha as a formidable foe. A thoroughly enjoyable episode then, and one that’ll leave you reeling from its many twists and turns long after Echo and Alpha have run off, snogging their way into the distance. 9.0
#112: 'Omega'
Wr: Tim Minear
Dr: Tim Minear
Synopsis: Alpha's continued obsession with Echo may cost her everything. Ballard makes a decision that could change the rest of his life. One Doll's story ends as another's is revealed.
Review: Unusually, ‘Omega’ has come under fire from a number of fans and critics alike for not providing a ‘satisfying’ enough conclusion to Dollhouse’s admittedly rather turbulent debut season. Such accusations seem rather to miss the point: Tim Minear’s script was never meant to be the last we saw of Echo, Sierra, Victor and co. in this televisual year. Due to some ludicrous behind-the-scenes politics, Fox ultimately decided only to show twelve of the thirteen hours filmed for season one, meaning that ‘Epitaph One’, Whedon’s actual season finale, which can be found on series one’s DVD release, was never aired. Fortunately, it is something of a unique instalment that can be separated from the season as a whole without having an effect on the flow of the ongoing narrative (even though it contains an abundance of revelations and plot developments… intrigued? You should be). Anyway, it certainly seems that ‘Omega’ has had to bear the brunt of this unfortunate occurrence and honestly, it really doesn’t deserve the scorn that some seem inclined to bestow upon it. The episode expertly explores some of the wider-ranging implications of the concept of imprinting through Alpha’s clearly rather disturbed machinations, hinting at some of the more sinister avenues that the show could take in seasons to come. The decision to imprint a random host with Caroline’s original memories and present her with another individual inside her own body is just plain warped, and quietly illustrates how dangerous the technology could be if it fell into the wrong hands. The scenes between Alpha, Caroline and the so-called Omega (Echo with an awareness of all of her previous personalities) are equally fascinating, opening up the possibility for a future turn in Dushku’s character towards self-awareness and providing a wonderfully succinct summary of the moral debate that has consistently underscored the show’s ongoing narrative. Some fans have criticised these sequences for being too ‘talky’, lacking action, but when the action actually comes, with Alpha basically running away with Echo’s original personality, it’s rather lacklustre and feels tagged on, as if Minear realised he needed to appease the quotient of fans that just want to see Dushku’s boobs bouncing up and down. It’s the intrigue of the dialogue and the horror of Alpha’s plan that make for the most compelling viewing; frankly, I’m dying to see how he’s going to top this in season two. Tudyk is wonderful once again, particularly in the subtle exhibition of the character’s abundance of personalities, one of which, amusingly, is a multiple personality. The supporting cast are fairly good too: Boyd and Ballard work significantly well together and appear to have considerable chemistry, while Olivia Williams’s DuWitt just gets better and better the more furrowed her brow becomes. There’s also the small matter of the Whiskey revelation, which is achieved through a number of simultaneously amusing and sickening flashbacks. Amy Acker is just outstanding throughout; the moment where she confronts Topher is probably the most heartbreaking scene that the show has yet given us. While the ending seems a little disappointing given the gravitas of what occurs in the episode, ‘Omega’ is nevertheless a thoroughly engaging episode with an abundance of fantastic sequences that demonstrate the wealth of potential that the show has going into its second season. A more than satisfactory substitute for the MIA ‘Epitaph One.’ 8.8
#113: 'Epitaph One'
Wr: Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen
Dr: David Solomon
Synopsis: The year is 2019, and the world is broken. A small band of survivors discovers an abandoned Dollhouse and as they explore they begin to understand the shadowy organization and to suspect that they may have been responsible for the current state of the world.
Review: In a somewhat frustrating turn of events, it transpires that Dollhouse’s greatest episode is also the one that the vast majority of the viewing public will never get to see (well, unless FOX tag it on to the end of season two or something.) In case you weren’t aware, ‘Epitaph One’ was never broadcast as the show’s season one finale, as it was supposed to be, due to a load of codswallop wrangling between the network and the production crew over how many episodes were ordered and how many delivered (if you want to understand the minutiae of the situation, just check out the notes on TV.com.) Consequently, the only chance that the programme’s fans have to see it is on the recently released first season DVD (well, the only legal chance anyway…), but trust me, it really is worth forking out the £25 for. Whedon’s script is a masterpiece of ingenuity, transporting the viewer to a depressingly bleak, nondescript future in which the technology of the Dollhouse has gone global and caused society as we know it to effectively fall apart at the seams. With the Rossum Corporation controlling which personality they want to imprint in each body, and the option available for ‘lesser’, ‘weaker’ individuals to have their minds replaced with more preferable models, a Hellish dystopia has been created, wherein no human being is necessarily who they claim to be. Amongst this chaos, Whedon weaves the tale of a ragtag band of ‘originals’ struggling to survive, who suddenly come upon the very thing that they may need to save mankind: the original Dollhouse itself. The viewer is launched headfirst into this unfamiliar, unforgiving environment and has to work to piece together the minutiae: the characters’ dialogue is littered with jargon and self-reference, which is often somewhat impenetrable, but such astute attention to detail greatly enhances the believability of the piece (after all, if you’d been living in such a world for the better part of five or so years, you wouldn’t explain everything to your compatriots in every sentence, would you?) The conflict and tension amongst the members of the group is also deliciously palpable; the guest cast do an absolutely stellar job of selling the paranoia and distrust that have become a natural part of their everyday lives. It’s something of a brave move to depart from the standard formula of the show and reduce the regular cast to B or C storyline status but thankfully, in Whedon’s masterful hands, it works wonders. The flashback sequences that do involve the Dollhouse occupants are all the more enjoyable and intriguing for their brevity. We are only allowed glimpses into the sequence of events that have led to the catastrophic environment in which we now find ourselves: we get an idea of how Ballard and Echo work from within to ‘free’ the Dolls, how Rossum develops its plans for the facility and, perhaps most significantly from a characterial perspective, what happens to Topher and DuWitt as they begin to see society falling apart around them. The scene in which she comforts the scientist in his mock Doll-hole is beautifully minimal, loaded with emotional meaning. Whedon is careful not to reveal too much here, suggesting rather than delineating, although one is tempted to question whether he wrote the script imagining that it would be Dollhouse’s last. It does seem to be a definitive path for the narrative post-‘Omega’; would he have been so revelatory if he’d known that the show was to be renewed? We can but speculate; just as we can but ponder the episode’s title, which seems to suggest that there are several epitaphs, not simply this one. Could this be a hint that we are seeing a possible future, not a definitive one? Or that a future season could pick up the story after this episode? Who knows? At the end of the day, perhaps it is actually for the best that ‘Epitaph One’ never aired. As a ‘bonus’ episode, outside of the official, televised canon, we are able to choose whether we treat its suggestions as sacrosanct or simply conjecture. This gives the episode an even greater weight, a rich ambiguity that makes its story all the more rewarding. A considerably brave move from Joss Whedon and one that keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout, desperate for the next revelation or morsel of exposition. With a fantastic guest cast, beautifully laconic and bleak production and another damn fine turn from Amy Acker (really, she’s just the best damn thing about the show, isn’t she?), ‘Epitaph One’ stands head and shoulders above just about anything that was actually aired under the Dollhouse moniker. An absolute must see. 9.3
Season One Statistics
Highest scoring episode: 'Epitaph One' (113), 9.3
Lowest scoring episode: 'Stage Fright' (103), 4.5
Season average: 7.6
Wr: Joss Whedon
Dr: Joss Whedon
Synopsis: Echo is one of the "Actives" in the elite and illegal Dollhouse. Through different personality downloads, she plays the role of a lovestruck girl on a romantic weekend, and then a ruthlessly efficient kidnapping negotiator. Meanwhile, FBI Agent Paul Ballard is struggling with his assignment to uncover information on the Dollhouse. The chase has destroyed his marriage and is wrecking his career, and it doesn't seem that he'll stop until he uncovers the truth.
Review: Joss Whedon returns to our screens for the first time since the curtain prematurely closed on the hugely underrated Firefly and the jury is most certainly out. The much-discussed Dollhouse premiere is a mixture of the fascinating and the banal, a curious pot pourri of ideas that don’t always seem to gel. The script tries to do too much at once: introducing the audience to the concept of ‘dolls’, outlining the rules and procedures of the imprint process, delineating the power structure of Miss DuWitt’s facility, counterpointing the Paul Ballard character against the central plot and, most importantly of all, demonstrating the malleability of Eliza Dushku as Echo, our plucky young protagonist. The result is that some aspects of the plot suffer from a lack of development or, worse still, rather lazy writing; Ballard’s introduction through the medium of the highly clichéd ‘boxing metaphor’ being perhaps the worst offender. Still, there is much to enjoy here: inevitably, Dushku brings a pointed believability to both of her roles within the episode, selling the character of the ‘ransom expert’ exceptionally well and imbuing her rather less graceful doll self with enough charm and intrigue to acquire the viewer’s allegiance. Whedon does a beautiful job with his supporting cast too, presenting us with a number of apparently one-note characters whose dialogue and mannerisms quickly hint at many more hidden depths: Amy Acker’s Dr. Saunders is fascinatingly resigned, while Topher’s stereotypical ‘aloof genius’ persona is just crying out for further exploration. It’s worth noting, too, that the basic premise of the show is one of the most original to have come out of the LA film lots since well, God only knows when, and has absolutely bags of potential. It’s a shame that the implications of the process aren’t explored in much detail here – although its morality is certainly well discussed, and quite refreshingly left without decisive comment, allowing the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions – and that the central drive of the narrative is ultimately a rather flat game of cat and mouse between Echo and a young girl’s kidnapper. Still, there’s plenty time yet for the show to grow into itself and as a preface to the season, this sets the necessary pieces into place satisfactorily. It’s just, well, we know Whedon’s capable of so much more… 6.8
#102: 'The Target'
Wr: Stephen S. DeKnight
Dr: Stephen S. DeKnight
Synopsis: Echo becomes the ultimate outdoorswoman when she is is hired by a handsome young client named Richard, but it may turn out that neither of the pair is what they seem to be. Meanwhile, Agent Ballard receives a clue about Echo's past, and we learn about Dr. Saunders' scars and the rogue active "Alpha".
Review: Things improve slightly this week but the essential problem illustrated so prominently in 'Ghost' still remains: the writing staff turn the attention of their stories to the minutiae of the actives’ missions when actually, the most interesting element of the show is the concept of the Dollhouse itself. We’d rather turn the microscope inwards, examining the possibilities of the imprint process and the intrigue that seems to bleed from the walls of DuWitt’s facility, than plod along with Echo as she tries to fulfil the fantasy of whichever multi-millionaire has hired out her services this week. To be fair to Steven S. DeKnight, he does add a considerable amount to the show’s burgeoning mythology, hinting at the rather more sinister side of the Dollhouse equation through the character of the demented, mysterious and elusive Alpha. The idea of a ‘rogue’ active is a superlative one as it automatically pervades the narrative with a sense of apprehensive tension: the viewer is aware that the character could return at any time, and in any aspect, since his identity is carefully and cleverly left to our collective imagination. DeKnight does a wonderful job of cementing his position as a formidable foe too, coating the dialogue that references him in fear, anxiety and the laconic, and providing a shocking and rather repulsive explanation of the excellently realised scars on Dr. Saunders’s face. It’s a brave move to disfigure a central character and keep the injury consistent, especially in the rather glossy, picture-perfect and pristine world of American television. Good on you Whedon, good to see that your penchant for the horrific didn’t end at a few episodes of eye-less Xander in season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Elsewhere, the A-storyline is passable if rather predictable; Dushku and Conlen play the roles of hunted and hunter perfectly admirably, but it’s obvious from the moment that the crazy SOB turns on her that she’ll escape from his clutches in the end and more than likely have some sort of epiphany about her status as a doll. It’s a shame, again, that the show insists on concentrating on this sort of conventional, tried-and-tested plot when it has a wealth of untapped narratalogical gold at its fingertips. Come on Whedon, show us something daring. 7.0
#103: 'Stage Fright'
Wr: Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen
Dr: David Solomon
Synopsis: Echo becomes a backup singer to watch out for a female singing sensation with a very overzealous fan. Agent Ballard's investigation takes a turn for the worse.
Review: One step forward, six steps back; 'Stage Fright' is a decidedly lacklustre offering, based on a premise that lacks any semblance of imagination or creativity. Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen’s script is essentially a dot-to-dot of televisual storytelling that feels like it was cobbled together on the back of a cigarette packet as a last ditch resort to come up with something before the impending deadline. Really, this couldn’t be more of a snooze fest if it tried. ‘Famous singer is targeted by crazy fan and needs protection, so in comes Echo to save the day but whoops! Singer doesn’t want to be saved really; she’s a tortured soul so she sabotages her aide’s efforts until finally, Echo uses her super-duper pre-programmed psychological intuition to tap into the celebrity’s psyche, to the lost, scared, humble child within’. Obviously, she saves the day and the superstar with a death wish comes down off her whine-horse, fully appreciative of the wonderful life that she leads. Bravo Echo, another soul saved, another moral lesson dutifully delineated; and another woefully treated audience, battered around the head with predictability and cliché. The ‘twists’ are telegraphed before the plot’s even had a chance to kick itself into gear, and the denouement just feels like one gigantic let down, a case of “yeah, well, is that it?” Interestingly, the production feels pretty half-arsed too, as if the crew were aware of the script’s glaring weaknesses and couldn’t bring themselves to even attempt to patch them up. The direction lacks flair, save for the performance sequences which, while not looking even remotely like any concert I’ve ever been to, are at least well choreographed and suitably glitzy, the support cast don’t really gel, and even Dushku appears to be going through the motions, as if aware that her considerable talents are being wasted. This is the first time we fail to get any further insight into the Dollhouse itself too, which, given that this is the most promising aspect of the show, really negates the episode’s impact. A bit of a waste of space. 4.5
#104: 'Gray Hour'
Wr: Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain
Dr: Rod Hardy
Synopsis: Echo becomes a burglar so she can perform a dangerous art heist. Meanwhile, Ballard challenges Lubov, and Adelle makes a disturbing confession.
Review: And in come Craft and Fain to save the day… Joss Whedon’s favourite old hands, those stalwarts of the Angel franchise, manage to resuscitate Dollhouse’s ailing carcass after last week’s disappointing effort. This is a much more well-rounded episode that sets up what appears to be a fairly run-of-the-mill heist plot and then takes a thoroughly gratifying swerve about a third of the way in. 'Gray Hour' does what no other episode has dared to thus far, and incorporates the minutiae of the imprint process into the central narrative, exploring the implications of an unexpected ‘shut down.’ This proves to be much more satisfying viewing than a simple ‘assignment of the week’, giving Dushku a chance to really demonstrate the horror of an active’s dual, conflicting existence, and reiterating, and indeed accentuating, the undercurrent of dramatic tension that is driving the show’s on-going narrative, as it becomes apparent that Echo is the victim of sabotage (Alpha, perhaps?) It’s a shame that this development is resolved so quickly, and that the impact on Echo appears to be fairly minimal, although it remains to be seen whether it will have implications in future episodes. Sierra’s involvement in Echo’s retrieval jars a little too, since Dichen Lachman is clearly still struggling to find her feet in the role, and delivers her lines rather clumsily. Nevertheless, this is a pretty enjoyable episode with an engaging foundation that advances the show’s mythology without requiring too much from the viewer. Promising. 7.2
#105: 'True Believer'
Wr: Tim Minear
Dr: Allan Kroeker
Synopsis: Echo becomes a blind woman so that she can infiltrate a very secretive and well-guarded cult.
Review: As if buoyed by the success of Craft and Fain’s episode last week, Whedon hires the services of fellow Angel veteran Tim Minear (one of the show’s executive producers, it’s worth noting) for this hour’s emotional tale of difference, faith and community, and the result is a distinctly average concept conveyed in an astutely above average way. The crux of the story, the infiltration of a religious cult through the introduction of a supposed miracle into their daily machinations, is fairly bog standard narratorial fare, and the turns within it - the testing of the ‘miracle’, a mistake that leads to the police team’s exposition – aren’t exactly shocking. Even the abrupt culmination of Esther’s ‘blindness’ is a guessable development, although the ensuing, hindering intervention of the slimy Mr. Dominic is rather less so. However, what sets 'True Believer' apart from other, bog standard Dollhouse fare is the successful marriage of script and production. Minear has a wonderfully keen eye for realism, and his dialogue manages to two-dimensionalise the range of characters within the story without ever seeming expository. His astute understanding of characterisation allows individuals like Jonas Sparrow and indeed Esther herself to acquire emotional layers that are often absent in the work of other writers. Importantly, this is complemented very well by a highly proficient cast; Dushku once again demonstrates how remarkably versatile she is by taking on an exceedingly difficult role and working wonders with it, while Brian Bloom turns in a superbly nuanced performance as Sparrow, and the remaining guest cast all sell their admittedly rather small roles as members of the cult exceptionally well. Of course, the episode is far from perfect: at the end of the day, the story is another fairly standard mission with little bearing on the overall mythology (save for Mr. Dominic’s surprising move), and what we do get in the way of action within the Dollhouse amounts to little more than time-filling sniggering (really… Topher and Saunders inspect Victor’s erections? Come on!) The show could do with upping the ante somewhat, but at least the production staff now appear to be on the right track. A good example of how to garnish the mediocre. 7.4
#106: 'Man on the Street'
Wr: Joss Whedon
Dr: David Straiton
Synopsis: Echo tries to help a client heal the ache of a lost love as a TV reporter prepares an expose on the Dollhouse
Review: This is Dollhouse’s much talked about climate change, Whedon’s mid-season shift in the direction of his latest project. It’s a bit of curious beast, feeling rather like an experiment in narrative divergence, and as such one is left feeling rather unsure as to whether the episode is successful or not. There are a number of highly memorable, skilfully executed set pieces around which the script seems to gravitate, not least of which is the dual one-two suckerpunch of Ballard’s physical encounter with Echo, in which she aides the agent by way of a piece of programming from within the Dollhouse, and the crushing revelation that Mellie is in fact a doll, and a decidedly kick-ass, scary one at that. While this twist was always on the cards, especially after we learned that Victor wasn’t actually a Russian millionaire, so the sequence is not entirely unexpected, the finer points of the scene are certainly far from what we might have anticipated for the character. November is a sleeper active, able to be transformed at DuWitt, or indeed anyone else’s, will through the utterance of a simple phrase… and boy, once those words are spoken, does she change. I’m still scraping my jaw off the floor following that headlock… geez. This sets up a wonderful slice of dramatic irony within the Ballard/Mellie dynamic, and also further illustrates the murky morality of the entire imprint process. There are other impressive moments too, such as Ballard’s heart-to-heart with Echo’s latest client, which offers a wonderfully human justification for the existence of the Dollhouse, and the series of vox pops that puncture the narrative, which serve to remind the viewer of the sheer size and scope of the implications of Topher’s work. Unfortunately, the narrative does feel rather like it is struggling to keep itself above water while traversing these points, and occasionally seems to wander aimlessly, filling screen time with unnecessary conversations between characters, where they deliberate about whether or not to do something. Still, at least the plot is finally given a shift in emphasis, from the intricacies of Echo’s missions to the intrigue of the world within which she inhabits. Whedon finally seems ready to harness the potential of his wonderfully rich concept, and if the rest of the season consists of episodes like this, we can only be onto a winner. 7.7
#107: 'Echoes'
Wr: Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain
Dr: James A. Contner
Synopsis: Echo abandons an assignment when she is drawn to a nearby college where the entire campus is being affected by a mysterious memory drug.
Review: 'Echoes' is an episode with the best of intentions but sadly, somewhere along the road, it loses its footing and descends into regrettably farcical whimsy. While comedy is certainly not a genre that Dollhouse should steer clear of – far from it, in fact, as the occasional bursts of humour that have peppered many of the preceding episodes have proved to be a more than welcome addition – it does take considerable skill to be able to make it work as a central motif, and unfortunately, for whatever reason, Craft and Fain fall well short of the mark here. Whedon’s track record with this sort of thing is largely spot on: some of Buffy and Angel’s finest work is to be found in the episodes with the highest comedic content (‘Smile Time’, ‘Band Candy’, ‘Storyteller’, anyone?), but crucially, they all use it as a backbone to the fundamental drive of the narrative. Humour is the medium through which character development occurs, or the allegory is expressed. Here, the only function that it appears to serve is in the audience’s temporary titillation. Sure, it’s fun to see Topher and DuWitt gradually removing their clothes and talking about the consistency of potato chips, and the sight of Mr. Dominic gesticulating madly with his gun is certain to raise the odd smirk or two, but these moments are too superficial to work without moderation. They produce a laugh but it quickly subsides, especially when the joke is basically repeated ad nauseum for the bulk of the episode. The sheer number of characters ‘wigging out’, for want of a better phrase, by hour’s end is just irritating, and the screwball element is distinctly over-egged, coming across like it’s trying far too hard to be funny. Unfortunately, this undermines the impact of the rest of the episode, which, at its heart, is actually trying to do something rather neat. Craft and Fain provide a glimpse into Echo (or rather, Caroline)’s past, detailing her reasons for signing up to the Dollhouse project. At first, they may seem a little underwhelming, but there are at least fairly realistic: the ‘political protest’ angle seems far more grounded than, say, a convoluted murder plot. The story itself t just about manages to keep itself afloat, although the idea that there are students and teachers running about on campus high as a kite, and that no outside forces would even deign to intervene when the Dollhouse operatives are ‘in da haus’, stretches credulity a little. The introduction of the Rossum Corporation adds an intriguing new layer to the show’s mythology though, giving it more room to breathe now that we are aware of the number of individual Dollhouses across the globe. It’s a bit of a shame that these positive developments are bogged down in light-hearted silliness when really, they should be given the careful attention that they so obviously deserve. 6.1
#108: 'Needs'
Wr: Tracy Bellomo
Dr: Felix Enrique Alcala
Synopsis: Awakening within the Dollhouse, with large parts of their original personalities having returned, Echo, Sierra and Victor plan an escape.
Review: While 'Echoes' was certainly something of a mixed bag, it has nonetheless had significant repercussions for the direction of the show as, with ‘Needs’, we are treated to the first almost entirely in-house narrative, a result of the glitches that befell the actives in Craft and Fain’s script. It is certainly good to see this issue being addressed, as the litany of things that have gone considerably wrong with the imprint process has become rather abundant of late, and it is entirely logical that DuWitt and co. would feel the need to resolve the issue before sending anyone else out into the big wide world. The execution of this process is largely commendable: the concept of a ‘brain wipe’, if you will, for the central protagonists, wherein they lose their Doll-like innocence but fail to remember who they really are, sets up an engaging dynamic, wherein the viewer feels the potential for his or her questions about the individual characters to finally be answered. In effect, our emotional responses are transferred onto Echo, Victor, Sierra and November, and thus, the drive towards the resolution of their respective enigmas becomes all the more captivating. It’s also rather refreshing to see the Dolls interact significantly with one another: outside of being imprinted, this is the first time the four characters have had a meaningful discourse (no, “I like art” does not count) and they complement each other well, the actors clearly having settled into their roles. The denouement is largely successful too: Sierra’s past proves suitably chilling, Victor’s expression of his attraction to the girl is a satisfying pay-off to the weeks of boners in the showers, November’s grief at the death of her child is considerably moving, and all the more poignant for the beautiful long-shot in which we follow her from a noisy, joyful playground full of kids to a quiet, sombre graveyard, and Echo’s need to seize control and ‘rescue’ the Dolls reinforces her position as the most important of our protagonists. The only real flaw in the whole thing is in the structuring of the explanation for their behaviour: the episode treats the notion that Dr. Saunders and DuWitt orchestrated the ‘wipe’ as if it is a major revelation, when in fact it becomes rather obvious as soon as no one appears to bat an eyelid in the face of some seriously un-Doll like behaviour. Nonetheless, this is a considerably solid effort and certainly the most satisfying episode to date. 8.1
#109: 'Spy in the House of Love'
Wr: Andrew Chambliss
Dr: David Solomon
Synopsis: When a traitor is discovered inside the Dollhouse, Echo and Sierra are programmed to root out the spy. Meanwhile, Paul receives surprising news from Mellie.
Review: Dollhouse continues its uphill climb with this highly engaging episode that quickens the pace of the ongoing narrative by presenting the viewer with a number of much-anticipated confrontations. Once again, the imprint process is used in a refreshingly inventive fashion, this time to provide the facility with an internal investigation into the possibility of a mole within their midst. Dushku does a great job as detective Echo, clearly relishing the opportunity to have the upper hand in her scenes with the characters that she normally has to act like a human vegetable around. Dichen Lachman is also good as the wigged, espionage-adept Sierra, and the sequences in which she infiltrates the CIA building are deftly executed. While the viewer is obviously aware of Mr. Dominic’s position as the traitor, the dramatic irony actually works to the story’s advantage as it is both rewarding to see how he handles the situation, scheming and squirming his way around the problem, and engaging to watch the missteps within the investigation, particularly the accusation of Topher’s ever-unfortunate assistant. Once the cat is out of the bag, we are treated to a number of delectable sequences, including a superbly choreographed fight between Echo and Dominic, and a marvellously understated two-hander involving him and DuWitt, which cleverly avoids providing any distinctly concrete answers for his behaviour, leaving the door wide open for further exploration of this angle. In the ‘real world’, per se, Ballard finally gets the chance to see Mellie, sorry November’s, true colours when another message from inside the Dollhouse plays out through the mouth of his girlfriend. Tamoah Penikett is excellent here, conveying the character’s surprise and horror without a great deal of dialogue. Only DuWitt’s sub-plot with Victor really falls anywhere near under par, as it seems a trifle intrusive when one considers the exhilarating thrust of the main narrative, although it certainly adds much welcome depth to her occasionally one-note character. And Enver Gjokaj's a bit of a hottie, so any opportunity for him to remove his clothes is fine by me… 8.6
#110: 'Haunted'
Wr: Jane Espenson & Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen
Dr: Elodie Keene
Synopsis: Echo is programmed with the memories of a dead woman in the hopes that she can help solve the woman's murder. Topher secretly prepares Sierra for an engagement, and Ballard looks into Mellie's past.
Review: Dollhouse does Quantum Leap as Echo is imprinted with the personality of an individual who was recently murdered in an attempt to uncover the truth behind her demise. It does seem like something of a step in the wrong direction following the revelations and developments that have occurred in recent weeks, but as an example of a ‘mission’ episode, it is able to hold its head up with the best of them (although, admittedly, they are hardly an illustrious bunch.) The story remains engaging by adopting the tried-and-tested conventions of the murder mystery; here we have a veritable litter of much-maligned individuals, each with their own respective motive for doing off with the poor head of the household, and as the script progresses, the intrigue builds and builds, with new layers of betrayal and double-cross exposed at every turn. This process enriches the believability of the narrative, carefully divulging the emotional conflicts within each of the characters and allowing the viewer the opportunity to empathise significantly with each of them. By episode’s end, we care enough about the family to be rather incensed by the culprit’s betrayal, even if all signs do seem to point to him once he starts fooling around in the stables after dark. Regrettably, the confrontation between mother and son falls rather short of expectations, seeming rather hurried and ham-fisted, although this may be more a fault of poor editing or direction than any flaw with the script. Still, Dushku and Jordan Bridges do their level best with what they’re given, and it’s testament once again to Eliza’s flexibility that she is able to make the viewer genuinely upset that Echo has to take the place of the dead woman once the mission is completed. It’s a stroke of genius to have the character be a friend of DuWitt’s too, since it lends the story a much more humanitarian undercurrent, ensuring the audience actually care about the ultimate outcome. We also get a neat little sub-plot with November and Ballard that carefully illustrates the cracks in their relationship now that he is aware of her status as a Doll (check out that angry sex scene man, ph-ew!), and a rather less than stellar C-storyline involving Topher and Sierra, in which the nerdy one finally gets a chance to unwind. It’s innocuous enough, and a welcome piece of character development, but one can’t help but wonder whether the time would’ve been better spent focusing on any number of the loose narrative strands that have been left dangling in recent weeks. An enjoyable side step before the inevitably mad end-of-season dash to the finish line. 7.7
#111: 'Briar Rose'
Wr: Jane Espenson
Dr: Dwight Little
Synopsis: Echo uses the story of "Sleeping Beauty" to help a young girl overcome a past trauma, but does the story foreshadow Echo's own future? Meanwhile, Ballard may have found the original designer of the Dollhouse, Adelle goes to an ex-employee for answers, and Alpha reveals himself and his endgame.
Review: And take that, all ye naysayers. Dollhouse ups the ante not once, not twice, but around about ten times with this rollercoaster ride of an episode that takes in Ballard’s infiltration of the facility and the re-emergence of Alpha as a threat to the lives of our protagonists. Espenson’s script is superbly crafted, beginning as a seemingly rather standard mission for Echo in which she helps a young girl come to terms with the advances of her predatorial father – a sub-plot that is handled with suitable delicacy and that introduces a terrific metaphor that permeates the hour – before morphing into a series of shocking plot developments that bombard the viewer with sequences that we’ve been awaiting for months. It’s good to see Tamoah Penikett getting such a considerable slice of the action, as he’s usually relegated to B or C storyline status, but here, it is his mission to rescue Caroline that provides the plot with its backbone, and, as is to be expected, he rises to the challenge. His counterpoint, the supposed Stephen Keppler, is an excellent foil too, striking just the right balance between fear and pathos to make their interplay suitably enjoyable. Espenson does a fantastic job of disguising the biggest twist of all, that Keppler is in fact Alpha, come to whisk Caroline away and cause all kinds of havoc to poor Victor’s face; the abundance of narrative strands, and the strength of the humour in Ballard and Keppler’s interaction, turn the viewer’s attention away from any distinct analysis of the situation. Indeed, Sierra’s mission to uncover the identity of the body in Tucson, which DuWitt identifies as being a potential victim of the errant Doll, even becomes something of a red herring: by making the Dollhouse occupants aware that Alpha is active once again, and addressing this within a C-storyline, it puts a distance between this concept and what is going on within the central thrust of the plot. There is no immediate association between Alpha and Ballard, and therefore the quick-fire moment in which Keppler turns into a face-disfiguring maniac provides one of the biggest fall-off-your-seat shockers of the year. Alan Tudyk is absolutely excellent in both of his roles, giving Dushku a run for her money in the versatility stakes, and it’s worth giving Amy Acker a mention too, since Dr. Saunders’s evident horror as she realises that the man who scarred her has returned essentially sells Alpha as a formidable foe. A thoroughly enjoyable episode then, and one that’ll leave you reeling from its many twists and turns long after Echo and Alpha have run off, snogging their way into the distance. 9.0
#112: 'Omega'
Wr: Tim Minear
Dr: Tim Minear
Synopsis: Alpha's continued obsession with Echo may cost her everything. Ballard makes a decision that could change the rest of his life. One Doll's story ends as another's is revealed.
Review: Unusually, ‘Omega’ has come under fire from a number of fans and critics alike for not providing a ‘satisfying’ enough conclusion to Dollhouse’s admittedly rather turbulent debut season. Such accusations seem rather to miss the point: Tim Minear’s script was never meant to be the last we saw of Echo, Sierra, Victor and co. in this televisual year. Due to some ludicrous behind-the-scenes politics, Fox ultimately decided only to show twelve of the thirteen hours filmed for season one, meaning that ‘Epitaph One’, Whedon’s actual season finale, which can be found on series one’s DVD release, was never aired. Fortunately, it is something of a unique instalment that can be separated from the season as a whole without having an effect on the flow of the ongoing narrative (even though it contains an abundance of revelations and plot developments… intrigued? You should be). Anyway, it certainly seems that ‘Omega’ has had to bear the brunt of this unfortunate occurrence and honestly, it really doesn’t deserve the scorn that some seem inclined to bestow upon it. The episode expertly explores some of the wider-ranging implications of the concept of imprinting through Alpha’s clearly rather disturbed machinations, hinting at some of the more sinister avenues that the show could take in seasons to come. The decision to imprint a random host with Caroline’s original memories and present her with another individual inside her own body is just plain warped, and quietly illustrates how dangerous the technology could be if it fell into the wrong hands. The scenes between Alpha, Caroline and the so-called Omega (Echo with an awareness of all of her previous personalities) are equally fascinating, opening up the possibility for a future turn in Dushku’s character towards self-awareness and providing a wonderfully succinct summary of the moral debate that has consistently underscored the show’s ongoing narrative. Some fans have criticised these sequences for being too ‘talky’, lacking action, but when the action actually comes, with Alpha basically running away with Echo’s original personality, it’s rather lacklustre and feels tagged on, as if Minear realised he needed to appease the quotient of fans that just want to see Dushku’s boobs bouncing up and down. It’s the intrigue of the dialogue and the horror of Alpha’s plan that make for the most compelling viewing; frankly, I’m dying to see how he’s going to top this in season two. Tudyk is wonderful once again, particularly in the subtle exhibition of the character’s abundance of personalities, one of which, amusingly, is a multiple personality. The supporting cast are fairly good too: Boyd and Ballard work significantly well together and appear to have considerable chemistry, while Olivia Williams’s DuWitt just gets better and better the more furrowed her brow becomes. There’s also the small matter of the Whiskey revelation, which is achieved through a number of simultaneously amusing and sickening flashbacks. Amy Acker is just outstanding throughout; the moment where she confronts Topher is probably the most heartbreaking scene that the show has yet given us. While the ending seems a little disappointing given the gravitas of what occurs in the episode, ‘Omega’ is nevertheless a thoroughly engaging episode with an abundance of fantastic sequences that demonstrate the wealth of potential that the show has going into its second season. A more than satisfactory substitute for the MIA ‘Epitaph One.’ 8.8
#113: 'Epitaph One'
Wr: Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon & Maurissa Tancharoen
Dr: David Solomon
Synopsis: The year is 2019, and the world is broken. A small band of survivors discovers an abandoned Dollhouse and as they explore they begin to understand the shadowy organization and to suspect that they may have been responsible for the current state of the world.
Review: In a somewhat frustrating turn of events, it transpires that Dollhouse’s greatest episode is also the one that the vast majority of the viewing public will never get to see (well, unless FOX tag it on to the end of season two or something.) In case you weren’t aware, ‘Epitaph One’ was never broadcast as the show’s season one finale, as it was supposed to be, due to a load of codswallop wrangling between the network and the production crew over how many episodes were ordered and how many delivered (if you want to understand the minutiae of the situation, just check out the notes on TV.com.) Consequently, the only chance that the programme’s fans have to see it is on the recently released first season DVD (well, the only legal chance anyway…), but trust me, it really is worth forking out the £25 for. Whedon’s script is a masterpiece of ingenuity, transporting the viewer to a depressingly bleak, nondescript future in which the technology of the Dollhouse has gone global and caused society as we know it to effectively fall apart at the seams. With the Rossum Corporation controlling which personality they want to imprint in each body, and the option available for ‘lesser’, ‘weaker’ individuals to have their minds replaced with more preferable models, a Hellish dystopia has been created, wherein no human being is necessarily who they claim to be. Amongst this chaos, Whedon weaves the tale of a ragtag band of ‘originals’ struggling to survive, who suddenly come upon the very thing that they may need to save mankind: the original Dollhouse itself. The viewer is launched headfirst into this unfamiliar, unforgiving environment and has to work to piece together the minutiae: the characters’ dialogue is littered with jargon and self-reference, which is often somewhat impenetrable, but such astute attention to detail greatly enhances the believability of the piece (after all, if you’d been living in such a world for the better part of five or so years, you wouldn’t explain everything to your compatriots in every sentence, would you?) The conflict and tension amongst the members of the group is also deliciously palpable; the guest cast do an absolutely stellar job of selling the paranoia and distrust that have become a natural part of their everyday lives. It’s something of a brave move to depart from the standard formula of the show and reduce the regular cast to B or C storyline status but thankfully, in Whedon’s masterful hands, it works wonders. The flashback sequences that do involve the Dollhouse occupants are all the more enjoyable and intriguing for their brevity. We are only allowed glimpses into the sequence of events that have led to the catastrophic environment in which we now find ourselves: we get an idea of how Ballard and Echo work from within to ‘free’ the Dolls, how Rossum develops its plans for the facility and, perhaps most significantly from a characterial perspective, what happens to Topher and DuWitt as they begin to see society falling apart around them. The scene in which she comforts the scientist in his mock Doll-hole is beautifully minimal, loaded with emotional meaning. Whedon is careful not to reveal too much here, suggesting rather than delineating, although one is tempted to question whether he wrote the script imagining that it would be Dollhouse’s last. It does seem to be a definitive path for the narrative post-‘Omega’; would he have been so revelatory if he’d known that the show was to be renewed? We can but speculate; just as we can but ponder the episode’s title, which seems to suggest that there are several epitaphs, not simply this one. Could this be a hint that we are seeing a possible future, not a definitive one? Or that a future season could pick up the story after this episode? Who knows? At the end of the day, perhaps it is actually for the best that ‘Epitaph One’ never aired. As a ‘bonus’ episode, outside of the official, televised canon, we are able to choose whether we treat its suggestions as sacrosanct or simply conjecture. This gives the episode an even greater weight, a rich ambiguity that makes its story all the more rewarding. A considerably brave move from Joss Whedon and one that keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout, desperate for the next revelation or morsel of exposition. With a fantastic guest cast, beautifully laconic and bleak production and another damn fine turn from Amy Acker (really, she’s just the best damn thing about the show, isn’t she?), ‘Epitaph One’ stands head and shoulders above just about anything that was actually aired under the Dollhouse moniker. An absolute must see. 9.3
Season One Statistics
Highest scoring episode: 'Epitaph One' (113), 9.3
Lowest scoring episode: 'Stage Fright' (103), 4.5
Season average: 7.6
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