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Dollhouse: Will it be good? Bad? Ugly? All three?
My first thought upon hearing about the new Joss Whedon show Dollhouse was, "...Oh, this is not going to end well."
I'm not really any more optimistic now that I've seen the character descriptions and the casting. Rant, rant ahoy!
Let me start off by adding a disclaimer right up front here, because this may well be coloring my impression of the show -- I don't much like Eliza Dushku. I'm not sure why; all I know is that my reaction to Faith was the same irrational dislike of both the character, and the actor's presentation of the role, that I had for Crichton/Ben Browder in Farscape. In the latter case, I actually was shocked to find that I liked him in SG-1 -- my initial reaction to the casting news having been NOOOOOOOO! -- so I'm attempting to keep an open mind on Dushku as well, even if I'm being harsh on the show itself. But I thought I'd mention it, because I'm hardly an unbiased observer of that particular actress's work. I'd like to think that my feelings about the actress haven't colored my impressions of the whole show, but ... I suppose you never know.
Anyway, the show itself, and what it's about -- probably the easiest thing here would be to quote the description from its Wikipedia article:
Okay. Just from the get-go, the whole premise, and the fact that the main character is a woman, is creepy as hell to me, and not really the good kind of creepy, either. I'm sorry, Joss, but there are some roles in which it's neither empowering nor subversive to cast a female protagonist, and I don't care how much you plan to subvert it down the line -- the role of an amnesiac living doll is pretty much the epitome of that kind of role. When I saw the original press release for the show, my first thought was how cool it would have been if they'd cast a man in that role -- a role which is submissive, powerless and probably going to be sexualized out the wazoo. That would have been awesome. I would totally have watched that. Not because I get my jollies seeing men rendered helpless (shut up) but because it would have been a really glorious role reversal of the way male and female roles are normally constructed on TV. Not that I had any actual hope of it, because I knew from the beginning that Dushku would be in the main role; I just couldn't help longing for what would be, to me, a much more interesting and gender-bending what-if.
But no.
Okay. Carrying on with my rampant pessimism, here is the original casting call for the Dollhouse cast (discovered via![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
whileaway), the results of which can be seen at the Wikipedia article also linked above, and in this cast photo.
First off, I can't help noticing that the main sympathetic cast -- Echo, her two friends, and her "handler" -- looks suspiciously like the Buffy/Willow/Xander/Giles grouping. Not just a little, but to the point where if anybody else did a show like this, I think my very first thought would be, "Oh hey, ripping off Buffy much?" One of the things that made Firefly so interesting was how much of a break from his past work it was -- not in every way, but in nearly all of the major ways. It was moving forward, not going back. I'm not sure if this show is a painfully self-conscious attempt to recapture the Buffy audience or if he's doing it accidentally; for that matter, I'm not sure which would be worse. It's not a good sign, though, that he basically seems to be reaching for his previous success rather than moving on to try something different as he's done in the past.
Alrighty then. Going down the rest of the cast ... the only woman with any power on the show is the cold, hard, apparently sexless madame -- or possibly they're aiming for a schoolmistress template here, but either way, stereotype city -- who rules her girls with an iron fist. (And, in the interests of fairness, her guys. There *is* one male Doll in the cast, which I hadn't realized from the original press release -- I thought they'd all be female. While it's nice to see, I still have a creeping suspicion just from looking at the actors and the character descriptions that the male Doll will be constructed as "sweet, harmless dork" while the girls will be more along the lines of "living sex toys". Perhaps I'm being needlessly gloomy; I guess we'll see.) Anyway, she's in charge, which is something, at least -- though the power she wields is basically the Iron Fist of Maternal Doom. Then we have the "smart one", the genius who updates the dolls' programming, who is, not surprisingly, a young white guy. There's a black guy in the bodyguard/mentor/advisor/Magical Negro role -- who honestly looks like the most sympathetic character in the bunch, to me at least, but I do go for "tormented and honorable" -- and another guy (young, sexy, white, etc) as the tough federal agent/nemesis/love interest. In short, the active "do-ers" of the show appear to be all men, though I expect the Dolls will come into their own on that front eventually, if only for the obligatory high-kicking tough-girl action.
That most of the major characters are white is, sadly, pretty much par for the course with a Whedon show, but I can't quite articulate how creepy I find it that the only character whose ethnicity is specified on the casting call is Echo's female friend among the Dolls, who is supposed to be "Asian or any ethnicity - certainly not Caucasian." And she is, indeed, played by an Asian (Tibetan?) woman. Playing a living doll. No stereotypes there, nosirree.
And shall I mention the age issues? Echo's bodyguard, Boyd, described in the casting call as "Late 40s-60 ... about to make the descent from ‘good-looking’ to ‘fatherly’" is actually played by a 43-year-old actor (yes, I looked it up on imbd.com, because I saw the picture and went "... wait, how old is he?") That's about three years older than John and Rodney, btw. XD Fatherly. Ooookay. (Olivia Williams, who plays the madame, is 38, and already set up in the mom role, and/or sexless ice queen.)
I mean ... maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, and I pretty much expect a show to screw up casting-wise on at least one axis (gender, age, race, whatnot) but on all of them at once? WTF? Just for a moment, think about how cool -- how different -- how interesting it might have been if they'd mixed up the roles a bit, on even one or two of the characters, rather than going straight for the painfully easy choice in every case. Cast an attractive young guy in the Dushku role, with a world-weary 45-year-old woman as his "handler". For the computer whiz, how about a black woman? Why can't the hot-and-mysterious love interest be a 50-year-old guy? Why is it that if you pinned up a dartboard of Hollywood stereotypes and tossed some darts, you'd be able to cheerfully fill out your cast without changing a single template?
Ultimately, I guess the question is why I'm even surprised enough, and bothered enough, to do a big long rant post on the (presumed) failings of a show I haven't even seen yet. I guess I'm so annoyed because Joss Whedon has made a reputation for himself by bucking the trends and really trying to do better. Not only that, but he's consistently seemed to take criticism to heart and try to improve. The casting on Buffy, for example, was utterly wretched with regards to racial diversity, but Firefly made a good stab at portraying a believably multi-ethnic future. And now we've got this ... thing, which is pretty much a giant step backwards in every way. I just don't know how to take it.
And maybe I'll be proven wrong, and it'll turn out to be fantastically written and turn every one of its obvious surface stereotypes on its head. But I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not really any more optimistic now that I've seen the character descriptions and the casting. Rant, rant ahoy!
Let me start off by adding a disclaimer right up front here, because this may well be coloring my impression of the show -- I don't much like Eliza Dushku. I'm not sure why; all I know is that my reaction to Faith was the same irrational dislike of both the character, and the actor's presentation of the role, that I had for Crichton/Ben Browder in Farscape. In the latter case, I actually was shocked to find that I liked him in SG-1 -- my initial reaction to the casting news having been NOOOOOOOO! -- so I'm attempting to keep an open mind on Dushku as well, even if I'm being harsh on the show itself. But I thought I'd mention it, because I'm hardly an unbiased observer of that particular actress's work. I'd like to think that my feelings about the actress haven't colored my impressions of the whole show, but ... I suppose you never know.
Anyway, the show itself, and what it's about -- probably the easiest thing here would be to quote the description from its Wikipedia article:
In Dollhouse, Dushku plays a young woman named Echo, a member of a group of people known as "Actives" or "Dolls" who volunteered for the work in the Dollhouse. They give up five years of their lives, and at the end they receive a large sum of money and no memory of anything they did for the Dollhouse. The Dolls have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments. They're then hired out for particular jobs, crimes, fantasies, and occasional good deeds. On missions, Actives are monitored internally (and remotely) by Handlers. In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a futuristic dormitory/laboratory, a hidden facility nicknamed "The Dollhouse". The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.
Okay. Just from the get-go, the whole premise, and the fact that the main character is a woman, is creepy as hell to me, and not really the good kind of creepy, either. I'm sorry, Joss, but there are some roles in which it's neither empowering nor subversive to cast a female protagonist, and I don't care how much you plan to subvert it down the line -- the role of an amnesiac living doll is pretty much the epitome of that kind of role. When I saw the original press release for the show, my first thought was how cool it would have been if they'd cast a man in that role -- a role which is submissive, powerless and probably going to be sexualized out the wazoo. That would have been awesome. I would totally have watched that. Not because I get my jollies seeing men rendered helpless (shut up) but because it would have been a really glorious role reversal of the way male and female roles are normally constructed on TV. Not that I had any actual hope of it, because I knew from the beginning that Dushku would be in the main role; I just couldn't help longing for what would be, to me, a much more interesting and gender-bending what-if.
But no.
Okay. Carrying on with my rampant pessimism, here is the original casting call for the Dollhouse cast (discovered via
whileaway), the results of which can be seen at the Wikipedia article also linked above, and in this cast photo. 
First off, I can't help noticing that the main sympathetic cast -- Echo, her two friends, and her "handler" -- looks suspiciously like the Buffy/Willow/Xander/Giles grouping. Not just a little, but to the point where if anybody else did a show like this, I think my very first thought would be, "Oh hey, ripping off Buffy much?" One of the things that made Firefly so interesting was how much of a break from his past work it was -- not in every way, but in nearly all of the major ways. It was moving forward, not going back. I'm not sure if this show is a painfully self-conscious attempt to recapture the Buffy audience or if he's doing it accidentally; for that matter, I'm not sure which would be worse. It's not a good sign, though, that he basically seems to be reaching for his previous success rather than moving on to try something different as he's done in the past.
Alrighty then. Going down the rest of the cast ... the only woman with any power on the show is the cold, hard, apparently sexless madame -- or possibly they're aiming for a schoolmistress template here, but either way, stereotype city -- who rules her girls with an iron fist. (And, in the interests of fairness, her guys. There *is* one male Doll in the cast, which I hadn't realized from the original press release -- I thought they'd all be female. While it's nice to see, I still have a creeping suspicion just from looking at the actors and the character descriptions that the male Doll will be constructed as "sweet, harmless dork" while the girls will be more along the lines of "living sex toys". Perhaps I'm being needlessly gloomy; I guess we'll see.) Anyway, she's in charge, which is something, at least -- though the power she wields is basically the Iron Fist of Maternal Doom. Then we have the "smart one", the genius who updates the dolls' programming, who is, not surprisingly, a young white guy. There's a black guy in the bodyguard/mentor/advisor/Magical Negro role -- who honestly looks like the most sympathetic character in the bunch, to me at least, but I do go for "tormented and honorable" -- and another guy (young, sexy, white, etc) as the tough federal agent/nemesis/love interest. In short, the active "do-ers" of the show appear to be all men, though I expect the Dolls will come into their own on that front eventually, if only for the obligatory high-kicking tough-girl action.
That most of the major characters are white is, sadly, pretty much par for the course with a Whedon show, but I can't quite articulate how creepy I find it that the only character whose ethnicity is specified on the casting call is Echo's female friend among the Dolls, who is supposed to be "Asian or any ethnicity - certainly not Caucasian." And she is, indeed, played by an Asian (Tibetan?) woman. Playing a living doll. No stereotypes there, nosirree.
And shall I mention the age issues? Echo's bodyguard, Boyd, described in the casting call as "Late 40s-60 ... about to make the descent from ‘good-looking’ to ‘fatherly’" is actually played by a 43-year-old actor (yes, I looked it up on imbd.com, because I saw the picture and went "... wait, how old is he?") That's about three years older than John and Rodney, btw. XD Fatherly. Ooookay. (Olivia Williams, who plays the madame, is 38, and already set up in the mom role, and/or sexless ice queen.)
I mean ... maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, and I pretty much expect a show to screw up casting-wise on at least one axis (gender, age, race, whatnot) but on all of them at once? WTF? Just for a moment, think about how cool -- how different -- how interesting it might have been if they'd mixed up the roles a bit, on even one or two of the characters, rather than going straight for the painfully easy choice in every case. Cast an attractive young guy in the Dushku role, with a world-weary 45-year-old woman as his "handler". For the computer whiz, how about a black woman? Why can't the hot-and-mysterious love interest be a 50-year-old guy? Why is it that if you pinned up a dartboard of Hollywood stereotypes and tossed some darts, you'd be able to cheerfully fill out your cast without changing a single template?
Ultimately, I guess the question is why I'm even surprised enough, and bothered enough, to do a big long rant post on the (presumed) failings of a show I haven't even seen yet. I guess I'm so annoyed because Joss Whedon has made a reputation for himself by bucking the trends and really trying to do better. Not only that, but he's consistently seemed to take criticism to heart and try to improve. The casting on Buffy, for example, was utterly wretched with regards to racial diversity, but Firefly made a good stab at portraying a believably multi-ethnic future. And now we've got this ... thing, which is pretty much a giant step backwards in every way. I just don't know how to take it.
And maybe I'll be proven wrong, and it'll turn out to be fantastically written and turn every one of its obvious surface stereotypes on its head. But I'm not holding my breath.
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Though the guy's age - that I could rant about, without having seen a minute of the show! That's just nuts. But that's what Supernatural did, too. JDM is what - eleven years older than Ackles? Twelve? He's not old enough to be either of their father, that's for sure! But, you know. He's pretty? (More hypocrisy: I didn't exactly mind JDM, because they're right, and he is very pleasant to look at. But then again, I don't think I would've loved him less if he'd been ten years older...)
And - I don't know if this is true, but I heard way back that the idea for the show is actually Dushku's, and not Whedon's? She got him involved, and not the other way around. I guess I should fact-check on this, but at the same time, it is interesting to see if you think that'd make things better or worse.
Finally, I love Dushku. ♥ I loved Faith - though I've never seen the final seasons of Buffy or Angel, and I don't know if that would change the love. But I could almost stand watching "Tru Calling" just for her. (This would be me being utterly shallow, by the way. Dushku is hot.)
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Exactly. I was pretty skeptical of the whole idea, but, well, I figured I'd look at the casting links and see what they'd decided to do with it -- and that just sent the ewww-factor into overdrive, because it really looks like they're pushing the brothel metaphor. (And it's not even that there aren't stories you could tell about sex workers and so forth -- but with ultra-hot living dolls? NO.) And there's pretty much nothing that *isn't* wrong with the casting, though most of it is pretty much in line with the usual Hollywood "wrong".
You are probably wise to see some of the show without condemning it, however. I shamefacedly admit that I didn't start watching Buffy 'til the sixth season, and then really enjoyed it, because I'd had some major problems with the casting and what little I knew about the premise, and thought it would be terrible when it wasn't.
If it's Dushku's idea, that certainly adds an interesting element to things, and maybe means that her character would have more depth and be less ... exploited? It's just hard for me to get past the extreme skeeviness of the premise, though.
I know my aversion to Dushku is basically a personal thing, and I really do *want* to keep an open mind about her; she might surprise me.
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I'd love to be proven wrong, but I'm thinking this is definitely not a show I'll be watching immediately. Be interesting to see how people react to it, though.
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Erm. Sorry for throwing a movie rec at you completely out of the blue. But if you haven't seen Paycheck, you should definitely check it out. The main character starts as a creep, but doesn't stay that way.
What makes the movie watchable, though, is that change--if he kept doing the whole mind-wipe thing, his character would remain a creep, and there would be nothing interesting or compelling about him.
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I also heard that Dushku has been heavily involved from the get-go, that she urged Whedon to make a show for her, and he said, "Okay, but you need to help me come up with the concept!" It would be nice if they really do explore what is in fact creepy and wrong about all this.
Sadly, there's lots of room for simple exploitation, as you say--for having one's cake and eating it too: throwing sexy women at us and saying, "Look, I'm revealing their oppression!" Um, but you created their oppression!
I have misgivings, but I'll give it a try. I have no opinion on Dushku; I've never regularly watched anything she's been in! I never could get into Buffy; I liked Firefly in some ways, but I thought it had real problems. (Courtesan who truly loves the man who claims to despise her? Please! And why is a smart, strong woman like Zoe following a screw-up like Mal, only arguing occasionally and half-heartedly? She should have been in charge! We will not even speak of characters we lost.)
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That would be nice, though I really feel like what we need in Holly wood right now isn't really an insider's view of what's wrong with the sex/exploitation industry (as depicted by gorgeous, scantily clad people); we need FEWER glorified prostitutes, not more of them, even if the whole idea is to show their oppression!
Sadly, there's lots of room for simple exploitation, as you say--for having one's cake and eating it too: throwing sexy women at us and saying, "Look, I'm revealing their oppression!" Um, but you created their oppression!
*laughs at that last bit* Sad but true -- and, unfortunately, that's pretty much exactly what I'm expecting.
However, someone else above mentioned Dushku being involved in the concept and production of the show, also, a detail which I wasn't aware of. If she really does have a significant amount of control, maybe it'll help?
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While I watched Buffy and Angel on-air and enjoyed Firefly on dvd, I'm definitely not in the "Everything Joss does will turn to gold" camp and in this case...I'm not sure I really want to watch.
I've heard some people mention trusting Joss enough to think he'll pull it off well. I'm not there.
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All very salient points. I think you're version of casting would be very interesting, although a Hollywood exec might not agree. I know Whedon took his shows' cancellations very hard, so I'm wondering if he's possibly bucking the trends less in an attempt to find work.
However, I know without a doubt if I do wind up liking the show, and falling in love with one of the characters, they're going to die horribly and painfully. It's like the man somehow knows which one I'm going to like, then starts plotting their death.
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*cracks up* Oh! That definitely reminds me to add a tag to this post ...
I know Whedon took his shows' cancellations very hard, so I'm wondering if he's possibly bucking the trends less in an attempt to find work.
Sadly, that's kind of what this feels like. He struck gold with Buffy, and it feels to me like he's trying to recapture the Buffy audience by producing what's basically a Buffy clone (only with 100% more skeeviness!).
However, I know without a doubt if I do wind up liking the show, and falling in love with one of the characters, they're going to die horribly and painfully.
... and there's also that. :D After Firefly, I'd sworn I wouldn't watch another Joss Whedon show because he just doesn't ever like his characters to be happy, and usually, the most likeable ones die. I can deal with it once or twice, but it's totally a pattern! I'd be happy to break my vow if he came along with something that looked as good as Firefly, but for this? Not a chance.
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My thought exactly! And maybe he'll take it and do something cool and fascinating with it, but y'know what, after looking at the characters (which could practically have been lifted straight from the Big Book of Hollywood Cliches) I'm not holding my breath.
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It could be an interesting show. It could be creepy. I'm just going to wait and see.
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But as a TV show - yup, it's going to be obnoxiously exploitive, catering to fantasies and using the plot as a pretext for dressing chicks up for male entertainment. Okay, maybe not. But I don't have faith in Hollywood, regardless of who's at the helm, Whedon or anyone else. If it were a woman writer - heading a scifi show! - and on cable, then I'd be curious. But going for a mainstream (i.e. the 18-35 male demo) audience - they don't have much choice.
Don't know Dushku at all as I'm the only fangirl on the planet who's never seen a complete ep of Buffy. "Fatherly" does usually describe a man in their 40s, I'd think? Most fathers of children are, what, 25-50, you get beyond that and then they're "grandfatherly"?
--oh wait, I reread the quote - the "descent from good-looking to fatherly," WTF?! Umm, so people stop being good-looking after a certain age? So how come Joe Flanigan is getting hotter as he ages, hmmm (with all his father-of-3-boys cuteness!)??? Or how do you explain RDA? (I was just on someone's lj where someone in the comments was remarking, "I don't understand how people can say Sheppard's hot, he's OLD!" So this isn't just casting calls? but still...I dunno, I've always had a thing for actors fairly significantly older than myself, so maybe my perspective is weird, but still...!)
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Hee, I just wrote something pretty similar in a reply to one of the comments above! And I agree totally -- the concept *could* have been worked in a way that wouldn't trip all of my skeeve-o-meters, but for a show catering to a young male demographic, produced by a man (though several people said Dushku is involved with the production, which might help), cast in a way that really could not be more Hollywood-cliche on pretty much every level ... my response is a resounding "ewww!"
--oh wait, I reread the quote - the "descent from good-looking to fatherly," WTF?!
Oh, hell yeah! I mean, I've always gone for older guys, too, so maybe at least part of it is simply that you and I appreciate mature male beauty more than the average person. XD And it makes a *little* more sense if you look at the original concept for the character's age (which was older than what we ended up with). But Joss's shows have always skewed abnormally young in their casting, and it looks like this one is going to be worse than most.
(I was just on someone's lj where someone in the comments was remarking, "I don't understand how people can say Sheppard's hot, he's OLD!"
WHAT? I *could* see someone saying that about RDA, I guess, though I still think he's massively hot, but ... Flanigan?
I think maybe I'm becoming a little more sensitive to it than I used to be, because I'm starting to get closer to the age (especially for women) that is coded as "old" in Hollywood. It's not at all uncommon to see female actors in their late 30s/early 40s written as if they were much older women; they just did it with one of the main characters on NCIS, for example, an actress who was playing wide-eyed 20-something ingenues 10 years ago (I used to watch a different show she was on) and is now playing a straight-laced matron-type who is an ex-flame of a character played by an actor about 15 years older than herself. (It's particularly annoying in that case because NCIS is otherwise pretty good about its treatment of older actors and characters.)
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To be perfectly honest, I loved Buffy until about season 5, and I loved the first few seasons of Angel, but in my opinion Joss Whedon isn't the god everyone says he is. Seasons 6 and 7 of Buffy were, to me, *unwatchable*, and Firefly never interested me. I'm kind of meh about this show. We'll see.
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From the description of the show, I suspect that the characters' real personalities and memories are going to start surfacing in their Dollhouse-life. But, yeah, I hadn't even thought about that, but having the characters constantly losing their memories of each other can't make it any easier to get into the show!
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And the show's premise sounds very disturbing, to say the least. Well, most disturbing is the fact that these people sign up for this doll-program voluntarily. Is there even a hint of justification in the premise as to why they sign up for this (other than for financial gain)?
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Firefly, I loved, if nothing else for Zoe and River. River was an absolutely fantastic portrayal of shattering insanity in many ways. Zoe and Wash were one of the absolute best examples of him turning stereotypes on their head, thought they weren't perfect. So I know what Whedon can pull off.
All that said, this may have been Dushku's idea, but all you have to do is look at Inara and see Whedon's idea of a supposed "geisha/hetaira" character. To start with, she's WAY too young to be really interesting. Good grief, for her to have any really interesting stories and experience, she'd have had to start in as a Companion in her early teens, and that's just creepy. I always thought her friend in the "best little whorehouse" episode would have made a much more fascinating character in the sex worker role. Then there's the whole mixing of the harem fantasies and geisha stuff--the latter which he got all wrong. TOTALLy wrong. Then there's the Orientalization issues. Inara was totally a white man's stereotypical fantasy.
The Spousal Unit is convinced that Joss will take the concept and turn it on his head. But you know, he lost Firefly which was his baby by all accounts, and he lost Wonder Woman. I think maybe he's just trying to get his foot back in the network tv door.
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To be honest I think Joss heydays are over. Firefly (the series!) was just great (yes, with weak points like Mal/Inara and...well..INARA!) but after that? Angel was just...strange, than the desaster "Wonder woman" - and the really Whedon's comic-seasons of Angel and Buffy. For example Angel tames the dragon, Gunn is a vampire and Spike "has become lord of the area and lives surrounded by harem of humans and demons" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel:_After_the_Fall). Oo Ah ja, and Dawn is now a giant. Riiight. OO
I don't really like Dushku - as someone said before she plays the same character in every single show!
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And I totally agree - it would be waaaaay more interesting to have a guy casted for that part rather than a woman.
Still, I'm personally willing to give it a chance, because you never know. There have been shows where I've sneered at the premise, only to actually watch the show and be pleasently surprised. Plus I'm curious to see where he can take such a show, especially when it comes to character development.
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That pretty much sums it up, I think. With that kind of show (the sort that is basically built around a one-note premise), it can go one of two ways -- either the creative team has a strong vision for the plotline of the first season and the ability to stick to it, in which case it'll be brilliant, or it'll live down to every bad expectation.
I think I'm probably gonna hold off watching it until I see what the fan reaction to the first few episodes looks like.
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And I really loved the Crichton character and was initially really disappointed by Mitchell (he grew on me.) But I completely agree about Dushku. Something about her has always creeped me out. I can't put my finger on why,except, well, somehow her teeth seem oddly predatory? *facepalm* I know, I'm weird!
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The premise of the show sounds to me like it's supposed to be a sort of psychological horror show. It sounds like the existence of the "Dolls" is supposed to creep you out a bit. Maybe a bit like when you see a bunch of people wake up mysteriously in a maze of cube-like rooms with no memory of how they got there and deadly traps all over the place - well, then you're supposed to think that it can't mean anything good.
But I dunno. I suppose I'd have to actually see the show to decide what the "tone" of it is. The blandly stated "premise" of many shows doesn't really convey what makes watching those shows worthwhile.
And BTW (going off at a bit of a tangent) - my sister recently showed me a rant in the LJ of a "radical feminist" stating that Firefly was one of the most hideously sexist and racist shows they'd seen, citing it as abusive towards women because all the female characters are either insane (due to psychological abuse), literally a whore (there is no way that someone in that position could be in any way empowered) or a submissive black woman (because she says "yes, sir" every time a certain white man tells her to do something). Furthermore, Zoe and Wash's marriage is clearly abusive because there's no way that a marriage between a white man and a black woman can be anything but an abusive master/slave scenario. But then again, this person also believes that virtually all heterosexual sex is effectively rape (I kid you not - when anyone asked if that wasn't a little extreme in the comments, she just linked them to a post where some other radical feminist friends of hers had provided the "Radical Feminist definition of rape").
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There are problems people have with Firefly that I think are kinda justified (like Inara's character) but overall, it's head and shoulders above most other TV sci-fi as far as characterization, world-building, casting -- just everything, pretty much.
And really, I do like your take on the show, and I think that your "voice of reason" here is a really good reminder of why it's usually not a good idea to make snap judgments based on very little information. I will admit that the whole premise of the show, combined with the cast photos, in the hands of mainstream TV producers, adds up to "... no good can come of this" in my brain. But, honestly, it could be really cool if it develops in the direction you've described. Personally, I love twisty, brain-breaking psychological thrillers. I just didn't get that impression from the promo info. But to paraphrase what you said, if you summarize most shows in one or two sentences, they sound pretty banal and bland!
The thought occurs to me, also, that I'm definitely guilty of playing the "wouldn't it be cooler if ...?" game with it. And I should know better, because I've ruined more TV shows and movies for myself by doing that! It works like this:
- Layla watches a movie trailer or TV pilot or the first part of a movie.
- Layla decides "Wouldn't it be a whole lot cooler/more original/more entertaining if ...?" [the Doll was a man]/[Neo wasn't really the Chosen One]/[the entire command crew of the Voyager had been killed off so the ensigns had to run the ship]/etc.
- Movie/TV show does not go that way.
- Layla is frustrated and angry because she liked her version better.
... which is completely silly, but I keep doing it! And am clearly doing it above, with the whole premise of the show AND with the casting.
So thank you for being sensible and sane.
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then again with Fox, it'll get axed even if its a brilliant show. grrr.
and Echo's female friend (Sierra, I think?) is the worst actress ever. she was horrific on Neighbours, truly cringe-worthy :| *facepalm*
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I think all this is RIGHT on the money, and would just add -- I love Faith, I adore Faith, Faith is My Girl, and yet....man, Eliza has really really sucked in every other role I have seen her in. (No wait, I think she was okay in Bring it On.) -- And I was reading this interview with her and she referred to the "infamous lunch" where she and Joss apparently spitballed this whole thing, and it was something like she wanted to essentially have a different role to act for every episode of the show -- every week, a new lead character. And I sat there thinking, Ohmigod, on top of everything else this is supposed to showcase the amazing range and variety of Eliza's acting skills? UM.
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... it's really depressing how closely my gloomy predictions from 8 months ago seem to have come to what I'm hearing from other people who've actually watched the premiere. You know, I would have been just FINE with being proven wrong!
Despite my dislike of Dushku and Faith (which I realize is irrational), I do think it's cool to hear that Joss basically wrote the show as a vehicle for her. Having heard that, though, I find it even creepier that THIS is what they came up with.
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