Television of the Weak: Cashed Out In Clean-Up City

This week, it's Dollhouse X Dollhouse, Fringe, Dexter X Dexter and a couple of bonus cuts. 

Dollhouse: "The Public Eye" and "The Left Hand" by Matthew J. Brady

As everyone has probably heard by now (since Joss Whedon fans have whined it up all over the internet, as usual), Dollhouse has been cancelled, which means Fox gets to burn off the remaining episodes in the season as quickly as possible, making for epic displays of Whedonicity. And sure enough, this two-parter-in-one, is one that kind of rocks, changing the status quo, making major revelations, adding new characters and conflicts, and just generally being pretty damn good. At least the show is going out with a bang.

 

The first hour gets off to a decent start, picking up the plot thread of the senator who is on a crusade against the Dollhouse and its parent corporation, Rossum Pharmaceutical. It looks to be fairly standard stuff, with Eliza Dushku doing spy/whore stuff like usual, and some possible expansion of the series' over-plot, as the senator's wife appears to be a doll from another Dollhouse. But halfway through, there's a pretty huge game-changer, as it is revealed that the senator is the doll. Suddenly, we're off in a whole new world, as the Washington, D.C. Dollhouse is suddenly introduced, with an evil plot to pass some pro-Rossum legislation and who knows what else. And their Topher-equivalent programmer genius is none other than Summer Glau, who gets the full Whedon treatment as a weirdo with lots of quirks and goofy tics (glasses, hair clip, lots of muttering, weird smirks, talking to herself, just plain acting like a weirdo), along with a vendetta against Echo. Or rather, against Caroline, Echo's pre-Dollhouse personality, who apparently left her behind in some sort of disaster and caused the paralysis of her arm. It's probably a long story, but we only get glimpses of it. It does end up being an effective integration of the character into the series though, as she tortures the captured Echo by strapping her into the imprint chair and inflicting pure mental pain, stripping her down to a blank slate and removing anything that might act as a buffer for the suffering. It's sadistic as hell, and fits right into the creepy moral atmosphere that the show strives to get into at its best.

So that's an interesting switch, but Whedon and pals aren't content to stop there, since they're probably trying to fit in as many of their planned plot points as possible before the expected cancellation. Olivia Williams and Topher mount a rescue operation, planning to get Echo out of the DC Dollhouse and figure out what's going on with the Senator plan. This leads to the introduction of another character, the DC equivalent of Williams' character, played by an ever-smirking Ray Wise (he was apparently in Twin Peaks, but I grew to love the bastard in that silly Reaper show from a year or two ago; god, he was hilarious there, playing Satan as a playful, jokey douchebag). He doesn't get to do much though; the real conflict is between Topher and Summer Glau, who make the expected goo-goo eyes at each other while scheming against each other at every turn. And to really liven things up, Topher programs Victor as a copy of himself to help out back at the LA Dollhouse, meaning Enver Gjokaj gets to do his chameleon thing again and imitate a member of the cast. It's hilarious; he manages to nail Fran Kranz's delivery, a note-perfect imitation of every physical quirk, vocal inflection, and facial expression that Topher does. It's fucking uncanny and very funny, with Topher taking full advantage of having a double, making jokes, silly comments, and exclamations about Summer Glau's hotness to himself like he's suddenly got a twin brother who is a perfect confidante.

Anyway, various factions all get to fight over Echo and the senator, Summer Glau has a mysterious, devious plan that might or might not make sense (but if it doesn't, it's just because she's crazy! Easy out, writers!), Agent Helo gets all morally weirded out because his ex-doll ex-girlfriend ex-neighbor (who has been roped into the whole thing as a witness) questions what the hell he's doing working for the bad guys, and Echo even ends up escaping and heading off on her own, leaving the possibilities for the next (last) few episodes pretty open-ended. That's a hell of a lot to fit into two hours, and it works, surprisingly.

That's the thing about Whedon, and this show in particular. It can be pretty dumb, with even the best episodes featuring silly plot devices like the Punch-In-The-Face Miracle Cure (yes, that one shows up here again), but when it's on, it can be pretty damn amazing, with heady sci-fi ideas, good characterization (and acting), laugh-out-loud humor, genuinely surprising plot twists, and interesting moral questions, like the senator's dilemma over whether he wants to be his "real" self or his programmed self. Who knew that the silly Eliza Dushku vehicle about a sexy prostitute and her wacky mental adventures could turn into something so good? Sure, cancellation sucks, but the fact that this show became so compelling is nothing less than a miracle, and I can't complain about that.

5 Minutes of Law & Order: UK, the first episode

The best part of the British version of Law & Order is the opening line, because the voice-over guy says "crown prosecutor" instead of "district attorney", and that confuses the American brain into thinking that one has fallen into a parallel universe, and maybe it's the parallel universe where you're paid to rub your soft penis on a warm balloon all day. But then the music kicks in, and it kicks in like a baby pony with a broken femur. And then the credits roll, and it gets worse, because the crown prosecutor is shown wearing those robes and those wigs that British people make their lawyers wear out of some thousand year old grudge, and it's just--nobody can watch that. Seriously, nobody can watch that. It's horrible. And while it's a vague nerd-friendly kind of drug to hear Battlestar Galactica's Apollo speak the king's, it's still a Pabst slobber where a Meth stutter is required. So turn it off, and wait for the day that Dick Wolf gets sociopathic enough to produce a Law & Order spin off set in some former Eastern Bloc country.

Fringe: "Snakehead" by Matthew J. Brady

Some shows start out dumb but manage to get smarter, or at least make the most of their silly premise (see: Dollhouse). And then there's Fringe, which seems to get lamer each week. The plot of this episode is hard to explain, mostly because it's stupid enough to cause a neck sprain when ashamedly shaking one's head while doing so. It has to do with illegal Chinese immigrants who have been infected with a genetically-engineered hookworm that grows to giant size and then bursts out of their mouths, Alien-style. This is done because regular-size worms are used as a remedy for asthma, so if you grow them big, they must be a cure-all, able to fix any disease, right? So the smuggling plot gets discovered when a boat sinks and 27 bodies wash up on the shore with freaky tentacled things hanging out of their mouths. Yuck. Me, I was reminded of the second season of The Wire, but this being Fringe, those worthless non-Americans are mostly forgotten in favor of plots about Walter trying to learn to function on his own without Peter watching his every move and Astrid getting beat up by Chinese thugs who follow her home yet somehow get there ahead of her. Seriously, this show needs to stop taking itself so seriously. These characters are much more interesting when they're not angsting about the direction of their lives.

 

Actually, one immigrant gets a bit of focus: a little girl, who we can be scared is going to die, even though we know she won't. This is at least the third young kid in the show's history who has been threatened by some monster or other in order to drum up some fake drama; if they really want us to be scared, they need to actually have one of them die at some point. That's right, I'm calling you out, Fringe! Kill a child, or I'll never believe you have the balls to actually be scary! An attractive woman would also suffice; that's another category of character that gets threatened regularly without actually being on the receiving end of real violence. Sure, the ugly men suffer all the time, but that's an easy target. Make me believe, guys.

Three minutes of some episode of Glee where they sang that Rolling Stones song about not getting what you want

You know how there's a certain group of people who claim that reality shows are destroying people's capacity for empathy and sucking the art out of entertainment? All of those people should be forced to watch this sequence of television--where a protein deficient harpy screeches at a patronizing audience of baby booming shitheels while stock racial figures dance their store bought choreography, complete with a wheelchair kid--until their eyes bleed out of their fucking sockets. No joke, no sarcasm, no snark, no nothing: this is the most evil thing that's on television, and the fact that this saccharine piece of Bury Your Head In Your Past, All Your Children are Special pornography is considered a "guilty pleasure" by people capable of eating something more complex than granulated mush provides the most obvious reason why every citizen of Earth should pump as much carbon dioxide into the air as is physically possible. The sooner the California-based production companies that produce this tripe sinks into the goddamn ocean, the better.

Dexter: "Hello Dexter Morgan" by Tucker Stone

In preparation for the sure-to-disappoint season finale of Dexter, certain boxes were necessarily ticked off this past week. The first was the removal of the Christine/Reporter/Irritating Side Character from the playing board, and while it's a bit disappointing that one didn't get to see her brains blossom out of her skull after spending so much of this sleazy season watching her prance around nude, there's a delicious irony to be found in the fact that her character took her life onscreen--after all, Courtney Ford spent most of this season earning quite a bit of empathy from ye olde audience. Stuck in the pole position that is the Unbelievable and Poorly Scripted Plot Twist, performing increasingly uncomfortable sex scenes opposite the wooden and incomprehensible Detective Quinn, and then finding out that her real life husband would forever be considered the George Lazenby of Superman actors while this terrible season aired--she didn't deserve any of that, because the only people who deserve that much bad luck are eating salisbury steak on death row, and Courtney's got a clean record. Giving her a decent scene in which to actually act--hey, it turns out, she isn't that bad--as well as blow her fucking head off before this disappointing stretch of embarrassing writing choices draws to a close? It reads like a fringe benefit, similar to when those people on Friends were given free cars by desperate car companies obsessed with trickle-down marketing.

Besides Ford, this episode spent about half of its runtime applying tourniquets to its various subplots, mostly so that the final hour can focus on Dexter versus Lithgow--Angel & LaGuerta marry to save their jobs, Dexter frames and kills a non-Lithgow suspect to provide a window of revenge freedom, while Rita blurts out the whole "kissed the neighbor" confession with the same get it done mentality that encompassed that twist when it actually occurred. And then, Lithgow-having realized that Dexter is more than meets the eye--walks up to him and introduces himself. Boom? Of course, if you made the mistake of watching last week's "on the next Dexter", the episode's final thirty seconds were completely blown, but hey, your bad for doing that. What, you actually like this show, says the network? Fuck you, you like it now? Hey, no, where you going? Hey, look! And then this is going to happen!

In all likelihood, there's going to be a great scene or two on Sunday's season finale. John Lithgow knows who Dexter Morgan is now, and there's no reason why he won't come at him with all knuckles. Due to the continued success of the show and the guarantee of another season, Dexter will get the upper hand, he'll say something that's got a 50% shot at being non-horrible, and then the show will close on some cornball tableau of Dexter's life with those plastic boxes of flesh he keeps calling a family. It'll be a shitty episode, because it's been a shitty season, and the people who waited for it on DVD will probably enjoy it more, because they can just fast forward through all the scenes that don't involve the two serial killers. 

They'll make another chunk of these next year. Those will probably be bad too. 

But it will still be better than Glee, which is the worst piece of fucking shit that I've seen since that one time my brother and I went and saw the fucking Da Vinci Code, and he kept leaning over and going "classic flick, this is a classic flick, they made a classic flick out of a classic read". This totally beats the shit out of that. It also is better than having a disease, or trying to get a job when you can't read.

-Matthew J. Brady & Tucker Stone, 2009

Comments

[Chris Jones]

Man, I've never even seen Glee but a lot of people in my age group sure seem to love it. It's really that bad?

[Kenny Cather]

Glee is awful for all the reasons you listed, but my wife *loves* it, so I watch it with her because it makes her happy. Does this make me a bad person?

I *really* want to watch the Mad Max trilogy again.... The Road Warrior is such an amazing sequel.

[Jacob]

Aw, I was hoping to see the Sons of Anarchy finale reviewed.

Glee's songs are actually decent, but the story is just so bad. It's just so cliche.

[Sean Witzke]

Glee is Election made by people who never saw Election. Also they think Kelly Clarkson is like, an actual artist.

[Tim O'Neil]

Wait a minute. No Kelly Clarkson bashing. I swear to God I will write a couple thousands words about why My December is an overlooked masterpiece.

[Lavina]

That's really what pisses me off about Dollhouse. Joss sells out for most of the first season, and some of the second season, and the moment they announce cancellation, it gets so effin' good that you hate the cancellation. The last two episodes of Dollhouse is really the kind of Whedonesque quality (minus some of the humor) that's been missing from the rest of the show.

[Lugh]

Funny, the advertising campaign for Glee led me to believe it was some sort of parody. Not that I'd know, having never watched it. Looks like I did the right thing, for once.

[Lavina]

PS: Maybe this will mean Joss going back to web programming. More Dr. Horrible, please

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http://www.qualityresearch.org.uk

[Mr. Rendón]

I'm pretty sure Ryan Murphy was doing Election before Election came out, on a show called Popular. And a young gay place kicker teaching his football team to dance to "Single Ladies" in order to score the winning TD has SO been done before.