SPOILERS about DOLLHOUSE ahead:
It's been a while since I've written anything here, since not every episode of television I've watched has riveted me for a while. Until this week's Dollhouse that is. By the way, if you haven't seen it yet, get on out of here and go watch it (then come back, obviously). Fringe has been good, very good even, other Dollhouse eps have been good, Terminator's done, so is BSG, Lost has been, well, Lost.
Seriously, SPOILERS. Biggest spoiler of the season ... probably, I mean maybe the finale will top it, but we'll see. It's just one shot I'm talking about, but I'll get to that down a bit.
Seriously, I like what Whedon and company do with their metaphors, symbolism, plot parallels and so on. I like that they flip things completely on their ears and that in this show, blood seems to come out every time they do it. It's frightening, the world of Dollhouse. I thought about comparing the complete limbo of conventional morality in this show to that in Battlestar, but this is a far more decadent animal. The characters in BSG all got pushed to great heights of moral utilitarianism, doing the best they could in a situation that threatened the extinction of every human being alive. But not Dollhouse. Those stakes don't exist here, in fact ... I don't know what the stakes are having just re-read that.
In Dollhouse, so far the greatest risks have been of losing a favourite character, perhaps, or if you want to get really grand, the technology on showcase has considerable threat if you consider that it could (and has) been used against people's will. But they have complicated all the other stances. Apparenly, the dolls are volunteers, and they get paid (somehow) when their stint is done. But they have illustrated, without really getting very grand with the stakes at all this week, just how dangerous the Dollhouse is.
I was feeling apprehensive watching the top of this week's episode because I had read a synopsis stating that Alpha would reveal himself. Now, everyone who's seen a horror film knows, if you build suspense that hinges on an unseen threat, you'd better make that threat materialize in a scary, credible way. A lot or horror films and tv screw this up. I think Dollhouse just did the exact opposite. It's easy to lose your grip on what this show is - it's sometimes a detective story, drama, sci-fi, action, thriller, and so far, horror only as an afterthought or, yes, a threat. So when Alan Tudyk suddenly walked right at the camera and viciously cut into Victor's face - having spent the rest of the episode aping an agoraphobic envoronmental geek, the threat was about as credible as anything I've ever seen. And that was the shot I was talking about.
The turnaround in tone was so abrupt, it was as though you were watching a PG-rated cop drama, where people say darn and heck, and suddenly it becomes an R-rated psychological thriller in which a simple break in becomes an assault, a rape, even. I was scared shitless.
I've had some trouble with the show, partly because I don't think Dushku is up to the task (that would challenge the very best actors out there), partly because of the aformentioned multi-genre free for all that places in the show, like the dolls, in constant identity flux. But I want to know where this goes and I pray FOX lets us find out for more than one episode forward.
And finally, as though it wasn't clear enough: I always knew I liked Alan Tudyk. I knew that because I liked Wash in Firefly, and even that bit part in Knocked Up. But Christ. In what must have amounted to about 3 minutes of screen time at the end of the episode, he blew the goddamn shoes of every other character in this show. Later this week, I gather he'll be back, and we'll see if he can keep that fever pitch of absolute psychotic villany up on high. Personally, I expect he can.
