(Warning – this is more of a series review than an episode review. It’s long, and very spoily.)

Technically speaking, the finale was breathtakingly perfect. It was exciting. The special effects were gorgeous. The emotions were powerful. The final outcome (Would they rescue Hera? Would they all die? Would Cavil get away with his plan?) was always in doubt. Tory was finally punished for killing Callie, Boomer for, well, everything. Anders finally amounted to something. Starbuck fulfilled her destiny. Most of the plot lines, and all of the recent ones, were wrapped up in a nice little ball. And when Roslin died, I broke down and cried for the rest of the episode.

So BSG ‘worked’, if you will. It was an emotional, powerful story. It had strong, interesting characters. The plot was coherent, for a TV show at least. The music and cinematography were beautiful. But in the end, it all came down to the biblical book of Ecclesiastes. “There is nothing new under the sun.” = “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.” Yeah, yeah. History repeats itself. Life is a cycle. Can we break the cycle? And since they intentionally forgot their history, we’re probably doomed to repeat it too. Oh – and the god who is “beyond good and evil” still conveniently wants to stop violence. They took the easy way out.

I’m not sure what I was expecting. BSG was like a big mystery novel, or perhaps like a serious Hitchhiker’s Guide. The question: What is life? What is its meaning? What defines humanity? Throughout the series, they kept dropping clues. Prophecies. Harvey Six and Harvey Baltar. The time capsule/disease thing. The ‘final five’. Starbuck generally. The Eye of Jupiter. The Arrow of Athena. The magic cave, complete with its star chart. Kobal. The opera house. And on and on. They were building up endlessly, each new discovery a piece of the secret, a new revelation, enough to provide insight while still building up the importance of the final discovery. I expected some incredible revelation, some insight into what it really means to be human. And all we got was “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.” All of that buildup, all that tension? It was nothing but a big red herring, with a slight hint of Deus Ex Mechina.

I had honestly thought that, “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again,” was the red herring. After all, that’s not interesting, is it? If you can’t affect the future, if it’s all futile, then why even try? Yes, there was some indication that they might have changed something (via the Harveys), but then they showed an extended shot of a dancing robot (we’re doomed). And so, the potent images of the previous seasons amounted to nothing. The opera house scene had been so strange so threatening. Caprica Six and Baltar were taking Hera, taking her away from Athena and Roslin, and from the human race. All hope was lost, it seemed. The replay/projection of the opera house scene, running through Galactaca, was beautiful, provocative – but Six and Baltar were on the same side as Roslin and Athena. They just didn’t notice them. The scene didn’t mean anything, and lost its bite. The same with D’Anna apologizing to the image, and the Arrow, the ramblings of the hybrids, even Starbuck’s death, came to little or nothing. Leoben’s obsession with Starbuck was apparently nothing more than his realizing that Starbuck was some sort of angel. It was all just so… pointless.

I suppose I had hoped, foolish computer scientist me, that the series would try to provide insight on what it means to be human, and the Cylons relationship to that. Why are the ‘humans’ human, and the Cylons not? What defines it? Do humans have souls, and Cylons not? What is emotion, do Cylons really have it, and is that the humanizing factor? In the end, the humans accepted as human only those Cylons (Athena, Caprica, and the final five), for whom they had developed emotional attachments to before they knew they were Cylons!

Now, they certainly tried to make the Cylons humanized to some extent – the Cylon repair crews, the Cylon seat on the Quorum, the Cylon acceptance of human military leadership, the Centurions being given their freedom, etc. But all of this fall under the category of ‘telling’ rather than ’showing’. We didn’t ever see anything from a Cylon perspective. In the end, they were still ‘other’, still machines. Humans are still the ‘real thing’, and we still don’t know what that even means!

Just to make this point, here’s an off-the-top-of-my-head chart of noticeable Human characters vs. noticeable Cylon characters, ordered very roughly in order of importance. I’m not including the final five – although they’re really humans, just in Cylon bodies. X’s mean the character is dead, ?’s mean I wasn’t sure if the character merited inclusion.

I know I’m missing some other important humans, but here’s the point. Except for Caprica, Gina, Boomer, Athena, and D’Anna, there aren’t any real Cylon characters. They are as faceless as the Centurions, or as the red-shirt deck hands (who usually at least had names!). And this is where I think BSG missed the boat. In the beginning, it worked – the Cylons have a sort of shared existence, per model. Then Caprica, Boomer, and Athena ‘broke away’, and then D’Anna (who was still working as a hive mind, just often at odds with the other Cylons). And that was it. D’Anna was the only Cylon not defined by her relationship with humans. Sure, they had the random scenes with the repair teams, and the Six in the council, but it was too little, too late. They didn’t give any names, any numbers, we couldn’t distinguish them, they didn’t seem. well, human. The question of defining humanity, or even worth is left almost untouched.

To be sure, there were flashes. The group scenes with the Cylons on New Caprica, Adama bonding with Athena, Baltar interacting with Gina. But it all fell short. Here’s what I think: instead of those endless dead-weight episodes about Lee, Lee and Kara, Anders and Kara, etc. (You know – the I want to be a lawyer bit), etc., they could have introduced some different Six characters – some who weren’t defined by having been mistaken for a human. Tricia Helfer looks so different with different hair, it would have been easy. And we all know that Lucy Lawless can portray an amazing array of characters, even when they all look alike – why didn’t they write that? Leoben, too – I really would have liked to understand his perspective. All we have now is that he’s creepily obsessed with Starbuck. Was is just one Leoben? All of them? If just one, what do the others think about it? What do the Leoben group discussions sound like?

In other words, the Cylons started out as machines. The humans saw them that way, they saw themselves that way. As time went on it became clear that either it was more complicated than that, or that it didn’t really matter (and in that case, what does? They never tried to touch that either.) But all we got were exceptions. A few humans fall in love with a few Cylons, and vice versa. There was no universal ’sentientizing’ (for lack of a better word) of the Cylons. Even more, by the Significant Eight having been created by the Final Five, the eight were robbed of much of their remaining individuality.

At the very end, they free the Centurions – thus recognizing them as having worth as well. But none of the Centurions had names or were individuals, so this just doesn’t have any impact. BSG simply missed it. They missed the question of strong AI, of defining humanity, of discussing why we think it’s important to treat people as people.

You know what would be interesting? Instead of this Caprica prequal series, what about a series about the Centurions. Make them individuals, and take it seriously. Not like a Wall-E, etc. or like the robots on Star Wars, but make them real characters, with real problems. I don’t know what changes that would take (voices, perhaps?), but it would be very interesting and enlightening.

I think that individualizing the Cylons, even to the point making the series half Cylon would have been so much more interesting. For one thing, it’s never been done before, not so far as I know. For another, it would help with this complaint about the fate of the women on the show (they’re either dead or coupled, if you didn’t notice). A dozen named Sixes and Eights, would have changed the demographics of the ending dramatically.

One more example of how individualizing the Cylons would have been interesting: The Gina/Cain story. Gina was mostly interesting first as the rape victim who impacts Baltar, and second as having dramatically influenced Cain to be a horrible person (and they messed that up too). But they constantly refused to let us see it from Gina’s point of view. She was just – well, not a machine, but more of a creature, something to be pitied. I always felt like Gina really loved Cain, but felt she had to ‘do her duty to her people’. She didn’t want to betray Cain, and thus felt betrayed in turn. Sort of a mirror of the Baltar/Caprica Six relationship, if you will, only more tragic. But we missed all that (if that was indeed the intention), since Cain was portrayed as a monster and then killed, and Gina was completely opaque. For that matter, even Caprica was mostly opaque – we mostly see Baltar’s side of the story.

I’ll stop rambling now. I think I’ve made my point.

In the end, BSG was an excellent series. It was well made, riveting, and at least a bit more equitable than most series. But I just can’t help but wish that they had been a bit more groundbreaking, that they had tried to answer the hard questions, instead of falling back on a trite theme.

I sorry, but I don’t believe that repetition is the meaning of life. If it is – life’s pretty stupid.

With Call The Doctor, Sleater-Kinney begins to sound like, well, Sleater-Kinney! Their first album was very riot-grrl, with some flashes of later beyond-riot-grrl brilliance, but Call The Doctor is the beginning of the real thing. The guitars parts are more complex, with bigger riffs and less simple chords. The rhythms are more complex. The songs are longer. The lyrics are more complicated.

Call The Doctor is a very serious album. Riot-grrl (and S-K’s first album) is always serious, of course, but it’s also enraged, angry, out of control. Punk in general, for that matter, tends to have that lack of control, that simple “pounding it out” sound. If riot-grrl is an expression of bottled-up rage, a release of pure anger at the faults of the world, Call The Doctor is more an impassioned argument. It’s rational, reasonable, intelligent – and incredibly personal. And still angry. We’re still being screamed at, but at the same time we know that we deserve it, and moreover, why.

What’s on this album?

Now for fun with stats! (Why this? I just want to know!)

Who sings, and on how many songs?
Corin: 8
Carrie: 1
Both: 3

Lora: 1?

Fast? Slow? Other tempo?
Fast (>130bpm): 6
Middling: 3
Slow (<80bpm): 2

The songs themselves

Call The Doctor

Lyrically:

A song about being different. At some level, I think it is about being gay: “this is love and you can’t make it / i’m your monster i’m not like you / all your life is written for you” It’s also about being a woman: “your life is good for one thing / … / they want to simplify your needs and likes / to sterilize you” More generally, though, it’s about deviancy, almost in a medical sense: they need to Call the Doctor to fix you.

But: You. Are. Not. Me.

Notice how the point of view shifts. They want to socialize ‘you’, but later it’s ‘my’ life. That’s the point – it’s not you or me. It’s Them. Even if you/we disagree, seem like monsters to each other, we’re in the same boat.

And then there’s the Contradiction:
“I’m your monster i’m not like you”
“I’m no monster i’m not like you”
“I’m no monster i’m just like you”

And that’s the essential argument: I’m a monster? No, you’re the monster. No, we’re actually the same.

Musically:

CtD is in a minor key. The melody is simple – most S-K melodies are – the main motif starts on the second, moves to the third, back to the second, and down to the tonic. But, the tonic is really less important than the second. CtD never really cadences – it’s uncertain throughout, right up to the end, when the song suddenly stops.

The screaming of “You Are Not Me” is highly effective here. It’s really more of an effect than an actual scream. It seems so impersonal, like the ocean, enveloping the listener. It’s as if it is saying, “you are not me, and there’s nothing you can do to change that. Just accept it.”

Hubcap

A simple song about control, setting the mood for the album. Hubcap is… utterly creepy. The drums cause this, I think; they are quite non-typical, and seem to be chasing something, or someone.

I’m not sure who exactly this song is about, but someone obviously doesn’t want them to think, to act! “you’re my co-pilot / not my god pilot” is, of course, a reference to the movie/book (god is my co-pilot) I haven’t seen the movie, but it in any case is yet another reference to control.

Interestingly, the middle of this song is sung in harmony. Not something S-K does often.

Little Mouth

Is about a prostitute. Short, and to the point. The listener is put into the position of the person buying the services of the prostitute. Very scary. It’s a different perspective – it invites you to objectify and deride her, while at the same time be horrified by the way you are treating her.

Corin’s vocal performance in this song is astonishing. The ostinato “i’m your little, i’m your little…,etc” is done in only two breaths, and the intensity never, never stops or lightens even a little bit.

Amazing.

Anonymous

Who wants to be anonymous? This woman does, apparently. She wants the easy way out, for no one to notice her, for no one to bother her. And, well – that’s not honest. That will make her unhappy.

I love the way Corin spits out the word an-on-y-mous. That alone tells us what

Anonymous is the first of many “story” songs – telling us about one particular person.

Stay Where You Are

Yet another song about being trapped. It would almost be redundant, but the vocals make it different than the previous song.

Carrie has the main vocal part, and her voice lends an almost sarcastic touch. “She’s dead if you want and that’s me if you want.” And she wants to “burn up the place”! She’s “bad because she wants to set things on fire” because, after all, we wouldn’t want to upset the status quo, would we?

Good Things

This song starts out quietly, then builds. Corin’s voice starts out softly, almost pleasantly, “got this feeling…”, and then turns immediately hard “…when I heard your name the other day”, and by the time she reaches the end of the verse “…weight crushing down on my face”, she’s almost spitting the words out.

It’s about a breakup – or perhaps a friendship ruined by romantic interest. They’re trying to fix it, but despite the last line, “this time it’ll be okay” the singer doesn’t really seem to believe it herself. Why do good thing never want to stay.

I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

The dance number on this album. It’s about… wrestling on the bedroom floor? I don’t know much about the overall cultural impact of Joey Ramone, but I thought this song was just about the singer wanting to be as important to her significant other as Joey Ramone was. It’s a slightly silly (and very danceable!) song. Tons of fun. Not too serious.

Random people on the internet did have some other theories, though, ranging from “She feels like she’s not famous because of her gender,” to “She wants to be the hot lead singer so all the straight girls will lust after her” (?!). Weird. I still think it’s simply the one light moment on a very deep album.

Taking Me Home

A song about objectification. In this case, the singer is… confused about it. She’s supposed to be free, supposed to be a real person. Why do they treat her like this? She’s “…mixed up with someone else”. Who would invite that kind of treatment.

It’s an interesting idea – the mystery of the patriarchy, if you will. Why is it like it is? Not how it came about, but why? It hurts almost everybody. Is it just confusion? It’s not supposed to be this way.

Taste Test

The Contradiction returns:
“I’m tired, I’m hurt, I’m fine.”

Another song about confusion, but desperate this time. Why can’t she find her? Why is he always making her guess? How can she make it right? Where is she, anyway?

The guitar playing is absolutely incredible on this song, especially on the chorus. It dips down into a lower registers, an underscore for the whole passage. Then, it returns to the starting point, the protagonist confused more than ever.

My Stuff

What do we teach children? Some say, indoctrinate them with the ‘right’ beliefs. Others say, let them decide for themselves. And, we don’t like our traditional beliefs. We want a “clean slate”. But than we’re “without a path”. So, “it doesn’t work that way”

It’s even more about confusion, I suppose. The underscoring guitars return. This time, though, the confusing is bigger. In Taste Test, it was confusion about one person. Now, it’s confusion about how to pass on beliefs.

I’m Not Waiting

And now, perhaps, we move to the child’s perspective. When should she grow up? What does that even mean? Is it only how you look in a swimsuit?

Musically, this song is heavy, pounding. Corin spits out every word, almost with distaste. It’s an exploration of maturity, of the anger that comes with it.

Heart Attack

My personal track on this album.

Lyrically:

Death. It could come at any time, you know. Some people are paranoid, like the in the song. You might get sick – throw everything out! Germs! Take medicine! Watch out! Live life as if it was the last moment you had – but try to stop it from ending, too!

What is death, anyway? Why do we fear it? Why don’t we want to stop existing, anyway? Or, go to the afterlife, if we believe in that? Either way, we can’t really help it. And yet, we worry endlessly about it.

Musically:

Heart Attack is very understated. There’s the ‘heart attack’ riff, a little, simple arpeggio. Then a little feedback squeal, and we’re into the second section – but it’s only a bit more intense, with none of the power one might expect from the squeal. See, worrying about death isn’t just an occasional thing – it’s constant. Not too big of a deal, most of the time, but occasionally we get that little squeal, and it comes closer.

Conclusion:

Thematic movement in Call the Doctor:

They try to control those who are differeny (Call the Doctor)
Control and prostitution (Hubcap, Little Mouth)
Control – Give in, avoid it (Anonymous)
Control – We don’t have it (Stay Where You Are)
Control of relationships (Good Things)
Interlude (Joey Ramone)
Control of bodies, lives (Taking Me Home)
Control of relationships, scared, desperate this time (Taste Test)
Control of the future (My Stuff)
Control of ourselves – do we have it (I’m not waiting)
Control of our lives – death (Heart Attack)

Call the Doctor is about control, about power. Who has it? Who wants it? And ultimately, we all lose control, die – but we can still feel, we can still do some things, even if we are limited and oppressed.

I loved the last episode of the L Word.

Well, maybe not quite loved – really, really, really liked. Lived, perhaps. (Get it? Liked + Loved? I’ll stop now. I usually don’t make horrible puns, but somehow it feels okay here. I think I’m high on L Word juice, or something)

Warning: This going to be super long – I have a lot of feelings at the moment.

Quick summary: I liked the Alice/Tasha/Jamie resolution. Sure, it was a bit artificial in the beginning, but it worked here. And I liked Helena and Dylan’s fight. It never made sense that they would make up so quickly. And I was sure that Jenny had screwed up the impersonation of Nikki’s manager. I felt relieved that Shane found Molly’s letter and the negatives. I loved nearly every scene with Tina and Bette. And I especially liked the last five minutes. (I’ll get to that in a minute.)

Alice/Tasha/Jamie. Threesome waiting to happen. And, I kind of wish it had. But, in real life (so I’m told) those things almost never turn into real relationships. Either the ‘third’ is the third wheel (and is only in it for sex), or one of the original couple gets jealous/falls for the third/both. The only way it can work is if the whole thing consists of nothing but sex, or if the people involved are very, very unusual. I can’t see Tasha “thinking is cheating” even coming close. And, I think she came back for the same reason. She was attracted to Jamie, but she never thought about it. Once she thought about it, she realized that she really wanted to be with Alice. Jamie was just a temporary attraction.

Helena and Dylan. Are one fucked up couple. Full Stop. They were weird back when they were playing ‘power sex’ that got caught on video tape. They were weird when Dylan couldn’t make herself do the right thing regarding the lawsuit, and yet still obviously loved Helena. And they are weird now, what with cutting clothes up with a knife and all. And, I think they still have a bunch of cycles to go before they work it out, or finally give it up. There’s just not time in eight episodes. I think that that’s okay, though. IC showed us just enough to make me happy.

That is one of the things I really liked about the finale, by the way. One of the stupid things about the L Word, has always been the assumption that the audience consists of idiots. The sledgehammer foreshadowing, they endless scenes of talking head exposition, the spelled out references, like this one:

[paraphrasing!]
Bette: “Lez girls. Cute, Jenny.”
Shane: “Like les girls. Nice play on words.”

Yeah…

We were never allowed to assume anything, to guess anything, to figure anything out. But thanks to time constraints in the finale, they allowed us to guess at a few things (the banister rail being an exception). The fate of Tasha/Alice, for example, and the future of Helena/Dylan for another.

!!!INSANE TANGENT WARNING!!!

I really wish the sequel was about Helena. Picture this: Helena, finding herself rather broke (through some unknown means), leverages her prison smarts, and becomes a big shot crime boss. Dylan is her on again, off again, girlfriend who insists on keeping a separate identity through her film-making. Helena would knock people around, sleep with hot cops to keep them quiet (and she’d play blackjack! and eff hookers! [sorry]), blow up Mormon churches (for being anti-gay!) (oooh, and the Mormons would be like the rival mob!) and all the while Helena would rule the criminal underworld with an elegant fist. At the end of the whole thing, Dylan would be killed by the cops by mistake when she stumbles into a big fight, and Helena would go on an insane rampage, and when they finally corner her, she has a bottle of wine in one hand, a detonator in the other, and she’s like, “<British Accent>Bloody Hell. Oh, fuck it all…</British Accent>” and she punches the detonator and blows up a whole city block!

Soooo… that was nuts. Hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?

Back to the L Word.

!!!END INSANE TANGENT WARNING!!!

Where was I? Oh, yes, Shane and Jenny. Shane’s storyline finally came together, for once. I never really cared for Shane, honestly – sure she was interesting (and hot!) the first season, but the whole ‘that’s Shane. She fucks a lot of girls.’ shtick got really old, really fast. Then came Carmen, who Shane dumped, and Paige, who Shane dumped, and probably a bunch of others I’m forgetting. And the whole Shay incident. Ok, we get it now – Shane has commitment issues. She also has no spine, despite her baby butchy demeanor. Why, oh, why, oh why can’t she change? Develop? Just a little bit? Then came Shenny, and the Shenny ’shippers were happy. The rest of us didn’t get it. What – another one for her to dump? What was the point? I think the point is: that Jenny was the first person who wouldn’t let Shane go. Sure, that girl in the first season was clingy, but she didn’t buy Nikki Stevens for 25,000 dollars! Shane is trapped. Will she break out? We assumed she wouldn’t – we didn’t have any reason to. But Shane actually did it! She found Molly’s jacket and decided that enough was enough. She didn’t get a change to actually do it – but her interaction with Alice, both at the party and before (at Alice’s) led me to believe that’s she’d really do it. She finally figured it out. (And by the way – yay for the understatement, again!)

That brings us to Jenny, who wasn’t nearly as despicable as she has been. Jenny’s just… crazy, really. Not clinically insane, but just her own brand of personal crazy. The season 2 acid trips with the circus clowns represent the worst of this. But I don’t mind her obsession that Bette admit to having an affair with Kelly. She honestly feels justified. And, her video project was really sweet and non-creepy.

Finally, Tina and Bette. Who had the sweetest and hottest sex and post-sex scenes ever. I’m so happy they ended up together. I always wished that TiBette hadn’t broken up at the beginning. We needed a strong central couple to hold the crazy together, and their breaking up was the worst thing in the show. Still, I think that there is closure now. And perhaps their new New York lesbian circle will be just as crazy, only they’ll be smart enough to hold it together themselves. Funny, TiBette is my favorite couple, but I can’t seem to find much to say about them here! Still – love, love, loved.

A few random bits: “Bye, Daddy.” Completely unnecessary. After ONE day at the zoo. I expect this show to be stupid, but when did it become hetero-normative? (He was in drag at the time, I suppose…) Also – they completely wasted Lucy Lawless. She’s seriously one of the best living actors, if not THE best. They could have at least put her face on camera more than twice! And Shane’s ‘voice over’ at the beginning was too extended. I felt like I was watching Sugar Rush!

Finale:

But these little nitpicks aren’t the point. Neither is the silliness all this season, or the disappointments seasons past. I think I’ve finally figured it out.

Near the very end of the episode, Jenny (as Ilene Chaikan) is sitting in front of the camera, saying goodbye. At first, of course, I thought, “Oh, great. IC’s finally gone off the deep end. Silly Meglomanaic!” But as the credits began to roll, as the cars drove up, as the women disembarked, walking, no, sashaying across the LA skyline, their bodies standing out like paintings, almost glowing, I realized: We’ve all been so wrong. The L Word isn’t a ‘realistic show’, a drama, a dramady, even a melodrama. It’s epic fantasy, in the tradition of, say, Gilgamesh or Faerie Queene or even Dune or Lord of the Rings.

Because the world is so, well, enormous and different. It’s the L Word, where all the woman are strong and beautiful, the men are mostly idiots, and the children are way, way above average. Goddesses abound. Bette may screw up, but when she does, it’s huge. She falls like a stone, at a pace mere mortals can’t began to follow. We can only worship. Marina’s the Succubus who when she can’t have her victim, tries to kill herself. When Alice outs somebody, she does it on national TV. Shane can’t just sleep with a few dozen girls – she has to sleep with thousands. And when Helena steps in shit, she does it in $40,000 boots.

I think it’s the theme song that fooled us. “The way that we live,” and all that. We said, “that’s not the way we live!” And it wasn’t. So we were angry. We took it at face value, thinking that they were at least trying tell the truth, and we missed the fantasy. Dana was another source of confusion. She was relateable, friendly, identifiable. We made the show about her – and missed that she was everywoman, the one source of real humanity in the whole fantastic mess.

It wasn’t the typical ‘epic struggle’, or course. No ‘Good against Evil’ or ‘Woman against God’. It was about love, friendship, of course, but not in the way we normally expect. Instead, it almost exists in stasis, a series of character portraits who are destined to act in a particular way, rather than let us identify with them.

Which is why we didn’t understand Jenny. Jenny was… us. Us, and IC. Jenny’s the one who dreamed the world into existence, or rather stepped through the looking glass to find it. That’s why she thought it was all about her – she didn’t catch the epic nature of it either. And that’s why she had to die. The world began with her. It could only end with her.

So as the final credits rolled, the characters blowing past the camera, back into that huge storybook called LA, the theme song (which sounded amazing without vocals, by the way), I had chills down my spine. The L Word succeeded, not because of wonderful stories, not because of meaningful human insight, but because the characters, the world, were so big, so different.

Lesbians, Loving, Lying, Laughing…

Anyway, the ghost story thing. Couple was estranged in death, so they possess the bodies of the nearest handy living people to be reunited. Yes, this has been done before. But they did it pretty well, and I happen to have a soft spot for that sort of thing – so I really liked it. There’s really not much to say about the main plot, though.

Two things: First, isn’t it interesting how the wizards are obviously stronger than both the seeker and confessor combined? It’s as if the seeker is only important because of the prophecies. It’s an interesting concept, really. I tend to be a bit obsessed with free will, myself, and the idea that there might not be any bothers me. That said, there is a sort of romantic thrill to this idea of determinism, though – especially when it’s wrapped up in a prophecy. We know Richard is going to kill the bad guy, but does it matter how much or little of a hero he is otherwise?  They need to explore this more.

Second, I loved the ending bit. “Oh, look, a tracking cloud.” “I’ll cast a simple spell to get rid of it.” There’s <i>got</i> to be more to this than that!

Much better than last week’s!

On further watching – Sugar Rush really is SoN on acid. I still don’t feel like rooting for any particular couple, but Kim is much more identifiable than I thought, and I do want her to find love. But the really interesting bit comes at the end of season 1, when they decide to run away from home. SoN did the same thing, only… not.

In SoN they ran away, the car ran out of gas, they hid in a restaurant, called the dad, and were threatened by a conveniently placed pervert (or was it an imaginary pervert?). It was all very after-school-specially.

Moral: Don’t run away from home.

In Sugar Rush, they run away, drive like idiots with no apparent repercussions, rent an obscenely expensive hotel room with the mom’s credit card, and have sex all night before the police manage to track them down.

Moral: Uhh…. Credit card theft rocks?

Yeah.

Honestly, I wouldn’t want my kids (should I ever have them) to watch Sugar Rush before they turn at least 17 or so. SoN is obviously more teen-appropriate. Still – there’s no denying that Sugar Rush is more realisticish (relatively speaking), and much more exciting.

Moral: British People are Crazy (and mildly cool).

I also liked that they managed to show some of the previous personalities, without resorting to sledgehammer tactics (flashbacks, groaning and falling down, etc) It all felt very clean and natural.

Could have done without so much of the dancing in lingerie, though. And the FBI dude is still boring.

Getting better!

The whole trick to bottle shows is to find an excuse to show a bunch of flashbacks. “Tell us the story of your dream!” is not a good excuse. Rahl’s assistant provided boring and useless commentary. And where did Anna come from? He seemed awfully in love to never mention her.

I did like the opening bit. It felt like it was poking fun at the “and he woke up. It had all been a dream.” But the teaser went on for almost a quarter of the episode. Boring!

The middle was – even more boring. And the ending didn’t make any sense. It all happened too fast, for one thing. It also seemed like a bit of a ripoff of the last scene in the Matrix. A longer buildup would have helped, I think.

Yay! for true love, I guess.

Question: If they could get to the box so fast, why didn’t Zedd and Kahlan just go move it without Richard?

Oh, well. You can’t expect too much from a bottle show.

See, here’s the thing: ripping off a famous story only works when your characters are so established or unique that they can make it fun and fresh, put their own twist on it. Take, for example Xena. They ripped off Groundhog Day with ‘Been There, Done That’. The original was an exploration of human goodness. But Xena… bulldozed, for lack of a better word, right through the plot with her usual reckless abandon. It’s the same for all of Xena’s ripoffs of Greek myth. Or, say the Charmed ‘fairy tale’ episode. In that case, they are all completely pissed about having to deal with the whole fairy tale mess, and it’s completely hilarious. There are dozen of other examples – but they’re almost all a bit campy, and all of them depend on the characters to provide a fresh feel.

Dollhouse just can’t do that. Not while Echo is still a blank slate. And Dollhouse is possibly the least campy show I’ve ever seen. It simply doesn’t work.

More problems: The FBI guy is still boring. And is Caroline really sending him clues, like the dead father in that other short story? (Or was it a novel? I can’t remember the name… can anybody else?)

Anyway, to not be completely negative – I did like the last quarter or so, where Echo starts to remember her true identity. I was pleased to note that they seem to be going with the ‘the real self can’t be destroyed, only suppressed’ concept. And the escaped active could be very interesting. If you think about it, he is actually the good guy, on the audience’s side. He may be reacting violently, but he’s got a pretty good excuse!

And the scenes where Echo meets her handler for the first time were well done. I can’t help be wish they had waited a few episodes to reverse the “You can trust me” concept, though. Give us some time to internalize it first!

I’m not going to give up on Dollhouse quite yet, but the plot really needs to improve.

Positives:

1. Eliza Dushku is an awesome actress. She even makes ‘completely spaced out’ entertaining.
2. Amy Acker is only slightly less awesome
3. The lady in charge is really creepy. If she’s really at the top on the ladder, she’ll be really interesting.
4. The evil geek was even creepier – I really, really hated him!
5. Eliza Dushku can really kick ass. (I’m shallow).
6. Eliza Dushku is really hot. (Yes, that shallow)
Negatives:
1. There’s no plot. I was going to write a review of the episode, but nothing actually happened beyond introductions! It wasn’t even a realistic nothing.
2. The FBI investigator is boring. Boring, boring, boring, and I don’t care.
3. Echo needs an identifying personality stat!
4. Even more, there aren’t any sympathetic characters, except perhaps the ‘handler’.
5. The story of the episode doesn’t have any resonant meaning, since the character (the hostage negotiator) involved disappears at the end.
6. The loss of agency theme makes me feel sick. More on this later.

Jaclyn at Bitch Ph. D. wrote a list of questions, and Aviva at Fourth Wave added some others, so I’m going to answer them:

From B PhD:
2) Were you as psyched as I was to see that Mutant Enemy tag at the end?
No. I hardly noticed it in Buffy, etc.!

3) How did you feel about Eliza D as Faith in Buffy? How have you felt about everything she’s done since Buffy? What did you think about her performance as Echo?
Love, love, loved Faith. I hope that the character Echo develops into is somewhat Faith-like. Tru calling was a terrible show, but Dushku was still really good in it. Echo was performed as well as could be.

4) Why the hell did Joss agree to work with Fox again? Or ever?
They gave him money. Nobody else would. He decided that making a show with Fox was better than no show at all. Corporate America sucks.

5) Um… are there still no people of color who want good roles in Hollywood? It’s a real problem, isn’t it? How on earth can we fix it, so that all the producers and directors aren’t forced to only cast white people all the time? (Yes, there’s Harry Lennix as Echo’s handler, but a) that just makes him the token and b) Driving Miss Daisy, anyone?)
I have no idea why this is so hard. Corporate America sucks. I suppose we can help it by supporting show with POC, but I’m guessing that the current bunch of executives/directors/producers/establishment will have to retire, at the very least, if we are ever to fix it.

6) Ditto fat people, people with physical disabilities, people who aren’t freakishly pretty, etc.?
I don’t think people who are freakishly pretty are going anywhere. I think we can redefine ‘freakishly pretty’ somewhat (both disabled and fat people can be very pretty, for instance), but I know that I’d far rather look at a pretty person on TV than one who, say, looks like me! (See positive #6 above…) Does this make me a horrible person?

7) Did they really have to start with the girl-is-broken-due-to-sex-abuse-and-requires-the-intervention-of-a-kind-man-to-seek-redemption plotline? Why is that never the secret weak spot for male action stars, huh?
Yes, of course they did. Because every strong woman has a history of abuse. The abuse makes them strong! Didn’t you know that? Women who have happy, un-abusive lives end up as boring housewives. (Yes, I’m very angry about this.)

If Person A is desperate and out of options, and is coerced into fully giving up her agency and identity, and if, after making that one decision, Person A no longer has any meaningful ability to consent to anything, nor does she have the ability to withdraw her consent from the original agreement — under those circumstances, if Person C pays Person B money to have sex with Person A, is that really prostitution, as Joss and Eliza have said it is? Or is that sexual slavery?
I had the impression that ‘Caroline’ was some sort of violent criminal, and they were giving her a way to avoid the electric chair. Or something. So, it somehow didn’t bother me, as a principle (Humane treatment of criminals is another issue). I am probably completely misreading this, though! Anyway, I also got the impression that Caroline was tricked – she didn’t understand what she was really signing up for. Presumably, when Echo figures it out, she’ll be pretty mad. Also, when Caroline agrees to be wiped, does she cease to exist? Echo seems to be a different person – she didn’t agree to anything! If so, she is definitely in slavery. This brings a bit of AI/existence (What defines a person? Can a person be duplicated? Transferred?) related stuff into the equation.

In other words: Insufficient information.

9) Can someone tell me that Joss is going somewhere good with this? I want to believe…
We’ll he hasn’t really done anything bad yet (Dr. Horrible excluded on grounds of extreme campyness), plus the network screwed with the pilot big time, so I think that it has a chance.

Now for Aviva’s questions:
a) Can a disturbing premise be mitigated by the subjugated character developing agency and control over her oppressors? If so, to what degree? Does she need to escape? Seek retribution? Take over?
It all depends on how it’s handled. I’m not a big fan of ‘vengeance stories’ – I’d like to see something bigger happen. Taking over might qualify (a la Alice in Resident Evil). Or perhaps something else.

b) How long can a show like Dollhouse continue on with this same “she can be anything you want her to be” shtick before something has to give?

One episode. If they don’t start making me fall in love with Echo herself in the next episode, I’m going to really dislike it. Characters make a story. They’re all that matter.

c) Is it possible to maintain narrative interest if Echo escapes or if Dollhouse (the place, not the show) is shut down? If so, how? If not, then doesn’t the continued need for the Dollhouse as an element of narrative interest necessitate the continued exploitation of the “actives” for our viewing pleasure?

I think they could do anything they want to. One caveat: see my answer to b) – we have to care about the characters. If Echo develops a personality, falls in love with Sierra, and they blow the Dollhouse, move to Mars and open a coffee house for pilgrims from Pluto, I’ll be happy – as long as I care about Echo! If I don’t care, whatever happens in the Dollhouse doesn’t interest me now.

One last thing:

Back to Negative #6:

I can’t really explain why, but the whole concept of loss of agency absolutely terrifies me. This is true even in lesser contexts. People who are addicted to substances or gambling or sex, mob groupthink, people who are unable to perceive the societal influences that they are acting on, people who only react to their current whim, people who don’t care about the effect of their actions, etc., etc. I could never, never, never accept the idea of determinism. Belief in free will is absolutely necessary for me to function. It’s central to my morality, religion, feminism, sexuality, relationships – not to mention boring, everyday life. It was even the primary influence for the name of this blog!

Echo doesn’t have agency, doesn’t have free will. If it was simple coercion, I wouldn’t like it, but I could live with it. Instead, she doesn’t even know she doesn’t have a choice. That makes me feel sick. Perhaps the show will explore this subject somewhat. But if they end up on the side of determinism, I’m going to be very, very angry.

]]> http://www.constantthoughts.net/2009/02/dollhouse/feed/ 0 http://www.constantthoughts.net/2009/02/legend-of-the-seeker-reviews-episode-11-family/ http://www.constantthoughts.net/2009/02/legend-of-the-seeker-reviews-episode-11-family/#comments Fri, 13 Feb 2009 05:44:19 +0000 Brianna http://www.constantthoughts.net/?p=111 This episode was excellent. The best since the pilot.

It’s not perfect yet. There’s still too muck awkward dialogue, and the ending felt a bit flat (too Scooby-Dooish), but the show is really getting there.

Anyway – Kahlan really messes up this episode, and she knows it too. Richard thought he did, too. The whole thing reminded me of the Buffy episode ‘Ted’ (when Buffy kills her mother’s robot boyfriend). But Kahlan actually did kill somebody innocent. She was too eager to get justice for her friend, and it backfired.

The more the protagonists screw up, the better it gets!

Also, the detective thing actually worked. They’ve done it a couple times before; it seemed a little cheesy then, but I thought it seemed better this time. Richard make a decent Sherlock Holmes, and the Confessor=Judge+Jury+Executioner aspect doesn’t seem like a farce the way, say, the ‘legal’ scenes in Xena were.

As a whole, I’m really beginning to like the pace of the show. Sure, they’re supposed to be saving the world, but the show is more about the small, ‘everyday’ problems more than the overall plot. At least, that’s the way they’re moving. At first, there was too much urgency, too much emphasis on getting the main bad guy, (and we knew they wouldn’t kill him – otherwise, there wouldn’t be a show!) I felt this way about the Sarah Connor Chronocles – the first two episode felt more like the beginning of a movie than the beginning of a TV show. It obviously wasn’t, though. LotS is starting to even out in the same way.

Random Thoughts:

• The side plot with Zedd’s brother was a bit – predictible. I did like that they gave so much screen time to the not so young and sexy, though.
• Richard’s streak of failing to notice someone sneaking up behind up continues. Why didn’t the consteble kill him after he was knocked out? Was he that much more scared of Kahlan than of the D’harans?
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