Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Michael Bay, 2011)

If there is any sliver of decency in this universe, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, the third entry in the most crass, vile and offensive big-budget franchise in Hollywood history will be its last. If it is any better than the series' previous installment, that is only because it sublimates its racial, gender, political and aesthetic travesties into an even longer, more interminable celebration of reactionary ideals. For a series predicated on the idea that some things are more than meets the eye, the Transformers movies represent one of the least varied, consistently shallow sagas to ever hit the big screen: Transformers 3, like its predecessors, is a masturbatory affair, perhaps even more so than the execrable Revenge of the Fallen. Whatever shred of humanity existed in these films is obliterated, leaving only an unadulterated tribute to He-Man masculinity in response to hysterical conservative perceptions of the Obama era.

Sam (Shia LaBeouf, whose increasingly greasy look in each film he does suggests he hasn't showered since Even Stevens got canceled) saved the world and brokered an alliance between man and Autobot, but no one will give him a job out of Ivy League college. The poor guy has to settle for an absurdly large D.C. apartment and being supported by his disposable new girlfriend, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), whose car-collecting boss, Dylan (Patrick Dempsey), openly flirts with her in front of Sam, further emasculating our hero. Compounded by the American government having locked Sam out from communicating with the Autobots, he needs a complete world invasion of Decepticons to let him prove his manhood, raising the question of just how many people need to die for Shia LaBeouf to feel comfortable about his dick size.

Serenity

It's perhaps somewhat appropriate that I wrap up my 7-month Whedon binge with the film that got me into the man in the first place. I never saw Serenity in the theaters; I even remember regarding the commercials as promoting some sort of Star Wars knockoff -- it didn't help that it came out the same year that George Lucas finished destroying his own legacy. No, I didn't watch it until it hit DVD, and a friend brought a copy to some sleepover in late '05. I had know idea who or what a Firefly was, I didn't know that Joss Whedon was the fella that made that Buffy the Vampire Slayer I made such a point of ignoring; I just sat down and watched the thing.

What I got was one of the most original, hilarious, and heartbreaking science fiction films I'd seen in years. The entire two hours was chock full of action, wit and those little moments that make everything so much better -- be it a conversation or even just a fleeting change of body language. Even though Serenity picks up where the show left off, it made me care enough about these character that I was moved when tragedy befell them. Which it did. A lot.

Serenity opens with a flashback, depicting Simon Tam's rescue of his sister, River, from whatever indoctrination center is experimenting on her. The scene ends to reveal it was all a hologram playback, viewed by a mysterious Alliance assassin known only as The Operative (Chiwetel Ejiofor). He kills the men in charge for allowing such a prized possession to escape, and sets about hunting down the modified psychic.

So, he seeks out Malcolm Reynolds' beloved rust bucket, run by the same kooky crew, minus a few hands who have settled elsewhere in the interim between the show's events and this narrative. He even takes River on a job, now aware of her ability to read minds, over her brother's loud protests. It is on this heist that we see our first Reavers on-screen -- either here or the T.V. show -- terrifying creatures who rape and eat anyone they capture alive. They give Mal and co. a thrilling chase, yet we still get some choice lines in the middle of the harrowing ordeal.

For the rest of the movie, Mal must contend with Reavers, The Operative, and even River, whom we discover can be triggered into becoming an incredible fighter with the right subliminal code. For a film based on such a sprawling series, Serenity wastes no time getting down to the nitty-gritty, moving from witty, interactive early scenes into some nice political satire in short order. Inara and Shepherd Book reemerge as The Operative chases down any lead to lure Mal out of hiding, though sadly their parts were cut down in editing. As The Operative attempts to... extract information from those unlucky enough to cross paths with him, we seem him come to stand for the Alliance he blindly follows: he says he believes he is helping to create "a world without sin," yet he is perfectly willing to cast aside his humanity to achieve it.

As Mal leads the ship into the depths of Reaver space to discover just what secret The Operative is trying to bury with River, the assassin's mission comes to match a terrible piece of the Alliance's past that serves as an intriguing attack on Big Brother-esque governments, examining the idea that an attempt to create utopia through force and bloodshed with never succeed. Whedon has to pack an entire season's -- and maybe even more; in the commentary, Joss mentions that the discovery of the Reaver planet about 2/3 into the film marked the end of the planned second season -- worth of theme and exposition into a film, yet he never lets his directorial debut feel like a retread of the show.

Whedon, of course, has directed a number of episodes of each of his series, and in those episodes he displayed an ability to get the very best out of his actors and to balance humor and bleak drama better than almost any "real" director you'd care to mention. Even if does, as he put it, "amp" it up for the big screen, he never loses track of his characters, to the point that, in some ways, this is as good an introduction to the series as the series works to establish the film. Under his direction, Fillion and the rest look like they've always been movie stars, even though Ejiofor is the only one who regularly appears in major features. He even pulls off his low budget, imbuing the frankly iffy special effects with such energy that you're too exhilarated to care. Then again, the giant space battle near the end is a true sight to behold, with so many ships piled into the screen you'd swear someone was magnificently overcompensating. Really, every single frame burns with the excitement of a man who knows that, by all accounts, he shouldn't be making this movie, and that's what makes Serenity such a perenially-rewarding journey.

The only real flaws of the movie are that, by nature of running length and an attempt for universal appeal, the Western element is somewhat lost, and we just can't spend the kind of time with these characters that T.V. allows. But Whedon turns the project into a deftly-constructed space opera, just about the most entertaining since the original Star Wars films. For all its political and social undertones, the movie is about faith: not in God, but in humanity. As dark as Whedon's scripts can be, he has a fundamental understanding of human emotions and interaction, and that sensibility makes Serenity a joy every bit as much as the action sequences. The only science fiction film this decade that I think can best it is the superb Children of Men (also starring Chiewetel Ejiofor).

After I saw this for the first time, I went out and grabbed Firefly a few months later and was blown away. I didn't get around to Buffy and Angel for years -- owing to my general avoidance of horror -- but I watched this crew tool around the 'Verse so many times I more than made up for it. When I finally got around to Joss' other work, I couldn't believe what I'd denied myself. Now, as his latest series gets off to a rocky yet ultimately rewarding start, I can't help but regard Serenity even more fondly than when it first rocked my world. Without it, I might never have come to discover the man who has since become far and away my favorite writer in entertainment. So if that colors my perspective, makes me subjective, even fanboyish, I don't care; Serenity surpasses every possible expectation you can place on the spinoff feature film of a canceled T.V. series, and I'm living proof that it's as capable of winning over new fans as any one of his excellent programs.

Firefly

You know, every so often I find myself wondering what all the fuss over Firefly is about. It was a show canceled almost out of the starting gate, and viciously tampered with in its brief run on the air. When the suited monkeys at FOX pulled the plug after airing only 11 of their initial 14-episode order -- and most of them wildly out of sequence -- they received an astonishing amount of fan reaction, given that they did everything in their power to prevent this show from gaining a following. Why then did it resonate with people? Why did it sell so many DVDs that Universal bought the rights to make a proper blockbuster out of it? And why do fans continue to hold conventions to express their appreciation for the actors and crew who barely got the time to establish their characters and the universe they inhabited?

Then I sit down with it for a few days, and all those questions just seem silly. Yes, it never got to build on its potential, and as such remains no more than a fascinating experiment, but I firmly believe that Firefly, not Buffy, would be Joss Whedon's defining creation had things worked out differently. It may have only had 14 episodes with which to set down some sort of Orson Scott Card-cum-Western universe, but damned if it didn't work. Frankly, I don't know how something this ambitious even made it to the air in the first place, especially on FOX.

Whedon sets the bar impossibly high with the two-hour premiere, titled "Serenity," an episode that did not air until 9 others preceded it, because -- you know, what, if I stop every time to point out where FOX did this show wrong, I'll never get through this review. Suffice to say, it makes no sense to dump this pilot, as it is one of the best and deepest series premieres ever made. Then again, I didn't get the full impact of its brilliance until at least the third time I watched it, so perhaps the decision wasn't made entirely out of greed and stupidity.

I don't know why exactly it took so long for the pilot to click with me, as Whedon doesn't waste a single second of its two-hour length. The opening battle introduces us to then-sergeant Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) and Zoe (Gina Torres), two rebel soldiers on their last legs as something called the Alliance sends in ships to bomb them to oblivion. Whedon drenches these moments in shadow, lighting the scene up only when a bomber puts another crater in the planet. Six years later, Malcolm's the captain of his very own ship, a deteriorating, Firefly-class cargo ship, Zoe's married the pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk), and an innocent little pixie named Kaylee (Jewel Staite) keeps the hunk of metal running. They may not have much, but this ragtag crew will follow their captain to the ends of the 'Verse. Well, except for mercenary Jayne (Adam Baldwin), who will happily sell the rest into slavery if the money's good.

Mal and co. make their living salvaging derelicts and delivering smuggled goods to buyers and sellers. When an Alliance cruiser busts their raid, the Serenity has a hard time offloading their booty, and they stop on a planet to pick up some passengers: a "shepherd" (preacher) by the name of Book (Ron Glass); Simon Tam (Sean Maher), a young doctor looking to get off-world without Alliance attention; and some mystery dude who is bound to cause some sort of trouble. Also accompanying the crew is Inara (Morena Baccarin), a member of the ultra-high class escort class known as the Companions, who uses the Serenity's built-in shuttle to meet her engagements. When mystery dude turns out to be a Fed, we discover that Simon smuggled his sister River (Summer Glau) on-board, and the two are fugitives running from the Alliance.


The pilot wastes no time fleshing out these characters. Despite a story that takes some big turns, "Serenity" is so great because it's really made up of countless tiny moments, from Wash at the helm playing with toy dinosaurs, to Book quickly disabling the Fed: Whedon, the man responsible for a great many of the best-developed characters to ever grace television, makes hs earlier efforts look like child's play. There's more development in this single pilot than the entire first season of Buffy.

But the pilot is no fluke; Whedon and his writers packed each episode so full of character development that attempting to discuss the show on an episodic basis is futile. Believe me I know: there's a 5000-word version of this post that's as much a tribute to wheel-spinning as it is a review of this show. The plots, good as they are, come a distant second to the characters; this is true of all of Whedon's shows of course (well, not Dollhouse, but that's new and not yet fully explored), but Firefly plays like 5 seasons worth of Whedon T.V. rolled into one.

Book, the kindly preacher, has a murky past, bits of which surface in was that simply make the details even fuzzier. Jayne loves his guns so much that, when Mal somehow finds himself married to a subservient farm girl, he offers the Cap his most prized possession -- a gun he dubs "Vera" -- to trade for the attractive stowaway. His loyalty to the highest bidder comes into play when he betrays the Tams for a fat bounty in the gripping "Ariel," and even in Mal's oxygen-deprived flashbacks in "Out of Gas." Simon, who comes off as foppish and sheltered, reveals a deep love for his sister and a willingness to lose everything to protect her. Zoe and Wash have just about the most stable relationship ever seen in the Jossverse, but occasionally Wash can't help but feel jealous over Zoe and Mal's extremely close -- and extremely platonic -- relationship.

Mal, of course, is another beast entirely. As objectively as I can view a piece of entertainment, I'd without a doubt rate Mal as one of the best-written, most interesting characters in Joss' or anyone else's shows. (Personally, I'd rank him second only behind Fred in my list of favorite Whedon creations). He's always interested about getting the job done and isn't at all afraid to make some seemingly heartless decisions, yet he cares for anyone under his charge like family: when Simon and River are kidnapped by zealous hill folk in "Safe," Mal comes to rescue them and, when Simon asks why the Captain came back for them, he simply responds that Simon and River are a part of the crew. But for all his professionalism, he has an unflinching ability to turn even the calmest situation into a brawl, at which point his ability to take an obscene amount of punishment benefits him: these altercations range from hilarious (the duel in "Shindig") to terrifying (the torture in "War Stories"). Even more interesting are the moments when his steely resolve comes to the fore, such as the downright fearsome coldness in his eyes when he breaks free of his torturers in "War Stories."

As with the rest of Whedon's "families," one person keeps everyone else together, no matter how bad things get. Buffy had Willow, then Xander, Angel had Fred, and Firefly has Kaylee, an irrepressible ray of sunshine who just so happens to be a mechanical genius. As Mal so rightly puts it, "I don't believe there's a power in the 'Verse that can keep Kaylee from bein' cheerful." When the Fed shoots her in the gut in the pilot, the entire crew rallies to save her and no one seems a mite concerned about killing Simon for indirectly causing it all -- as with Willow in the early seasons of Buffy, Joss isn't above putting her in jeopardy constantly to ratchet up the drama. Though Jayne makes a number of crass jokes at her expense, everyone clearly cares for her, particularly Inara, who constantly fields Kaylee's doe-eyed wonder without a hint of condescension.


As a matter of fact, my single favorite scene in the series involves Kaylee. In "Shindig," Kaylee spots a, frankly, gaudy dress in a window shop but nevertheless regards it as she does Inara's finest clothing. When Mal needs to sneak into an upper crust party to speak with a potential client -- the fact that Inara's there has nothing to do with it, of course -- he shows up with Kaylee, frilly dress and all, in hand. Now, I'm a very empathetic person: pretty much everything but non-Whedon television can move me to tears, and I feel shame for those too drunk or dumb to feel it for themselves. I literally watch Ricky Gervais' shows through my fingers as if they were horror films. Yet when Kaylee stumbles into the middle of high society wearing what looks like a pink Christmas tree, it never once occurs to me to be embarrassed for her. Jane Espenson turns the cliché on its head, instantly shutting down the snotty aristocrats who jeer her and making her the star of the ball without resorting to some insulting Pygmalion-like "transformation," with men listening rapturously as she gives them the skinny on the best and worst ships you can buy. I can't tell you how thrilled I was that they never paraded such a sweet character around for a cheap laugh.

As I've already noted, picking highlights from this set is a fool's errand. If you're in the mood to laugh, try "Jaynestown," in which Jayne returns to a planet he raided years ago, only to find out that the money he unwittingly dumped to break out of the atmosphere made him a folk hero. Or you can go with Whedon's own "Our Mrs. Reynolds," in which Mal wakes up from a drunken celebration to find himself betrothed to the sort of woman Joss has made a career to "liberate." Quotable lines abound as the rest of the crew reacts with various degrees of amusement and disgust, but the choicest quote has to go to Book warning Mal of taking advantage of the girl who seems so anxious to please her new beau: "You'll go to a special level of hell reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theater."

But, as with all Whedon, the cream of the crop comes with pitch blackness. The de facto finale, "Objects in Space," casts River's madness and bounty hunter Jubal Early's sadism against the cold nothingness of space, giving the whole thing a certain existential feel without ever letting itself get too smart to neglect the well-paced plot. Early himself is a masterstroke of a one-off villain, providing a nice contrast for River but with a terrifying lack of morals -- he casually threatens to rape Kaylee if she, and later Simon, do not help him. The aforementioned "War Stories" turns Niska from the somewhat cartoony Bond-esque villain from "The Train Job" and makes him truly frightening, though not as scary as Mal when we meet his "true" self (though the attempted group therapy Mal and Wash hold as they're being electrocuted is pretty gorram funny). Jayne's betrayal in "Ariel" sets up one of the best thrillers in the Jossverse; one of the chief problems of Joss' shows is that the writers hold back as much information as they can so they can sucker punch you all at once, but by knowing that Jayne is selling out River and Simon long before it happens, the entire episode is chilling, and it only gets better when two mysterious agents start killing everyone in their path to get to their targets -- including fellow Alliance personnel).


If I must pick a favorite, though, I'd have to go with Tim Minear's hallucinatory "Out of Gas." Kaylee spent the first few episodes casually mentioning something about a faulty catalyzer, and it dies at last, leaving the ship with no power and no life support. Pieced together out of sequence, in some ways it strikes me as representative of the constant tampering with the show, only here it's put to artistic use. And now that I revisit the show after going through Joss' other series, I can't help but think of it as Firefly's version of "Fool for Love" or "Selfless": it acknowledges the Serenity as a character all its own and, like Spike and Anya, charts its evolution, though instead of clothes or relationships, it advances as each person joins the crew.

For many people, the show's mixture of cyberpunk and classic Westerns made it unpalatable, but I fail to see the problem: at their cores, science fiction and Westerns are about explorations, of lawless, unexplored frontiers where man is only answerable to his conscience, or the conscience of a mob. The characters certainly fit easily into Western archetypes: Mal as the ex-Confederate (though he never fought for the right to keep slaves) making his way in the desert -- or space, as the case may be; the Alliance the bureaucracy seeking to tame the wild beauty even as it also conforms to an Ender's Game-like evil government; and Book, the man of God with the terrible past. The Reavers of course stand in for the "savages," though you could truly call these men savage. Even the guns are a throwback, with Zoe's weapon in particular being a direct rip from Steve McQueen's rifle in Wanted: Dead or Alive (the actual gun was the same prop used for Brisco County, Jr.). While it can be jarring to go from mining dead ships in space to a dusty frontier town, the overall tone never shifts wildly enough to create a disparity between the two styles.

So yes, Firefly will go down as the greatest "what if?" series in T.V. and not the best show ever made. Its fans will eventually give up entirely on the possibility of a sequel to either the series or the spinoff film, though they'll still host convention after convention (good). I don't know how it could have ever run for more than a few seasons, even if its massive budget wasn't an issue. Nevertheless, I've never seen a show so abused and so short make such a good argument for its greatness. As much as I can't simply dive into the middle of Buffy or Angel, I find myself glued to my TV for a few days every time I break this out (and I've been watching Firefly a great deal longer than the rest). The show's rich tapestry of character interaction and an ingrained sense of continuity only made Dollhouse's disappointing failure to establish a solid mythology for itself with its first season more glaring -- I'm not casting aspersions, mind you; Dollhouse is an entirely different show. Dollhouse might be Joss' most ambitious show thematically and stylistically, but Firefly more than matches it in scope. What a shame it only got to be the martyr.

Dollhouse — Season 1

[Contains minor spoilers]

Has it really been five years since Joss Whedon graced T.V.-land with his presence? After the twin blows of both Firefly and Angel’s cancellations only a year apart from one another, Whedon seemed to retreat from the limelight somewhat, delivering only a magnificent Firefly spinoff and one of the best sci-fi films in recent memory and some great works on a handful of comic books (including launching series continuations of Buffy and Angel). At last, he decided to return to television, and the Internet rejoiced. Until we learned that he was working for Fox.

Fox, as you are no doubt painfully aware, canceled Firefly almost out of the gate, giving it only enough time to shuffle airing orders and time slots. The resulting resentment had absolutely no effect on Fox, whose primary demographic tunes in for exploitative “reality” programs and whatever half-assed pop collage Seth McFarlane is passing off as funny. So, when Joss came out of exile, only to wind up with the very studio that crushed him the first time around, many assumed the worst. And when Dollhouse first hit the air, all the cynics’ predictions were seemingly confirmed.

Dollhouse revolves around the titular construct, a near-mythical organization that hires willing (after a fashion) volunteers, hollows out their personalities, then inserts a new personality and traits to loan out to high-paying customers. Set at the L.A. branch, the show’s central character – protagonist may not be the right word – Echo. Played by Eliza Dushku, Echo is the most-requested “Active” in the Dollhouse; she works as a high-class escort, an FBI negotiator, even the target of some demented sport hunting. When the engagement is over, a handler calms her done and takes her to have her mind wiped.


It’s a concept that opens a number of thematic possibilities; far more than ever introduced in a Whedon show, in fact. The Dollhouse clearly stands for human traffickers, but their M.O. allows for commentaries on modern society: the anonymity allowed through increasing technology and impersonal communication, the desensitization that such anonymity engenders, and the very nature of free will.

I say possibilities, because for the entire first half of the season, not a damn thing happens. Fans got their first taste of dread when Fox announced that Joss’ initial pilot was “too dark” and “confusing” and Joss offered to make a more straightforward version to prevent episode shuffling (which ended up happening anyway). So, when the neutered pilot debuted in February, anxious fans got an occasionally interesting but overall tepid offering that barely introduced its characters satisfactorily, much less established any themes.

In it, Echo plays an FBI negotiator helping a wealthy man rescue his kidnapped daughter, which is a ridiculous way to start things off. We are given no solid reason for a man spending millions on a negotiator when the actual FBI would likely have gotten involved (and for free!), and when we discover that Active programmer Topher (Fran Kanz) also imprinted Echo with the memory of an abducted child which gives her an insight, it comes off more a pathetic justification for the plot than an intriguing development.

The early episodes all suffer from this problem: useless assignments that offer absolutely no insight into why anyone would pay millions for such a service. Easily the most absurd of these is a backup dancer for a hit-prone pop star, chosen to provide security while befriending the star. O.K., couple of things: 1) Why not just hire her as a bodyguard? 2) Why not just hire a real bodyguard for a lot less? 3) Are you kidding me? And it gets even worse when we learn that the star is actually suicidal and wants to burn out rather than fade away. A Britney Spears-knockoff has dreams of immortality. The episode as a whole is the most unbearable and useless piece of preaching since Angel’s “She” reminded Americans that female genital mutilation was wrong.

The constant personality shifts also require a lot of chops, and Dushku has come under fire from a number of critics for a perceived lack of range. While the actors playing Dolls Victor (Enver Gjokaj) and Sierra (Dichen Lachman) always seem to hit their marks and receive kudos, Dushku gets singled out for being too Faith-y. I presume they mean that she looks and speaks like Faith and therefore Eliza Dushku, so I'm a bit puzzled. Is Echo off in her imprints? Yes. That's the point. Truth is, Dushku has handled the majority of her imprints well, though some don't quite work. See über-writer Tim Minear’s first credit on the show, “True Believer”: Minear’s dark humor pervades the B-plot (involving Victor exhibiting emotion and sexual attraction to Sierra while in his wiped state, leading to a hilarious investigation by Saunders and Topher), but the main story concerning Echo infiltrating a cult via an imprint of a blind follower falls on its face. Even then, I'm less willing to lay the blame at Dushku's feet when the writing clearly lacked -- which, coming from Minear, was shocking.

Despite the relative ennui of these first five “Doll of the Week” episodes, their chief shortcoming is the complete failure to link the plots to the overarching mythology and thematic drive of the Dollhouse. FBI agent Paul Ballard (Tamoh Penikett) investigates the organization, but he seems to risk everything just because he’s captivated by a video of Echo with her true personality, Caroline. Ex-cop Boyd (Harry Lennix, Jr.), Echo’s handler, voices his concerns for how they manipulate Actives to branch manager Adele DeWitt (Olivia Williams), but he just sort of drops his protests after awhile. DeWitt explains it away by reminding him that people volunteer for the job and are paid well when their contracts expire, but for too long no one calls her on the hypocrisy of the statement.

When that changes, the show itself kicks off at last. The sixth episode, “Man on the Street,” intimated to us by Dushku and Whedon as the beginning of a true arc, so suddenly thrusts Dollhouse to the next level that the preceding five weeks of mediocre to downright arduous programming seem like a parody that hit the airwaves before the subject of its travesty. Apart from providing the first touching incident of Doll use (a wealthy man hiring Echo, not for sex but so he could show his “wife” the house she never got to see because she died in a wreck) as well as juxtaposing the rape of one of the Dolls by her handler with the heretofore unspoken reality that DeWitt and her employees send these people to be raped on a daily basis (just because you sign a contract doesn’t mean you give sexual consent for five years). I’m not entirely pleased that it took a “real” rape to finally put the truth out there, but it was an incredibly effective move. Also, we learned something about Paul’s neighbor/crush Mellie (Miracle Laurie) that proves that Joss could still surprise the hell out of us when he felt like it.

From there the show builds, if not thematically, then at least literally: “Echoes” manages to balance a key insight into Caroline’s past via a thrilling main plot and a simply hysterical side story involving a gas leak in the Dollhouse. “Needs” fizzles with its end reveal, but we learn what drove our Actives to sign up for the Dollhouse and it explains some of their earlier behavior, even if its hard to count it as character development when the purpose of the show is to suppress identity. “Spy in the House of Love” trumps even MotS in its gripping plot and story advancement, only for the late-game standalone “Haunted” to kill the momentum.

Happily, things rebound with force with the season enders. Whedon’s shows have never lacked for strong season finales, but Jane Espenson’s “Briar Rose” is the first definitive argument for the potential greatness of Dollhouse as opposed to sixth and ninth’s episodes, which simply argued that the show actually deserved to stay on the air. At last, we met the Big Bad Alpha, an Active that went insane when he “composited” all of his prior imprints and slashed his way out of the building, including giving Saunders her scars. Sadly, his identity was revealed long before when Fox’s constant meddling resulted in a number of spoilers hitting the web; nevertheless, Espenson and Whedon structured the episode in a way that kept it completely pulse pounding.

It’s so good that even the mighty Tim Minear (the man behind every almost every great episode of Angel in the first three seasons) cannot match it, though I suspect he was hindered by the fact that Dollhouse has rested on the bubble of cancellation since the get-go. Thus, the first 40 minutes, in which Alpha imprints Echo with an imprint of his old Active partner (whose identity was rightly guessed by me and many others before we learned it) and attempts to “awaken” the person who drove him to his rebellion. Then it ends with a whimper that leaves the story open and thankfully doesn’t box the series in, but it also clearly sets up the possibility that these 12 episodes are all we’re going to get.

Taken as a self-contained product (which it happily isn’t), “Omega” contains the best and worst of what Dollhouse has given us so far: it’s got flashes of too-rare Whedon humor (seriously, where were the jokes for most of the season?), the suspense that defined its best episodes, and someone finally gets to the bottom line of the Dollhouse’s hypocrisy: “You can’t sign a contract to be a slave.” On the other hand, it displays the show’s shallow side (Sierra and November get imprinted as bounty hunters to track Alpha, then are never seen again); its clumsy – especially for Whedon shows – dialogue; and the fact that it never gets around to explaining the actual purpose of the Dollhouse. I imagine that’s something that Whedon wants to take entire arcs to explain, but it’s frustrating that he wants us to just buy such an organization. And at the end, as with all things in the Dollhouse, all epiphanies are seemingly wiped away in an instant, leaving us wondering "What was the point of it all?"

At this stage, I like Dollhouse more for what it can be that what it is, which is a silly reason to like something I’ll grant you. Even a show that centers around a lack of identity must give us a reason to care about its characters, through its direction if not its lines. Dollhouse, to put it mildly, fails to do this; at this stage the only character I give a toss about is Saunders, which is almost entirely attributable to Amy Acker, who buoys the scarce writing devoted to the character with mystery and humanity. Characters like Ballard, DeWitt, Topher and Boyd should have been fleshed out, and only Ballard and DeWitt got any development at all. Combined with its skin-deep analysis of a handful of its many potential themes, it makes Dollhouse a show that you really have to will yourself to like rather than grabbing you with its interesting characters and its unique universe.

Still, when Dollhouse hit its stride, I found myself glued to the screen in a way I haven’t been since The Wire. It’s a far cry from classic Whedon, but he’s never tried something so ambitious. I attribute its lack of character development and its weak first half to Fox; remember, Firefly was nothing but character development, to the point that main plots really only served to advance its characters and its universe. It could have been Whedon’s magnum opus, but Fox canned it. Therefore, I believe that Dollhouse is Whedon playing to Fox’s M.O., though not in a subversive but desperate manner. On the other hand, a part of me believes that Joss made the show to challenge himself: I mean, who does character growth better? By forcibly removing character evolution, he's thrust himself into a bold, new territory that could reap big rewards.

Nevertheless, that does not excuse him for letting the show stumble along for weeks without even attempting to find a voice and the rest of the time laying the foundations that should have been established after a few episodes. The biggest mistake fans can make is to lay the blame solely at Fox's feet (somewhat hypocritical coming from the guy who devoted space in each of his first three paragraphs to disparage them, I know). The simple truth of it is: Joss himself admitted he wasn't sure how to proceed at first, and he acknowledged that he failed to tie in the plots of the early episodes into the larger story. I've seen some fans give it a pass, saying, "Well, Buffy was shaky its first season, too." But that notion ignores the glaring fact that Buffy was Joss' first foray into television, before he found the writers best suited to his vision and his style. This is his fourth series; by now he's accumulated some of the finest writing talent around, most of whom put in their best work with Whedon. I will agree with the comparison, however, when you consider that, like Buffy, Whedon and co. have a show with more potential than they perhaps realize at the moment, and only when left to their own devices and allowed to stretch the boundaries will the show grow.

As of this writing, I don’t know whether or not Dollhouse will come back for a second season, but, if we get lucky, I can only hope that someone lights a fire under Joss’ ass that forces him to build on these last few episodes and to carve a television program truly worthy of his name. Fingers crossed, everyone. [Ed: It is coming back! Huzzah!]