I haven’t blogged about Dollhouse since way back in February. There I wondered if the series would ever get to its meaty center of philosophical questions about identity, the mind, body and experience. It’s safe to say that season two has delivered on all counts. “Meet Jane Doe” does a decent job of making the engagement of the week episodes of season one relevant to the development of Echo’s composite personality. Still much of what happened in the early episodes wasn’t necessary to demonstrate the full implications of Echo’s new abilities. Dushku has come into her own through the Echo character and Enver Gjokaj continues to amaze us all with his power to become anyone and everyone.
But I started this post not so much to ruminate on the awesomeness of the series (which has, by-the-by, become one I heartily recommend – even if it is with the strong caveate that you must make it through the handfull of painfull first few episodes before getting to the good stuff), but instead I’m wondering how much the pacing this season, the tightness of the storyline, and its singular focus stem from the fact that the series was canceled. Part of me seriously doubts that season 2 would be as good without the constraint of having to end the story. In fact the story has already ended on the DVD episode “Epitaph One” which was partially created as a way to finish off the series if it had not been granted a second season and as a means to fulfill contractual obligation for the DVD’s release (at least so sayeth the wiki entry).
In The Sense of an Ending Frank Kermode wrote that “We project ourselves–a small, humble elect, perhaps–past the End, so as to see the structure whole, a thing we cannot do from our spot of time in the middle.” Prime time serialized television benefits from a clear sense of an ending. In Dollhouse’s “Epitaph One” we see the aftermath of a technological apocalypse and desire to know how the hell they got there.* Having been forced to project the series past its end allowed a structure and a more clearly defined purpose to emerge. A similar thing happened with Lost; it appeared to have a strong, if convoluted, sense of where it was going, but by season three was floundering around looking for itself. Once the decision to end it after 3 more shorter seasons it reasserted its narrative drive and became a much better series again because of it. It isn’t telescoped in the way Dollhouse was; we don’t actually know yet where Lost is going (this promo might give us some idea). Battlestar Galactica OTOH appeared to suffer from its overdetermined (find earth, have plan, shape of things to come, etc.) sense of an ending that its finale was less than satisfying. Knowing the end helps give structure to where we are now – to find meaning in the middle.My desire to consistently situate myself within whatever narrative world I’m currently living in encourages my preference for spoilers.** The surprise/reveal endings are much less interesting than how they got there and what they mean for the future. Knowing the end helps give structure to where we are now – to find more meaning in the middle. The release of “Epitaph One” as a kind of official spoiler has made this season (and through it the previous season) much more rich and interesting.
The changing nature of television, particularly network television is a perennial discussion, so much that it can get a little boring. But within this discussion, what strikes me as really odd is the sheer amount of resistance the industry has towards playing with the standard “a TV series must go on forever to be profitable and successful” line of thinking. Imagine if Dollhouse was originally only meant to be 10-13 episodes long. There’s no guarantee that it would be great – it could have been terrible- but the anxiety over cancellation, over whether or not the story would be fully told, or if we’d all be left hanging, would not have clouded our experience of it. Now, it is quite possibly the case that successful short-run series might be reliant on writer-producer show runners with name and style recognition and fan bases, but the mere thought of mixing this type of structure into the prime time line up is unheard of.
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*The Whedonverse is littered with apocalypses; Buffy is constantly thwarting them, Angel and co. go out with a bang fighting against one, and the Firefly kids are finding their place after one.
** Case in point, all the twittering about the surprise, game-changing ending of last night’s Dexter finale lead me to search out what has happened. Once I found out I thought, wow, I cannot wait to see how it got there. I didn’t feel cheated at all, but I’m aware that this is my preference and not shared with everyone.
First, read the interesting post on Glee from Liz Ellcessor here.
When I wrote a few weeks ago that I had given up on Glee I should have been more clear that I was going to continue to watch it (at least through the mid season break), but that I had given up on the possibility that it could be the great show I thought and hoped it could be. Last night’s episode was encouraging. This was largely due to the fact that Terri and Emma were completely absent. The episode had that “after school” special feeling like the Single Ladies episode had, but it works because it keeps the focus on the club and the kids. That’s where the interesting stories are. Maybe they’ll continue on this track and surprise me by revealing the big pregnancy lie and moving on sooner rather than later.
It was nice to see Sue have some depth and for Will to have his smarmy self-righteousness put in a check a little.
Kurt’s relationship with his father was refreshing. Artie’s and Tina’s flirtation was sweet and the twist that Tina’s stutter is fake could make for some interesting interactions later.
I’m not getting my hopes up though. I can see from the preview that Terri and Emma are back next week and Rachel retakes centerstage.
On this week’s So You Think You Can Dance choerographer Stacey Tookey created a routine for Katheryn and Legacy about a woman struggling with fear.
Many people remarked that it was very similar to last season’s routine “Addiction” by Mia Michaels.
While I see the similarities, I enjoyed Tookey’s piece much more. I found the Mia routine problematic because it was so violent – seeming to relish in the beauty of the woman’s victimization. It made me uncomfortable to watch, and wondered how the piece might change had the roles been reversed. Mia’s known for her preference for male dancers and the series hasn’t exactly been on the forefront of challenging gender norms in the dance world. Men are men and women are women – and while there’s nothing inherantly wrong with that, it too often means that men are strong and women are weak. The Tookey piece was refreshing because it while the woman is obviously struggling with her fears, she’s not being victimized by them. She’s in control. If he comes back it’s because she lets him. She repeatedly pushes him away and finally succeeds in triumphing over her fear.
Four days in (yesterday) and I’m already behind on NaBloPoMo. This doesn’t make for the most interesting in blog posts, I know. The point is to get into the habit though, yes? And last night as I crawled into bed I realized I hadn’t blogged yet. It wasn’t enough to make me get out of bed and blog with the 20 minutes I had left in the actual day, but it was reassuring that I had remembered it needed to get done.
Now that that is out of the way…
I’ve got this season’s Dexter to catch up on, but I’m not going to start on that until I finish drafting chapter 3. I can’t handle any more possible examples than I already have.
I’m finally caught up on Dollhouse and episode 2.04 “Belonging” definitely did not disappoint. I have lots to say about it, but before I delve into it I think I’m going to have to do some re-watching. I’m really enjoying how the plots are starting to be layered together particularly how “Epitaph One” has been gestured towards in these first 4 episodes. As a big fan of spoilers in part because I’m always more interesting in how the story gets where its going, “Epitaph One” works as an official spoiler. No need to worry about where specifically it’s going, please focus on how we get there. Yay for more Mellie/November/Madeline when the series returns in December.
I’ve been thinking about Battlestar a lot the past few days while working on the third chapter of my dissertation. Re-watching the Pegasus arc from season 2 the other day reminded me just how good the series was.
So, since I don’t have a fully formed and interesting post for today I thought I would share one of my favorite BSG fanvids. Unfortunately, the stream isn’t available anymore, so I can only post the link to the page which has a link to download the file.
Vid Info from the linked page:
Title: Bring on the Wonder Editor: annaK Music: “Bring on the Wonder” by Susan Enan (feat Sarah McLachlan) Video: Battlestar Galactica 2003 Spoilers: Through 4×18 “Islanded in a Stream of Stars” Summary: “Bring on the wonder, bring on the song, we pushed you down deep in our souls for too long.” Humans, Cylons, love and loss.
I’ve been an avid watcher of The Amazing Race for a few years now, and I’ve generally enjoyed it most of the time. But this season I’ve been disappointed with it.
First irritation came before the race even started when the cast was revealed and there was only 1 all female team and 4 all male teams. What, aren’t there enough interesting all female submissions that the producers couldn’t even find one more to add to the cast?
Second, while there is usually only one team comprised of truly awful people, this season’s cast is full of them.
There’s been lots of instances of men berating and disrespecting their female partners. Culminating in the last week’s debacle at the top of 6-story high waterslide. Canaan (seriously, his name is Canaan?) claims here that what he did to Mika was not abusive. He was just being competitive! I mean wouldn’t you just push her too?
Enough with all the masculine posturing by Flight Time and Big Easy. We get it. You’re dudes. You don’t have to chest bump each episode.
And this week there was the loss of the one all female team to what appeared to me to be an unfair challenge. Why was the test your strength bell placed before the dancing? It made no sense. Do the Dutch usually engage in testing their strength before performing traditional folk dances and eating herring? Tiffany and Maria talk about their exeperiences here. I thought the editing choice that made it seem that the men all completed the task on the first try, when they didn’t, compared to the “let’s laugh at the weak women” counter that showed up periodically while they tried to complete the task was even more telling that the task was not very well planned.
With 6 teams left, I’m rooting for the father/son duo at this point or the Barbie and Ken. They’re competitive without being obnoxious and interesting enough to watch.
In an effort to blog more I’ve decided, at the very last possible moment, to participate in NaBloPoMo. This might mean the blog occasionally goes off topic. I’m tossing around posting snippets from the dissertation. In the works are probably posts on The Amazing Race, Dollhouse, and if I get around to it BSG’s The Plan. I’ve never been one for daily journaling, but it’s a habit I aspire to have. Fingers crossed I’ll make it through the month with a hand full or two of decent posts and lots of other really silly ones.
There’s been a discussion going on Twitter about Glee, which up until this article by Andy Dehnart and this post by Sadie over at Jezebel, appeared to me to be universally loved by everyone but myself.
I watched the Pilot on Hulu over the summer and while I enjoyed the musical numbers, Sue, and that the cheerleaders where called “The Cheerios” it fell a little flat to me. But I thought it had potential to be a wonderful series. But week after week I sit down, watch, and fail to be as amazed as everyone else seemed to be. It’s still not sure if it wants to be an edgy teen satire that happens to have musical numbers, or a teen musical that has a little satirical edge. It changes tone too often from the absurd fake pregnancy plot line to the sweet after school special feeling of Kurt’s coming out.
What I have found most problematic with Glee was addressed in both the Dehnart and Jezebel pieces and that’s the over-reliance on unnecessary stereotypes for comedic effect. Sadie takes the series to task for its awful female characters and Dehnart mentions the appalling Sandy. To add to this, I found the rainbow coalition of background Glee members a problem. I’ve been hoping for weeks to learn more about Mercedes, Tina, Artie, and Kurt, but with the exception of Kurt, I still don’t know anything about them as the series continues to focus on the straight white people.
Last week’s episode, “Throwdown” seemed at first like it was going to be a self-reflexive dig on the show’s lack of focus on the rest of the club. But, after the number with the amazing Mercedes (who I’d much rather listen to than Lea’s wide eyed earnestness), it turned out to be an episode about the pregnant Quinn, the worst plot line in TV history Terri’s fake pregnancy and the rivalry between Sue and Will. (And BTW – what is up with the background Cheerios wearing high healed sport shoes and dancing like they’re in a rap video when ever they appear?) In trying to poke fun at the marginalization and tokenism of minorities (what? My dad’s a dentist) Glee only succeeded in continuing to marginalize them. The final number emphasized that they just need to stick together (integrate the black and white, nice use of subtle costuming there) as members of Glee – overcome their differences and literally hold hands and sing kumbaya. We know that Glee is meant to be about being an outcast in general and next week’s episodes it looks like Finn and Quinn (and how did I not notice that before – bleh shades of Lee/Dee) learn what it’s really like to be an outcast, but unless the focus starts to move about to the rest of the cast I’m going to lose complete interest. Loving to hate Sue and waiting to see what off the wall thing she’ll say next aren’t enough to keep me watching. I couldn’t care less about Finn, Lea, Will, or Emma. They’re not only uninteresting characters but they’re completely unlikeable, which only makes the continued insistence of focusing on them even more annnoying.
Step it up please. I would love to see a musical series not aimed at tweens be successful in prime time, but right now I’m not sure I want Glee to be that series.
I curated a post on Dollhouse this week over at the In Media Res site at Media Commons. I know I’ve severly neglected this blog but I’m hoping to change that soonish. I have some ideas about doing something with clips and video that was inspired by working up my In Media Res post.
So head over here and check it out. Be sure to stay and browse around; there’s a lot of interesting stuff over there.
I like that PCA is an open and laid back conference. The national PCA/ACA conference is not known for it’s selectivity. This means some papers are wonderfully researched, argued, and presented while others are underdeveloped, poorly researched, and inarticulately presented. I heard many papers in which authors merely went through a series of observations or summaries about whatever their paper was meant to be on, or heard presenters who made arguments about the internet or television that may have been very interesting 10 years ago. My fellow grad student colleague and I began thinking about why this might be the case. One of the things that we noticed is that many of the presenters where not popular, media, or television scholars (since we both work in television, many of the panels we attended were television panels). Instead they had written their papers as side projects, fun distractions from the “real” research they normally conducted on political science or literature. Engaging with some of the arguments was frustrating because there was no frame of reference for the presenter within in which to formulate a response to my questions, frames that I would consider essential knowledge for anyone working with televisual texts. This lead me towards wondering what might happen had I, on a lark or as a fun distraction from my real work on television, presented a paper on Wordsworth at something like MLA that failed to reference pertinent or even basic research or utilize a recognized method of analysis. The proposal probably wouldn’t even be accepted, and I wouldn’t expect it to be. So, I wonder, why is it acceptable to do on television or pop culture?
