What?

I usually pride myself on my English comprehension, but I cannot for the life of me figure out the point of this article. I can’t believe that this anecdote by a first-time author was deemed to be interesting enough to publish. I wouldn’t even have told it at a dinner party.

Dollhouse is finally worth watching

I’ve been watching Dollhouse, Joss Whedon’s new show, since its pilot. I wanted for so many reasons to like it:

• It was created by Joss Whedon, who I will always love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• It stars Eliza Dushku, who played the complicated and interesting Faith on Buffy
• The premise sounded really interesting
• …

Okay, so maybe there were just three reasons that I wanted to like it. But when the show premiered, it became clear to me that maybe these things were actually liabilities. Joss Whedon is a god to a certain subset of television and movie watchers, but Buffy and Angel were a long time ago, and Firefly didn’t even last an entire season. Sure, he did well with Dr. Horrible (although I believe I made my feelings on that one pretty clear), but you’re only as good as your last show, and I’m not sure that Internet sensations count.

Second, Eliza Dushku is not a great actress. She was the perfect person to play the tough, conflicted Faith, but she’s much less convincing on Dollhouse when she’s supposed to be nice and harmless. It’s gotten to the point where casting her conveys the same message as casting Lucy Lawless: watch out for this one, she’ll hurt you bad. I never quite buy it when other characters look at Echo’s Persona of the Week and fail to notice the danger. For example, on tonight’s episode, “Echoes”, they had her running around a college campus in an outfit that screams “late 90s” (complete with a miniscule skirt and almost thigh-high socks!) and wearing high-heeled Mary Janes. Who else but a freakishly tough woman could withstand hours of kinky sex, motorcycle-riding, and sneaking around in those things? I know that I probably would have only had the fortitude to get around to the first two things on that list.

Third, the premise seems more ridiculous each week. The idea is that there is a group of beautiful people who are essentially blank slates and for incredible sums of money (usually), individuals, corporations, the government, etc. can have these blank slates imprinted with any set of memories or skill set they desire. So Echo the Doll can become sex-kitten Alice, and then go back to being Echo when the engagement is over. And aside from the fact that the technology seems to keep finding newer and more spectacular ways of failing (no spoilers, but if you’ve seen next week’s preview, you know what I’m talking about), some of the assignments just don’t make sense. Why would a couple use a Doll as a midwife? Why pay a boatload of money when a real midwife could be had for considerably less? Or as a hostage negotiator? Why shell out a lot of money on a fake negotiator when one would presumably soon also be paying a ransom? The given excuse of the need for privacy seemed pretty flimsy. I can’t imagine many negotiators make it a practice to blab about their assignments once they’re completed. And, anyway, what value did Echo add in that situation? Due to the way she was programmed, she actually kind of arsed it up before damage control and more Dolls helped save the day.

And why is Echo working in LA, when that’s where she became a Doll? Episode 6 revealed that there are 20 Dollhouses around the world (why is the LA house the only one that seems to have reached the status of urban legend?), so what sense does it make to have her stay in the city where she started out? She’s already been recognized while on an engagement, and the more assignments she does, the more likely this is to happen again. This 20 Dollhouse thing feels to me like Joss is already tweaking the established mythology, although I am glad that he did not wait six seasons to reveal that there are a lot of other Dollhouses, so this main Dollhouse is less special. It seems that I may be harboring a little residual bitterness about the Slayerettes that popped up in season 7. My bad.

I’ve said more about this than I thought I would, and this post is already excessively wordy, so I will save my thoughts on the Dollhouse staff and other Dolls for some other time.

I knew all that tv watching would eventually pay off

I asked Alan Sepinwall, tv critic for the Newark Star-Ledger and blogger, a question for his mailbag column, and he answered it for me! Maybe he answered my question first because it was the best (yay!), the worst (boo!), or possibly because I am from the state the paper is based in. Whatever, I found out what I wanted to know. It’s nice to be the one asking questions, for a change.

A thorough ribbing, not necessarily undeserved

I like to read the Food section of the New York Times when I have a few minutes and find myself in front of the computer. I bake and cook when I get the mood, and I’m always looking for good recipes. This week’s Frank Bruni column focused on a challenge given to two food writers: feed a party of 8 for less than $50. I thought the article was interesting, and liked the ideas that I got from it, even though I know that it’s not at all difficult to serve 6 people a complete meal for $50 or less.

Still, I got a kick out of the way that the Jezebel community reacted to the story. In addition to being up in arms and making fun of stupid food reporters, chefs, the New York Times, and printed media in general, the Jezzies added something of even more value than humor: recipes. Most of them were in the vein of “tostitos, dip, coffee, etc” but a few (including Sadie’s recipe that she posted along with her reaction to the article) looked like something I’d in all seriousness make and eat. Thank you, Jezebel! I shall be eating cheaply for ages, now!

Tragic

I find it interesting how following seemingly random links on the internet can teach you something you’d never have any reason to know otherwise. I started out looking at this Metafilter thread about the web site dead.atyourage.com. You enter your exact date of birth and find out about famous/infamous/interesting people who died at your age or thereabouts.

The first person on my list was Lyman Bostock, a baseball player I’d never heard of. Apparently, he is still the only MLB player to have been murdered during the baseball season. That’s sad enough, but I went to the Wikipedia article about him and read the story of his death; it’s heartbreaking. He was a great hitter on his way to being a pretty big star, and was murdered by Leonard Smith, the jealous, estranged husband of a woman he’d only just met. Even worse, Smith was found guilty in his second trial (the first ended in a mistrial due to a hung jury), was committed for psychiatric treatment, and was released after seven months when he was deemed to be no longer mentally ill. Including that time and the time he was in jail awaiting trial, he served less than two years for Bostock’s murder. ESPN Outside the Lines also did a story on Bostock’s murder. It seems like a slap in the face of Bostock’s family that Smith has been free for nearly thirty years, even though he was found guilty of murder. As a direct result of this case, the state of Indiana changed the way that the sentences of those found guilty by reason of insanity are handles, so that people found guilty and then deemed no longer insane would go to jail, instead of be released.

Where do you go from here?

There are a lot of shows whose premises make them seem like they’d make decent tv movies, but which don’t seem supportable over the course of a season. Amanda Bynes’s new show sounds like such a program. It’s called Canned, and it’s about a bunch of young friends who are all fired on the same day. Hilarious, right? Okay, not really. But still: how do you drag that out across a season (I say one season because, let’s be honest, right now nothing about this premise screams renewal)? I guess there must be more to it than that, right? Because otherwise, it’s pretty lame. Sounds like it may last as long Jerry O’Connell’s hotel show.

Chuck vs the Predator

Oh my goodness! Chuck has been getting so good lately, and really this whole season has been pretty amazing. I love how Chuck is being seen as a grown-up, as opposed to a screw-up who creates more problems than he solves. On the one hand, I’m sad that Chuck is being forced into these situations that are causing him to harden and turn into the spy he never wanted to be. On the other hand, I recognize that he is a smart, capable person who is given way too little credit and is definitely equal to the tasks before him.

I’m so so so excited to see the rest of this season, and hope that Tricia Helfer’s stint on Chuck will be less useless than her appearances in the first 8 episodes of Burn Notice’s second season (haven’t finished it yet, maybe there’s a reason for her to exist).

I appreciate that the General didn’t lie to Chuck; she absolutely does not want him to stop being the Intersect, and actually wants to pull him further into the spy lifestyle. I think that Sarah’s confusion over her duty to her mission and her feelings for Chuck was well-played, and that the story wouldn’t have been very believable if she’d taken a firm stand either way. And Casey totally came through. I knew that he was more of a softie than he admitted (the man keeps a photo of Reagan [which the General promptly mocked], for cripes sakes), but I’m glad that when he had the opportunity to expose the depths of Sarah and Chuck’s feelings for one another, he basically played dumb.

As always, Adam Baldwin totally rocked my world, although I must say that Zachary Levi has grown on me quite a lot in the last little bit of time. I guess I’m still fundamentally the same 16 year old who swooned over David Boreanaz’s Angel, because damn it all if this new, tortured Chuck isn’t the hottest freaking thing ever.

Happy Monday!

One of the pictures that I took when Satanski and I went to the American Museum of Natural History has been added to the New York Schmap Guide. How exciting!

I Love You, Man

Remember those beer commercials? Yeah, neither do I. But I did got see the Paul Rudd and Jason Segal movie this weekend, and definitely enjoyed it. My love for these actors is only slightly more fervent than my desire not to witness anything really embarrassing ever, but that edge was all it took to make me want to see this movie. I’m not sorry that I went; when I wasn’t covering my eyes with my scarf so that yet another deeply shameful moment went unseen by me, I was laughing pretty damn hard. I really will watch Paul Rudd in anything (this is true: I watched all of I Could Never Be Your Woman a few weeks ago).

As is my habit, here is an excerpt from a review that kind of matched up with my experience in watching this film.

Is the premise of “I Love You, Man” thinner than the paper Maxim is printed on? No doubt. (It’s never clear why, if Peter is close enough to his brother to ask him to set him up on a series of “man dates,” he can’t just ask his brother to be his best man.) Does the movie feature a by-now yawn-inducing quota of jokes involving masturbation, projectile vomiting and flatulence? Positutely. Does Paul Rudd make the whole thing worth it? Totes magotes. — Ann Hornady, Washington Post

I would like to pretend that I don’t understand why a movie like this placed a distant second to that thing that Nicolas Cage crapped all over the box office this weekend, but I do: people are morons. Speaking of Nicolas Cage, I will now share with you the best thing that you have ever seen. Behold:

Things I didn’t need a psychic to figure out

I’m not surprised that Nicolas Cage’s new movie, Knowing, scored a fresh rating of 19% on Rotten Tomatoes. No, I’m shocked that such a high percentage of people were able to come out of that movie believing that it wasn’t a waste of effort, money, and minutes of their lives. No Nicolas Cage movie in years has been worth watching (yes, this includes the first National Treasure), and this seems like more of the same hokey crap. Usually I go see a movie and then post a pertinent snippet of a review, but this time I’m going to skip the trip to the theater and go straight to the bashing.

Enjoy.

As Knowing gets increasingly preposterous, and Cage’s stony deadpan acting seems even sillier in context, a kind of slack-jawed joy may overtake you. How on earth did this movie get made? How did anyone involved think they had a story worth telling? And, as always, what is Nicolas Cage thinking? — Leanne Cari, Cinema Blend