Here is what Dollhouse is missing:

[readingthedark]

1) Monsters with freaky powers that get looked up in books.
2) Eerie haunted weapons that make up for the fact that someone's life is going to be threatened for the second half every issue.
3) A weird younger sister out of nowhere who is secretly a key.
4) Characters you care about.

I like Fred a lot, even now that her face has healed.

For a two-dimensional metaphor for human trafficking, Echo sure does get some implausibly intense adventuring going on.

I could go on. I just feel like the grand overarching plot that has been charted out for the next 100 episodes was what they spent most of their effort on, which makes it even less powerful that those arcs are being fed with glistening half-baked chunks of exposition that doesn't fit the single ep stories.

The first five minutes of episode 2 are enough to keep me following that story so I'll keep watching, despite a bland predictability that no series should run into after a mere three episodes.

Down with sameness. Up with monsters and haunted weapons.

Comments

[readingthedark.livejournal.com]

Yes. Having characters that weren't so lousy would make it easier to put words in their mouths and have people pretend to understand what they're saying and that's a two-way street. Good characterization makes it easier to act and write for, but good writing and good acting are what give characters. The show is in big trouble if prectable repetitive flatness is their most defining characteristic.

Dollhouse... Tune in to see how many times you will yawn as you are caught up in the gripping lack of character development... Fridays on Fox!

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

The show is in big trouble if prectable repetitive flatness is their most defining characteristic.

Heh. One of the things that's baffling me is actually the reverse--they keep talking about how Echo's development is strange! and wrong! and dangerous! but as far as I can tell based on what we've seen, refusing to return to perfect flatness is par for the course (Alpha, Echo, and now Sierra), so what's the big deal?

Problem: if we don't ever see the Dollhouse functioning as it's supposed to function, the malfunctions don't have much impact because to us, they're business as usual.

But of course, other problem: as you say, the functional Dollhouse isn't very interesting, either.