A Few Things

♦With reservations, I recommend Torchwood: Children of Earth, the BBC miniseries (technically a season of Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood) that aired recently on BBC America and is available on iTunes. It’s a suspenseful and unusually pointed dramatization of some ethical quandaries, but despite many believable and affecting performances, is not so impressive in its development of character or in its actual exploration of the dilemmas it poses. Yet it’s quite refreshing to encounter science fiction focusing more on ideas than on action. Further, in part by leaving the agenda of the aliens mysterious until near the end of the narrative, the writers create a milieu of foreboding that is intense and yet murky. The more viscerally suspenseful elements, deriving mostly from violence, chases, surveillance, and the like, are achieved through conflict among the human characters; this was an interesting and in some ways satisfying approach. On the other hand, while the aliens were not made into cartoonish villains—they have clear motivations—they serve more as objects of fear than as agents with complex motives and experiences. Alien psychology is an inherently interesting topic and we don’t see it explored here.

♦I missed a couple episodes of Nurse Jackie but I caught Monday’s. I like the direction things seem to be taking: Jackie is experiencing greater difficulty negotiating her relationship issues, parenting role, and drug issues. I’m thinking, now, that it was important to show her intelligence, caring, and competence in the early episodes, so that the challenges she is facing now would seem consequential. She has something to lose.

♦The Dollhouse season one DVDs, of course, are out. I loved “Epitaph One” but I have reservations about it as well. That, however, will have to wait for later in the week.

Women Underrepresented Behind the Camera

Neda Ulaby provides details in a story for NPR.

Infinite Summer

A couple weeks late, I’ve joined in the daunting project being chronicled at Infinite Summer. More to come.

Jackie, Take Five

Jackie, Take Five
[Spoilers for this episode only]

This episode of Jackie was another strong one; again, it contained nothing particularly surprising or nuanced. Rather, one sensed some of the joy this profession offers when one can use it, as Jackie does here, to really help someone in need and to forge a personal connection with her in the process. In fact, part of what makes Jackie so effective—in contrast to the doctors around her, who are obviously also very knowledgeable and competent—is precisely that she communicates so well with patients—listening to them, showing interest in them, providing emotional support, and, when necessary, being tough with their family members, or even giving out her cell phone number. They trust her and one senses they will try to do as she asks. One sees this with the stroke patient and with Stephanie, the girl caring for her sick mother.

I do not think Akalitus is being developed well. She isn’t formidable enough and is too easily ridiculed. Also? Coop is not very interesting yet, although he’s had his moments. Momo and Thor are pretty engaging. Eddie, the lover and drug provider, is pretty good in his wacky, clueless warmth. O’Hara is wonderfully crazy in her overdone imperiousness.

Recommended: Writers’ Block

Ive started listening to KQED’s Writers’ Block podcast (also available on iTunes). It features authors reading stories, book excerpts, and other short works. The selections are quite good from what I’ve heard; a particularly refreshing aspect of this podcast is that unlike most similar programs, there is no host and no interview—just authors briefly discussing and then reading their work. This direct approach is very absorbing, I’ve found.

It’s That Time of Year

Ravi Somaiya talks with movie industry insiders about why so many big movies are rotten. “It’s a business.”

Jackie, Take Four

Note: Spoilers for this episode

I thought episode four was fine. It dealt with the death of a character it had bothered to humanize quite a bit, and this unblinking treatment was surprising and affecting. The drawing used to illustrate Jackie’s daughter’s anxiety was an effective device, made more so by the counterpoint of another child’s drawing at the end. Her effortlessly caring approach for a worried parent and her instruction to Zoey in this matter were also powerful (you really want someone like Jackie to care for you when you are in the hospital).

But somehow the episode fell rather flat, I thought. The half-hour time frame continues to work against the show: our investment in the characters depends on their change over time, but the events here seem so rushed and episode-bound that I am diverted more than intrigued by the latest crisis. The daughter’s problem could certainly provoke some interesting conflicts, but her time onscreen so far has been quite limited. Presumably that will change if this subplot is going to develop. The hint of conflict with her husband also seems like it could become interesting, but so far her juggling of her multiple relationships is so nearly seamless that it’s hard to care about this issue. The text messages from her lover that she gets while with her husband (one is afraid he’ll see them) suggest the conflict here may intensify. That would be good. Because for all the messiness of Jackie’s life, she is handling things too smoothly for dramatic purposes. Even a comedy, especially one with not much good comedy, needs emotional stories to tell.

A Thriller That Is Also a Relationship Movie

A thriller that is willing to stop being a thriller and to become not merely “psychological” but a relationship movie of sorts, only to become a thriller again in climactic moments, and then to return again to relationship and character concerns in its conclusion is already a rare accomplishment. This structure suggests a satisfying perspective that we don’t encounter often enough in film: The thrills and trauma of violence are not what life or fiction needs fundamentally to be about even in a story focusing on adolescents, crime, and desperation. Our feelings are more generous and our interests broader than is indicated by the mindsets we exhibit in crisis. We tend to compartmentalize our broader, more vulnerable selves when struggling to control our feelings and behavior to address urgent situations; sometimes we tend temporarily to forget about that broader perspective entirely. When others genuinely help us, not through didactic means but through a subtle empathy, to recall our humanity during stressful circumstances, something lovely and substantive has happened.

The subject of these meditations is Cassandra Nicolaou’s 2006 Canadian thriller, Show Me. Aside from very convincing performances from its three leads, this film, shot mostly in a few locations with almost no other actors, creates an intimacy that suggests it might have worked even better as theater. Sarah, an apparently upper-middle class businesswoman, is kidnapped when she rolls down her car window to pay a teenage girl, Jenna, who had tried to clean her windshield. She and her boyfriend Jackson, in need of money and space to think out their next move, accompany Sarah to a cabin in the woods where she plans to meet her lover, detained by meetings, for what is later revealed to be their tenth anniversary. In a strange way, they get to know one another.

None of these characters is given an adequate back story; the explanation provided for the teenagers’ desperation is embarrassingly melodramatic (a single traumatic event involving an alcoholic parent seems to be crucial) and at the same time unpersuasive. Interesting and plausible accounts of motivation tend to recognize the significance of complex environments that affect people over time, including perhaps a number of explicit crisis points, or none at all.

But this movie is a psychological study, if not of individual characters or narratives then of relationships and how they affect people. At first, Sarah forms a strategy of trying to work on Jackson, whose tone is apologetic and practical (Jenna is initially angrier and meaner). Her efforts to escape eventually bring them into direct conflict, however. Meahwhile, it becomes apparent that Jenna is as angry with herself as she is with Sarah. As Sarah senses this, her sympathy for Jenna grows. The film really becomes interesting as the hostage dynamic recedes almost to nothing (indeed, Sarah actually manages to escape for a time). When Jenna, for her part, watches some home videos of Sarah and her lover, she comes to feel a grudging affection and longing for connection with her. Jackson is not thrown into stereotypical rage by this development--in a refreshing break with thriller clichés about paranoid criminals and the use of divide-and-conquer tactics by hostages or cops, his bonds with Jenna, however stormy, are unbreakable. Yet he senses the shifted dynamic and seems hurt in a background sort of way. In the later parts of the film, his anger, mingling with his fears and neediness, seem to dominate his motivation, carrying terrible consequences in a climactic, unforeseen crisis.

There are any number of kidnapping movies featuring complex dynamics between criminals and their hostages. There are fine studies of kids on the cusp of adolescence like Lisa Krueger’s indie Manny & Lo (1996); there are vivid slice-of-life classics like Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Despite its somewhat vague, stereotyped portrayals of its teenage characters, Show Me deserves a distinguished place in this suspense subgenre, because the dynamics between characters believably change so many times, just as real relationships are apt to evolve—hopefully, as here, to a measure of understanding. Such sympathy is not always enough to ensure a fully happy ending, but if nothing else it helps define life by something more than its crisis moments.

Are Doctors So Terrible?

Mary Carmichael at DoubleX makes a good point about Nurse Jackie. I noticed this a bit in episode two, but she draws out the point very well.

I would add that even if doctors are often as terrible as the show suggests (I’ve read evidence that many doctors have their share of issues), the dichotomy is not particularly well suited to television drama, or at least, not as portrayed here so far. If some of the doctors were shown to be fantastic and some of the nurses to be terrible, then the dichotomy would seem less facile. Or if Jackie wants to assert a sharp division in caring and attentiveness between doctors and nurses, it ought to explore the reasons for the difference, try to resolve it in a particular case, or otherwise treat the issue in a more complex fashion.

edited 26-Jun-2009

‘Jackie’: Things Are Looking Up

The third episode of Nurse Jackie was the best so far. Several subplots were deftly juggled, and I got the sense that the harried lifestyle of a nurse and parent (not to mention one carrying on an affair and with a drug habit) entails stress coming at her from all sides at a rapid pace. In particular, there seemed to be a subtle polarity between Jackie’s gracious support for a dying old man refusing treatment and his wife, suggesting a nurse’s pragmatic comfort with cruel existential facts, and, on the other hand, her bafflement with her ten-year-old daughter’s growing and seemingly inexplicable morbid anxiety. Jackie exhibits a rare maturity and competence, but also episodes of bewilderment, dread, and feelings of helplessness. (Does her daughter’s anxiety have something to do with her mother’s problems? It will be interesting to see if this is the case.)

I was less impressed with nurse-in-training Zoey’s again being used as a figure of ridicule. The writing and characterization with her so far are broader, for comic purposes, and less indiidualized. Coop’s character also seems more than a bit absurd. When I have enjoyed this show, it hasn’t been because of its allegedly comedic moments but because of Jackie’s character development and Falco’s portrayal.

Links Are Your Friend

Longer stuff coming up in the next couple days, but for now a bit of link happiness.

♦ This sharp, compassionate essay, by Jenny Turner, is one of the better pieces of writing about fiction (maybe the best) that I’ve read in the last couple years. It is written very well, and says some things that badly needed saying. (It’s about some vampire interlopers you may have heard of.)

♦ I’ve been reading the short story Web site 5 Chapters. I quite like some of the writing, and I also want to note that the serial format is a pleasure to find on the Web. In a box-set, download-friendly culture—and I write this as someone who loves box sets and the Web—suspense and a certain kind of fan experience can be casualties.

‘Nursing’ Is Hard Work: ‘Nurse Jackie,’ Episode 2

Note: spoilers for episode 2.

So, episode 2 … Our nurse continues her wise ways, subduing a violent patient with a well-timed dose of courtesy when physicians and police were having trouble. I liked this subplot, but not much the rest of the episode, in which a seemingly bizarre suggestion about a patient’s condition from Coop turns out to be correct (this outcome could be seen coming a mile away; also, why wouldn’t Dr. O’Hara listen briefly to a colleague? Is this normal? Healthcare professionals, clue me in …) and nervous nurse-in-training Zoey both becomes nervous about her chosen profession a bit too easily and then gets reassured a bit too easily by Jackie’s mix of moral support and sternness. Nor did I find the unknowingly-high antics of hospital official Gloria Akatilus (Anna Deveare Smith) to show any subtlety or humor.

The show continues to suggest that nursing is gritty work that allows a real sense of accomplishment and requires a quietly ingenious daily pragmatism to be done well. This message and the mood used to help convey it are compelling, but the narratives used to portray them are so rushed—again, this series needs a full hour—that the delivery feels didactic and a bit trite. A case in point is Jackie’s drug use—a harrowing, ambiguous narrative and emotional backdrop for the series, but one whose gravity is undercut by using Falco’s narration to discuss it, as though it’s a casual activity entirely under her control. Since it’s a solitary activity, this narrative technique is understandable, but so far the show hasn’t shown her to have any experiences with drug use that convey any deeper, more complex information about its role in her personality and coping that might make it interesting on its own terms. We’re just supposed to gather its meaning from what Jackie tells us about it.

Remembering that Nurse Jackie is a comedy, I feel a little friendlier toward it. Its settings and characters are more complex and interesting than what I associate with sitcoms, but this show purports to be about characters and institutions as well. So far it has not transcended cliché in these areas, but it’s still a young series, and I admit I enjoy it, in a voyeuristic sort of way. I just don’t find it as interesting or moving or thought-provoking as it seemed to want to be. Perhaps I can sum up my feelings thus far by saying that this is a “dark comedy” that seems to skip the “dark” part almost entirely.

A Brief Author Recommendation

I’ve been remiss in failing to note this. Last month, Alice Munro, who is primarily known for her short fiction, was awarded the Man Booker International Prize*. I don’t have time to write something detailed about her work right now, but let me at least say that her characters are portrayed with enough telling detail, narrative scope, and sense of place to become intensely real. Her work is therefore naturally poignant, but so unpretentious and thoughtful that it lacks the sentimentality to which, given that it has its share of sadness, it might easily have fallen prey. (I think of sentimentality, roughly, as a stifling didacticism—in particular, sympathy or other emotion achieved by using characters and situations that evoke facile identification or rejection, rather than, say, by creating well-developed personalities and highly individualized mileus.)

At any rate, if you haven’t read Munro, you should pick up one of her short story collections. This is a cliché about short stories, but it fits so well in this instance that it demands to be said: each story is a world unto itself, and correspondingly rich. (With some hesitation, I also suggest that you not start with “The View from Castle Rock,” which, given its historical settings, seems to me a bit less approachable than some of her other work.)



*Note: This honor, awarded every two years, should not be confused with the annual Man Booker Prize (“Booker Prize”), which is given to a Commonwealth novel.

‘Jackie’: Too Early to Judge

Note: Implied spoiler for pilot only.

THERE ARE SEVERAL commonly observed reasons to watch Nurse Jackie, Showtime’s new series airing at Monday nights at 10:30 EST, all of which are valid: Edie Falco; a medical show focusing on nursing; another show focusing on flawed genius—it’s been done, but hardly exhausted; and—I would add—the friendship between Falco and Edie Best’s Doctor O’Hara, which in its pairing of two women experiencing the medical profession from different angles, seems promising. Falco’s character abuses prescription drugs, apparently to keep up with a gruesome schedule, and perhaps for other reasons. This depiction of drug use—as problematic (at the very least, getting the drugs seems an alarmingly urgent matter for her) yet combined with her being a high-functioning, thoughtful person, is intriguing too.

Yet I have some quibbles after watching the pilot. This show deserves a full hour, it seems to me. The medical crises seem to play out too quickly to develop the emotional weight their content deserves: resolved so quickly, these crises come to seem almost sensationalistic. (For that matter, they also don’t last long enough to become interesting on a technical, philosophical, or other intellectual level.) Then there’s the milieu of the hospital setting, which surely carries a lot of potential to convey the burdens and messy dynamics of her distinctive workplace. Instead, so far, we’re only being given clichés: she’s tired, overworked, and dedicated; one or more of the doctors she works with may be nightmares.

Nor is Jackie—again, so far—a clearly defined personality outside of her nursing role. The closing scene conveyed that there are more complexities to her life than those she faces as a nurse, but it remains to be seen whether this moment, which takes place at her home, is going to be used enough to develop her character, or only has a site of romantic tensions.

Others have pointed out, and I agree, that her decisions in the pilot, including deliberately interfering with the treatment of a monster of a patient, are highly questionable, yet presented rather nonchalantly. Finally, I would note that she seems to take her drug use for granted, rather than being troubled by or conflicted about it. This portrayal might be fine, except that it’s arguably the defining feature of the character and the series; if she can entirely handle this choice well, where’s the ambiguity, the tension, the fodder for dramatic narrative? Her doubt or troubles on this score, obviously, no doubt will emerge over time; but it would have been nice to see some evidence in the pilot that the drug use is intended as a source of characterization rather than, say, for shock value. (The source of a serious error she makes, and quickly corrects, with one patient is ambiguous—arguably it’s merely due to fatigue.)

In all, I’d say it’s too early by far to judge the series. The show has lots of potential and, equally, plenty of pitfalls to avoid. Hospital shows have not exactly been lacking in the last two decades or so. It’s an inherently interesting setting and one most people can relate to at a human level. But many of its dilemmas have become painfully familiar. Nurse Jackie is going to have to prove itself.

edited for grammar and code 24-Jun

Don’t You Feel Like This Sometimes?

Beware of the Evil Robot Monkey.

Seriously, I thought this podcast short story was pretty awesome.

Glee Clears Its Throat

If you missed the premiere of Glee, Ryan Murphy’s new Fox offering set to return Sept. 16, you can see it on the Fox Web site or on Hulu, and you really should, despite its confusing and empty first ten minutes. It’s often risky to judge an hour-long serial too much by its pilot episode, because a show often needs several episodes or more to find its dramatic rhythm, a sense of its characters, and a coherent style and tone. Yet I think we can dispense with much of that caution in this case, for Glee is both a comedy and a musical, and it’s clear already that it succeeds abundantly in both genres. Despite some underdeveloped characters and an odd focus, it seems likely to feature enough humor and exuberance to make it a pleasure even if we are forced to enjoy its episodes as stand-alone pieces more than as increments in semi-serious character arcs. (Every show about adolescents should try to achieve at least a little seriousness, or poignancy, or something of the sort; the subject demands it.)


A show with an intense, quirky ensemble cast set in a high school will inevitably have its soapy elements, of course, yet if these transcend cliché, I’ll be surprised (and thrilled). For starters, the kids seem like stock characters. Consider born-to-sing Rachel (Lea Michele) — obsessive and demanding about the glee club, ostensibly an outsider — who seems troubled by her ostracized-artist status for all of a minute. Given her conventionally gorgeous looks and considerable talent, it seems unclear why she would be unpopular in the first place, except for her frantic need to prove herself, which itself, alas seems inexplicable. While teenagers with popularity, beauty, and talent to burn have their share of insecurities, we aren’t shown the context for hers, which leaves them seeming like comedic devices rather than humanizing qualities. Her peers on the team haven’t emerged enough as individuals yet to comment on, except for Finn (Cory Hudson), who is given the delightful dual role of being simultaneously a star football player and a newly discovered singing talent. His clueless jock observations, equally earnest and oblivious (dad “died in Iraq when we were fighting Osama bin Laden the first time”), are funny but make him more than a little ridiculous.


Then there’s the fact that these troubled kids — variously described or describing themselves as invisible, anonymous, hated — are scarcely shown in the rest of their allegedly difficult lives, only onstage. Oddly, the adult stories have more texture — Jayma Mays is a standout as a fellow teacher infatuated with Will (Matthew Morrison), the earnest coach. These subplots are great, but a show about high school probably needs to have successful portrayals of its students to feel fully realized.


So — it seems like it will be hard to invest emotionally in the struggles of the young singers. But with comedic lines (“I reek of management potential,” “Dr. Phil said that people could change”) and joyous performances of a wide and weird amalgam of songs (“Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Rehab,” etc.) following in quick succession, we will be happy viewers anyway. Then there’s the fact that the very appearance of a musical on network TV is such a change from the melodramatic formulas that typify coming-of-age series, and Glee deserves a healthy chance for this reason alone.

Note: lightly edited May 31 for clarity, syntax, and emphasis.

The Taboo on Technological Optimism: A Dollhouse Retrospective

[Spoilers for Dollhouse, season 1; Angel, season 4; and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 6]

JOSS WHEDON ALWAYS makes interesting television, and Dollhouse is no exception. How sad, then, that this complicated show, boasting an unusual, daring narrative style, in some ways also turned out to be so conventional.

I. The Wrong Kind of Villain (and What He Crowds Out)
The Dollhouse finale, “Omega,” focuses on the goals of a person whom we already know to be quite crazy. After all the buzz about this episode, its main revelation is that his goals turn out to be … crazy. (This sort of underwhelming parallelism was not inevitable. People who are troubled or even crazy can have goals that are interesting, ambiguous, layered, even redemptive.) When Echo turns against Alpha, the moment feels predictable and uninspiring. (You can’t help but think anyone, even a doll, would have to recoil from such plans.) Echo’s assertive and thoroughly sane attitude throughout the rest of the episode merely duplicates a trend we’d seen throughout the season, and with increasing depth in several episodes of the second half. Although it also included a few touching moments that deserved more elaboration, the continued focus on an Active-gone-bad makes this last hour melodramatic and shallow, undermining the show’s intermittent efforts at thematic reach.

Notwithstanding his complex origins, Alpha — a technologically induced being, an unplanned composite of dozens of identities — is actually quite simple; he essentially wants … power. This kind of grandiosity certainly exists in many people, yet the choice to focus the last two episodes on such a character, rather than on the motives and machinations of the puppetmasters, amounts to a counterproductive reductionism. Dollhouse, after all, is a television series self-consciously seeking complex moral inquiry rather than relying on Manichean formula. It aims to explore the complexity of our enmeshment within corrupt but valuable social institutions. While some elements of the show suggest questions along these lines, more often this exploration is avoided, and the season culminates in a use of the mad-scientist motif that amounts to a catastrophic repudiation of this whole moral project. Alpha’s cartoon-like, megalomaniacal fantasies — which seem clearly to be Whedon et al.’s amplified commentary on the dollhouse technology itself — allow us, in a facile way, to feel safely superior not only to him but to the organization that created him. To put the point another way, Alpha’s characterization and especially the way it reflects on the dollhouse (about which more later) violate what ought to be a major rule of genre fiction — that it feature interesting villains — a rule that the show had previously tried to respect.

There’s a glaring contrast between the anticlimactic finale, with its convenient, essentially inhuman enemy epitomizing the deranged vision of his creators, and the intriguing original premise. We had been led to entertain the counterintuitive and upsetting possibility that the dollhouse organization and its operatives had made a complex, rather than absurd, moral calculation in acting against core human attributes — memory and selfhood. One suspected they were pursuing a larger (social? political? medical?) mission that our ordinary, and vital, moral categories somehow neglect. Rather than being sidelined for the killer-on-the-run finale, a part of that mission could have been revealed — an exciting prospect which would have invited debate. Similarly, Actives might have been designed to retain some subjectivity rather than as blank slates, so that we might be able to feel ambivalent about, even tempted by, their altered state of being. Perhaps the primary clients of the dollhouse could have been the actives themselves, rather than merely wealthy outsiders. The famous statement from the pilot — An active is the truest soul among us — might then have become a plausible claim, even a partial truth, rather than a risible piece of corporate propaganda.

The squandered possibilities for raising challenging philosophical questions abound. One might even have hoped for a creative re-imagining of the parable of the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov. One instructive template for this possibility is found elsewhere in Whedon’s own work, in the haunting climax of Angel, season four. A mysterious deity called Jasmine arrives in Los Angeles, providing all who encounter her a peace that surpasses understanding, at the cost of their ability to form independent judgments about her or their deepest values. In the end, free will is returned to the citizens of Los Angeles (and Jasmine’s television viewers elsewhere) — and it comes with a horrible price. While most viewers no doubt agree with Angel that some sort of free will is essential to human dignity and that Jasmine had to be defeated, it is a victory that leaves one feeling relief mingled with dread; this victory will leave unknowable torment, innumerable victims, in its wake.

The duality of her power is striking almost from the moment of her arrival. Jasmine clearly had perpetrated a terrifying spiritual violation on everyone around her, silently and irresistibly inducing a state of obedient worship — a clear and chilling metaphor for religious indoctrination. This form of worship, however, is mingled with an equally apparent state of blissful trust and inner harmony. At the conclusion, everyone’s selfhood is returned, and, like Buffy Summers ripped from heaven, many seem broken by the change. One senses they will not easily find anything resembling the peace or goodwill they had enjoyed under Jasmine’s influence. This arc of faith found and lost is simultaneously a trenchant critique of organized religion and a subtler statement about the deficiencies of the belief in self-sufficiency that does so much, for better and worse, to define the American character.

In “Man on the Street,” the challenge an eerily appropriated Echo (herself, of course, already an altered form of another appropriated self) had posed — that Agent Ballard should find out why the dollhouse exists — had suggested that the series would explore similar domains of moral complexity. We were led to wonder: Might that purpose have redeeming features? The possibility of such layering was suggested by numerous character subtleties, such as Adele DeWitt’s former profession of medical research and Boyd Langdon’s anomalous, pervasively compassionate presence in the organization. Increasingly, however, in its second half — even before the troubled digression into the Alpha subplot — the series had begun to focus more narrowly on providing thrilling, innovative twists on the suspense genre.

II. Questions of Power
These twists, admittedly, were not entirely without thematic content. They showed us, powerfully, that divided loyalties and hidden identities abound in an organization that wields so much power with so little oversight or dialogue. The hierarchical model of the corporation serves as a frightening repository for the management of such power. Laurence Dominic, you will recall, made this claim, briefly, in “A Spy in the House of Love” — to my mind the single most compelling episode.

But even these political messages — already narrower and less interesting than the show’s presumed philosophical interests in ethics, phenomenology, identity, and the like — were expressed too briefly. The question of how memory- and personality-altering technology might be managed with more accountability is not explored. Instead, we are left to conclude simply that the uncertain, inconsistent benevolence of those in power ought not be trusted. Insofar as the show is musing metaphorically about authority, or (as an interesting essay posted on io9.com suggested), about how we all misuse it, Dollhouse would have had to say far more before its exploration in this area could be said to be interesting, let alone challenging. In a post-George W. Bush era (with all due respect to his supporters), not to mention the legacies of Watergate, the Vietnam War, communism, and fascism, does anyone need fiction to understand that power can be abused?

(As for the claim that the show critiques our own tendencies to use other people — which I think could be a compelling message — this idea, I think, falters on the sheer extremity of the technology as depicted. If most of us regularly manipulate people, we hardly can be said to do so as directly and deeply as dollhouse clients do. An interesting variant of this we-are-all-akin-to-dollhouse-clients claim might be made about the harm of certain practices associated with globalization, which arguably has produced plenty of unseen victims, partly for the benefit of stockholders and consumers in wealthy countries. Ultimately, however, the parallel doesn’t work very well. The dollhouse relies on individual transactions, while the most important economic decisions are made by corporate and bureaucratic elites.)

The reality of everyday life, despite our awareness of its abuses, is that power is a pervasive, if often implicit, aspect of our social worlds; it is sometimes used for good and sometimes for ill. This is the moral reality we want explored with respect for its ambiguities. Instead, even the nascent critique of power imbalances the later episodes do achieve is cut short by the Alpha narrative, which in its pessimism proves too much. After all, why bother to contemplate who should control the power of this technology if it’s inherently corrupting? Alpha’s story really serves as a kind of Luddite warning about the dangers of science and technology and, implicitly, the quest for transcendence. It confirms the cliched message that experimentation equals hubris equals doom. Serious moral complexity is sacrificed; Ballard joins the ranks of the dollhouse with no enthusiasm or moral conversion to some larger mission, but purely for instrumental purposes (to secure November’s release). Echo — whose rebellion throughout had at least suggested technology cannot kill the human spirit very easily — returns meekly to the fold (as if to say, repeating the lesson of Alpha’s example, that you can’t trust technology after all).

III. The Taboo on Positive Futures
Of course, the dollhouse concept as literally presented is indeed morally unacceptable, in fact horrifying; at one level we are relieved that Ballard apparently retains his moral outrage about it. But we already know that slavery is wrong, and selfhood precious. We might have expected from Whedon’s curious mind a thematic focus on a different sort of conversation. Dollhouse could have explored the idea that selfhood is not only precious, but also, in some ways, problematic, and it could have explored how technology and a collective effort to manage it (in less objectionable form) might help salve the horrors we face in life.

The quandaries that led volunteers to sign contracts to join the dollhouse hint at this sort of open-minded inquiry. We see some of the traumas of life-as-it-was for these “volunteers.” These tentative acknowledgments of human desperation, however, finally cannot serve as even partial vindication for the dollhouse concept. Notice that the incentives and remedies DeWitt offers these vulnerable people are thoroughly mundane — money, assistance in avoiding prosecution — that is, forms of payment for participating in the technology, not a promise of deliverance or support via applications of the technology itself. In consequence, a host of other interesting questions are not explored:

• How might someone be helped by absorbing so many experiences, skills, perspectives?
  
• What new forms of empathy, connection, and creativity might be possible with this technology?
  
• Most of all, why does a person need to remain erased, rather than, say, restored to herself with memories of her imprints, between assignments?

Technology, like any other psychological, social, or material process, can of course lead us astray, and this point is worth making. But technology can also help us, and in fact has freed countless people confronting physical, psychological, and political obstacles to pursue more fully the development of their identities in chosen, creative ways. Since disaster — corruption, insanity, and violence — is hardly the exclusive fruit of scientific innovation, or its necessary consequence, the focus on humanity’s overstepping its bounds is terribly disappointing. Why does Whedon focus so much on the possibility of going insane from being an Active? The analogy is imperfect, but Dollhouse owes more to R.U.R. than to Isaac Asimov (who depicted technological advances as morally fraught but capable of being managed responsibly and serving as a positive, humane force).

At times, Dollhouse showed a more curious, ambiguous perspective. It showed signs of political and existential curiosity — more, certainly, than we tend to encounter on network television. But insofar as the dictates of network executives for conventional suspense-genre trappings and the specter of Alpha’s horrific project define the series, it’s something of a paean to paternalistic authority: Will the dollhouse be brought down, and the natural order restored? The show could have asked whether undeniably dangerous experiments with our scientific and social arrangements could be refashioned in collaborative ways. Or suppose instead that we reject altogether this drive to experiment, to learn more, to feel better and freer, as the show seems to prefer. This choice may leave us safer (or more sheltered); but will we be safer, freer, more sane in the long run? Or will we remain stuck with the sources of anomie, despair, and mistrust that already confront us every day?

No doubt subsequent seasons of Dollhouse would explore broader questions and provide more ambiguous, interesting answers. “Epitaph One,” the final episode of the season, which has yet to air*, sounds promising. But as I have suggested, the trajectory of this season as aired and the form of the memory-erasing premise the show employed are already problems insofar as that season is considered on its own terms. In the end, one cannot blame the creators of the show for being more skeptical of personality-altering technology than some of its viewers; it’s invigorating to take in art with a sharp point of view. But one must blame them for constructing the show on terms that force us to agree with them, and (so far) for only grazing the questions that might really expand our imaginations.

*Originally I wrote that it would be available on DVD, but apparently it may yet air. This post has also been edited for spelling and to clean up code. -May 18

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Look here for individual reviews and broader reflections on fiction and its possibilities, speculation on forthcoming works, links to interesting sources on the subject, and lots more. Television, short stories, novels, comics, movies—all these media will get some attention. Please visit often and share your comments. Spoilers will generally be avoided; warning will be provided before they are used.