{"id":8859,"date":"2009-10-05T01:01:49","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T08:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8859"},"modified":"2009-10-05T01:01:49","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T08:01:49","slug":"petpluto-on-the-best-scene-in-dollhouse-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=8859","title":{"rendered":"PetPluto on The Best Scene in Dollhouse 2.1"},"content":{"rendered":"

In her review<\/a> of the second season premiere of “Dollhouse,” Maia wrote “the scene that owned this episode was Fran Kranz and Amy Acker in a room,” but didn’t end up saying that much about the scene. (Which is fine, what Maia wrote about the rest of the episode was great).<\/p>\n

PetPluto<\/a>, in contrast, spent about half of her review discussing The Scene. I especially liked this observation:<\/p>\n

SAUNDERS<\/strong>: Let’s stop playing games.<\/p>\n

TOPHER<\/strong>: Okay, huh – how does this qualify as not playing games?<\/p>\n

SAUNDERS<\/strong>: Because this is the endgame. This is where it all leads. You design someone to hate you so you can convince them to love you.<\/p>\n

TOPHER<\/strong>: Hey, I could whip up a love slave any day I wanted to.<\/p>\n

SAUNDERS<\/strong>: But that wouldn’t be a challenge, would it? Slaves are just slaves. But winning over your enemy – the one person guaranteed to reject everything you are – that’s real love. More real than anything up in the world.<\/p>\n

[…] I also find it so very cool that the premise Saunders presents, the challenge of getting someone who hates you to love you, is practically the basis for a whole huge swath of romantic comedies, ranging from When Harry Met Sally to 27 Dresses to The Ugly Truth to 2 Weeks Notice. And it is presented here as a sad notion. Which, even though I liked the two non-Heigl films above, was kind of refreshing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

An unrelated Dollhouse note: There are a zillion problems with the engagement-of-the-week nature of the show, but one of them is that most of the time, Echo and company are shown doing good<\/em>. Echo tries to get back the kidnap victim, or helps council an abuse victim, or finds a murderer, or breaks up some kind of horribly unrealistic mob activity, or helps destroy a cult, and so on.<\/p>\n

We’ve all seen this show structure before — it’s Kung Fu<\/a>, or Highway to Heaven<\/a>, or Quantum Leap<\/a>, or for that matter, Tru Calling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s an old story structure — Do-gooder encounters a new batch of evildoers and\/or sympathetic people in need of help each episode; Do-gooder makes it right. The problem is, the Dollhouse isn’t — or shouldn’t be – a do-gooder. The Dollhouse is a commercial enterprise, which serves the needs of clients loaded with money but lacking ethics. Why don’t we see Echo being hired to convince a bunch of stubborn tenants to move out so the building can be knocked down to make way for a mall?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her review of the second season premiere of “Dollhouse,” Maia wrote “the scene that owned this episode was Fran Kranz and Amy Acker in a room,” but didn’t end up saying that much about the scene. (Which is fine, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buffy-whedon-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}