"Puppet wrangler? There weren't any puppets in this movie!" – Crow T. Robot
Joss Whedon on working on Wonder Woman:
They didn’t tell me to leave, but they showed me the door and how pretty it was. Would I like to touch the knob and maybe make it swing?
I also like how he calls his upcoming movie, Cabin in the Woods, “old school horror with grad school sensibilities.”
Via Whedonesque. It’s not a new interview with Whedon by any means, but there’s still some interesting stuff in there, mostly about comics and Dollhouse.
Commenting on Scott Tobias’ recap of last night’s Dollhouse episode, AV Club writer Zack Handlen makes an interesting observation:
And how weird would it be to know that somewhere out there, somebody had figured out your perfect type; and that the type was passive, endlessly sweet, and completely willing to surrender to you at every turn? This is not a nice thing to learn about yourself, I think.
Somewhere halfway through this first (and maybe only) season, Dollhouse went from being a lousy show with a few interesting elements, at best an intriguing disappointment, to being a genuinely terrific show. That’s not to say it’s a perfect show — in general I agree with Handlen’s later point, that it isn’t “as fully-formed as it could be,” and still, Eliza Dusku remains the least interesting part of the whole thing — but I’d actually be sorry if (or when?) it was canceled at this point.
Andy Hallett, best known as Lorne from TV’s Angel, has passed away. He was just 33. I’m stunned and saddened by the news.
So I was watching this week’s episode of The Mentalist, and a couple of things about it bugged me. Overall, I really enjoy the show (and this episode), which I think coasts by on some clever writing, hints of darkness, and Simon Baker’s not inconsiderable charm. But the show isn’t perfect, and this week’s episode was no exception. Some spoilers follow.
First, there was the Taser scene. Agents Lisbon and Rigsby are trying to take a suspect in for questioning. The suspect gets angry, pushes Rigsby away, then moves threateningly towards Lisbon. And then she, very calmly and with a smile on her face, Tasers him. Leaving aside the potentially ugly subtext of this being an angry black man going after a white woman — which I suspect was unintentional — I was a little disturbed to see a Taser depicted as the acceptable, immediate go-to for law enforcement. (That’s what it’s increasingly become, but there’s plenty of evidence that that’s not a good thing.) It was a quick scene, played mostly for laughs — but I think that’s maybe what bothered me most about it.
Then there’s the fact — and this is the much bigger spoiler — that the episode is all about revisiting the sins of Patrick Jane’s past and the consequences of the lies he told as a “spiritual medium.” Except it turns out that this one wasn’t a lie. He told a woman that her husband was cheating on her. She divorced her husband, and now he and their son blame Jane for the whole thing. But the husband was cheating on her. Jane may have been lying about how he knew this — more direct observation, less spiritual connection — but I would have liked it more if he’d told her what she wanted to hear, ruined a man’s life, and then been wrong. This way offered too quick a redemption — See? He cheated some people, but he probably helped this woman. Heck, she even went on to happily re-marry. The show has demonstrated it’s willing to take Jane into some dark emotional places; I wish they hadn’t pulled their punches like this.
Oh, and while I’m speaking of spiritual mediums, it turns out that my former Jujitsu instructor is one. I don’t know exactly how — if at all — to feel about this, largely because it’s been close to twenty years since I was a student with him. But I find the whole medium thing rather morally dubious. I suppose there’s something to be said for providing comfort to grieving family and friends, but that comfort comes with a pretty high price, as well as claims to psychic abilities I’m fairly certain I don’t believe in.
We wanted—and Fox also wanted—the first six episodes to be episodes people could pick up and understand what was going on even if they were late getting to the party, which I agree with. So the first six episodes are more self-contained. But once we sort of hit that place where the show takes off, I think it’s going to be important to send some screener copies back out there to some of the reviewers that maybe didn’t jump on board the first time around, or some of the diehard Joss fans that felt they were missing his voice in some of the first shows. Because his voice is back, and it’s loud, and it’s as exciting as ever once we get rolling.
I think I understand that strategy, but I also think, like Fox’s tinkering with the original pilot and requested reshoots, it may come back to bite the show in the end.
I thought the second episode was a significant improvement over the first, but neither grabbed me like I think the show needed to do — especially to bring in and keep those new viewers. I expect I’ll stick with the show at least until at least the sixth episode Dushku’s pushing. I just worry that not enough other people will.
We’ll see what tonight’s episode is like. There’s certainly potential.