A small thought about Dollhouse... and a confession about The Wire

[ffutures]

It occurs to me that one of the reason why I'm dissatisfied with Dollhouse is an area of dishonesty - it's claimed, repeatedly, that male and female Dolls are given the same sort of assignments, but so far we've never see any evidence whatever that the male Dolls are being used for prostitution, whereas we repeatedly see Echo in this role.

And The Wire. Well, I really tried, for three nights this week, but I'm afraid I really don't find this show engaging my attention at all. Part of it is that I have trouble understanding a lot of what the characters are saying, most of it is that my memory for character names and faces is REALLY bad, and I have major problems following the story at all. Add to that that the BBC are showing it after 11 PM, when my attention span is not at its best, and non-comprehension is near total. Sorry, but I think I'm going to have to sit this one out.

Comments

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

I really tried with the Wire as well, but also gave up after 3 and a half episodes. It just... did not grab me. It didn't help that it didn't seem to have any humour either. Even Oz at its most grim and disturbing, always had a touch of humour.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, that too. No humour and little comprehension, not a good combination.

Weird

[pilot-moondog.livejournal.com]

I've watch seasons 1 to 4 of The Wire on DVD.

I understood what most of the slang meant by context and, yes, there is humour. It's just the sort of very dark humour you tend to find amongst police and soldiers. For a good example of this consider the first conversation in the opening episode.

I find the utterly cut-throat departmental and city politics fascinating, and I don't even pick up on the occasional nods to real-life Baltimore politicos in the characterisation of some people.

But that's showbiz for you. Tastes will insist on differing.

Re: Weird

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thing is I can't even remember that conversation; it just isn't making much impression on me at all.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Mind you I don't think the BBC helped it by scheduling it between eleven and midnight 5 or 6 days a week. That's a level of commitment to watching a tv show that not many people can make.

I suppose u nless they are soap opera addicts.

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

A couple of days ago someone on my F-list posted a YouTube video featuring his/her favourite The Wire character, as a sort of promo for the show appearing on UK TV, and all it made me think was 'I wonder if it will be subtitled?'

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The girl buying the nail gun?

[speakr2customrs.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was it. I only understood about one word in ten of what she said.

[bastardsnow.livejournal.com]

Oh man, Snoop is incomprehensible at the *best* of times.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I just about got that she planned to use it on people, but that was about it. And not exactly a new idea anyway, between Monty Python and a novel I read many years ago that had a nail gun attack.

[bastardsnow.livejournal.com]

Actually, the point of the scene was that the nail gun was so advanced these days that she might as well use it to kill people, but her actual plan was to use it to board up abandoned houses where they had dropped the bodies of people they'd already killed (although, the bit about what they *actually* planned to do wasn't in the clip, if I recall correctly).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, shows just how poorly I understood it.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

I have 'The Wire' on DVD and intend to watch it at my convenience rather than the BBCs. I do find that I need to have subtitles on a lot of US shows these days (The West Wing makes a lot more sense with them), and also some sort of character crib-sheet (a legacy of 1930s detective novels which conveninently had character lists so that you could sneak a look when you got confused by the plot).

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm OK with most US shows, but for some reason I find the Wire really difficult to follow.

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

I am recording it all.

[bastardsnow.livejournal.com]

Baltimore lingo and dialect can be rough to pick up on. I live 45 minutes from Baltimore, and I occasionally had to backtrack and say "Now what the hell did he just say?" To the actors' credit, they did an excellent job picking up on that particular patois... but I can definitely see it being frustrating.

Re: Dollhouse... I don't know what episode you guys are on in the UK, and don't want to spoil, but there is a bit in one episode where they mention that Victor has been out on a few 'love bunny' sessions, or something along those lines, in a row.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

If they've said that I missed it. But saying it and showing it the way they've shown Echo's assignments are two very different things.

[bastardsnow.livejournal.com]

I entirely agree, saying it and showing it a la Echo are very different things, although, I'll give them a *little* leeway because the show is mostly about Echo, and most other Active assignments that we've seen have been in some way related to either Echo's current assignment or to the overarching storyline of the season.

That said, it is something they need to explicitly address, or else, honestly, I kind of feel like the idea of this show being more than an excuse to get Eliza to dress up in lots of different clothes is somewhat... less probable.

[houses7177.livejournal.com]

THey said that Victor was probably showing sexual urges toward Sierra because he'd been on assignment with "looking for love" or whatever the code name was for that lady six times, I think. So it's been more than mentioned, IMHO, as it was the reason they initially suspected Victor of Sierra's rape: too much nookie broke his already broken brain.

But I agree, too much of the prostitution implication for me to really love this series. I'm sticking with it because I love Helo/Paul Ballard/Tamoh, but it's not getting me.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Remember it now, but it wasn't exactly showcased the way Echo is.

[houses7177.livejournal.com]

My only counter argument here is that it's a show about Echo, so we expect things to be showcased about her.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

But then, we haven't seen all that much of any of the other Doll's assignments, either. We've seen Sierra as a bad-ass killer, and a super-fan to a pop star.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Yeah, The Wire's been a little hard to follow, but I don't hold that against it. I'm beginning to pick up the plot now, and at least once per episode there's a scene I find absolutely magnetic. The scene with the young black guy (I'm hopeless with names, too) explaining chess to his drug-dealing gang was one, and last night's with the crime scene investigation with dialog consisting entirely of expletives was another. I feel for the drug-dealer, 'cause I can see his story's going to end tragically.

But yeah, it's suffering from being thrown at a late night audience on consecutive nights. Not the most friendly way to show a series, especially such a good one.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I really don't feel inclined to commit the time needed to watch it every night, especially when I'm way down on sleep at present.

[ramtops.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't dream of committing myself to watching something every weeknight, that late. That's what video recorders (or indeed torrents!) are for.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It's not just the time of night, it's the total time commitment.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Prostitution is a tricky theme to handle in a gender-neutral fashion, especially on American network television. Realistically, the great majority of male prostitutes work for male clients; and both the network executives and a large share of the audience would find that a male character in such a role was impossible to view sympathetically. I'm not even sure the FCC would view such content as acceptable. On the other hand, male prostitutes working for female clients are statistically uncommon; to have such scenes as frequently as comparable scenes with Echo and male clients would undermine the sense that this is our social reality. On the third hand, we have had it established that Victor was involved with such a client, and as has been said, Victor is not the protagonist.

On the fourth hand, if we had had setup scenes of Victor meeting his female client, that would have helped prepare us for the theory about his being Sierra's abuser. But then we would have lost the big reveal that the FBI agent's Russian contact is really a doll, which may have seemed more important.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

We've known he's a doll since the second episode. I agree that there are reasons why we are more likely to see Echo than a male character in this role, but it's too one sided.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I had lost track of when he was revealed. Given that, showing him being sent out to see the woman in question would have been a good setup . . . just a couple of minutes in each episode would have done it.

The thing is, though, that Joss Whedon has limitations on this gender equality thing. Note, for example, that we had lots of story about Willow and Tara, and then Willow and Kennedy, and we had a scene with Inara and a female client (and Jayne's line "I'll be in my bunk") . . . but we really haven't had anything close to a comparable treatment of male homosexuality. We have Inara as a romanticized figure, but no romanticized gigolo character. This has been consistently true. Whedon gives us the sexual liberation content that's appealing to a straight male audience; and he mostly gives us empowered women who are appealing to a straight male audience. This puts him way ahead of most of what's in the media, but if we lived in a genuinely sexually egalitarian society, he'd look awfully retrograde.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, the homosexual side of it had occurred to me too. So far no female clients for Echo, unless they did that last night, no male ones for any of the male dolls.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Which episode are you up to on Dollhouse?

And as far as The Wire goes:

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/03/09/85-the-wire/

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen the most recent one, apart from that I'm up to date.

Re the wire, I'm really not prepared to commit 3+ hours a week to any program - probably wouldn't watch Doctor Who if it was on that often! Thanks for the link though, that was pretty funny.

[pwca.livejournal.com]

I will pick this up on DVD because the BBC is at fault here. It may think that it is a great way to show The Wire, but on successive nights and after 11pm? I somehow wonder if the BBC appreciate what it has, or just bought the rights to show it because it stopped anyone from having it?

Much like Mad Men, I wonder if The Wire deserves to sit on BBC4 where it will be both appreciated and allowed to gain popularity?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'd like it more if I wasn't continually being told what a masterpiece it is, and found it a little more accessible. As it is, I'll probably pick up the DVDs if they come my way cheap, but not otherwise.

[trinfaneb.livejournal.com]

Yeah I can imagine all the hype is hard to live up to. When it first came on HBO I didn't see any of the hype (if I remember correctly HBO really didn't advertise the show much behind a generic "wire" graphic) and might not have started watching it if it didn't come on after "The Sopranos" and I set my vcr to record 5 minutes over and thus I caught the opening scene about the murder of Snot Bogie and then saw the Baltimore police car in the opening credits. Since I was already a fan of "Homicide" (the book and tv show) that's all it took to hook me.

The show really does reward the time you spend with it, so I hope you can catch up with it at some point. And HBO does need to make it dvds cheaper.