Closing Its Doors. For Good.

During the airing of Dollhouse's series finale on Friday night, Fox cut off the show in the middle of what I can only assume was the final scene. Considering this show's short, tumultuous history, what could have been more appropriate?

Dollhouse should not have had a second season. The show's ratings were consistently in the toilet. Countless shows have gotten sacked after one or two episodes with the sort of ratings Dollhouse invariably received over its 25 episode run on Fox. Perhaps the folks at the network felt guilty about their idiotic treatment of Joss Whedon's last show, Firefly. Perhaps they knew that Whedon's rabid fanbase would guarantee great DVD sales. Perhaps they had lower expectations in this age of internet, video games and cable TV. Regardless, Dollhouse's improbably long run had nothing to do with the show's quality. It was too damn inconsistent to sell on the grounds that it was a critical hit. Time and again, Dollhouse would make fools of pundits like me, following moments of genuine brilliance with disastrous stumbles. So, now that the show has reached a finale that was as much of a mixed bag as ever, how much will the show really be missed?

After the First Season ended on an extremely high note, I, like many others, was convinced that Dollhouse had found its groove. Mr. Keeley reviewed the Second Season premiere, "Vows," as a newcomer to the series and approved of it – with a few reservations. Those reservations were not misplaced and, for viewers of the First Season, the episode's flaws were disconcerting. "Vows" displayed far too many of the issues that plagued the series' earliest episodes, as I explain later in that post myself. With the following episode, "Instinct," the series bottomed out. An absolutely boneheaded premise was coupled with little-to-no advancement of any major plotlines.

I was already wondering if I would bother to watch the next episode. The realization that Dollhouse would never be a consistently good show dawned on me.

This is partly why the episode that came three weeks later was such a revelation. To call "Belonging" bold is an understatement. It told the story of Priya (Dichen Lachman), a young woman who is the object of a self-indulgent doctor's desires. This doctor, Nolan Kinnard (Vincent Ventresca), tries to sweep Priya off of her feet upon meeting her, but she quickly comes to hate his decadent lifestyle. After she publicly rejects him, he hatches a complex plan with a simple goal: enslaving her. The result is that Priya becomes Sierra, a doll whom he buys on a regular basis – a doll imprinted as a pliable, approving version of Priya.

If most network television dramas made their darkest qualities so plainly visible as Dollhouse did in this episode, they would be be cancelled. Only the show's lack of popularity can explain why Fox was allowed to air this, one of the most horrifying hours of television I have ever seen. For, as sick as the premise is, the unmitigated moral ambiguity of its conclusion is what leaves the deepest mark. When Topher (Fran Kranz), the Dollhouse's typically amoral scientist, discovers Sierra's true origins, Nolan is exposed. Nolan demands exclusive use of Sierra by threatening to use his power to destroy the Dollhouse. Topher is forced to comply. Instead of giving Nolan his version of Priya, however, he secretly imprints her with her original personality. He explains the situation to her and, powerless to help any further, gives her to Nolan.

It is not long before Nolan realizes that Priya is not as compliant as she should be. With this realization, he attempts to rape her. She fights back and kills him. Topher, still concerned for her, finds her in shock next to Nolan's body. In order to save both Priya and himself from punishment, he is forced to dispose of Nolan's body by cutting it into pieces. The experience leaves Topher emotionally decimated. The moment when he is forced to wipe the mind of Priya – a person for whom he has come to deeply care – is perhaps even more painful. This character once embodied the gleefully amoral scientific progress that defines the Dollhouse. With the conclusion of this episode, however, he had borne all of the pain and horror that his work could cause.

It is tough to hate a show that can be this good.

Soon after "Belonging" aired, the Dollhouse cast and crew must have learned that the show would not be back for a third season. This is evident in the marked change of pace that occurs after this episode. Suddenly, what seemed like seasons worth of plot was being poured into a few episodes.

Rarely do viewers get to experience the work of a group of talented writers who are holding nothing back. This led to a run of several good episodes, a few of which rank among the best of the series. The world of Dollhouse was deepened. The characters were developed further. The plot moved with the sort of self-assurance that only a show with its end in sight can. Even some of the vagaries and weak spots from earlier in the series were revisited and improved. It was apparent that Dollhouse was set for a fantastic finale... until "The Hollow Men" came along.

This, the penultimate episode, was a veritable mess. A huge twist that suddenly cast Boyd (Harry Lennix), a beloved hero of the Dollhouse universe, as the chief villain of the series backfired in countless ways. Nothing in his newly-revealed, evil plot explained away 24 episodes of unwavering heroism, and the purpose of that evil plot was never coherently explained. Furthermore, the episode threatened to sully what brilliance came before it. The revelation about Boyd not only provided a wildly unsatisfying end for a consistently enigmatic character, but it cast a shadow over all of his previous actions; the severe damage done to Boyd was retroactive. Also, the idea that a show as morally complex as Dollhouse could boil the solution to all of its plot threads down to killing one villain and destroying one computer mainframe was downright laughable.

"The Hollow Men" was clearly a casualty of dwindling budgets and quickly approaching deadlines. Most of the episode had the usually-excellent cast running around a series of generic hallways, barely able to hide their confusion as they performed scenes that had little consistency with the nuanced characters they had worked so hard to build. This was a letdown of the high order of Neon Genesis Evangelion's finale. While the episode was thankfully not Dollhouse's last, the bad taste it left will remain a reminder of how the show was inconsistent to the very end.

The series finale was far more satisfying. While it did create a few plotholes for the sake of bringing characters together, it remained true to the theme, tone and characters of Dollhouse; under the circumstances, it was the best farewell for which fans could have asked.

There is much for which fans of Dollhouse can be thankful. That the series got a second season, much less a chance to provide closure is something of a miracle. Fox was downright charitable in letting the series continue as long as it did. The Second Season had a number of truly fantastic episodes that easily overcame the few bombs. Nevertheless, being a fan of Dollhouse was an abusive experience. Dollhouse may have improved over its mediocre first episodes, but it never gained stability. When it was good, it thrilled like no other show could, but that rendered its disappointments all the more painful. That is why perhaps the greatest thing for which fans should be thankful is that the show has finally come to an end. In the afterlife of DVD, those disappointments can be omitted with the press of a button.

Nasty, Brutish, Short, and Far Too Fun

Edge of Darkness is not by any stretch of the imagination an original film. It's a revenge film. About an angry father. Who faces an evil corporation. And kills a lot of people. All on a Boston-and-Berkshires backdrop. This film may not win any awards for screenplay, acting, or cinematography, but at least it's an enjoyable thrill ride.

The long-absent Mel Gibson plays Thomas Craven, a lonely Boston cop with a sole daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic). Craven lives by himself and is elated when the mysteriously-sick Emma comes to visit him. His daughter has something to tell her parent, but a masked thug with a shotgun interrupts her revelation. Craven, being a Mel Gibson character, begins to investigate the murder with the help of a mysterious British "security consultant" (Ray Winstone). Craven's journey brings him to the mysterious Northmoor Corporation, its chief Bennett (Danny Huston), and a slew of gunfights.

Gibson knows he has a lot to do in Edge of Darkness. Not only does he have to convince the audience he's still young enough to carry an action movie, he also has to make them forget some of his less-laudable off-screen behavior. I thought there were several moments in the script that alluded to Gibson's personal beliefs and habits, though perhaps I'm reading too much into innocuous bits of the film. Most significantly, one of Craven's fellow Boston cops says that he knows his colleague keeps liquor in his cabinet... but it's dusty. Later in the film, Winstone's character pours Craven a drink. The bereaved officer doesn't take a single sip. Gibson wants us to trust him again; he's gotten responsible on us. I found that I still like Mel Gibson. Others may have harsher judgments.

I get the impression that Edge of Darkness was a somewhat troubled production. The film is a remake of a British miniseries from the eighties, also directed by Martin Campbell. The original series apparently featured quite a lot of New Age-y mysticism, apparently quite well-integrated. Campbell's remake has dropped this aspect of the story; though Craven sometimes sees his daughter's spirit, there's no indication that his visions are at all supernatural. He's just a grieving man; the various visitations come across as awkwardly contrived to remind the audience that Craven is a very sad and broken man. Unlike what he did in the miniseries, Campbell doesn't work very hard to provide a supernatural framework, so Emma's posthumous presence fails to impress.

The opening scenes of Edge of Darkness are character studies; it's quite some time before the action scenes begin. Nevertheless, Edge of Darkness had reshoots to add more mayhem. I would have preferred more time spent building up the characters. At least two thrill scenes have very little to do with the plot; they're entertaining but gratuitous. Still, the action sequences are quite good. Campbell, director of Casino Royale and GoldenEye, never lets a shootout or car chase go on too long; he understands just how far one can push suspension of disbelief. As with Casino Royale – a far better film – the action is always well-choreographed and easy to follow. The violence in Edge of Darkness is as brutal as it is rapid. There are several extremely jarring acts of sudden violence, all quite gory. Blood gushes, heads bleed profusely, and Gibson keeps reloading.

The basic plot of Edge of Darkness is absurd; it's hard to fathom how the perfidious Northmoor Corporation, so cavalier with its killing, fails to eliminate Gibson's character. The individual action scenes, however, are all more or less plausible.

Though some portions of the movie seem excessive, the script does, from time to time, remind us of the costs of violence. Gibson's Craven is a broken man, of course, but we also learn some poignant facts about the Evil Corporation's victims. Edge of Darkness doesn't abstain from the revenge flick tradition of righteous sadism; when Craven (spoiler!) shoots the movie's villain, the camera lingers on the blood bubbling from the foe's neck. This movie, for all its occasional pretensions, hopes for a bloodthirsty audience.

Edge of Darkness was an enjoyable movie, and a few segments brought cheers and hurrahs from the small audience in the theater. Gibson's exit-line to the villain is particularly fine – nasty yet true moralizing. Would that the rest of Edge of Darkness were so good. This movie may be a generic artistic failure, but it's also a satisfying, if not memorable, crowd-pleaser. Campbell and Gibson can both do better – neither will count the Edge of Darkness remake as a highlight of his career – but they could do worse.

You Can't Go Home Again

This time last year, I was thrilled with Playstation Home. Much to the frustration of my friends and girlfriend, I would spend hours each week jogging around this virtual neighborhood of dead-eyed mutes. Yet even then, I knew it was more in anticipation of what was to come than it was because of the experience it offered at the time. Playstation Home has been in its "open beta" phase for just over thirteen months now, and it is hard to deny that it has grown, but has it really delivered on any of the promise it once had?

I think that depends on who you ask. PS3 fans at the time (the few that there were) had visions of a slick, virtual world where users would be able to seamlessly socialize and access their system's many media functions at the same time. Some even thought that it would supplant the PS3's main menu as the primary means of accessing content, providing something far more engaging and dynamic than any other system could. Sony fueled many of these fantasies but, in hindsight, it clearly had different plans.

As I look back, I now see that the amount of time I spent in Home gradually decreased throughout 2009. Today, not even a biweekly content update can be sure to lure me. Sure, there have been various small successes: The "Xi" alternate reality game was sufficiently deep to keep me coming back, even if I was too impatient to refrain from cheating my way through it. The Ratchet and Clank space had a fun minigame that not only hooked me for a brief time but also forced me to cooperate with other users to win. Even the recent "Sodium One Hub" surprised me by showing how pretty Home can look.

All of these spaces, however, are really just elaborate packaging for one or two stilted, shallow minigames which, in turn, are really just elaborate ads for whatever real game they represent. This is neither what initially drew me to Home nor is it what keeps me coming back; I can get many more games of far higher quality by visiting the Playstation Store or (!) by putting in an actual game.

None of this ever managed to distract me from the fact that Home is failing to perform many of its perceived roles. A year later, I still wonder how I am supposed to use this application as a social network. What is so personal about Home? Avatars and personal spaces should, in theory, fit the bill. In practice, though, they only serve to show how much money I am willing to spend on virtual items. Even if the monetary issue is removed, there is still an extremely limited amount of items from which I can choose. (The amount of apartments available only recently became greater than ten. Who, exactly, was begging for a bobsledder outfit?)

Of course, personalization is not even half of the social networking experience. The majority of it is (wait for it...) socialization. Playstation Home is designed to make this nearly impossible. Not more than a few weeks into the life of Home, public voice chat was disabled, limiting audio communication to personal spaces and user-to-user "phone calls." This left most of the communication to text messaging, whereby messages appear in a bubble above the user's avatar. Simple enough, if all you want to do is say "hi" or yell a racial epithet then flee. Having a conversation is another story. Considering that most of us do not have a Bluetooth keyboard lying around, the text messages require the use of the clunky onscreen keyboard. It makes conversation an excruciatingly slow process.

Even when voice chat can be used, the experience is crippled by bugs and connection issues. Often, inviting more than one other user into my personal space resulted in one of us being unable to speak or hear the conversation. Not that there is much to talk about when visitng a personal space. Early promises of being able to stream video and music to virtual entertainment systems quickly faded into myth. So, after about 60 seconds, visitors will have seen all that any given apartment has to offer (that is, if they do not own that space themselves). Meeting up with friends in public spaces may sound more promising, but this process is quite tedious. Users may only engage in a phone call with one other user at a time. It does work regardless of the users' respective locations in Home, but the limitations of this feature are still downright pathetic. The soon-to-be-released game, MAG will allow dozens of users to chat simultaneously, but Home, an application that is specifically designed for socializing, cannot handle me speaking to two other people at a time? There is no question that the PS3's dedicated chat application is far simpler, faster, more feature-rich.

Even if one only has a single friend, getting to the same location will take some time. Moving between each tiny location in Home is a grind. Each space must be downloaded on the first visit (some spaces are as big as 50MB) and whenever that space receives an update (it is often), another download is required. Once the space is downloaded and installed, connecting to it and loading it can take a good 30 seconds. Once again, I can point to a number of games that handle similar tasks on a far larger scale much quicker. Needless to say, this ensures that Home is in no way more pleasant, intuitive or practical than the the PS3's main menu; Home will never replace it. Home's long stretches of downtime have only served well as moments for introspective questioning like, "Did I really buy this $600 machine so I could do this?" or, "What am I doing with my life?"

That, after all, is what repels me so consistently from Home today. As I am shuffling around the Home Mall, traveling through small crowds of improperly rendered avatars, who congregate for no apparent reason beyond it looking more natural than standing apart, I get a sinking feeling. It becomes undeniable: If I spend any more time scrolling through a clunky menu, looking for a vaguely interesting virtual t-shirt for an avatar that few people will ever give a second look, I am wasting my life.

Playstation Home is a consumerist culture low point – a collection of people willfully submitting themselves to advertisements, not for any real enjoyment, but largely out of a sense of brand loyalty. A year ago, I started using Playstation Home because I was a proud PS3 owner. Today, I have stopped using Playstation Home for that same reason – because there are simply too many better things to be doing with this machine.

Good Steampunk Fun, Until the Plot Gets the Sack

I suppose I should begin this post with a clarification. I am reviewing 9, the 2009 CGI film about doll-like creatures in a post-apocalyptic world. I am not reviewing Nine, the 2009 remake of 8 1/2 that features Penelope Cruz dancing and singing in her underwear. The latter movie is apparently quite a disappointment, while the subject of my review was in fact quite a good movie.

9 is the story of a group of numerically-named... well, it's hard to decide what to call them. Dolls? Living puppets? Homunculi? In any case, the protagonists look as if they're refugees from a gritty steampunk reboot of LittleBigPlanet; there are indeed a few scenes that appear far too videogame-y. The diminutive protagonists wander a destroyed Earth; judging from the state of ruined technology we see, this world died in some even-bloodier alternate 1940's. Human corpses still litter streets and bombed-out buildings, though the discreet camera rarely focuses on them.

Tim Burton was one of the producers for 9, though director Shane Acker apparently conceived the story and characters. This is Acker's first full-length film, and I'm afraid he wears all his influences on his sleeve. The general aesthetic is Burton-esque, though the film lacks the real nastiness that often mars Burton's films. The stronghold of the evil machines resembles Mordor in The Lord of the Rings films – for which Acker contributed some digital effects – while another shambling machine clearly has relatives in The Matrix. While 9 doesn't lack for derivative moments, it also features a number of wonderfully original creations. I especially like the "Serpent" monster that attacks our heroes; it's a creature of metal, porcelain, and yarn that bears a dead homunculus as the rattle of its tail. It's a very impressive beast, and one almost feels bad when the intrepid 9 destroys it.

Like most big-budget CGI films, 9 has several major stars providing voiceovers. Elijah Wood plays 9 (The Lord of the Rings influence again), Jennifer Connelly plays platonic love interest 7, and Christopher Plummer plays the mildly despotic ruler 1. All the actors provide good performances, and none makes the error of trying to steal the show from the apocalyptic setting and the mechanical beasts.

Like most non-Disney animation, this is not an actor's film. The CGI is good, though I can't say it blew me away. The backgrounds sometimes seem a trifle static; the last war seems to have killed off not just the humans but also the cockroaches. The quiet dead world fits 9's stories, but it doesn't provide the animators much room for grace notes and flourishes.

Before I saw 9, I'd read some speculation that the writers might originally have intended to resolve the plot in a different manner. Certainly there are artifacts of a different – and better – story in 9, and I think the film's last act is rather weak. For most of the film's running time, 9's world seems to operate on movie-science-steampunk rules, but the film's ending both fails to resolve much of anything and introduces unnecessary mysticism. 9 ends with an image of renewal – rain once again falling on the ruined Earth – but there's little sense that anything has really changed. To be perfectly frank, I don't think the story ever had all that much room to breathe; 9 runs only an hour and twenty minutes. I wouldn't have minded further explorations of the film's world and characters; perhaps the budget didn't allow for it. Perhaps the producers realized that 9 has a demographic problem: It's a comparatively dark computer-animated film rated PG-13 and not exactly likely to set the box office afire.

9 is a pretty, entertaining film, but I can't help but think it could have been much more. It's terribly short and the initially compelling story falls apart near the end. Still, 9's world, its creatures, and its action won me over in the end. In a better world, 9 would have been a great film. I hope Acker gets the chance to make some more movies; I'm very curious to see what else he can do.

Conan and the Comic Misadventures of the NBC Executives

These days, watching NBC is like watching a lost hiker gnawing at his arm in a desperate attempt to stave off starvation. Moving Jay Leno to ten o'clock has done far more damage to the network than even the biggest skeptics probably expected, digging the deep hole NBC had in its primetime schedule even deeper. Now, as the network struggles to rectify the situation, Conan O'Brien has effectively received a slap in the face and a kick in the butt. It was a short-sighted response on the part of NBC executives, and O'Brien has made them pay with constant on-air heckling in the lead-up to his departure. (Like this masterpiece of schadenfreude.) The saga that led up to all of this makes for some good drama, but it also reveals how Conan O'Brien has already come out on top.

It did not take long for Jay Leno to prove himself unworthy of primetime. The moment he walked out onto his new set, it was apparent that The Jay Leno Show was essentially The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, plus some superficial gimmicks. The elimination of the time-tested hosts' desk in favor of two unadorned chairs could have signaled a greater focus on in-depth interviews. It did not. Stunt guests quickly wore thin, making the show feel even more tawdry than the typical late night plug-fest. Leno capitalized on the Kanye West "Imma let you finish" controversy by interviewing the rapper soon after the incident. Leno brought the man to tears by asking if he thought his recently deceased mother would approve of his actions. It was the sort of vicious moral condescension that any decent person would reserve for the likes of Roman Polanski, but Leno saw fit to utilize it for a person who merely displayed bad manners on MTV. It was pure, ratings-grabbing exploitation and there was no way it would work for long.

It is not that this sort of material is beneath prime time television, per se (sinking this low is the bread and butter of reality TV, after all). It, however, was not markedly different from what has been on late night TV for years – and what constitutes ratings success in late night is very different from what constitutes success in prime time. It does not take a programming executive to see how ill-conceived the whole show was.

The best that can be said about the plan is that NBC marshaled its forces and transitioned their existing late night block quite smoothly. Conan O'Brien took over Leno's old role as host of the venerable Tonight Show franchise and Jimmy Fallon became the host of O'Brien's old Late Night program. Both new shows launched months before Leno's did and competed with their rivals on CBS ably. This was no small feat as, historically, new late night hosts have taken months, if not years, to build a stable audience.

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien took on a fairly familiar form – featuring O'Brien's manic, self-deprecating style with the glossy sheen of a bigger budget and a move to the west coast. The host eased into the bigger spotlight slowly, but surely. These days, he is just as wild and digressive as ever, but he shows a keener sense of pacing than he once did. O'Brien seems to understand that his new job is the opposite of Leno's: Putting on the best show he can without reinventing the wheel. (When I look back at the 2008 writers' strike, I cannot help but wonder if the two should have switched roles. Conan's efforts at putting on a writer-less show displayed far greater capacity for innovation than Leno's ever did.)

Since their new shows' debuts, however, ratings have bottomed out for both Leno and O'Brien. NBC has responded with panic. Their actions seem to contradict their previous rationale for withholding quick judgement – having once acknowledged that Leno would only flourish in the less competitive spring and summer seasons and that this would help O'Brien build his own audience. Obviously, not nearly enough time has passed for either of these things to happen and NBC has now assured that neither ever will.

Even if NBC had low expectations for Leno's performance, he obviously failed to live up to even those expectations because "Jay at 10" is as good as dead. Yet, they still insist on putting him front-and-center in their proposed new lineup, while punishing Conan, who has carefully settled in for a slow build. Leno would be moved back to the first half of The Tonight Show's old time slot at 11:35 and then The Tonight Show would air at 12:05. Frantically trying to recapture Leno's old popularity in a half-hour show would be a jarring move in a daypart that thrives on consistency. Pushing O'Brien back in order to accommodate the show would only ensure O'Brien's failure, as well; few struggling shows have ever been aided by a scheduling shuffle.

NBC has painted itself into a corner and, ironically, only the hosts themselves can save it. There is clearly only enough room for two hosts on NBC late night and, with Fallon enjoying success, it comes down to either Leno or O'Brien. This is where Conan O'Brien has shown his worth. He understands that moving the decades-old Tonight Show from its longtime home at 11:35 would be the beginning of the end of a television institution. Meanwhile, it is apparent that NBC is willing to keep Leno at all costs, and that Leno is willing to let NBC kick him around as much as they would like – a combination that hardly promises stability in the face of future ratings declines.

In short, there are few reasons for Conan to stay. There are plenty of networks that want him and would be perfectly happy with the ratings he already gets. At the moment, it may look like Conan is the one who has gotten the shaft, but being loosed from the grasp of the seemingly suicidal NBC management may prove to be quite the blessing.