Premise: Sci-fi drama about elite secret agents with programmed personalities and abilities tailored to fit each mission. When their missions have been completed, their memories are wiped clean.
Ghost: The Joss Whedon series about agents for hire who receive personality implants for each mission—and have their memories cleared once finished—opens with Echo (Eliza Dushku) becoming a hostage negotiator in order to free a kidnapped girl, the daughter of a businessman (Kurt Caceres) who’d rather pay big bucks than go to the police. Meanwhile, an FBI agent (Tahmoh Penikett) finds his career threatened by his search for the illegal Dollhouse. Dr. Claire Saunders: Amy Acker. (TV Guide)
While the idea is clever and open up a lot story plots, I’m not quite sure what the hell they were thinking with the pilot episode. The story itself, although it went off in a few different directions (something you wouldn’t expect from someone so seasoned), it was a good idea.
When it came time to roll the film, I felt pained as I witnessed actors doing their best to let us know that they were acting. I sat watching puzzled and slightly distracted from the story-line because of all the foreshadowing being thrown all over the place, the amature performances and the feel of “Does this man ever interact with people out of the biz”? The conversations that took place in the first half hour of the episode were choppy and not once did I feel pulled into the show.
Joss, we watch these shows because we want to escape our reality. It’s the
visual book that’s supposed to draw us in and melt away our surroundings. I think you need to remember the magic of story telling and try to step it up in future episodes.
Towards the end I felt Joss’ talent present and again… it had to do with the actors, they stepped up their game (which is a HUGE mistake of everyone on
this project who picked some of these people). Seriously, was this filmed in a day? You could feel the comfort levels pick up over the course of the p
rogram and even then… OMG do I really want to watch Olivia Williams, who didn’t deliver ONCE, for a full season(s)?
Please let this be a sloppy pilot that was created and released without Joss’ approval. Oh Joss, you’ve shattered my omnipotent image of you.
I hope this will be the first of many episodes I get to review of this show, and I want so badly for this one to succeed. Although it wasn’t HORRIBLE (if it was made by a first timer) I was slightly disappointed.
On the positive side, I liked the introduction of Harry Lennix as Boyd. He was one of the few characters I warmed up to, even more than Amy Acker’s and Eliza’s. Bravo.
Harsh! All I would have said about it is *murmer* *murmer* *murmer*.
But you don’t pull your punches the way I’m likely to. I agree that the story was good, but it really didn’t depend on the personality-switching stuff. That seems to be a flaw in the concept, much as Pushing Daisies (R.I.P.) was flawed by its detective stories not depending in any fundamental way on raising the dead. So far, we’ve seen no dramatic payoff from the personality-switching stuff; it’s purely a pragmatic way of letting them use the same actress every week. We’re forced to suspend our disbelief about personality-switching (or dead-raising), and then it turns out that we never needed to bother since we could have gotten the same stories anyhow without doing so.
Right now I’m consoling myself with the story of what happened to Firefly. I’m sure you must know this already, but what happened is that they refused to air the pilot episode first and insisted that a completely new story be aired first instead. Joss and Tim Minear hastily wrote the replacement first episode over the weekend. Since the viewers didn’t have any of the background info that the (much longer) pilot episode provided, they were confused about everything that what happening. So the initial viewers never really had a chance to find out that the show was good before giving up on it.
Maybe that’s what’s happening here. There’s some evidence for that, if you look at the opening sequence in which she’s signing up for a 5-year arrangement; that sequence seems unnatural, as if it was just pasted on as an afterthought. Perhaps it was cut out of a pilot episode that we haven’t seen yet. As a natural cynic I doubt that this is what’s really happening, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
It almost feels like that. I was seriously looking at the screen “Really Joss? Seriously?” It wasn’t his normal work. And you are spot on about the personalities. That was driving me crazy! For such intense emotional lashes (and omg… since there is the chance of PST in the personalities… wouldn’t they factor that in? Where are these personalities coming from? It obviously isn’t a matter of programming… I kept telling myself, much like when I’ve viewed travesties of his before with a story- Trust in Joss, he won’t disappoint.
For a pilot episode, you shouldn’t have to hope he shines through based on PAST work. Is he tired? Has the magic gone out? Is this his attempt at getting out there again to tell the stories inside his head? To Joss… We want to know your stories… but not if you’re going to murmur them like I would! I SUCK at verbal rehashing of my dreams or stories. Writing… not a problem for the most part. I felt like I was listening to me tell a story. Now that’s bad.
Okay… again… I didn’t HATE it (telling this to myself). It was just far from his best work or ideas.
I think the pilot is one place where you have to make allowances for past performance, because it’s the place where the network people are going to step in and exercise the most control over the project.
For example, one thing that Joss Whedon is really good at is the humor part of it. Yet I can’t recall a single funny moment in the show. Surely nothing that Joss wrote would have been completely humorless. Somebody else had to have ripped the guts out of the show and remade it in their own image.
He *tried* his performers were supposed to deliver a couple subtle lines that were, I believe, supposed to have been funny… which, if they were spoken by someone else, it would have been. That’s where I disliked the actors. Poor choices and no comedic timing, which is where the director should have yelled “CUT” and made them do it again or find someone else who could.
Unfortunately, that comment puts the whole thing in perspective for me. My first thought was to go back and look at it again to see where that might have happened. My second thought was that I couldn’t stomach it. It’s kind of hard to give it the benefit of the doubt when you suddenly realize that you can’t bear watching it a second time.
Perhaps aversion will wear off by next week.
Let us hope.