Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Dollhouse: “Man on the Street”

I've been receiving strange phone calls all weekend, all marked “unknown caller” and all hanging up the minute my answering machine kicks in. Since few such calls have a local area code, I haven't exactly been vigilant about tracking down the culprit behind them but after this episode...I just might be.

Okay, I won't pretend that this episode will do for answering machines what Psycho did for showers and Jaws did for beaches. But it did make me think.

And yet after all the hype this episode has received, I can't help but wonder if all this series has to offer is woo-hoo fight scenes and oops-didn't-see-that-coming plot twists. By now, viewers of this series have learned to expect that not every character is what they seem to be. So when a key plot sequence in this episode revolved around a certain character turning out to be more than he or she seemed to be, I wasn't exactly surprised.

To be fair, Whedon did his damnedest to misdirect my suspicions. And yet I can't help wondering if Whedon has a more intellectual story arc planned for future episodes or if he intends to make this series little more than Faith the Manchurian Vampire Slayer. I'm keeping my fingers crossed...