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Heroes: “Dying of the Light”

An episode in which it is discovered that second season villain Adam is just as unpopular with the writers as he is with me.

And in which it is discovered that even veteran character actors like Robert Forster can play surprisingly boring villains. Though I suppose that his character, Arthur Petrelli (father of Nathan and Peter, natch), does earn a prize for being the one TV character this season who's most unlikely to get a Father's Day card.

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Dollhouse: “Haunted”

This week, it's the Freudian Follies as Adelle DeWitt downloads the memories of a dead friend into Echo and lets her loose to attend her own funeral and catch her own murderer. Along the way, the dead woman discovers that she wasn't as beloved by her surviving loved ones as she thought she was. Except by one particular loved one who almost loves her too much.

Meanwhile, Agent Ballard is learning some unpleasant truths about himself and Mellie while on a lighter note, Topher uses an imprint upon a Doll to create his own birthday pal.

Do things end happily? Well, I guess that depends on your definition of “happily.”

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Planet of the Dead”

Geez, all this time since the last episode (which aired around Christmastime) and now we gotta wait until November until the next episode. It's a good time there's so much classic Who on DVD because, otherwise, the wait would be unbearable.

As for the episode itself...

Well, I enjoyed it but I saw no real reason why it had to be filmed in Dubai. (Other countries do have sand, you know.)

Michelle Ryan was okay as the female lead character, Lady Christina de Souza -- though I'm a bit stumped as to why the first character on new Who to bear a Spanish name thus far got to be a streetwalker -- and quite possibly a nanny as well -- while the first character to bear a Portuguese surname -- Ms. de Souza, natch -- gets to be an aristocrat. True, she's a crooked aristocrat, but still... Way to counter those obnoxious ethnic stereotypes, Russell T. Davies. Fight the power.

Anyway, apart from that, the story was not all that bad though I could have done without a character who looked suspiciously like Donna Noble's grandfather and another who looked suspiciously like Jackie Tyler and yet another who looked suspiciously like Mickey Smith and so on and so forth. Yes, we get it. Mr. Davies. You love these characters. I love these characters too. But I'd love them a lot more if you gave them a rest every once in a while.

And if you're going to introduce flylike aliens just so you can make a joke about excrement -- well, you're not writing a screenplay for The Dark Light-Years so I'd just prefer it if you didn't go there.

On the other hand, the Quatermass reference was way cool. So kudos for that.

I'm not sure why UNIT -- and not Torchwood -- showed up to help out -- but at least you didn't depict the good folks of UNIT as imbeciles... So good on you again, Mr. Davies.

It's still going to be a long, long wait until November, though.

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Dollhouse: “A Spy in the House of Love”

Actually, if you want to get technical about it, this episode has two characters who can be classified as “spies in the house of love.”

Plus Agent Ballard finds out a shocking secret about Mellie. A secret even Mellie herself doesn't know -- and can't ever know. Talk about putting stress on a relationship.

And yes, contrary to what last week's episode hinted, Echo is still in the Dollhouse.

And we learn that the Dollhouse's boss lady, Adelle DeWitt, has a human side. Not that that changes the fact that she is not the type of person that you want to have angry with you but still.

I must confess that Olivia Williams' performance as Adelle is one of the few reasons I've been as patient with this series as I have been. I wish I could say the same about Eliza Dushku's performance as Echo but at this point, no. I give Ms. Dushku credit for being a good sport about some of the costumes she has to wear on this show, but it would be nice if the show got to the point where it didn't have to rely on the sight of Ms. Dushku in a tight-fitting outfit to keep its ratings.

Anyway, plot elements are finally starting to jell and characters are starting to get more complex. Will it be enough to save the show for a second season?

I don't know. But I suppose we'll always have fan fic.

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Dollhouse: “Needs”

Things are finally happening on this show. And it looks like Echo might finally escape from the Dollhouse. So it guess this means that this episode is the show's final episode.

No, wait, it isn't.

But on the plus side, we learn a lot more about some of Echo's fellow dolls.

Plus Agent Ballard is having dreams. And not the type of dreams he'll be sharing with Mellie any time soon.

Stay tuned.

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Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The Next Doctor”

Wow! Who knew there were so many Hispanic people running around the British Isles? First we get the Maria character in the Doctor Who spinoff, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and now we've got Rosita, who pops up in Victorian London in time for the latest episode. Unfortunately, Rosita appears to be a bit lower down on the social scale than Maria. Plus the episode hints that she was a streetwalker. Which is hardly the type of stereotype I expected to see in this series, but alas, there it is.

Rosita, for what it's worth, is also black, and it could be said that she was deliberately written to combine the features of the Doctor's last three assistants (Rose, Martha and Donna). Unfortunately, she's not an official assistant though. The doctor she helps out is not the same doctor we all know and love but rather another character altogether. The script hints that that this doctor might be a future incarnation of the present doctor but apart from owning a sonic screwdriver, he doesn't seem much like a doctor.

Meanwhile, the Cybermen are back. And a mysterious lady in red appears to be associated with them.

Can the present doctor solve the mystery of the future doctor, defeat the Cybermen and save the day?

Well, what do you think?

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Heroes: “One of Us, One of Them”

Hilary ensues when Noah Bennet is forced to work with Sylar, the man who attacked his daughter Claire, in order to track down dangerous supervillains. Okay, it doesn't but I suspect that the Sylar-like writers had such a thought in mind.

Meanwhile, Claire gets self-defense lessons from her biological mother, Meredith, who is using her pyrokinetic abilities to play bodyguard while Noah is gone.

PresentPeter gets his body back but also gets a vision of the future.

And Tracy visits Micah Sanders, who thinks she's his mother. She isn't.

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Heroes: “The Butterfly Effect”

Claire Bennet, the cheerleader whom Sylar symbolically raped in the last episode, is now acting like Seventh Season Buffy, what with the angst and the “I can't feel anything” and so on and so forth. Considering what happened to her in the last episode, this is understandable. Yet, apart from a conversation with her mother, she doesn't seem to be getting much sympathy from anyone.

Meanwhile, FuturePeter (the Peter Petrelli from a distant future) is still messing things up, PresentPeter (the Peter Petrelli from our present time) is trapped in the body of an imprisoned supervillain, Nathan Petrelli is seeing dead people, Tracy Strauss is discovering her superpower at the worst possible time, and Elle is trying to make her father proud by tracking down Sylar. Only Sylar tracks down her father first and almost kills her.

Sylar ends up being captured but in the process, Elle accidentally knocks out the electrical system in Level 5 of the Primatech Paper facility where supervillains are imprisoned, and as a result, a trio of nogoodniks gets away, taking PresentPeter with them.

Hiro and Ando do their damnedest to track down the mysterious blonde girl who stole the secret formula in the last episode -- a blonde girl who looks almost like Elle but isn't and who goes by the name of Daphne -- but don't have much luck.

Angela Petrelli takes over Elle's late father's position as the head of the Pinehurst facility and decides to talk to the imprisoned Sylar. Only to reveal to him that he is actually a member of the Petrelli family and that she is his mother.

And the poor guy didn't have a chance to buy a Mother's Day card. I just knew he'd pay for that Claire Bennet attack in some way...

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Heroes: “The Second Coming”

The second season of the series seemed devoted to proving that the show's top villain, Sylar, could be as much of a bastard without his super-powers as he is with them. So much so that it seemed genuinely disappointing to see the guy get his powers back at the end of the second season since he was certain to become an even bigger bastard with such powers than without them.

So in the first episode of the current season, the show's writers waste no time in proving me right. One of the first things Sylar does in this episode is symbolically rape one of the most likable female members of the cast. Nor did he get punished for this act. Instead, he walks away to live another day.

In other scenes, Senator Nathan Petrelli ends up being shot by a mysterious figure that turned out to be his own brother Peter. Actually it wasn't his actual sibling who did the shooting but a sibling from the far-flung future. A future in which Clair Bennett has dark hair and does evil things and Future Peter is genuinely unpopular with his fellow heroes.

Meanwhile, Niki Sanders -- who was last seen trying to rescue her son Micah and his cousin Monica from a burning building -- is now apparently dead. But wait. In Washington, D.C., there's a mysterious blonde woman named Tracy Strauss who looks just like Niki. You don't suppose...

As for Hiro and his friend Ando, they uncover a mysterious secret formula entrusted to them by Hiro's late father. So naturally they lose it.

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Dollhouse: “Echoes”

This is your show.

This is your show on drugs.

Notice much difference?

I thought not.

Dammit!

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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...

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The X-Files: “The Rain King”

Anyone else get the feeling that this should have been the last episode of the series? True, it helps on an atypical happy note -- something rarely seen in a X-Files episode. But it ends on a note of ambiguity too. True, two characters have their romantic problems resolved, but the romantic problems of the show's two lead characters -- FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully -- seem destined to continue.

And though I would like to be able to argue that the show continued to improve after this, it’s difficult to think of few episodes -- apart from an occasional exception like the Groundhog Day tribute “Monday” -- that were really all that great.

Indeed, the whole series starts going downhill after Season Six. In fact, some X-Files fans would argue that I was being excessively Pollyannaish at including Season Six in the list of good seasons.

Anyway, this is not exactly a classic episode, and in many ways, one might consider it quite forgettable. After all, the episode tells us nothing about UFOs or extraterrestrials or government conspiracies or even the whereabouts of Mulder’s missing sister. It could be argued that the morale of the story is borderline creepy -- act out in a psychotic fashion and you too can get the girl of your dreams -- and if the writer had not been so intent on creating a “comic” episode, he could very well have put a darker spin on this same material. But he doesn’t.

And yet I like this episode precisely because the writer resists the pull of his dark side. So many episodes in this series seem to toss in an unhappy ending just for the heck of it. And after a while, one gets tired of the constant reminders that yes, mankind is bad and the fight against evil is not so easily won. Most people don’t have to watch a TV show to know all that. They’ve learned it from personal experience.

And while one could argue that at this point we hardly needed yet another episode alluding to the unspoken romantic relationship between Mulder and Scully, it was nice to see an episode allude to that fact without hitting us over the head with it.

I found genuine humor in the scenes in which Mulder had to give dating advice to a guy who was even more emotionally repressed than he was. And, of course, Scully’s big soliloquy on the evolution of platonic love into romantic love was quite touching.

So should I feel happy about an episode that seems to argue in favor of a possibly lethal romantic obsession? Not really. But then one could argue that the episode is not about that at all. After all, the one guy who receives the most punishment in this episode -- the fraudulent “rain king” of the title -- is a guy who tries to be something he’s not. He pursues relationships for his own selfish reasons, and he ends up paying a price because of it.

For that matter, the emotionally obsessive weatherman who proves to be the true culprit of the episode also pays a price for not being himself. By repressing his true feelings for fear of rejection, he ends up ensuring his own loneliness. It’s only when he is encouraged by Mulder and Scully to conquer his fear that his romantic problems resolve themselves.

And if there’s hope for a guy so repressed that his very emotions can cause thunderstorms, then there just has to be hope for Mulder and Scully -- and by extension, the rest of us.

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Dollhouse: “True Believer”

No, it's not a reference to the Eric Hoffer book of the same name. It's a reference to Echo's latest assignment in which she infiltrates a cult as an undercover agent who doesn't even know that she's an undercover agent. Should I even try to pretend I was surprised by what happened?

Also, Agent Ballard's next-door neighbor Mellie -- the mysterious neighbor lady referred to in “Stage Fright” -- comes to visit him at work. Could she be working undercover for the Dollhouse? Or is she just really really desperate to give away her Italian food?

And still no answer about the scars on Dr. Saunders' face. However, she and the resident imprint expert, Topher, have noticed something unusual about one of Echo's fellow co-workers aka “dolls.” Apparently the doll in question isn't acting very Ken-like...

And someone on the Dollhouse staff really doesn't like Echo. And apparently is underestimating her abilities just a wee bit...

Of course, the episodes shown thus far are being shown out of order so I shouldn't read too much into them. But I'm guessing we don't find out the real identity of Alpha and his connection to Echo for at least quite a few episodes.

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United States of Tara: “Pilot”

As much as I love Toni Collette (the actress who plays the title character Tara) and as much as I get the appeal of a show that allows her to play more than one character, I'm still not looking forward to the actual series for which this episode was a pilot. Perhaps it's because there has been one too many series making fun of suburbia. (Doesn't anyone in TVland -- apart from the good folks of Eureka, of course -- actually live somewhere they like?) Or perhaps it's because I don't quite trust Diablo Cody -- the author of Candy Girl -- to not make this series seem like Crazy/Beautiful for mental patients (no pun intended).

On the bright side, the pilot did a good job of depicting the frustration one must feel having to live with a loved one who suffers from multiple personality disorder. The feeling that, yes, I still love this person, but geez, she does make it harder to live with her than it has to be. A feeling that reminds me a lot of the stories one of my former girlfriends once told me about how it was living with her alcoholic mother. (Not that alcoholism is synonymous with multiple personality disorder, but it does appear to produce similar emotional complications.)

Unfortunately, the pilot was not so good at depicting why one would put up with such a person. Indeed, I couldn't help losing patience with the show when it tried to present Tara's sister Charmaine as some sort of bad person just because she refuses to see Tara's disorder as just some wacky personality flaw.

I keep telling myself that Ms. Cody undoubtedly means well. But I can't help but wonder... Would I be so quick to watch this show if it was about, say, an alcoholic? And would it be receiving the same amount of critical attention? Inquiring minds want to know.

But perhaps I should wait until I see more episodes before I say more.

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Heroes: “Angels and Monsters”

The writing goof I most love on this show thus far:

It's been established that Maya -- a character who can kill a village full of people without lifting a finger -- has a tendency to inadvertently kill people when she's under stress. So naturally another character yells at her a lot...

Plus how exactly do you capture someone who can kill you without lifting a finger? For a modern-day poison damsel, Maya is remarkably useless at defending herself. I appreciate the fact that the show's writers chose to include a Hispanic character in the show. I just wish the character had been a better one than Maya.

For that matter, I must confess I'm not exactly pleased to see the return of Adam (one of my least favorite characters from the second season) but then I wasn't pleased to see everyone's favorite nogoodnik Sylar get his powers back last season and thus far Sylar's story arc is going better than I thought it would.

Predictions:

The conflict between Meredith (Claire Bennet's birth mother) and Claire's adoptive mother will work itself somehow -- hopefully without a big sacrifice on Meredith's part.

We'll see Tracy's hermana Barbara sometime before the end of the season. Probably on the side of the bad guys. And she better not be in the same business as her deceased sister Nikki. Although I wouldn't mind seeing Jessica again. As unlikely as that would be...

One of the writers of this show is going to admit to having one hell of an Oedipus complex...

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Dollhouse: “Gray Hour”

The new Joss Whedon series is back with yet another generic storyline: the old failed heist plot. Blue skies!

According to an interview with Eliza Dushku cited on the Television Without Pity site, the series is supposed to start improving with episode six. Let's hope so.

And should those of us who are old enough to remember a godawful series called Point Pleasant be unhappy that this episode never quite delivers on the promise of an “Echo goes all Carrie White on people” subplot? After all, Point Pleasant was also written by a former Buffy scribe and generally aspired to be an updated version of Carrie -- among other things. And yet it was awful. Someday I may go into detail about just how awful it was but for now... Be thankful that I don't have the patience to go back and relive that show right now.

I must confess it was fun to see the same character played by two different actresses. Or better yet, to have the type of TV show where such a development could not be considered all that unusual. But then I can't help but wonder what happened to the original person who inspired that character. And why would a “humanitarian” organization like the Dollhouse need such a person to be kept on file in the first place?

Will the next episode supply the answer to such questions? Or will we the audience be yanked around some more? Since the next episode is by Tim Minnear of Firefly fame, I'm hoping otherwise. But we'll see.

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Dollhouse: “Stage Fright”

And the generic plots just keep on coming.

In this episode, Echo plays a backup singer who is assigned by the Dollhouse to protect a famous pop singer from a psychotic fan. Do I really have to tell you that things go awry?

At the end of the episode, one of the Dollhouse people threatens to have Echo sent to a mysterious place called the Attic. Needless to say, it's probably nothing like Disneyland.

Plus we learn that a mysterious neighbor lady who was seen expressing her infatuation with FBI agent Paul Ballard in earlier episodes is actually a good thing for Mr. Ballard. Not only does she interrupt and inadvertently prevent a break-in of his apartment, but she also comes to visit him in the hospital.

Why is Paul Ballard in the hospital? Well, apparently one of his “reliable” sources proved to be not as reliable as Mr. Ballard thought.

And Echo appears to be bonding with one of her fellow co-workers. But not in a way she dares advertise to their mutual employer.

And why does the mysterious Dr. Claire Saunders -- one of the Dollhouse employees -- have scars on her face? Where did she get them from? Was the mysterious Alpha involved?

And is this show really going to get better? We'll see.

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Dollhouse: “The Target”

In the last episode of this series, Echo played a hostage negotiator who rescues the daughter of a Mexican millionaire from vicious Mexican kidnappers.

In this episode, she is hired to play the wilderness-friendly girlfriend of a young millionaire, only to find out halfway through her mission that said millionaire expects far more from her than a warm snuggle in a shared sleeping bag.

If you're familiar with short stories, you can probably guess where this story is heading the minute the millionaire reveals his last name to be Connell. (As in Richard Connell, the author of a famous short story.) Even if you're not familiar with short stories, you can probably guess what happens since this episode involves one of the most used plots in TV and movie history.

Not a good sign.

Plus we get a brief flashback involving the mysterious Alpha, a former member of the Dollhouse who used to be like Echo but who one day rebelled and killed a number of Dollhouse personnel. No one in this episode is sure of Alpha's current whereabouts. Sure, he's supposed to be dead but no one is quite sure of that. Plus...whoever said that Alpha is necessarily a he? And why did he spare Echo in his murder spree?

We also learn how Echo came to bond with her current handler, a ex-cop who appears to be growing a bit of a conscience as far as Echo is concerned. Unfortunately, the Dollhouse doesn't appear to be an organization in which good consciences are rewarded even though the head people tend to profess humanitarian motives for their work.

And who sent Paul Ballard, the rogue FBI agent, that mysterious video tape we glimpsed in the last episode? The one with a home movie of Echo's graduation in it?

Could it be Alpha? Or Satan?

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Dollhouse: “Ghost”

Eliza Dushku of Buffy fame returns in a new Joss Whedon show that I'm tempted to describe as a Faith-based initiative.

Apparently, Ms. Dushku plays Echo, a member of a secret organization called the Dollhouse that may or may not be legitimate. Okay, there's no real maybe about the legitimacy part but the head people tend to profess humanitarian motives, so who knows?

First scene shows Echo negotiating with a female VIP of the Dollhouse, a negotiation which -- the show makes quite obvious -- is not being done from a position of strength.

Next scene shows Echo riding on a motorcycle with a guy she really, really likes, only to have all memories of said guy stripped away from her when she returns to the Dollhouse for her “treatment.”

The main plot involves Echo having a different personality “downloaded” into her each week, a personality that is later stripped away with supposedly no trace left behind. In this episode, the personality is that of a hostage negotiator, sent by the Dollhouse to help negotiate the release of a young Mexican girl from Mexican kidnappers. A subplot involves a rogue FBI agent named Paul Ballard who is doing his damnedest to track down the Dollhouse.

Plus the show tempts us with the possibility that Echo might not be forgetting as much of her past personalities as the Dollhouse's head honchos would prefer.

Is the show as good as past Joss Whedon shows? It's too early to tell, but the generic quality of this week's kidnapping plot doesn't bode well. Hopefully, it's just a misstep.

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House M.D.: “The Softer Side”

And the medical term of the week is genetic mosaic.

Plus, it's apparently a bad thing for world-famous doctors like Dr. House to be happy.

Especially if it's for the wrong reasons.

Plus there's that whole risking-death thing.

Okay, it's obvious to most people who know me in the offline world that I have a soft spot for this show. But is said soft spot deserved? That's the question I keep asking myself this season.