Loaded Couch Potatoes

Honk Mahfah reviews the season finales of Dollhouse and Fringe.  Read only if you want to know spoilers you don’t want to know.

I’ve got to be honest: the season finale of Lost is on the air right now, so I’m not inclined to take very detailed looks at these two episodes.  I’m going to put in the due diligence, though, so here goes.

In “Omega,” the finale of the first (and possibly only) season of Dollhouse, we find out a bit more of what the deal is with Alpha.  About half of the episode consists of flashbacks to Alpha’s rampage that left Saunders scarred; the rest of the episode splits time between Alpha trying to create a new mate (Omega) in the body of Caroline and the Dollhouse’s attempts to track them down.

This was a good episode, but it wasn’t entirely satisfactory.  Some of it may have played better on paper than it does in fact: much of the confrontation between Alpha and Omega/Echo/Caroline (sheesh!) seems silly and ill-advised.  The location shooting at the factory or wherever they are has an incredibly hollow feel to it, and has no visual appeal whatsoever; zero, zip, nada, zilch.  You never want that, but a season finale is definitely the wrong place for it.  I also detested the choice of wardrobe that Echo wore; the old flannel shirt and jean shorts thing isn’t hot, it’s just trashy, and while I get that that was the point, it was quite unappealing visually.

I also can’t say I was a fan of the way Alpha’s shifts between different personalities was executed.  Now, Alan Tudyk is a very good actor, and each one of his different takes on the character was outstanding … but by throwing flash edits into the mix, so that you’re literally cutting briefly when his personality changes each time, it makes it seem as if you’re having to cut around the performance in order to create the semblance of some sort of unity.  Yes, I know that the intended effect is one of disorientation and tension, but that wasn’t the effect it had on me; it made it seem like the editors weren’t confident in Tudyk’s ability to telegraph the transitions between different personalities.  That was ill-judged, in my opinion.

I’m also not quite sure what to think of the choice Eliza Dushku made to not do something similar to Tudyk’s performance in her scenes as Omega.  I might have liked to see something a little more manic.  On the other hand, isn’t it kinda cool that Echo/Caroline seems to be able to process all of these personalities and retain some semblance of normalcy?  I think it works, from a character standpoint, and I also like the authority that Dushku brings to these scenes; she feels very much in control, at least of herself.  I continue to think that she’s a better actress than she’s getting credit for being.

Lest it sound like I’m totally bagging on this episode, I’d better talk briefly about what I liked.  As I just hinted, I liked — “loved” might not be wrong to say — the fact that Omega didn’t go nuts because her core, original personality (her soul, according to Ballard) is fundamentally stable.  That’s a nice wrinkle, and that part of the story helps make up a bit for how unsuccessful the rest of the scenes in Alpha’s hideouts tend to be.

The Saunders/Whiskey storyline was satisfying.  It hadn’t occurred to me to think that “Saunders” was an Active, but it makes perfect sense.  Amy Acker is particularly good in this episode.  Why hasn’t someone figured out how to build a show around her yet?

The episode’s beginning — in which a customer’s Natural Born Killers fantasy goes horribly awry — was suitably horrific, and it’s also believable: I totally buy that someone would pay for that type of experience, and that it would be approved so long as the Dollhouse felt it could control the situation.

I also enjoyed Ballard’s new allegiance with the Dollhouse.  I’m not 100% sold on it, in terms of its believability — Ballard has been so obsessed with bringing the thing down, I’m not sure I can buy him even considering working with them — but Tahmoh Penikett has such great chemistry with Olivia Williams, Harry Lennix, and Fran Kranz that it’s easy to see why Whedon would want to push the show in that direction.

All in all, it was a good finale, but only good; definitely not great.  It was clearly an attempt to resolve many of the plot threads from the season, but I don’t think it was entirely successful in actually doing so.

There is one remaining episode, “Epitaph One,” which will apparently make its debut on DVD.  From there, who knows.  According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Fox network has been meeting with the Fox studio (they;re not entirely the same entity, it seems) to try and figure out how to make a second season a financial reality.  That’s encouraging news.

Moving on to Fringe, I was also disappointed a bit in this show’s season finale, “There’s More Than One of Everything.”  I’ll say this for Dollhouse, it at least tried to wrap up the first season.  The producers of Fringe seem a lot more interested in setting up the second season, and more or less forgot to provide a compelling episode to hang that setup upon.

The main thrust of the episode involves David Robert Jones, who shot Nina at the end of last week’s episode; we find out that he did this so he could steal an ultra-powerful energy cell out of Nina’s cyborg arm.  He uses this energy cell to punch a hole between the dimensions, through which he apparently plans to journey for nefarious reasons.  He does all this wrapped in Invisible Man bandages, which makes for some good, creepy shots.

I’m most disapointed by how little last week’s Observer-takes-Walter plotline yields this week.  Turns out, the Observer takes Walter to the cemetery (Peter Bishop 1979-1985!), and then to the beach and the old family beachhouse.  There, Walter finds a device he created that is capable of sealing holes between the dimensions.  Now, this is obviously an important device, but it doesn’t really feel that important for some reason.

Nina manages to convince Olivia, Broyles, and Charlie that William Bell is actually in one of these other dimensions, which can be accessed through thin spots between the worlds.  For anyone who’s read The Dark Tower, this might sound like a thinny; for anyone who’s read The Talisman or Black House, the title of the episode might remind you of Twinners.  (While we’re on that subject, how awesome a Speedy Parker would Lance Reddick make?)  I’m not crying foul; Abrams and company are on record as enormous Stephen King fans.

The final scene, in which Olivia side-steps into another world and meets Walter Bell, is pretty damn cool.  Nimoy is great, performing with far more energy than he does in Star Trek; you almost sense that he feels the opportunity at hand to put a solid asterisk on his career with a great role in a new hit show.  The episode ends with a pullback revealing that Bell’s office is in the a World Trade Center!  It’s a great end to a mediocre episode; a great end to a good first season.

But I’m not entirely on the Fringe bandwagon yet, truth be told.  The show is swimming in potential, but it hasn’t paid off enough of that potential for me to be a huge fan yet.  Hopefully, the second season will accomplish that goal.