Medicated Fiction, Side Effects May Include...

What in the fuck happened?

It sucked donkey balls.

It had so much POTENTIAL. I'm a huge, HUGE Joss fan. Buffy, Angel, episodes of Robot Chicken that have him doing guest voices, Firefly, Astonishing X-Men (all except for issue 24 when he launches Kitty into space in a giant bullet, never to be seen again), you name it, I love it if it has Joss' dirty little handprints all over it.

And Eliza Dushku is my girl crush. She was awesome as Faith. She plays such a lovable sociopath and psycho killer, so with that in mind...

Why the heck was this show such a mess?

Every TV Guide and entertainment magazine I've picked up for the past three months has built up this show, giving it at least three stars before the pilot even aired. They pulled the original first epi to rework it, for crying out loud, to make sure they got it right. They even threw in Amy Acker, who, hello, was a riot as Fred on Angel. I mean, how could you not love Fred???

I'll tell you how. When she only has about two lines the entire episode, and she delivers them woodenly to avoid showing up everyone else in the scene who's having a hard time with the script. And she cut her hair!!!! She looks like someone's mom. In a lab coat.

The opening scene has a fun motorcycle race through busy traffic. Not amazing camera work, but it was fun. It could have been filmed to be more dynamic, and the suspense factor was low. Then, Echo (her character's name, basically a correctonym for a bit of irony, since her character keeps having flashbacks), tips the cycle over onto her leg, hops right back up, stands the thing back up (that must be one lightweight bike, when you consider that if you did that to a Harley, two people would need to pick it up) and hops right back on WITHOUT her helmet on. Then, they go careening to the finish line, which is evidently in a hotel. Uh-huh. The people in the front lobby look surprised, but that's it. The scene never really goes anywhere.

Next, cut to a scene with Eliza dancing with the guy who beat her in the race. Presumably her boyfriend? They act like they've been dating for a while, except we know this isn't the case, based on the premise of the show. Eliza should never dance again. It was an embarrassing mess, reminiscent of the Jesse James video "Shake it Like a White Girl" from the early nineties, color meaning nothing here, but her footwork just wasn't there. Her dress was a hankie, didn't even cover her butt, and it looked like she had cheerleader bloomers underneath.

So, after the date, the guy gives her a little gold heart necklace, so we're supposed to say "awwwww," but, um, nope. Might as well have gotten it out of a cracker jack box or the glass case in Kmart, it was just a moment of cheese.

Cut to Echo leaving the club. the guy who played the sleazy owner of the rival hair styling place in Barbershop 2 shows up in a suspicious looking van in an expensive suit. "Are you ready for your treatment?" he asks. I scratch my head. It was just kinda stilted...

So, she babbles on in girly fashion, something that doesn't seem genuine from Eliza, she's a better actress than this, and she seemed like someone pretending to play a teenager - which she hasn't done in oh, what, ten years? - at a slumber party. They zap her. Memories go bye-bye.

Cut to more crap.

it just grew more painful. She was programmed the next time to be a hostage negotiator...I guess. Ugly gray pantsuit, sloppy unflattering bun  in her hair, glasses that didn't make the rest of her ensemble look any less awkward. So, they have her on the case, hired by this guy whose daughter was taken hostage while he was talking to the kid on teh phone. Even the kid couldn't act. The scene where they take her wasnt well filmed, there wasn't enough of a "stalker's eye view" to make you jump, they didn't zoom in close enough or even cue the scary blast of music to give it that "GOTCHA!" factor.

Echo shows up again and negotiates badly. For some reason, she knows the entire modus operandi of this kidnapper (I fell asleep through most of this today, since I was watching it at 7AM after I got home from my night of work), knows how he plans to off the kid, etc. The bad guys are on a boat. Who does that? A boat is a shitty way to make your getaway anyway, if you're toting a hostage. Cue more bad fight choreography, Echo (kinda) saving the day, or at least getting in the way until this other chick shows up, more or less as a "cleaner," a la "Point of No Return" to dispose of Bridget Fonda's, I mean Eliza's mess. Then she's all "I've got you, you're all right," with the kid, carrying her, even though the kid is about up to her shoulder.

So, back to the Dollhouse, the headquarters and her home as a living puppet. Brain zap, shower, walk around looking vacuous, then off to sleep in her people pod. The end. Thank goodness.

Except for some psycho watching videos of her at the end from before her time as an Active (doll, whatever) with two bloody bodies in the background. Presumably fodder for next week's episode. Which if I'm smart, I'll skip.