The Joss Whedon-Eliza Dushku series recently became available on streaming Netflix, and all of the sudden I’ve finished both seasons (including paying for the second one on Amazon Video On Demand) in the span of about 8 days. I’ve been raving about this show to many people since I started chain-smoking those episodes, and unfortunately I haven’t found one person to share in my fanboy geekgasm banter.
I can’t devote a 20-minute ranty vlog to it, but I do have to say this show explored some pretty cool cyberpunk themes (uploaded consciousness, brains powering supercomputers, the Übermensch) I haven’t seen on TV or in movies. I’m talking Neal Stephenson, William Gibson and Charles Stross territory here. The premise is a Zen garden-like “house” built at least four stories under Los Angeles where “dolls” (humans with their brains wiped nearly clean of memories and thoughts) are “imprinted” with personalities and rented by wealthy clients for lust, romance, secret agent-type missions or whatever they can think of.
OK, enough with the scare quotes. It’s a Johnny Mnemonic meets La Femme Nikita sort of tale, and obviously there’s a string of fun vocabulary that any Comic Book Guy in waiting would jump to employ. Don’t even IMDB or Wikipedia it past the first paragraph because you’ll be spoiling it for yourself in no time (it’s got that Battlestar “Who’s a Cylon?” fun going for it with “Who’s a doll?”). Plus, you get your Firefly, Buffy, Angel and Dr. Horrible love with Alan Tudyk, Summer Glau, Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Felicia Day and at least a few others of the Whedon ilk rounding out the rotating cast of characters. There’s a few other things I’d love to say but that dang New York Post went and beat me to it.
Seriously, watch it. Just 26 little episodes that will set your heart and mind on overdrive. And actually, that’s how I like it. I watched every Battlestar Galactica episode over the course of two months as the show was wrapping up last year. Harper’s Island I devoured in a matter of days. With Burn Notice I lined up 30 episodes for a crash course before jumping into the third season midway. I’m mostly watching shows when I know their lifespan. I no longer have the patience for the another season, another plotline the creators developed over the summer game. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s deplorable. It’s so 1990s. What I like about good TV nowadays is that the plotlines have me convinced the creators have a plan from the start. That just makes it all the more enjoyable for me to consume all at once.
