Not long ago, I expressed worry about Chuck’s future now that the will-they/won’t-they romance has been resolved. With one episode down and five to go, I think the writers are on the right path.

So far, at least, the show seems quite content to let Chuck and Sarah just be happy while being spies. And rightly so! It seems odd to me that no show that I can recall aside from the American version of The Office has had the long-term romance solidify and continue telling stories. Emotional connections are perhaps harder to establish with fictional characters when a romance isn’t one of the balls in the air, but conversely, storytelling is not merely the act of introducing sadness to people’s lives.

This isn’t to say that they need to be a perfect couple forever from here on out, but at the very least they have avoided for the time being the trap of the quick and implausible relationship collapse. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this season plays out¹.

---

Footnotes

1. Oh, also, the season’s winding down, the ratings are still unremarkable, and the show continues to be one of the best shows on right now. In conclusion… Start Watching Chuck, Dammit! [↩]

Monday’s new episode of Chuck, which originally served as the 13-episode finale before NBC extended the episode order for the season, ended in a rather climactic moment that will forever change the way the show works. I’m not talking about the fact that Chuck finally killed someone. I think that was well played and an inevitable step for Chuck, something that logically had to be the way Chuck’s arc from Intersect 2.0 to full-fledged agent. What I’m talking about was Chuck and Sarah’s happy ending in Paris.

There are a few ways this plays out but here’s the most likely: the show will continue to introduce arbitrary conflicts for their relationship, despite having concretely established their long-simmering love, which results in them defaulting to their on-again/off-again status.

The major conflict they put up for Chuck and Sarah’s love the last few episodes was that Chuck was now a killer and not the man she fell in love with which, admittedly, is a somewhat reasonable conflict¹ but that’s over with now. I’m not saying a different and compelling reason for them to fall out of love couldn’t be concocted by the writers, but I think any long-term relationship drama at this point would be laziness on the part of the writers.

It’s easy for the show to return to its status quo, because that’s what the writers have been doing for years; it’s much harder to take their relationship as a given and move on. I hope this is the path the show follows for the six episode run it has coming up and for the next season if it gets renewed². Will that happen? Probably not, but a man can dream can’t he?

---

Footnotes

1. Though not nearly as much as the show would have you believe, seeing as Sarah was supposedly falling for Shaw as her love for Chuck wavered and Shaw is a ruthless killer when he needs to be; he even shot himself! [↩]
2. fingers crossed [↩]

I’ve been meaning to write a bit about Reaper, a show in the same vein as Chuck, ever since its season finale. One thing I noticed was the fairly significant similarities in their progression. Reaper ended its second season with what could be considered an evening of the playing field between Sam, the slacker Reaper looking for a way out of his contract with the Devil, and his pseudo-girlfriend Andi, who had shrinked from Sam this season after learning he was a son of the Devil: she had lost her soul to the Devil as well. Additionally, the season ended with a cryptic message from former demon, and current angel, Steve that everything that’s happening is happening for a reason, and the blueprints aren’t downstairs; the world was expanded, and Sam’s significance had increased.

Similarly, with Chuck the season ended with Chuck obtaining a newer more powerful Intersect which gave him physical capabilities as well; twisting this slightly to make the point, he was now on a level playing field with his pseudo-girlfriend Sarah, who until now had been the kickass super-agent of the relationship. And in the process of obtaining this new Intersect the scope of the story was expanded: the enemy of the last two years had been but one part of a larger machine. The parallels are striking.

That isn’t to say the shows were similar. In fact, the contrast between the two shows was much greater in their second seasons than their first, but the similarities in their arcs are  nonetheless notable.

Chuck and Reaper have followed similar paths on the production side of things as well. They were both affected, and truncated, by the Writer’s Strike and as a result both were “bubble shows” that made it back for a second season by the skin of their teeth. Of course, here their paths diverge slightly. Reaper was given a short season renewal. I’d initially read that it was a 9 episode season, but ultimately 13 aired; Chuck was given a full 22 episode pick up.

So Chuck returned in the fall and spent months developing its identity and fanbase to the point that when it was placed once again on the bubble (albeit as a likely renewal) the fans sprang into action. Reaper, with its shorter season, began airing as a mid-season replacement and didn’t have as much time to grow a fanbase. So, despite continual assertions of inevitable cancellation by TV rating analysts, the fanbase barely materialized and the show was killed, while Chuck’s wildly successful fan-driven campaign resulted in saving the show from the increasingly fickle chopping block.

But following the trend of cancelled shows being picked up by other networks, seen this year with Medium and (potentially) My Name is Earl, the execs behind Reaper were rumoured to be looking for a deal that would have allowed for a third season on a new network. Jenny Wade, who starred on this season of Reaper as a demon and Ben’s Anya-esque girlfriend, posted on twitter of an unofficial deal in the works, a deal that fell through rather quickly. Since then, I’ve been following her and she recently posted a video discussing Reaper. In it she, among other things, defends Tyler Labine and Bret Harrison, the stars of Reaper, from fans who said they gave up on the show. This is the first I’d heard of it, but I decided to hypothesize completely uninformed of the context of the comments.

Tyler Labine was cast in a new pilot which was subsequently greenlit for a season order. I can see how that can be construed as “abandoning” a show, but it’s simply the reality of the industry; in addition, his contract for Reaper almost certainly overrode any other deals and the pilot he filmed was merely “backup.” Bret Harrison is another story; he hasn’t quickly moved onto other roles or anything of that sort so the anger of the fans seems even more unjustified to me. What I think it boils down to, though, is Reaper’s unintended doppleganger: Chuck.

One of the more noted aspects of the Chuck renewal campaign was how vociferously some of the stars of the show encouraged the campaign: namely, Bret Harrison’s Chuck counterpart Zachary Levi. While at a convention in London, he took a group of Chuck fans to a nearby Subway and, following one of the ideas of the fan campaign, started buying five dollar footlongs. Subsequently, he appeared on CNN, and most likely other channels as well, to discuss the campaign and support the show and the renewal campaign. As far as I know, Bret Harrison did none of these things, so I presume that this is at least one aspect of why the fans seem displeased with Harrison. Which (finally) gets to the point of this post: are those sorts of actions the duty of an actor?

I don’t think so. An actor’s duty is to act. Beyond that, every actor does things differently. Acting, in the end, is just a job. To some people, their job is their life, to others it’s not. We’d all like to believe that all the actors in our favourite shows and movies ansolutely love the roles they’re playing, but that’s not always the case. And really, it’s not their job to love their job.

Maybe Zachary Levi really loves Chuck more than Bret Harrison loves Reaper. Or maybe that’s just who Levi is; maybe he will spend a week evangelizing all of his friends when he finds a great rib joint. I don’t know either of them. What I do know is that the both of them did a great job. They performed their roles well, and brought to life their characters. Beyond that, I don’t give a shit.

(Obviously, I care a little; personable and fan-friendly actors are better than the alternative, but I’m not going to chastise an actor for not being an acolyte for their show.)

And ultimately, Zachary Levi talking about Chuck on CNN did not renew the show. Zachary Levi would not have even been on CNN talking Chuck except for one thing: the fans. The fans created the campaign, the fans pushed the narrative, they renewed the show. Anything Zachary Levi did was ancillary, just as anything Bret Harrison could have done would have been. The only thing Zachary Levi did to renew the show was give a great performance, one that engendered such an enthusiastic fanbase. He did his job. And so did Harrison.

As I look back on the grand experiment that was my weekly reviews of Dollhouse, I find myself still struggling with the proper format of these reviews. Based on my blog’s tracking stats, I’ve found more people visit the reviews which were more in-depth and detailed, but at the same time that could simply be a side-effect of the sheer volume of words in those reviews. By quoting specific lines and describing most of the scenes to a reasonable level of detail it becomes much more reasonable for someone searching for those things online — something I often do, to gauge if my opinion of certain scenes is reflected by the online audience — to find my site.

But that’s a fairly cold and calculating way to look at writing a review. I don’t want to merely insert enough keywords as to increase my traffic by throwing everything against the wall and seeing what sticks. That said, I have found myself more willing to go back and examine and re-read my more detailed reviews. Looking at the little moments that make a show good is one thing that many other reviewers fail to do, and to write about those details in the hopes of reaching others who, like me, appreciate the little things a show does is a big reason I write about television.

So I’ve decided that if Dollhouse gets renewed for another season, I will write detailed reviews — luxuriating over every shot, every thought, every furtive glance — for every episode of Dollhouse until the series ends. And I mean series the way an American or a Canadian does. If Dollhouse becomes a breakaway hit in its second season and then airs continuously for the next fifty years, I will have a horridly long review for every single episode in the bunch. Of course, the real question is this: is this promise a reason to renew or a reason to not?

This review took a lot longer to come out, not because I had trouble writing it, but because I got distracted by the Save Chuck campaign and by reading the Death Note manga (which is fucktastically good, by the way) during every spare moment of time. I’m not really sure how I feel about this week’s episode of Dollhouse. I want to hold out on judgement until next week, since this episode was all about the set-up for next week’s finale¹, but in reality the entire season has been leading up to next week. I think this entire episode was wonderful, until the last few moments and those I’m still not sure about.

As much as Alan Tudyk’s manic portrayal of Alpha pleased me, when he imprinted Echo with a new personality — who? we don’t yet know — and headed off with a kiss it left me worried about how the season will end. I never saw Alpha’s grand plan as being so petty; playing hero for one of the personalities stored in the Dollhouse’s archives is neither nefarious nor lofty. That said, this is a Joss Whedon show we’re talking about so it’s almost guaranteed that it will end up wowing me. So, in the meantime, let’s talk about what I liked.

First off, the Echo-imprint story of the week, which provides the show with its title, with Echo as a teacher trying to touch a troubled student (not like that) was cool. Fixing a person’s emotional problems in software and then fixing the original person in the real world is an interesting extension of the Dollhouse’s technology, but I was way too enthralled by all the intrigue going on in the Dollhouse this episode to really give a damn. So I’m going to completely ignore it; it might be great, but there’s no closure to the thread and I’m not entirely sure that it’ll be picked up in subsequent episodes. So fuck it.

The episode kicks off² with Ballard breaking up with Mellie and packing up his apartment. Which I, for one, am glad to see. Ever since Mellie’s outing as a Doll, I see her pining for Paul as degrading and calculating rather than heartwarming and quixotic. Last week’s episode, when Ballard broke down and used Mellie like an object, finally broke his resolve and so he’s leaving her. Of course, he’s also leaving her in the hopes that she will be taken back to the Dollhouse. Which then happens, thus proving that Ballard actually is a capable investigator; being spoonfed information for the first half of the season was beginning to wear on me so it’s good that he’s discovered the Dollhouse at least partially on his own.

I say partially because he still hasn’t found the Dollhouse, only the door. To get past the door he needs the man that built it. Seeing as his corpse is rotting in Tucson, Alpha playing the role of the builder of the Dollhouse will have to do. Paul’s journey through the Dollhouse is tense, and exciting, but when he finally got to the pod room and he started getting all doe-eyed over Caroline I start zoning out. Hopefully, that thread is abandoned soon, because the more opportunities Ballard has to be in contact with Echo, the more annoying it gets.

A lot of stuff happened, and it mostly seems very meh in light of the revelations stacked into the last few minutes, but one moment that took me by surprise in more ways than one was Enver Gjokaj’s absolutely dead-on impersonation of Laurence Dominic. I mean, it’s so good it’s like they cast one or both of those guys (Reed Diamond and Enver Gjokaj) for this explicit purpose. I will cherish those moments for the rest of my life. OK, not really, but it was really great.

So, I know it feels like I’m giving this episode’s review the short shrift, and in a lot of ways I am. There are a lot of really nice touches in this episode, but that final scene left me with a lot of trepidation about what will happen in the finale. I hope it turns out well, given the likelihood of there being a second season, so I’m just gonna wait it out.

---

Footnotes

1. There are 13 episodes this season, but the 13th is a standalone that likely won’t even air. [↩]
2. Again, I’m ignoring the school teacher stuff, so Ballard’s stuff happened “first” from that perspective. [↩]

I should be writing my weekly Dollhouse review/recap right now, but the current hysteria over Chuck and its possible cancellation is what tends to preoccupy my televisual thoughts nowadays. I should say this immediately: both Chuck and Dollhouse are deserving of renewal. I’m more heavily invested in Chuck because there have been more episodes and more emotional connections made, but they’re both excellent shows. The key difference between the two is that the fan base of Chuck has galvanized and mobilized, while the fans of Dollhouse do little more than bemoan its impending doom in scattershot fora.

I remember two years ago, when Jericho was a show was less than stellar ratings that looked “on the bubble” just as Chuck is now; there were rumblings that it might not be renewed, but nobody was ardently fighting for its renewal. Not until the season ended with a spectacular climax and CBS announced that the show would not be returning for a second season did the fan base explode with fury and begin sending tonnes (literally) of peanuts to CBS to demand a new season of Jericho.

Miraculously, it worked. No write-in campaign that I know of had been successful in reviving a show since Star Trek in the 60′s, but the dedication of the fans astounded the executives and so they made an abrupt about-face and gave Jericho a second season. Of seven freaking episodes.

In the case of Jericho, the network execs were essentially telling the writers to finish off whatever they had planned. They kept up the pretense of a possible third season, even having the writers create two alternate endings, but everyone could see the writing on the wall. Some might argue that this is the best you can get, but I think what’s happened with Chuck is a sign of the future of fandom.

Chuck has never been more than “on the bubble,” and even in this impoverished state, most experts have been quietly optimistic about its possibilities. But we’ve learned not to take “good enough” for granted. Jericho had higher ratings than Chuck, and it still got cancelled. The fans have learned their lesson, and they will fight for the shows they love, even before the fight has begun. Preemptive war is the tactic du jour in our world now. And one has to hope it will result in greater gains than the Jericho campaigns.

The fans of other shows haven’t learned their lesson yet, or they’ve been conditioned for failure. In fact, most of the ardent supporters of Dollhouse in the early days were the ones virtually promising that it would be cancelled.

At this point, Chuck seems likely to be renewed, but its relative success — whether or not it gets a crappy timeslot, or a truncated run, or substantial network support, etc. — will be the litmus test for this new form of fandom. Bringing the fight to the network before the network knows there’s a fight is a potent tactic. If it works, that is.

I really don’t want to be one of those people that becomes a fanatic about every TV show I like on the brink of cancellation, but the news I just read is painful. Supposedly, Chuck — a show that’s done nothing but improve in its two year tenure — and Medium — a show that seems so poorly done that I wonder if there are any genuine fans — are battling it out in the offices of NBC, and only one will be given a new season.

I hate Medium. I hated it before I’d ever seen it, but watching an episode solidified and justified my prejudice. I have no idea why the ratings for that show are even marginally better than Chuck. I would be more upset by Medium getting a renewal and Chuck getting cancelled than both shows getting cancelled. So, NBC: please please please please choose Chuck. Or at the very least, don’t choose Medium. But seriously, choose Chuck.

Last night’s Chuck was a spectacular hour of television, but the moment being touted as a “game-changer” didn’t feel like that to me. The moment of realization at the end of season three of Lost was a game changing one: the entire dynamic of the show was thrown in a drastically different direction. Last night’s Chuck felt more like Lost’s season one finale and season two premiere: we’ve arrived at a pivotal moment in the mythology of the series, and realized that what we have seen thus far was merely prelude. Like the deep endless chasm Jack and Locke stared into, Chuck’s finale left us desperate for more, but things hadn’t really changed. The camera had simply pulled back to reveal that the rope was actually an elephant’s tail. So while the story has grown much grander, its elements are the same, which I would say means it’s not a game-changer; an amazing episode, but not a game-changer.

Admittedly, this could just be my view of what a game-changer is. If you consider the introduction of the Dharma Initiative on Lost a game-changing event, then Chuck’s finale was more definitely a game-changer.

Regardless, this finale proved that Chuck is one of the best shows on TV. It manages to intertwine overarching mythology, spy action, drama, romance, humour, and geeky references better than any other show. And what’s more astounding is that none of these suffer for any other. The characters are fleshed out, they grow and change over time, the Chuck/Sarah romance is always there and develops and evolves with each new circumstance, and the action is more dynamic than most other television shows. Chuck is undoubtedly the best show NBC has right now, and to cancel it now would be more than foolish, it would be tragic.

Many people are spreading the word about the “Save Chuck” campaign, and Alan Sepinwall’s open letter to NBC is stellar. The best advice, however, is the simplest. Watch the show. Buy it on DVD. Contact NBC and voice your support of the show. Chuck is a show worth fighting for. So fight.

Chuck is a fantastic series. When it started, I put it beside Reaper and said they were pretty much the same show with any given week being a coin toss as to which would be better. In many important ways, that was true of their first seasons, but this year Chuck has rocketed into the stratosphere of awesome. Before, it was simply a show I watched, one among many, but this year it’s become one of my top five favourite shows on television. Unfortunately, the ratings are not that great. I’ve lamented Chuck’s poor ratings before, especially in light of the weak fare it’s put up against most weeks, but it never really hit me that the show might not come back.

But that’s the truth of the situation. Chuck has yet to get a greenlight for a third season, and as much as I hold out hope that NBC will keep one of their few genuinely entertaining shows alive for another year, I know that NBC has done little to warm me to their cause; Surface, The Black Donnellys, Andy Barker, P.I., Journeyman, and The Book of Daniel are all shows that were cancelled too quickly by NBC.

I’m leaving my hovel to venture out into the real world tonight, so I won’t be able to watch Chuck, live and vibrating with excitement as I normally do, tonight. But don’t let me stop you. Watch Chuck. You won’t regret it.

Seriously? Chuck’s ratings keep dropping despite each new episode being better than the last. Chuck is demonstrably better than almost everything else on Monday nights. CBS’ comedy pairing of The Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother is good, but I don’t think it surpasses Chuck. And the execrable dreck that is Dancing with the Stars is an unstoppable juggernaut of ratings, overpowering everything in its path. Why? I have no idea.

I don’t want to encourage viewers of TBBT or HIMYM to stop watching those shows because they’re both decent shows and HIMYM was on the verge of cancellation every year prior to this. And quite frankly, if you’re stupid enough to actually watch a full episode of Dancing with the Stars, I don’t want your eyes anywhere near Chuck. I’m afraid the stupid might leak. But there is one other show that pulls down strong numbers reliably that probably isn’t totally deserving of them.

I’m going to let the world in on a secret. House isn’t that good. I loved the first season. I have it on DVD, even though it’s shitty non-anamorphic widescreen. I liked the second season. The show had lost some of its charm, but House seemed to be developing as a character. By the third season I started to notice that despite every second episode ending with some significant moment implying that House would be changing nothing ever really changed. The show’s plot got tediously formulaic. House had to do more and more outrageous things to maintain his edginess. And the idea that House, no matter how brilliant he is, could keep his medical license after all the atrocious actions he’d commited more than strained credulity. So, near the end of season three I stopped watching it. When season four started up, I started to watch the premiere and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even make it through the whole thing.

I’m not against episodic television, where not much really changes from episode to episode. Obviously, I prefer serialized television because it allows bonds to be made between the characters and the audience, but I do watch a few shows with very little ongoing story. That said, I do not like shows that pretend that they’re serialized. It insults my intelligence and demeans the characters. And that’s what House does. The ongoing “developments” amount to nothing but the same cardboard cutout characters getting reset back to the status quo nearly every episode.

So stop watching House and give your television time to a show much much more deserving. Seriously.

Chuck is a great show, one that hasn’t found a strong audience but is more than deserving. While maintaining the high caliber action scenes a spy-drama needs, the show manages to develop personalities for their characters, keeps up an ongoing will-they-won’t-they-of-course-they-will-but-not-for-another-couple-seasons relationship without cockteasing the audience too badly, and also have really sharp dialogue and stories packed with geek references. There’s a lot to like about Chuck and the minor annoyances that any given episode offer up are just that: minor.

Of course, I wouldn’t title this post “The Death Spiral Continues” if I were extolling the wonders of a show. I merely take the time to discuss Chuck to contrast it with the increasingly dreaful show that follows it Monday nights on NBC. This week’s episode of Heroes continued to disappoint and downright offend as Parkman’s inexplicable prophetic painting continues to repeat a story that was overplayed and poorly executed when they did it the first five times. And when Rebel gives them useful intel, Matt and Peter finally start thinking and they double up on the mind powers to help them get past security. A smart idea and they got a couple good scenes out of it. Of course, why they wouldn’t at least cover the security camera in the room — leaving the others wondering who it could be — is one of many questions that are aroused by the idiotic behaviour in this episode.

Indeed, while in “Building 26″, Matt and Peter get ahold of video surveillance and Matt’s first plan is to leverage that information to get Daphne back. “One life at a time” he says, as though that makes sense. If your plan is to chip away at the problem until it’s been fixed and then suddenly you’re given material capable of destroying the very foundation of the bricks you’re chipping at, a change in stratagem might be in order. And then, when Peter escapes with that information, instead of bringing the information immediately to all the news outlets and uploading it to Youtube and posting to dailykos under the username LoveIsTheAnswer about the abuses of the Executive Branch and how horrifying the rounding up of these superpowered-Americans is for the freedoms of all Americans, he calls up his totally trustworthy brother who’s never betrayed him before and makes a deal to exchange all the incriminating evidence he has for Matt and Daphne. Even Nathan is astounded! It’s the stupidest deal ever. If you release the information to the public, Matt and Daphne would be ultimately freed, along with everyone else they’d illegally imprisoned. That’s what TNC would call “stepping over dollars to snatch up nickels.”

Oh but the stupid is strong with this episode. That’s just one of three equally stupid and repetitive stories. Claire is protecting Aquaman and, while he’s less annoying than West from last year, the story comes across virtually identical. They’re on the run and the guy saves her with his power somehow. Meanwhile, they discover that they’re not alone, that they have someone to share this part of themselves with. It’s just boring and Claire’s ongoing self-assuredness in the face of her obvious inadequacies is exasperating. And Sylar rediscovers his dad. Turns out his dad sold him to his uncle. Who knew?! The scene where Sylar relives that memory was played as though it were new astonishing information when it’s been known for at least a couple episodes now. The closest thing the scene has to a twist is when Sylar’s dad kills Sylar’s mom via some good old fashioned head-slicing telekenesis. Which, much like last week’s reveal of Mohinder’s pseudo-complicity, doesn’t make sense. Sylar obtained his telekinesis through his real power, the ability to understand complex systems intuitively and “fix” them, so to give telekinetic powers to his dad makes negative sense.

I’m feeling more and more angry with Heroes each new episode. I truly want the show to be good. I don’t like abandoning shows, especially not shows with sci-fi and comic book trappings, but Heroes is not entertaining for me anymore. Other shows are much better. Chuck, for example. Watch them instead.

Well, the idea of an episode where Echo plays a backup singer/secret bodyguard wasn’t immediately appealing to me, the show managed to ask a few interesting questions and keep me entertained during those scenes while furthering the mythology of the show. The real accomplishment was, of course, having legitimately good original pop songs. When Chuck had its rockstar-in-trouble episode a couple weeks ago they had to fake it but this show busted a full-fledged dance number out to kick off the hour.

The superstar-gone-crazy storyline isn’t entirely original, but because this is Dollhouse you get a chance to compare the assembly-line construction of pop stars the industry operates on  – there’s even a line about Rayna, the pop star in trouble, having stalkers since “singing for the Mouse” a clear reference to the Disney Mousketeers and their continual stream of stars — with the programming the Dollhouse gives to its Actives. Of course, there are obvious advantages to a story such as this…

Meanwhile, in the Dollhouse story-line a new aspect of the Active’s programming was revealed in this episode: Actives are given a persona, the identity they’re portraying, and a parameter, the underlying requirements of the mission. Echo’s persona is a singer, but her parameter is to protect Rayna at all costs. It’s an interesting addition to the mythos that opens up lots of possibilities regarding the inconsistent programming of the subconscious and conscious minds of the Actives.

The story definitely goes over-the-top with the diva personality — the exasperated line “Is somebody eating a mint?!” comes to mind — but I suppose it helps in establishing that she’s crazy. Echo’s solution to the Rayna’s suicidal tendencies is simple: bring her close to death so she can realize it’s not that appealing. But it breaks from her mission parameter in a 3 Laws of Robotics sort of way, which is interesting but a cause of consternation. Because of Echo’s improvisation there’s talk of an Attic, where inactive Actives go to sleep forever, which harkens to the boxing of Cylon models on BSG. But in the end she saves Rayna from herself. She also seemingly remembering her earlier interactions with Sierra at the Dollhouse during the mission; even stranger, Echo and Sierra seemed to remember each other when back at the Dollhouse. Things are moving quickly here, and Echo’s awakening will surely be a “game-changing” event in Dollhouse should the show survive long enough to feel its effects.

On a related note, I have to say I was really impressed by the performance from Dichen Lachman, the actress playing Sierra. Her captivity scenes were very good. She played the fear very realistically. Kudos to her. I just hope she doesn’t play an Australian persona too often; I know she’s already Australian so there’s no need to work on an accent but the landscape of American television is becoming inundated by Australian actors playing American roles which on occasion have to pretend to be Australian. Not that it’s a bad thing when they’re all as gorgeous as Yvonne Strahovski, Dichen Lachman, and Alex O’Loughlin.

And finally, Ballard’s Russian mob informant is revealed to actually be a Dollhouse Active presumably on a mission to get Ballard killed. It’s not a huge surprise, again because of the press photos showing that actor as an Active, but it’s a new development and the reveals thus far only skim the surface of what Viktor’s mission actually is and what the Dollhouse has in store for Ballard. At first glance, the information given to Ballard was to set him up to be killed by the mob, but who’s to say what the real intention was. Ballard’s plots are all so minor and insubstantial right now, it’s hard to put any effort into examining them, but I’m sure as the show progresses he’ll get closer to the Dollhouse and more integrated with the rest of the show’s stories.

The show’s improving. This week’s episode wasn’t as good as last week’s for the same reason the pilot was a little lackluster: the main story wasn’t that enthralling. But the show is getting better. The characterizations are getting richer, the long-term stories are getting layered in wonderfully, and the dialogue is getting smoother and Joss-ier. So freaking watch it, because the ratings are not good people.