TV Time: Buffy, the Dollhouse, and Being Human

I convinced my friend Annette to watch all of Battlestar Galactica, so in return, she got me to watch all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I think she still owes me, really, because BSG has 75 episodes total and Buffy has 144.) Anyway, I finally finished watching all of Buffy. And then I started watching Dollhouse - another Joss Whedon show (love him!), and I watched one episode of "Being Human" - a new SciFi channel show. I thought I'd write about each of them quickly now...


I thought Buffy was a fairly good show, though it changes a lot over the course of the series. The first season or so is very light and episodic - fighting robots and fish monsters and things like that. There is some overarching story, but it's not all that intense. By the last season, things are much darker. I'm not sure I would have gotten through it without the Andrew comic relief (which constantly had me laughing out loud) - he just makes such awesome geeky references that I swear only a few people would get.

<> Really the last couple of seasons are pretty dark - ever since Buffy died the second time. Buffy hates being alive, Willow is semi-evil and/or can't do any magic at all (which is boring), Dawn exists (and is soooo whiny), Giles is gone, Spike is cool but never happy, Xander and Anya split up, then the long, drawn out "some of us aren't going to make it" stuff... Made me miss the days when they were high school students battling fish-swim-team-monsters. In some ways it was a better show, because the characters and stories had more depth, but it was a little less happy-go-lucky/ fun to watch. 

<> I liked the finale pretty well. I liked how they brought back every character ever, basically, and I thought the "making every girl a slayer" was kind of sappy/awesome. I thought it was good that not everyone made it (Poor Anya, though! The scene where Xander is calling for her is really pretty sad!) (And poor Spike - finally redeemed himself, though) but that most of them did make it. I also really liked the very end where its just chatting, like "what do we do now?" Such a cool way to end the show. Oh, and I loved that Nathan Fillion was on the show - it's hilarious to me that Joss Wheden just works with the exact same people over and over. 

Jeff and I just started Dollhouse about a week ago, and we're already a couple episodes into the second season. The premise is that there is an organization (called 'the dollhouse') where people sign a contract to have their mind wiped. Then, the people in the dollhouse program them with a new personality, memories, etc. to fulfill client's requests - instead of hiring an actor to pretend to be your girlfriend, you're buying someone who really believes that she is your girlfriend. It's a good show - interesting, funny, with constant changes. There is a good overarching storyline, so it's not just about the client of the week. Sadly, it was canceled after the second season, so only about 25 episodes exist total.

I watched "Being Human," while at the gym, because it's one of the only free TV shows on iTunes that looked halfway interesting, and I can play iPhone movies on the TV screen attached to the elliptical. The show is about a vampire, werewolf, and a ghost (all actors in their 20's) that decide to get a house together. The pilot was actually pretty funny and entertaining, which is rare for a pilot (I feel like they're usually awkward, because the actors haven't really figured out the characters yet).