There are lots of good things about the show. The supporting cast is strong: Guy of Gisbourne scowls darkly, and he is just the start of it. Keith Allen’s vaugely-swish Sherrif (“would you chose a woman over all this… this… POWER?!?”) is a great baddie. It is Lucy Shelton Griffiths, however, who steals the show. Refreshingly Rubenesque, agentive, and non-blond, Shelton’s Griffith’s Marion is a marvelously strong — and, frankly, extremely beautiful — woman. In fact the best pasts of the show are the scene work between her and Jonas Armstrong, which shows off how complex and torn their relationship is: he trying to win her heart by protecting her, even as she searches for a lover who realizes that she does not need protecting, but seeks to protect others. In fact, the show has a lot of scenes like this which are far better than they have any right to be. The plot centers around the destruction of happy families by oppressive forces, and a surprising amount of their plight is genuinely touching, walking a fine line between melodrama on the one hand and emotionally empty move-the-plot-alongism on the other. This, along with the fact that the first season has an actual arc, raises Robin Hood above your average Hollywood fare.

Which is good, because these days LA sets high standards for action which Robin Hood does not meet. This is one of the weaknesses of the show: despite their attempts, the British simply lack the sensibility — so exemplified in Xena, for instance — requires to take a warehouse full of costumes and a bunch of stuntmen-turned-actors and produce genuine Cheap Action. The fight scenes are only so-so, and not enough is done with the conceit of Robin as the master archer. Even the opening theme-song was preformed with full brass fanfare played by trained musicians and not turned out by a guy with a synthesizer living in Santa Monica who uses his bedroom for his office, which is the way cheap actions shows should have their fanfares made.

Ultimately, however, the greatest weakness of the show is Robin Hood himself. Is he a rollicking adventurer whose effortless competence means he has never lost and never learned to grieve? Is his pure good-heartedness untouched by a sense of moral complexity? Or is he, as the show suggests, a deeply religious patriot, a nobleman accustomed to leading and being obeyed whose benevolent paternalism is challenged by Marion’s feminist demands for parity? Is he driven by vanity, or by a desperate need for affirmation fulfilled only by the adulation of the crowd? Is he the scarred war vet whose experiences of combat have given him hidden emotional depth or a man of integrity who emerged from the Crusades unscarred only by clinging to his values? Armstrong’s Robin Hood promises to be a complex mix of all of these things, but ultimately comes across as incoherent rather than nuanced: haunted one minute, happy the next, but never realizing that tantalizing goal of becoming a truly compelling and multifaceted character. Its hard to tell whether it is the writers’ fault or Armstrong’s or both, but it is a failure that turns a potentially great show into a merely good one.

Before Spartacus began a little message popped up on the screen reassuring us that what we are about to see seems so shocking only because “that’s how things really were back then”. This was an excuse that I bought in HBO’s “Rome”, which did a wonderful job portraying the period it took place in, even if at times you did wonder whether some scenes absolutely had to be set in the middle of an orgy, and whether the Mad Men-esque ethnograhic detailing would appeal to anyone other than Classicists and randy teenagers. I didn’t care for 300 too much, but I admit that it’s well done, and I get why people like it — and of course they threw realism out the door immediately: if they hadn’t they would have had to call it “300 and their 9000 slaves”.

The idea that Sparticus’s violence is somehow not ‘over the top’ but ‘period’ is ridiculous — unless you think that iron-age Thrace is the kind of place where time suddenly slowed down and people threw buckets of blood in slow motion across people watching pitched battles. Equally, most of the sex was Spartacus-as-dildo: close up shots of his hot wife Liking It ending with an incredibly uninteresting All American heterosexual simultaneous orgasm, missionary position and all. There are certain moments in the show when I wonder “what is the director thinking?” except I already know the answer, which is “I know, let’s end this scene with… cunnilingus!”

Ultimately this is the real problem with Spartacus: its not the amounts of sex and violence, it’s how poorly its done. The balletic ultraviolence of 300 has been replaced with gory, by-the-numbers action scenes. Rome’s scene of James Purefoy au naturel getting dried off with a strigil — carefully designed to show off James Purefoy, make a point about Roman perceptions of rank and nudity, and, especially, demonstrate the use of a strigil — has been replaced by the usual large amount of totally naked chicks and just a couple of guys not wearing shirts. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for weird, derivative movies — Brotherhood of the Wolf anyone? — but Spartacus isn’t one of them.

Back in the immediate post-9/11 world people spent a lot of time comparing the US to Rome: imperial ambitious, shared trajectories of decadence, hubris, and decline. Spartacus has some interesting touches (the transitions between scenes through morphing backgrounds and zooming in on maps), but when watching it I can’t help feeling like one of the bloodthirsty, sybaritic bystanders in the show itself. How far we have come from Laurence Olivier hitting on Tony Curtis by talking about seafood. If we keep going at this rate, I shudder to think what is going to go down in the Ben Hur remake.

There were moments of sparkling dialogue — mostly of the DeWitt Vs. Guys In Suits variety — but I for one miss the days when in the course of 90 seconds Joss could simultaneously give David Boreanaz a cameo on the last episode of Buffy, explain why he wasn’t going to be on for longer than that, and tie up stuff with Buffy in a realistic way but non-subplot starting way. The scene where Bamber is convinced Dushka is spy and she explains away her attempting to break into his desk as a sign of her enthusiasm to find out where their honeymoon will be was very nicely written but man did the Topher/Saunders scene not do the work it was supposed to dramatically, although it did give me a very good sense of what the writers were striving for.

Meanwhile, we did get to see Apollo and Wesley again which is welcome and I look forward to seeing how they get incorporated into the show as Joss moves towards sukkot, and I’m hoping we’ll get to see Alan Tudyk before simchah torah. We’ll see — overall I’m guardedly optimistic that Joss will make good on the ‘do-over’ that Fox has handed him.

I imagine that Dollhouse is going to be canceled after the season finale, since it has gotten so good. It is a pity — Joss is really warming up to using the chair. We’ve seen dead people, children meeting different versions of themselves, attic’d employees put back in the bodies of dolls, and now we know Tudyk has been on a steady diet of egg whites, toast, and exercise in order to fit snugly into his probably-organic-cotton doll jammies.

Maybe it’s Joss’s fault for making shows that don’t get really going until people have already given up on them, or maybe people who like to watch good TV just do it over the Internet now. Even if they do cancel Dollhouse, at least the Tudyk-reveal last night gave me a ‘wtfbbqsauce’ moment the likes of which I haven’t had in _years_. Literally.

On the one hand, the show burrows down through multiple layers of reality anchored below the dollhouse — the various fantasy worlds the show uses to undress and imperil Dushku in each episode. This is a fantasy situation for the writers — the story arc of the Dollhouse reality can be interrupted in any episode by a one-off episode that can literally be about anything: its a situation drama without a situation. Or rather one which is a metasituation which can accommodate any number of stories inside itself.

Its also interesting to think about the character development that occurs between the Dollhouse reality and stata beneath it. The dolls and their support staff develop relationships in and through interactions in the lower reality. The friendship between Sierra and Echo thus develop half consciously (or not) (or consciously to a degree that the audience is not yet privy to) while they are other people.

On the other hand, you can’t give Joss a chair that erases your personality and not expect to see the technology ramify upwards. Honestly: Do you think Olivia Williams knows who she actually is? As the show looks for dramatic wallop it will surely give it to us by building narratives above the Dollhouse reality in which staff supposedly secure in their identities are revealed to be programmed pawns of bigger actors with darkly shrouded identities.

So despite the gross sexualization of Dushku the show has potential — there is always the possibility of the gross sexualization of Tahmoh Penikett and Dichen Lachman to look forward to, for instance. But seriously, despite my mixed feelings for the first couple of episodes, its clear that the world of Dollhouse is a big playground, and I look forward to seeing how Joss plays with it.

Watching it a second time I like it even more than the first. In 12 twenty minute episodes the show explores the life of movie producer Peter Dragon (played against type by pretty boy Jay Mohr, who turns in a marvelous performance bristling with apoplectic rage) and his dysfunctional entourage as they try to make an action blockbuster.

The show is unique in many ways — guest cameos by A-list celebrities, it mocks its own executive producers, and so forth. But really makes it stand out is its overwhelming, over-the-top obscenity. ‘Edgy’ is not a good description and ‘raw’ does not do it justice. Antisemitic, homophobic, sexist, racist, and politically incorrect Action both makes me squirm in my seat and laugh uncontrollably. The last couple of episodes (written after they had gotten the axe, I reckon) aren’t as good, and I doubt if the show could have sustained its manic intensity for more than a season, but the hour or two of good TV that they’ve left us is truly worth watching.

The conceit of Dr. Horrible is pretty straightforward: post-college emo white boys are aspiring supervillains seeking to be included in the Evil League of Evil — sort of a cross between getting made by a mafia family and getting signed to a major label. In the meantime they are crushed out on girls who also secretly think their cute and would go out with them if only they had the nerve to say something to them when they saw them in the laundromat. Its bad guy as good guy, let’s turn this genre upside down and shake it and see what falls out, but in a ‘digital media microformat’ ‘Once More With Feeling’ kinda way.

This mix of romance/superhero show is epitomized in the Freeze Ray song, which combines tropes of supervillain ultraweapons with love song imagery of freezing the perfect moment of intimacy with your beloved so you can experience it forever (I’ll bend the world to our will/and we’ll make time stand still). Its clever and sweet and even a little catchy despite the occasional lyrical misstep (You make me feel/what’s the phrase/like a fool/kinda sick/special needs) and, let’s face it, a melody written for a singer whose range is only a major fourth.

Its not that supervillains have never been examined before, but Joss’s work with them really is interesting. In some way it follows logically from his previous work: Buffy was about a powerful woman with a tremendous destiny who wished she could live an ordinary life. Angel was about powerful people living an ordinary life wishing that they could have a tremendous destiny. In Dr. Horrible supervillains share the same aspirations that superheroes have in other movies: to save the world. But Joss’s insight is that superheroes never actually make the world a better place, they only keep it the same — they work to protect the status quo. Dr. Horrible, in contrast, wants to change the world, to remake it and remove the glaring injustices he sees around him — by putting himself in charge. On this account, supervillains are not bad people, they simply represent the authoritarian urge — the urge to remake with one’s own hand — to fix what is obviously wrong.

On the other hand Captain Hammer, the Dr. Horrible’s nemesis, is a bit of a flop. I get that in Joss’s reverso-world superheroes are smug sadistic assholes, the star quarterback to Dr. Horrible’s science fair nerd. But Nathan Fillion simply doesn’t suit the part, and to be really effective as a character Captain Hammer would have to be sickeningly violent — too brutal for the tone of the show. I think it would have been more effective to play him stupid instead of cruel, as someone who only saw things in black and white and was thus at first more attractive for the love interest than Dr. Horrible, who could then be seen as more nuanced and human.

At any rate, worth watching. And its Joss singing the Bad Horse letters!

Unlike a lot of superhero flicks, Iron Man really does bear comparison with Singer’s X-Men movies because both put the underlying themes of their source material in charge and harness the CGI and eye candy to them, rather than the other way around. The difference betwen Iron Man and X-Men, however, is that the underlying themes of X-Men are alienation and misunderstood powere, whereas the underlying theme of Iron Man is kicking ass and taking names.

But, like the obsession with guns, Tony Stark’s Hefneresque life style and gadgets could easily be part of a vapid cars-and-chicks summer block buster. And, of course, all of that is on display in the movie. But we also see a driven, obsessive genius — half Faust and half Edison (which mean, basically three quarters Faust) who, like all good Romantic Artists, externalizes his inner self in a work of art which (unlike the typical Romantic Artist) he then climbs back inside and uses to kick ass and take names. He is (for the first time since Revenge Of The Nerds?) a male role model who is both virile _and_ good at math and sciences. Although of course in an engineering, “working with my power tools in the garage” sort of way. It a combination that could fit together awkwardly, but which does manage to hang together mostly (I suspect) because of Robert Downey Junior. No one could redeem the keystone cops antics with the robots, but at least Robert Downey Jr. keeps them from being too embarassing. Equally, Gwyneth Paltrow (and some deft maneuvering by the screenplay) keeps Pepper Potts from being merely a doormat. And although Terrence Howard never quite gets the room he needs to become Tony’s moral compass, he does manage to become more than just the mandatory ‘Of Color’ member of the Scooby Gang.

Although its enages with the ambiguities of American power abroad and the military-industrial complex, it never ultimately escapes the idea that there are, in the end, good guys and bad guys. This is not the Marvel franchise with Film School ambitions to probe moral ambiguity. Iron Man is just as subtle as it has to be in order for you to enjoy the explosions — and Robder Downey Jr’s twitchy, charismatic delivery — with a clear consciensce.

I forgot how much I liked the film, as well as what a following it had. Some good soul has put “the entire script”:http://www.nasastooge.fsnet.co.uk/withnail/withnail-index.html on-line with audio from key quotes as well (the full script with stage directions is “here”:http://corky.net/scripts/withnail.html.)

“Balls. We want the finest wine available to humanity. We want them here, and we want them _now_!”:http://www.nasastooge.fsnet.co.uk/withnail/sounds/finewine.wav

My favorite line is actually:

Withnail:
At some point or another I want to stop and get hold of a child.

Marwood:
What do you want a child for?

Withnail:
To tutor it in the ways of righteousness and procure some uncontaminated urine.

But they didn’t have a .wav for that one.