Well, a group of us got together at Dave’s place last week to watch these three episodes of quality TV.  If it wasn’t the for the company, and some hilarious one liners, I think we would have stopped watching after the religious cult episode.  As it is, there’s a strong chance that the group won’t get together to watch the rest of the series.  Because sometimes life is too short, even when you’re enjoying yourself with mates.  And there’s only so many times you can groan, bitch and whine about a line of dialogue or a terrible piece of plotting.

Of the three episodes, 4 was the best.  I liked the twist of Echo having her mind wiped in the warehouse-safe.  Not that much was done with the idea, and the episode ended with smoke and bullets, but at least it was an attempt to do something interesting with the concept.

Episode 5 was just offensive.  OK, I don’t condone or support crazy religious cults.  But let’s be clear, other than the cache of weapons hidden under the floorboards, there’s no indication in the episode at all that the crazy cult were (a) psychotically crazy or (b) looking to kill themselves or everyone else.  It’s only when the SWAT teams intervene that the crazy leader starts to arm up and decides to burn everyone in the Chapel (Because he think he’s seen a miracle – Echo and the whole fake blindness / getting her sight back thing ). 

What I’m trying to say is that these people were genuinely happy with their lot *before* the cops and the Doll House got involved.  And it’s only because the writers fell back on an old, tried and threadbare cliche that we assume – without any detail – that the cult is (a) evil and (b) abusive and (c) out to kill people.

Episode 6 isn’t much better.  It’s the rape episode, though that (I’ll admit) wasn’t the bit that turned me off the episode.  It was the terrible acting from the vox people and it was the terrible plotting with the *shock* / *gasp* twist that lasagne next door neighbour girl is actually a Doll.  What would have made that more interesting is if it turned out she wasn’t.  Even the best bit of the episode, where the Bill Gates rip off explains why he uses Dolls, felt a bit "I’ve heard this story before" cliched. 

As for the rape.  All it does is highlight how evil the Doll House is and how everyone involved, including the so called sympathetic characters, are just arses.  The fact that Echo’s handler catches the rapist I suppose is good.  The fact that he stays around and doesn’t demand that something be done makes him no better than everyone else.

I’ll continue to watch Doll House if the hive mind decide to get together and watch episodes 7,8 and 9 at Dave’s.  Otherwise, I’m quite happy to skip to Joss’ next offering and hope it’s much, MUCH better.

For the sake of fairness, I should point out that the original pilot script that’s online somewhere is infinitely better than what we got served up.  Scenes from the script (because it was all filmed) are littered throughout the first six episodes.  And it’s in reading this script that I blame Hollywood more than Joss for the state of Doll House.