hmmm.
Ok, let me get something out of the way right up front. In two back-to-back episodes, Echo gets hired out as the "dream date" and it turns out a "dream date" is ... a woman who is highly competitive in physical activities. In Episode 1 she raced motorcycles; in this one she white water rafted. She's one of the guys except she's a girl and she'll have sex with you. Yeah, in this episode the "date" was a sham. But maybe the writers (Joss?) could come up with something new next week for Echo to do on her "dates"? Because right now it just seems like a Fox TV thing to me.
Interesting use of cliches tonight. In fact at first I was annoyed by them. The guy helping the girl learn to shoot a bow - an excuse to get physical. I thought ... oh puleeze. And then the death of the deer (hart?) and orgasm (the little death?). Again. Oh puleeze. Was I the only one thinking, I'm just not buying this? And part of me thought, well of course you aren't buying it, he bought her, it isn't real. But then, of course, I found that I shouldn't have bought it because the whole thing was a setup; a little little bit of manipulation of me leading up to a Whedon "trust your gut" lesson?
I also found the childlike nature of the blank slate Echo a bit annoying tonight - but it was great when they had blank Echo slap her shoulder at the end.
I did like that they started developing the back story, especially the relationship between Langton and Echo. And explained the scars on Dr. Saunders' face. And I love every minute that Reed Diamond's dislikable character is on, whatever his name is. I loved him when he was on Judging Amy even though I didn't want Amy to end up with his character.
This is an odd show. It is an absolute showcase for Eliza Dushku who I thought did a phenomenal job in the character she played tonight. There was good tension and even though I knew that the star of a show will never be killed , I still wanted to know how they wrote her out of the situation. But I kept thinking that if this show is going to hold together it's going to need big character development for the secondary characters. And that's an interesting creative problem because I assume that we aren't supposed to like them too much. After all, wiping people's memories isn't very nice.
