Update: Lowest Ratings Evah for Dollhouse: Review: Dollhouse 2.2 Instinct – A Breastfeeding Too Far…

Updates moved to end of post

M’kay. Last night Echo was imprinted as a nursing mom and breastfed the infant. Yeah, Topher gave her a glandular imprint this time and when he tried to wipe it she went off the rails, to quote the show ‘her body was stronger than her mind’. Gee Joss thanks for that prototypical BS about nursing women! As a mom who nursed her baby boy I was horrified and floored by turns. The end thought Joss left us with is, glands control nursing women over their intellect. So much for Joss as writer of strong women HA!

November made an appearance and Miracle Laurie came off more as a robot than she ever did when imprinted as November. Eliza Dushku’s performance was flat and atonal even with the ‘glandular problems’ Joss gave her.

A real disappointment. I flipped over to Medium, and DVRd SG*U. I caught the end of the Dollhouse episode on FOX ON DEMAND this morning and frankly was glad I went with Medium. Sofia Vassilieva, who plays Ariel gave an outstanding (and emotional!) performance in last night’s episode, Who’s That Girl, in which her body was inhabited by a spirit. She managed to EMOTE what the other person was feeling, something Dushku has not done to date…

Even in the final scenes when Dushku’s character is holding a large knife and the baby and the father is trying to tell her she is not the mother, she has a completely ‘flat affect’, no signs of ‘hormones’, more like catatonia. I mean you”re an  actress, you got a Hail Mary season 2, you can ‘inhabit’ other lifetimes each week, but you have no emotions? Is it Eliza or is it Joss’ direction? Either way it is flat and boring as hexx.

Amy Acker was not in this episode and word is she is off the show after another episode or two. She is the finest actress on the show so that is a big let down as well.

One more time – they should have kept TSCC, Summer Glau emotes more as a Terminator than Dushku does as a mother having her infant torn from her arms.Even in using an awful stereotype about nursing women Joss either didnt give Eliza anything REAL to work with or she is not a good enough actress to ‘feel’ the things they are imprinting on her, take your pick.

When November believed she loved Tahmoh Penikett she WAS that imprint. She was in the throes of love and desperate to make it work. Their scenes together last season were great. Where is any of that depth in Dushku? So far the most ‘real’ I have seen  her is when she inevitably makes the Scooby Doo face of confusion in each episode as she is brought back to the Dollhouse to fix her glitch.

We are looking forward to Joss’ Cabin in the Woods, let’s hope we get Joss back to something worthwhile when Dollhouse gets dumped. Every week he seems to take us down another stereotype about women and he gives us no signs he himself does not believe they are true. I have been trying to see something more than women as interchangeable appliances for every customer’s need in Joss’ writing but it just is not there. We will post the ratings when they are up.

Update 1: Dollhouse ratings fall off a cliff to previously uncharted depths for FOX last night. once more with feeling: you frakked up Reilly! FOX should’ve brought TSCC back….

THRFeed:

“Dollhouse” (2.1 million viewers, 0.8 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) punched through it’s previous rock bottom Friday night to discover a Fox ratings netherworld. The show dropped 20% from last week’s premiere, which was already an all-time-low for the show. I’m betting the debut of Syfy’s “Stargate: Universe” zapped some viewers (cable ratings aren’t available yet), but even so — this is too low for a Fox show.

CBS won the night again even with ‘soft ratings’ hey it’s a Friday!

Meanwhile CBS didn’t have a great night either, with its trio of crime dramas falling from their somewhat-soft premieres. “Ghost Whisperer” (7.6 million, 1.7), “Medium” (7.7 million, 1.8) and “Numbers” (7.7 million, 1.6). CBS nonetheless won the night.

CW lost some views:

Week 2 of “Smallville” (2.4 million, 0.9) dropped 18%. (Update: Smallville beat Brothers on the network!)

Update 2: MTV Movie blog pans last night’s episode also:

(…)Man, this might have been one of the most needless episodes of “Dollhouse” to date. It did very, very little to propel the forward momentum of the series seen in last year’s finales and hinted at in this year’s premiere. Sure, we get the reminder at the end that Echo is growing cognizant of her situation, but we have to wait until the final minutes for this reveal. It felt like the bad old days of the first season, where those opening episodes struggled to find their footing. This was an extraordinary step back, in my opinion…

…”Instinct” was a complete waste of time given the progress the show has made since last year’s final episodes. I truly hope this was a one-time fluke in quality, because when “Dollhouse” is this stale, I have a hard time feeling bad about its ratings decline and inevitable cancellation….