Holy crap! Jax has gone all “to be or not to be” and Tara’s all Opheliaed out. Abel’s still alive (duh) but in Belfast wtf?? Is Hale dead?? Didn’t see that one coming. Is it next Tuesday yet?

So . . . it’s like Netflix . . . but more expensive . . . with just TV and no movies . . . and you have to pay extra for apps to play it on your devices . . . and it still has advertisments. That warrants an extra unmotivated “Meh.”

There’s not one word about whether or not this new service will improve the quality of the service, namely the whisper-quiet audio on the shows and the ear-splitting volume of the advertising. We tolerate that on Hulu because it’s free. I really doubt users are going to be super stoked about parting with hard-earned cash to pay for repetitive noisy ads and TV shows that need to be put through a nuclear-powered amplifier to be heard.

Hulu Plus will probably feature TV shows sooner than Netflix, which has to wait for a show to come out on DVD before it can stream the content or ship it to your house on a disc. So what? There’s so much good stuff to catch up on that I don’t feel the need to keep up on shows as they come out. When TV was a one-shot deal, you had to tune in at the prescribed time. On-demand digital content has changed all of that. I don’t need to conform my schedule to the gods of the TV network. Like curling up with a good book, I can watch whatever I want, without ads to damage the narrative. Watching on-demand ad-free television has made an enormous change in my ability to enjoy a show. I can be ready to enjoy it, pause it when I need to, and can follow the development of plot and characters without having to listen to anybody pimp toothpaste and tampons every five minutes. I’m more likely to notice if a show is good or bad. I can disregard inferior content and save my valuable time by only watching the good stuff.

My standards for entertainment are raised. I’m not at the mercy of whatever happens to be on, and I can choose a service that doesn’t subject me to advertising. Hulu Plus, you will not get my cash for the service you are currently offering, and I suspect others will be similarly nonplussed. Hulu Plus isn’t offering anything I can’t get better and cheaper from Netflix. To put it more clearly: I’d torrent TV shows before I would pay ten bucks to watch ads. Hulu isn’t a bad deal, but it needs to decide what it wants to be. Hulu is currently the bargain bin of legal online entertainment. What’s on there is somewhat limited, but it’s free so we overlook its shortcomings. But if it wants to be a premium service, it shouldn’t half-ass the transition.

Hey, Hulu: drop the ads, offer a giant movie catalog, fix the audio issues and make your premium service truly premium by offering 1020p HD video. Oh, and knock three bucks off the price. Then maybe I’ll come back around to you.

Especially tickling my funnybone has been two recent reviews of Dollhouse from Charlie Brooker and his nearly as witty cohort, Kathryn Flett. It’s impossible not to adore the bitchy, prissy snottiness of a British journalist unafraid to vent their spleen at the flashy hoop-dee-ha coming out of Hollywood. The commentary is supremely snobby, but has so much panache you can’t help but enjoy it. Flett had me laughing out loud with her jabs at the all-too-true image of L.A. with her description of the setting:

. . . some sort of illegal laboratory-cum-spa called the “Dollhouse”, wherein beautiful young women (though I think there may be some beautiful young men kicking around, too) have had their memories wiped of personality, and indeed everything that makes them able to do anything other than walk around in skimpy garments looking Stepfordishly blank, so obviously the show has been a godsend to the LA acting community.

Brooker not only gives Dollhouse the finger, he gives it to Whedon worshippers too. He has none of the wide-eyed, optimistic gullibility of an American viewer. Calling the show “bloody awful,” he slathers on the cynicism extra thick:

In week one, Echo (that’s her name) was transformed into an expert in Latin American kidnap negotiations, which meant she donned glasses and wore her hair up in a bun.

My goodness, it’s so true. And I never spotted that. Shame on me, I should have known better. But my favorite:

Tahmoh Penikett from Battlestar Galactica shows up as Agent Jawbone Hunk, an improbably gorgeous FBI bloke determined to uncover the truth about this “Dollhouse” thing he’s heard about which his colleagues insist is just a wild rumour but he’s got this hunch there’s more to it than that and blah blah BLAH BLAH OH WHO CARES?

Hee hee hee! He nailed it. Penikett hasn’t really brought much to the part, other than being very tall, in spectacularly good shape, and having a chin the size of Montana.

The jury is still out for me on Dollhouse. Some of the episodes have been fascinating and thought-provoking. Others I never finished because I got bored and there’s better stuff on Hulu. I’m not going to worship this show just because I loved Firefly. I have hope for it, mainly because Wash showed up in the last episode, and I could see him carrying the series much better than Dushku is managing to.

But I wasn’t able to pinpoint the reasons that I’m not sold on the show until flipping over to The Guardian. Local reviews on the show were useless. American entertainment reviewers hate everything as much as their British counterparts, but I can love the reviews in The Guardian and not The Los Angeles Times because of the difference in where the bitterness comes from and the way that translates to the value of the review. The Londoners have a tired, bored, patronizing voice, and the dry bitterness comes from knowing that something will be awful, and then it is, but being right brings no joy. But they are nothing if not honest. On the flip side, the entire entertainment staff of the L.A. Times is made up of failed screenwriters, so their hatred of every movie on the screen stems from their own pouty insecurity, and they frequently shortchange a good thing because they’re jealous that they didn’t write it.

I’m sorry I’ve neglected you, Guardian. Please keep bitching and I’ll keep reading.

Like burritos and The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Digging into a delicious burrito laden with veggies, fresh cilantro, and a big goopy pile of guacamole finally made me feel like I was home. I was able to find some guacamole in Wales the night before my flight home. It had peas in it.

I’ll just let that sink in for a bit.

Peas.

I had rather eat nothing than a sad mockery of Mexican food. So tonight that tasty guac-laden tortilla tasted like a bit of heaven. Afterward I flipped on Hulu to catch the last two SCC episodes I missed and ZOMG!! What a body count! What a show! In case that had to be the series finale it wrapped up loose threads nicely. But I still have so many questions. Derek’s dead. Derek’s alive. Cameron’s dead. Cameron’s alive. Is Jesse dead? Is Sarah dying? Where’s John Henry? Did Savannah survive the robocalypse? I was flabbergasted at the number of corpses the show laid out in the final weeks of Season Two, and Derek’s death — coming from the only precise shot ever fired by a Terminator at the chronically bullet-dodging Connor clan — was particularly shocking. I actually stood up in shock, and yelled wtf at my poor Mac when it happened, something that has never happened to me before while watching a TV show.

Please, oh please, ye overlords of the Fox network, can I please have season three?