Ghost
Monday, February 16, 2009 at 11:19am by GeekBoyThis week, on the premiere of Joss Whedon’s new show, Dollhouse …
RECAP DETAILS AHEAD (don’t read if you haven’t watched it yet) …
So what did everybody think? I probably won’t be the first to say, “I liked it, but I didn’t love it.” After only one hour, it seems like there’s still more promise than payoff. But when I think back to the first episodes of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, the same applied there too. Like a batch of chili, I’ve found that slow cooking over time is a key aspect of Joss Whedon’s brand of storytelling. It might taste okay if you eat it when it’s only been cooking for an hour, but the real payoff is eating it a few days later. So I look forward to seeing how the show will feel after a few more episodes, and then again after the “front 13″ are complete.
So you’ve probably heard the premise already: a mysterious agency, “The Dollhouse” for lack of a better name, takes hot young 20-somethings, wipes their minds, and loads them up with memories and abilities that enable them to carry out “assignments” that some rich person is paying for. Over and over again. Echo is one of these “Actives” or “Dolls”.
We don’t know much about Echo’s past. Only that she used to be Caroline, and that at some point, she created a “mess” while “trying to make a difference … trying to take [her] place in the world, like ’she’ always said.” But “actions have consequences.” The Dollhouse has offered her a clean slate. They’ll clean up whatever mess it is she made, and after five years, she’ll get her life back. Caroline accepts, and becomes Echo.
As Echo, she basically walks around The Dollhouse in a clueless daze — part naive child, part lobotomized mental patient. Not unintelligent, but also not quite connected to whatever intelligence she might have. One assumes that her real personality is in a database somewhere, ready to be uploaded again when her five years are up … although it seems to be bleeding through now and then already. At one point, she stumbles across the room where new Dolls are “created” — because, you know, they wouldn’t bother to lock that door or anything — and we see that the process looks fairly painful and inhumane. But I guess it doesn’t matter if you don’t remember it ever happening?
Echo’s main assignment this episode is acting (literally) as a private negotiator in a kidnapping situation. So she’s programmed with the skills and memories of an actual negotiator. What makes things a bit more interesting is that when you’re a Doll, you get the bad along with the good, because as it’s explained, strengths are often just the result of compensating for some weakness. In Echo’s case, this means that during the kidnapping assignment, she’s not only near-sighted and asthmatic, but also has the memories of her uploaded personality, including the memory of having been kidnapped as a young girl — a girl who went on to commit suicide later in life.
Things get all the more complicated when it turns out that one of kidnappers who are part of Echo’s assignment is the guy who kidnapped the girl in her head. This was actually a surprise aspect of the premise for me that I found pretty cool. Because in the end, when the kidnapper is taken down, Echo is essentially able to get justice for the girl while being the girl. It’s only posthumously and by proxy, of course, but still — there’s a certain poetry to it. And this opens up all kind of possibilities for future episodes. For instance, what if Echo actually meets one of the people who is in her head while they’re in her head?
Rounding out the intrigue is the fact that this Dollhouse agency is quite illegal, and that Agent Paul Ballard (played by BSG’s Tahmoh Penikett) is hell bent on finding enough evidence of it to take it down. No seriously, he’s really really hell bent. To the point where you have to wonder why. Was somebody he loved recruited as a Doll and made to forget about him? Or was he burnt by a Doll at some point? It seems unlikely that he’d be this angry just out of pure principle. Unfortunately for him, he’s kind of a Mulder in this scenario — he doesn’t get much support in his search for the Dollhouse, but they keep him on the case anyway.
Within the Dollhouse are a cast of characters we don’t know too well yet — the cold lady who seems to run things, the goofy science guy who performs the wipings and uploadings, the creepy physician played by Amy Acker, the hard-ass security chief (played by the brother from Journeyman), and Echo’s handler, who seems to have some moral misgivings about what it is the agency does, and who I’m guessing will bang heads with the cold lady and the security chief every week. Not to mention a variety of other Dolls, only one of which we’ve met so far — Sierra, who Echo saw being “created”.
The episode ends with a creepy scene in which somebody, after having killed some people, is watching a videotape of Echo as Caroline in college. Who this might be, and what his/her interest in Echo is are unknown yet. But I’m guessing he doesn’t want to give her a hug.
So what did you think?
1. Papercuts! said ( Monday, February 16, 2009 at 12:10 pm )
I’m in the same boat as you. Liked it but didn’t love it. But I have faith it’ll turn out.
What really stuck with me is that while Eliza Dushku isn’t a great actress by any means, she really pulled off the Confident on a Job/Vacant in the Dollhouse switch pretty admirably.
2. Dave said ( Monday, February 16, 2009 at 12:15 pm )
I agree with the “liked it didn’t love it” sentiment. Joss’ shows take a while to simmer before really taking off, which I think is the hallmark of a potentially amazing show – if there isn’t some build-up, it’s hard to get that transcendent “WOW” moment.
I’m just hoping FOX doesn’t “Firefly” this thing, and lets it have the time to grow an audience.
3. GeekBoy said ( Monday, February 16, 2009 at 12:27 pm )
Papercuts: “But I have faith it’ll turn out.” Pun intended?
4. Chips O'Toole said ( Monday, February 16, 2009 at 2:48 pm )
I wasn’t crazy about it, but reminded that Firefly’s first episode, the Train Job, was also not it’s brightest.
I don’t know how much this show can sustain its premise in the long term. it’s a lot like Dark Angel, perhaps…how long will we tune in to see the agent who is trained for perhaps nefarious things who is having flashbacks and reservations about what she’s doing? Isn’t this also feeling a bit like treading on Firefly issues with River that went largely unresolved because of the run of the show (and film)?
I was also disappointed at some of the dialogue and writing, to be honest. Firefly was full of intense background detail that wasn’t discussed or barely mentioned, and Dollhouse had lines like “and if anyone ever found out what happens here, we’d all go to jail…” which seems heavyhanded and not Whedon-esque in its subtlety.
I wanted to love it, and through Ms Dushku generally bigs me (as she certainly did in the first few scenes) the character of confident negotiator / victim was played very well. When she stops being Faith, for lack of a better characterisation, she’s watchable, but otherwise, meh.
That said, the wife really liked it, especially the more she thought about it. So what do i know?
5. Papercuts! said ( Monday, February 16, 2009 at 2:59 pm )
LOL. I didn’t even realize I wrote that! LOL.
6. GeekBoy said ( Monday, February 16, 2009 at 6:03 pm )
Chips, I have full confidence that Whedon knows exactly where the story is going, and has a long-term plan to raise the bar with this premise each season and keep it interesting for 5 years — which I’m guessing is his planned run for this. Else why have the boss lady throw that number out at Caroline/Echo?
But I have less confidence that the show will actually attract and hold enough of an audience to take it that far. Don’t get me wrong — I’d love to have my pessimism proven wrong, so that I get a chance to see what this show looks like in later seasons, once it’s kicked into high gear. I’m just doubtful it will get that chance. There was so much hype for this, because it was Whedon, and now that the premiere wasn’t as strong as it could have been, from either a story or a ratings perspective, I’m guessing the backlash will be just as strong as the hype. At this point, I’ll be happy if we just get to see the first 13.
7. Chips O'Toole said ( Monday, February 16, 2009 at 11:33 pm )
I agree. And I very much want to be proven wrong. Though Mrs O’Toole is the Buffy/Angel fan, we both love Firefly, and I have great admiration for Whedon’s work, and despite my concerns, I suspect (or at least hope) that he sees this all so well, and that we get to see his vision.
8. Maggie said ( Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 2:10 pm )
I liked it a lot and I got into it pretty quickly. It definitely feels more mainstream than anything else by Joss Whedon but no matter how shiny or fancy or network the show will be on the surface, I know its bones will begin to feel familiar soon enough.
I hope Fox will respect the show, although I don’t have high hopes about that. Here’s a list of Firefly’s episodes in order, along with their actual air dates…I didn’t watch the series until I had it on DVD and I still can’t believe Fox decided to disjoint the story by showing the episodes this way, but they did and they might do that with this show, too. I’m mentioning this because The Train Job, the first Firefly episode on tv, was actually the second episode and the pilot aired last. IMO, The Train Job was a much stronger episode when watched after the pilot, with a sense of the characters already in place.
9. GeekBoy said ( Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 2:22 pm )
Yeah, I’m hoping Joss had the balls to at least demand that FOX show the episodes in order this time. I’d be surprised if he didn’t. From what I understand, the first episode of Dollhouse actually went through a major rewrite because FOX was looking for something slightly different than what Joss first gave them. So it sounds like FOX is flexing its muscles on the back end, instead of flexing them after the fact (by doing things like changing the episode order), which I’d much prefer. At least that gives Joss a fighting chance.
10. Michael said ( Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 8:25 pm )
Not as much humor as I expected, but I really enjoyed it. And, doods, that dress. Plus, Helo!
11. Jason said ( Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 9:03 pm )
I wasn’t into it for the first 1/2 hour (outside of that ridiculous dress she wore) but was pretty well committed by the end. Lack of skillful dialogue is a problem to me but I think they’ll work that out, they needed to do a lot of exposition with this episode (and may need it for a couple more) before we’re comfortable in the world.
I’m of the opinion that the serial killer is Echo’s Angel or maybe Echo’s Spike but who know.