by Daniel Erenberg

I’ve been very reluctant to review the Dollhouse pilot since it aired on Friday. Since the launch of Slow Century Magazine, it’s the only thing that people have actually requested I write about. In fact, friends of mine have asked me to review each episode individually, which is something I haven’t done with anything yet. You have to understand. As I’ve stated elsewhere on the site, part of my background comes in Joss Whedon studies. I wrote my undergraduate thesis about the use of foreshadowing in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Indeed, I wrote a weekly column for three years over at Slayage.com, which has been cited in multiple published books about Buffy and Angel. So now here is Dollhouse, the first new Whedon show since Firefly got cancelled back in December of ’03. I have high hopes for it, and I still do after watching the pilot. But Joss Whedon shows are always slow starters, stumbling out of the gate before becoming the masterpieces you can see at their cores.

The bones of Dollhouse are great. Whedon sets up the world of the show beautifully in the pilot. Whedon regular (and Dollhouse producer) Eliza Dushku plays Echo, a “doll” in the Dollhouse of the title, which is a covert operation that completes “experiences” for its willing clients. In the pilot, Echo must become a hostage negotiator. Next week, she’s the perfect girlfriend. To complete these missions, the Dollhouse and, more specifically, its tech guy Topher (an engaging and darkly funny Fran Kranz) put memory and skill implants into the heads of the “dolls.” It’s a complex premise, but Whedon sets it up for the viewer easily, without it seeming too silly or complicated.

The supporting cast is beautifully assembled, especially the addition of Battlestar Galactica’s Tahmoh Penikett as FBI agent Paul Ballard, who is investigating the Dollhouse. With Echo’s memory getting wiped in every episode, he’s really the character that the audience can root for. After all, what the Dollhouse is doing for its clients is questionable at best, and what it’s doing to its employees is simply monstrous. Boyd Langdon (Harry Lennix) is also a helpful character to the audience because he is the only Dollhouse employee that actually seems troubled by what he is taking part in.

The Dollhouse pilot is given the unenviable task of setting up the universe of the show, introducing the cast satisfactorily, sending Echo on a mission-of-the-week and introducing a new Doll, the bad-ass Sierra. Somehow, it manages this, but the weak link is the mission. As audiences grow tired of serialized shows, creators of complex narratives seem to be retreating to an episode-by-episode structure (J.J. Abrams on Fringe or Amy Sherman-Palladino on last year’s The Return of Jezebel James to name a couple off the top of my head), and Dollhouse is not an exception. Now, Whedon is historically great at this. A lot of the most memorable episodes of Buffy and Angel were those special one-off experiments like “Restless” (the dream one), “Hush” (the silent one), “Once More With Feeling” (the musical one) or “Smile Time” (the puppet one). This premise allows Whedon to run completely wild, but “Ghost” is stuck with an establishing exercise, a boring kidnapping case better suited for something like Law and Order or NCIS.  I never connected to the case, and spent every moment longing for a check-in on what was going on back at the Dollhouse.

Another problem right off the bat, it must be said, is Dushku. Her acting range is, shall we say, questionable and her performance in this episode was somewhat uninspiring. As the constantly re-imagined Echo, Dushku is required to play a different character every week. Back in the Buffy days, Whedon had her character switch minds with Buffy (in the “This Year’s Girl”/”Who Are You” two-parter), but, while Sarah Michelle Gellar was incredibly impressive playing Eliza Dushku, Dushku was never that convincing. And, as a hostage negotiator here, she just seems like Eliza Dushku in glasses.

That being said, it’s a Joss Whedon show, and it’s on television. Because of this, I am a horrible person to be reviewing this because I couldn’t be happier.

B+

Tags: joss whedon dollhouse eliza dushku
February 17, 2009 at 5:40pm ∞

by Daniel Erenberg

It was impossible for me to be too depressed today, because I was about to see two of my three modern TV idols in person. I feel as though Joss Whedon, Josh Schwartz and J.J. Abrams are at the top of the heap in terms of TV writing these days (I’m gonna go ahead and wait until Matthew Weiner’s follow-up to Mad Men to add him to this list). Abrams wasn’t going to be attending the con this year—though I was psyched for the panel for his new show, Fringe—but Whedon was there to promote his new one, Dollhouse, and Schwartz was in attendance to talk about his sophomore season slump-defying Chuck.

Chuck was first up on my list, which I was very excited about, but on my way to the panel, I passed by the line for the Dollhouse panel, which was already ridiculously long even two and a half hours before its scheduled start time. This made me nervous, but not nervous to pass up Chuck. The panel started with a long, spoiler-laden exclusive trailer for the second half of the current second season of the show, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to dip in quality any time soon. The action was kinetic, the laughter by the audience members at the jokes was completely genuine and the dialogue was in top form in the short clips we saw. Chuck was the first Josh Schwartz show that I was able to get into because I dismissed his other two as shallow crap sight unseen. But I spent the better part of August watching the entirety of The O.C. which is probably the best teen show since Freaks and Geeks, by the way, and was able to catch up on Gossip Girl on DVD before the second season began. Schwartz is three for three in my mind, so I was very excited to see him at this panel. He came with Chuck co-creator Chris Fedak and lead actress Yvonne Strahovsky, who might be the most beautiful human being I’ve ever laid eyes upon in real life. It relieved me to hear the three of them so confident that the fledgling show would be renewed for a third season, and it was nice to see fans fill up one of the bigger conference rooms in support of it. In fact, the fans seemed pretty obsessive, which made me happy, as I was beginning to wonder if I was the only one. At the end of the panel, a teenage girl who was sitting in front of me went up to Schwartz with a poster of “Atomic County,” a fictional comic book that was set up on The O.C. Schwartz’s eyes lit up and he signed it immediately. Watching that was the happiest moment of my con experience.

Until I got into the Dollhouse panel and Joss Whedon came out. Now, you have to understand. I’m pretty nuts about Joss Whedon. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my favorite television show of all time, the fourth season of Angel is, in my opinion, as good as a full season can get, I went to see Serenity three times the day it came out and I’ve watched the entireties of all three of his series more times than I care to admit. But wait. There’s more. My first internet writing gig was as a weekly columnist for Joss Whedon fansite, Slayage.com, I’ve been cited in books about Buffy and Angel by Keith Topping and Nikki Stafford, and my undergraduate thesis was called “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn: Foreshadowing in the Buffyverse.” So I guess you can say I’m pretty excited about Dollhouse. Well, Whedon brought the first act of the pilot to Comic Con, and it’s good. Not great yet, but good. Whedon’s shows are almost always growers, but this one is off to a pretty good start. There’s a bit of a cheesy dance/motorcycling sequence, but the exposition is intriguing, the characters are already well-defined, and there’s loads of metaphorical subtext, something Whedon is the best at. The show is about a place called The Dollhouse, which employs human beings that are programmed to perform specific experiences for the company’s clients. After these “experiences” are finished, the minds of the “dolls” are wiped completely clean. But one such “doll,” named Echo (Eliza Dushku) begins to remember things. It’s sort of a bleak concept for a show, so much so that it can really be looked at as a metaphor for human trafficking. Whedon also says it’s been called both a feminist perspective of a woman fighting to discover herself and a misogynist’s biggest fantasy, and that this debate is warranted and intentional. Dollhouse is ambitious and on Friday nights and created by Joss Whedon, so don’t expect it to last too long. But do expect it to be damn good. “I’m such a bitter, sad man,” Whedon told the crowd. “And this is my bitter, sad show. Welcome to it!”

After Joss was done (plus actor Tahmoh Penikett, who you may know as Helo from Battlestar Galactica, but who I barely noticed because I’m too obsessed with Joss Whedon), the entire cast of Fringe took the stage, along with writer Jeff Pinkner. The cast was animated and well-spoken, particularly the surprisingly charming Anna Torv, who is much more captivating in person than she is in the show. Wire actor Lance Reddick endeared himself to me forever by admitting that he is a big Ultimate Spider-Man fan, and Joshua Jackson responded to three Mighty Ducks references with well-timed quips about Gordon Bombay and the legendary triple-deke. Fringe has turned into quite a strong little show, so it was great to see the auditorium remain full following the Dollhouse panel.

After Fringe I walked over to the Life On Mars panel but it was too depressing because only about a quarter of the room was full, and everyone seemed to be milling about during a screening of this week’s new episode. It was awkward, so I left. And that was the last thing I cared about, so I left the Jacob Javits Center entirely. On my way home, I saw Bill Hader on the street. I later found out that he was at Comic Con today to announce a new Spider-Man comic that he is co-writing with Saturday Night Live head writer Seth Meyers.

I like Comic Book Conventions. It’s a place where awkwardness and lack of social skills just aren’t noticed or given a second thought. It’s accepted and even encouraged. I think every attendee has been picked on at one point or another. But no one gets picked on at Comic Con. We just geek out for three days. And what could be better than that?

Tags: geeks new york comic con dollhouse
February 8, 2009 at 11:35pm ∞