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 ∞