espite the big stink that was created when Joss Whedon announced he was rewriting the pilot episode for his new FOX series Dollhouse, he turned in a solid episode. For the uninitiated, Dollhouse is a clandestine operation run by the enigmatic Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams, The Sixth Sense) where "Dolls" or "Actives" are imprinted with a different number of new personas and can be anything or anyone - the perfect assassin, the perfect date, the perfect whatever - as long as they're not submissive and as long as the client has the dough to pay for these unique services. Once the mission is fulfilled, they're mind-wiped into a docile, child-like state and live in the Dollhouse until their status is reactivated for another mission, complete with a new persona. A very good analogy comes from a Dollhouse client at the beginning. He remarks that Cinderella has to get back at the stroke of midnight before her carriage becomes a pumpkin. That fits.
House of Dolls ~
In the case of Echo (Eliza Dushku, best known as Faith from Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, and who has an executive producer credit), she is becoming self-aware, despite all the mind-wipes. She's retaining some aspects of the various personalities that are downloaded into her brain. Thus, this is the basis for the series.
Dushku is given the opportunity to stretch her acting range. She wants to prove that there's more to her television audiences than the ill-fated slayer (probably why there isn't a Faith spin-off) and she does. She starts off as an adventurous, aggressive date, who is somewhat Faith-esque - which is luring viewers in with the familiar - then as the submissive Echo, then as Eleanor Penn, who is a hard-nosed, calculating, cucumber-cool hostage negotiator.
Echo's taken back to the Dollhouse, where you meet her handler, an ex-cop named Boyd (Harry Lennix, Barbershop 2: Back in Business), who has misgivings about the operation; amoral nerdling scientist Topher Brink (Fran Kranz, The TV Set), who programs the Dolls; Dr. Claire Saunders (another Whedon alumna Amy Acker, Angel), who looks over the physical well-being of the Dolls and has a contentious relationship with Topher; and Sierra (Dichen Lachman, Aquamarine), a fellow Doll.
The last member of the regular cast is renegade FBI Agent Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett, Battlestar Galactica), who is investigating the Dollhouse. Paul's not afraid to break the rules and piss off powerful people in order to expose the Dollhouse, which he has no proof of, not to mention his superiors believe it's an urban myth.
A Gathering of Old Friends ~
Eliza and Amy
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Whedon brilliantly establishes the kind of character Ballard is within five minutes. The scene where he's getting dressed down by his superior at FBI headquarters is intercut with a scene of him boxing a buff-looking tattooed man (who looks like one of the New Kids on the Block pumped up on steroids). As his boss is screaming at him, you see the boxer pounding the tar out of him. When Ballard concedes and states he'll back off, you see him on the ground, bleeding but unbroken. He gathers his second wind and mercilessly beats the boxer into unconsciousness. From the beginning, viewers know that Ballard is a force to be reckoned with.
Echo is programmed as the afore-mentioned Eleanor Penn, who works relentlessly to negotiate the return of a client's kidnapped daughter. However, her Penn persona was abducted by one of the girl's kidnappers, which brings about her self-awareness. At the end of the episode, we learn more about who Echo was before she became a Doll, opening the door for the rest of the season.
All in all, this was a decent episode. Everything is set up for the audience to understand the premise of Dollhouse unlike Whedon's short-lived 2002 FOX series Firefly, which had the second episode played first instead of the 2-hour pilot that laid everything out.
Whedon's strength is writing multi-episode arcs rather than standard done-in-one episodes, something this clearly is, the teaser at the end not withstanding. This is a series that needs time to grow and find its audience, an opportunity most networks don't really give in this day and age. Let's hope FOX will give this show the time it needs to find its feet and has learned from its mistakes over Firefly.
RATING: 3.5 Stakes out of 5
Written by CoA Writer, Kurt Anthony Krug
Special Thanks to Todd Adair at Fox for his gracious assistance in this review.
For more information on the series Dollhouse, visit:
Fox.com
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