I had a moderate amount of trepidation/anticipation regarding the premiere of Dollhouse on Friday. It's Joss Whedon. How could it go wrong? Well, like this: It could be a deeply involving series with a complex story arc that takes at least half a season to get truly going, struggles to find an audience, gets jacked around the schedule so that the audience that has found can't find it any more, and gets smashed into teeny-tiny pieces as I stand over the flaming wreckage shouting "DAMN YOU FOX! DAMN YOU TO HELLLLLLL!"
So, that's essentially how things could go bad. But the fact that they've teamed Dollhouse with Terminator (which they also seem to be trying to give a chance - not my cuppa, but whatevs) and turn it into a girl's-who-can-kick-booty night gave me enough hope that I thought I'd give it a try. And even bad Joss Whedon is better than no Joss Whedon. But this wasn't bad.
It wasn't great yet either. But go back and look at the first episode of Buffy some time. She didn't start out perfect either.
Long story shortish - the Dollhouse is a storage unit for "actives", people who've had their own memories erased (voluntarily? maybe. not sure.), so that they can be re-programmed, on-demand, with the personalities of other people who have useful skills. They are then rented out to wealthy clients who need skills in things like hostage negotiating, ass-kicking, being the perfect girlfriend, etc. Handy stuff. Then they're erased and wander around kinda blank and Paris Hilton-like until they're needed for another client. Sort of human GameBoys. Pop in a new cartridge and it's a completely different game.
Eliza Dushku is one of the actives. Like her or loathe her, she is very good at kicking ass and dropping the sci-fi one-liner. Maybe she has the chops to be able to pull off being completely different people, but it will take a few episodes to know that for sure.
The first episode is a lot of exposition. So the action gets bogged down every five minutes for somebody to explain WTF is going on. But there was enough going on that I'm definitely curious about how it's going to play out.
Two things that I had wished I had known ahead of time: one, Reed Diamond looks to be a series regular - excellent, even if it is only in a second bad banana capacity; and two, Matt Keelsar (who's he? Oh, he's just the Middleman) looks like he's going to be the baddie in ep 2. Ah, Joss Whedon really does love me. So, I'm glad I jumped on this one early. I'd have hated to miss them.
And, in the end, it was just nice to hear the Mutant Enemy "grrr-argh". All is right in the 'verse.
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2 comments:
I adore Eliza Dushku and the Dollhouse concept - was a rough first ep, but by the end they had me and I'll be back for more.
I've read 2 reviews today (didn't want to see them before the fact in case they were bad), that say that the second episode really starts to bring it all together. So tune in, same Bat channel.
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