Joss Whedon’s new series, Dollhouse, opens with an enigmatic conversation between a character named Echo (Eliza Dushku) and an undoubtedly evil Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) about life, responsibilities, and what seems to be a very strange job interview.
Perfect at Everything
In the next scene Echo has accepted the job and is “on the job” as the “perfect weekend date” for a wealthy beau, slicing through downtown Los Angeles streets on a motorcycle and ending up a lively nightclub grooving to tunes by Lady GaGa. Shortly thereafter she ditches the man and enters a van while telling her ex-cop handler (Harry J. Lennix, Commander in Chief) she is ready for her “treatment.”
Turns out Echo is an “active”, someone who has agreed to let a secretive organization (headed by aforementioned evil DeWitt) erase her original memories and personality and implant new ones in her for "assignments" involving rich clients. The “treatment” in question is the memory wipe.
Multiple Personalities
The concept of multiple personalities, hidden identities, loss of identity and shady underworld organizations has been explored broadly. Dollhouse is a quilt made up of La Femme Nikita and Alias, and The United States of Tara but without the alluring snarl.
Joss Whedon
So what does TV genius Joss Whedon bring to the genre? With a heavy heart, Suite101 says not enough. A big fan of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, this Suite101 writer was completely addicted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and in awe of Firefly but Dollhouse lacks the whimsy, wit, pop culture references, and rat-a-tat dialogue of those shows.
The problem is the premise doesn’t feel fresh and neither does the pilot. FOX reportedly reshot the pilot and retooled the show so maybe Whedon isn’t to blame.
A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That
As for the lead, Dushku is fine embodying the idea “I’ll be anything you want me to be” – a lover for the weekend (as in the pilot), an assassin, a hostage negotiator (also in the pilot), and anything else the writers cook up. But the actress lacks the spark her co-star Sarah Michelle Gellar had as Buffy (Buffy TVS) or the acting chops of Toni Collette who stars in The United States of Tara.
Echo spends a lot of time walking around the set with a wide-eyed glazed look, devoid of any engaging characteristics and not enough time “on the job” so it’s hard to care about her lost personality and her previous life.
Promise
Other promising characters include Amy Acker (Buffy TVS) as the disfigured Dr. Claire Saunders who gives Echo physicals and suggest she get massages at the end of each assignment; Tahmoh Penikett of Battlestar Galactica, plays Paul Ballard, an FBI agent obsessed with unveiling the Dollhouse; Fran Kanz plays Topher Brink, a geeky and cheeky tech-wiz charged with physically doing the memory implants and wipes.
The set is sumptuous (massage rooms, communal showers, spiral staircases, beds fanning out like flowers), the wardrobe is beautiful, but there are no break-out performances no AHA must-watch moment. The pilot feels more like episode four or five than episode one. And that doesn’t bode well for the series.
Maybe that’s why FOX programming execs scheduled it for the TV wasteland of Friday nights.
Dollhouse premieres on Global/FOX on Friday, February 13.
Amber Nasrulla - In the last 15 years, Amber Nasrulla has worked as a reporter and editor in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K. In her most recent post, she ...
