You Might Not Want to Play in the Dollhouse
By Nick Manteris · 0 Comments · Leave a Comment
Joss Whedon is back on network TV with the new show, Dollhouse. If you don’t recognize that name then you aren’t one of his followers yet and, judging by this pilot, you might not have a chance to become indoctrinated. Whedon is the creative force behind cult television shows like Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. His most recent project, Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, was created independently from the studio system during the recent writer strike.
In Dollhouse, Eliza Dushku plays Echo, a girl that, due to circumstances seemingly beyond her control, is recruited as an “active” in a secret organization. These “actives” have their personalities wiped clean and, depending on what job the clients of the organization have ordered, are imprinted with new personalities and skills. This premise seems simple enough (it only took Neo seconds to learn Kung Fu in The Matrix), but, for some reason, Dollhouse decided to carefully explain this concept to us in the pilot. This gives the impression that FOX believes most of their viewers are simple minded and should probably be insulting. But that’s not even the worst part: the clever dialogue that we’ve come to expect from Whedon is completely missing. The heavy-handed exposition presumably used up the space that would normally be used for humor.
This style of storytelling will continue for at least the first half of the season because the network wanted stand-alone episodes, but then, if the rumors are true, we can expect events to unfold in the typical Whedonesque manner…that is usually far from typical. As long as FOX doesn’t pull the show before we get to that point it will be worth sticking around to see what happens.
