Feb. 13th, 2009 10:48 pm
Dollhouse, Episode 1
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jdotmiTHIS WAS THE BEST HOUR OF TELEVISION I HAVE WATCHED IN 2009 OTHER THAN THE SEASON PREMIER OF BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.
With that screamline out of the way... The rest of this post is spoiler central, so I'm using an LJ Cut for the rest of this.
First Thoughts on Dollhouse, Season 1 Episode 1
This episode does start a little slow. If you've watched the clips online, you'll recognize several clips in the first 15 minutes or so of the show. You jump from a pure setup scene, showing us a hint of who Echo was just before she became Echo, into an action scene showing Echo on the job.
Echo is an Active. She can be anyone that the client wants her to be. This time, she's the perfect bad girl date for the weekend. She's fearless and fun and willing to push boundaries and buttons. At the end of the night, she's sweet and enjoying herself and then off she goes for a little treatment where she once again becomes the blank slate known as Echo.
Actives, when not imprinted with a personality, are very childlike and docile. They live in a beautiful spa like complex designed to help keep them perfect. It seems like this is the place where most of the continuity is going to come into play later on. Echo meets the newest active to join the Dollhouse, Sierra, as she is going through what appears to be her initial mind-wipe.
The episode cuts out at this point to visit what appears to be an FBI agent of some sort that is played by Tahmoh Penikett. He's investigating the Dollhouse but getting nowhere. His scenes don't really serve the rest of the story of the episode, but give a starting thread to where his storyline will go for the season. He spends some time getting chewed out by his bosses for fucking up their investigations and then roughing up a guy involved with human trafficking, so we'll see what happens with that.
Echo's second job of the episode is to facilitate paying the ransom for a kidnapped girl. We find out at this point that the personalities that are given to the Actives are amalgams of different people, and this personality is both Nearsighted and has Asthma. She's good at her job, but it turns out a kidnapper actually kidnapped one of the women used to make Echo's personality and this causes some major problems for her. After a near disaster, and thanks to some timely bouts of conscience on the part of the people in charge of the Dollhouse, Echo is allowed to finish rescuing the girl and manages to get some form of revenge for the woman in her head, who had actually commited suicide a year earlier, having never gotten over the abuse she suffered from her abduction.
The acting in the episode was hit and miss. Eliza Dushku (Echo) was excellent. We got to see pretty much five different personalities from her. Most of them were distinct, but some obviously felt a bit like Faith, which is expected with this being a Joss show and all.
Tahmoh had practically nothing to do in the episode. He had a scene threatening a guy, a scene sitting and talking to his bosses, and flashbacks to a boxing match where his entire purpose was to be nearly naked eye candy sparring in a gym. Give him more to do, cuz any BSG fan knows the actor is capable.
Olivia Williams plays the woman in charge of the Dollhouse. I think of all the characters so far, she works the best. I kept thinking, "She's a cross between Lilah Morgan and Maggie Smith".
Harry Lennix plays Echo's "handler", the person assigned to monitor her while she's on assignment and intervene if she is in danger. I'm afraid he may be a bit too much of the "good cop". He's the Conscience of the Dollhouse, but I didn't really get any awesome vibes off his performance.
Franz Kranz plays the nerd in charge of the personality wipes and imprints. He's somewhat neurotic and amoral. He worked really really well, though. He had just enough excitement about what he's doing and just enough concern that something could go wrong to make the character not seem like a caricature.
Dichen Lachman plays Sierra. We got all of five minutes of screen time with her. Once when she's being wiped, once when she's on a treadmill, and once when she's imprinted in the end and kicking ass. Not enough to go by so far on her.
Enver Gjokaj plays the russian mobster that Tahmoh's character threatened. He was originally going to play an Active (let's see if it turns out he is one, eh?) but his new character had two scenes, so we'll see what happens. Again, no opinion as there wasn't enough to work with yet.
Amy Acker plays the Doctor in charge of the Active's physical well being. She's got scars on her face which hint at an interesting Jossified back story. I was worried that the character would have shades of Fred in her, but she doesn't at all. She's creepy and comforting all at the same time. Okay, maybe that is shades of Fred, but not in the same way that Fred could be creepy and comforting.
Other than that, there's not really anyone to talk about. Amy is recurring, and the rest of the cast was pretty much all guests. Well, the chief of security is also recurring, but he had less screen time than Dichen, so yeah, not bothering yet.
I really liked this episode. I'm not sure it was the best way to launch the series (more action would have been nice I think), but it's definitely good.
Shades of Joss throughout the episode, obviously. The dialogue isn't as fast paced and frantic as in the Buffyverse series or in Firefly, but his humor is still apparent. Especially in the scene between Tahmoh and Enver. I liked that Echo's last personality in the episode wasn't the super strong and confident woman that Joss likes to write so much. She was confident, or at least projected that she was, but she was also pretty fragile. Sierra got to be the badass blond at the end, but the lead got to be the emotional part of the show, which is how it should be.
The high estrogen factor in the cast is also pure Joss, and I think it's one of his weaknesses. It's not a fault in the show by any stretch, but it's what people expect from him, and that may make people go "whatever, seen it already".
I can't wait until next Friday now. I want to see the next episode.
Oh, and I squealed and clapped my hands like a retarded seal when the little Mutant Enemy dude Grr Arrg'd his way across the screen at the end.
Note to Fox: KEEP THIS SHOW
With that screamline out of the way... The rest of this post is spoiler central, so I'm using an LJ Cut for the rest of this.
First Thoughts on Dollhouse, Season 1 Episode 1
This episode does start a little slow. If you've watched the clips online, you'll recognize several clips in the first 15 minutes or so of the show. You jump from a pure setup scene, showing us a hint of who Echo was just before she became Echo, into an action scene showing Echo on the job.
Echo is an Active. She can be anyone that the client wants her to be. This time, she's the perfect bad girl date for the weekend. She's fearless and fun and willing to push boundaries and buttons. At the end of the night, she's sweet and enjoying herself and then off she goes for a little treatment where she once again becomes the blank slate known as Echo.
Actives, when not imprinted with a personality, are very childlike and docile. They live in a beautiful spa like complex designed to help keep them perfect. It seems like this is the place where most of the continuity is going to come into play later on. Echo meets the newest active to join the Dollhouse, Sierra, as she is going through what appears to be her initial mind-wipe.
The episode cuts out at this point to visit what appears to be an FBI agent of some sort that is played by Tahmoh Penikett. He's investigating the Dollhouse but getting nowhere. His scenes don't really serve the rest of the story of the episode, but give a starting thread to where his storyline will go for the season. He spends some time getting chewed out by his bosses for fucking up their investigations and then roughing up a guy involved with human trafficking, so we'll see what happens with that.
Echo's second job of the episode is to facilitate paying the ransom for a kidnapped girl. We find out at this point that the personalities that are given to the Actives are amalgams of different people, and this personality is both Nearsighted and has Asthma. She's good at her job, but it turns out a kidnapper actually kidnapped one of the women used to make Echo's personality and this causes some major problems for her. After a near disaster, and thanks to some timely bouts of conscience on the part of the people in charge of the Dollhouse, Echo is allowed to finish rescuing the girl and manages to get some form of revenge for the woman in her head, who had actually commited suicide a year earlier, having never gotten over the abuse she suffered from her abduction.
The acting in the episode was hit and miss. Eliza Dushku (Echo) was excellent. We got to see pretty much five different personalities from her. Most of them were distinct, but some obviously felt a bit like Faith, which is expected with this being a Joss show and all.
Tahmoh had practically nothing to do in the episode. He had a scene threatening a guy, a scene sitting and talking to his bosses, and flashbacks to a boxing match where his entire purpose was to be nearly naked eye candy sparring in a gym. Give him more to do, cuz any BSG fan knows the actor is capable.
Olivia Williams plays the woman in charge of the Dollhouse. I think of all the characters so far, she works the best. I kept thinking, "She's a cross between Lilah Morgan and Maggie Smith".
Harry Lennix plays Echo's "handler", the person assigned to monitor her while she's on assignment and intervene if she is in danger. I'm afraid he may be a bit too much of the "good cop". He's the Conscience of the Dollhouse, but I didn't really get any awesome vibes off his performance.
Franz Kranz plays the nerd in charge of the personality wipes and imprints. He's somewhat neurotic and amoral. He worked really really well, though. He had just enough excitement about what he's doing and just enough concern that something could go wrong to make the character not seem like a caricature.
Dichen Lachman plays Sierra. We got all of five minutes of screen time with her. Once when she's being wiped, once when she's on a treadmill, and once when she's imprinted in the end and kicking ass. Not enough to go by so far on her.
Enver Gjokaj plays the russian mobster that Tahmoh's character threatened. He was originally going to play an Active (let's see if it turns out he is one, eh?) but his new character had two scenes, so we'll see what happens. Again, no opinion as there wasn't enough to work with yet.
Amy Acker plays the Doctor in charge of the Active's physical well being. She's got scars on her face which hint at an interesting Jossified back story. I was worried that the character would have shades of Fred in her, but she doesn't at all. She's creepy and comforting all at the same time. Okay, maybe that is shades of Fred, but not in the same way that Fred could be creepy and comforting.
Other than that, there's not really anyone to talk about. Amy is recurring, and the rest of the cast was pretty much all guests. Well, the chief of security is also recurring, but he had less screen time than Dichen, so yeah, not bothering yet.
I really liked this episode. I'm not sure it was the best way to launch the series (more action would have been nice I think), but it's definitely good.
Shades of Joss throughout the episode, obviously. The dialogue isn't as fast paced and frantic as in the Buffyverse series or in Firefly, but his humor is still apparent. Especially in the scene between Tahmoh and Enver. I liked that Echo's last personality in the episode wasn't the super strong and confident woman that Joss likes to write so much. She was confident, or at least projected that she was, but she was also pretty fragile. Sierra got to be the badass blond at the end, but the lead got to be the emotional part of the show, which is how it should be.
The high estrogen factor in the cast is also pure Joss, and I think it's one of his weaknesses. It's not a fault in the show by any stretch, but it's what people expect from him, and that may make people go "whatever, seen it already".
I can't wait until next Friday now. I want to see the next episode.
Oh, and I squealed and clapped my hands like a retarded seal when the little Mutant Enemy dude Grr Arrg'd his way across the screen at the end.
Note to Fox: KEEP THIS SHOW
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To me, the "trick" with this series will be for Joss to show the audience what the "true" nature of Echo's "actual" character is - because in a way, this is an inversion of the dynamic Moore and Eick use to show the character of each model of Cylons on BSG (in that they are simultaneously similar and different). I'm almost proud of the fact that I can correctly identify a particular 6 by the style of Tricia's hair (the theme music doesn't hurt much either).
Yeah, this is a keeper (admitted Joss bias, admitted Eliza bias, admitted this gets a 7.5 out of 10 on my "mindfrak-o-meter") and it's the only reason I'd turn to Fox, since no matter how hard I try, I can't get into the Sarah Connor Chronicles.
-TheMaskedBeast!
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Well, okay, Heroes had a pretty solid pilot, too.
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