Dollhouse, or How let's meet the players

Dollhouse returned last night with a Whedon-written-&-directed episode called "Vows" which delved deeper into the moral ambiguities surrounding the Dollhouse (through Whiskey/Saunders' storyline) and set up the ongoing threads for season 2 (a senator-led witch-hunt against the Dollhouse, Paul & Echo's alliance, Whiskey's self-discovery). I don't know what new viewers thought (or if any tuned in) but it was a solid episode featuring a great cast:

Spoilers Ahead...

Guest Starring

Lee Adama (known as 'Jamie Bamber' outside the BSG-verse) played Echo's "assignment" - a husband whose business is a bit shady. (PS. Is Bamber hotter when he's angry/villainous or was that just me?)

Wesley Windham-Pryce (ie. 'Mr Alyson Hannigan' er... I mean 'Alexis Denisof' outside of the Buffyverse) plays (and will recur throughout) as a Senator who has it in for the 'Dollhouse': but why?

Amy Acker as Whiskey/Dr Saunders. After finding out her identity was a sham (she was the premier 'doll' until Alpha sliced her up) she's left in shambles battling with her inner-engineering.

Series Regulars

Enver Gjokaj as 'Victor' (a doll) - following the same fate as Whiskey (at Alpha's knife) we find Victor getting cosmetic surgery at the Dollhouse's expense (which irks Whiskey, but then... we all know why Ms DeWitt would want to keep pretty-Victor's face intact, no?)

Dichen Lachman as 'Sierra' (a doll) has probably the most hysterical scene in the episode where her interaction with Ivy ("Uh, could I have the other one? The man one?") showcases her imprint's racist/sexual personality, but has little to do other than hold hands with Victor at the end of the episode.

Harry Lenix as Boyd Langton (Echo's former handler and now head of security of the Dollhouse) plays the 'father' figure throughout (not just with Echo but now taking on Whiskey as well).

Fran Kranz is Topher Brink, the mastermind behind the Dollhouse's technology - who we saw wounded and damaged in 'Epitah One' begins his morally-tinged journey into ambivalence with his interactions with Whiskey.

Olivia Williams (playing probably my favorite character on the show) is Adelle DeWitt, the head of the LA branch of the Dollhouse (yes! there are more we learned!) and is intent on keeping Ballard close at hand. Good thing she knows how to get things done: by emotionally manipulating people to her advantage.

'Helo' (Tamoh Pennikett) is (ex)Agent FBI Paull Ballard who after spending season 1 pursuing the 'Dollhouse' and finding out what happened to Caroline/Echo, is now 'employed' (though to what capacity the episode doesn't reveal til the end) under the Dollhouse though as DeWitt tells us, his motives (much too chivalrous) are his best guarantee in keeping Echo safe.

And last (and most would also say least) we have Eliza Dushku (Faith herself!) as 'Echo/Caroline): the 'best' doll in the Dollhouse who's self-awareness keeps chipping away at her doll-persona ("I am all of them, but none of them is me" she tells Paul at the end of the episode)

Jamie & Eliza or How I'm extra-excited about Dollhouse now

"We are kickass"

Need we say more?

[src]

Dollhouse's Echo/Epitaph One or How this is fearless TV at work

Dollhouse's 'Lost Episodes' (read: the original pilot 'Echo' - which got scrapped, and the thirteenth episode 'Epitath One' - which FOX refused to air in the Spring but which will be available when the Dollhouse DVDs make their way into shelves everywhere) make for great bookends to what was arguably a shaky start to Joss Whedon's provocative new show. Careful: SPOILERS AHEAD.

More so than its aired brethren, 'Echo' and 'Epitath One' carefully distill the moral ambiguity and bleak-toned originality of Joss's premise:

Echo is part of"a member of a group of people known as "Actives" or "Dolls". The Dolls are people whose personalities and existence in the outside world have been wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas—including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language—for different assignments (referred to as engagements)" (So Wikipedia summarizes it).

Echo

Written and Directed by Joss Whedon

If the aired pilot functioned as a way to introduce gentle viewers into this complicated world (with a ransom story more akin to Law & Order than to a Whedon show), 'Echo' doesn't shy away from plunging us deep into the core of the show's premise: what is the real purpose of the Dollhouse? (a question keen viewers might remember from Echo's encounter with Paul Ballard late in the season and which 'Epitaph' will pick up in full force). The episode guides us through the Dollhouse's process: we see Echo in several assignments as Adele explains that the Dollhouse gives its clients not what they want, but what they need. And so we follow as Echo gets given a mission to throw Ballard's mission off target (having gotten Caroline's picture just as in the aired-pilot and following fake tips from 'Victor', Ballard is getting quite close at finding the Dollhouse it seems) - culminating in a moment as shocking and well-executed as the Echo/Paul fight from 'Man on the Street', showing how well Eliza and Tammoh actually work against the other.

In a way, this 'lost pilot' gets quicker at what the season one as a whole works to develop: it intertwines the Paul/Echo story much faster, gives away the Victor/Doll mystery right away and - this is most glaring in the last scene - Echo whispers 'Caroline' before falling asleep, suggesting Echo's ability to remember past her wipes (This if we all remember is the last scene of 'Omega' though it fits much more beautifully here)

In particular (and given the amount of scenes spliced straight into the aired pilot) I wish the Boyd/Topher conversation had been kept intact as it illuminated (much less didactically than what actually aired) the tensions within the Dollhouse in regards to the Dolls:

Topher: Does that tie keep you warm?

Boyd: Uh... no.

Topher: It's just what grownup men do in our culture. They... ah, put a piece of cloth around their necks so they can assert their status and recognize each other as non-threatening kindred.

Boyd: So what is this? The 60s? We're going to burn our draft cards?

Topher: You wear the tie because it never occurred to you not to. You eat eggs every morning but never at night. You feel excitement, companionship when rich men you've never met put a ball through a net. You feel guilty, maybe a little suspicious every time you see that Salvation Army Santa. You look down for at least half a second if a woman leans forward. And your stomach rumbles every time you drive by a big golden arch even if you weren't hungry before. Everybody's programmed Boyd.

In a sense, despite being the first episode, 'Echo' feels much more like an episode from the second half of the season (post-'Man on the Street', if you will) which suggests Whedon & co. only hit their stride once they realized this was less a show about 'who's Eliza gonna play in this episode?' (read: a Network friendly action of the week type deal) and more of an intricately woven adult premise dealing with human trafficking, body/soul metaphysics and tech morality.

Epitath One

Written by: Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon

Directed by: Joss Whedon

We start in an LA we might only recognize because we've seen the Terminator films: it is dark, flames envelop the background and we are told it is 2019 and these 'actuals' (humans who we presume can't/haven't been 'printed') we meet are afraid of any tech as they seek refuge. Where do they end up? Inside the Dollhouse of course.

This is not your regular Dollhouse; for this Whedon & co. came up with a framing device that might have seemed hokey if it did not work perfectly to retell the 'Dollhouse' mythology (following it through past what the season finale showed us) tracing it through what is arguably one of the most fascinating characters on the show: Adele DeWitt. While the rag-tag pack of survivors find a way to survive inside the Dollhouse (battling an unseen murdering force and finding a creepy haunting-like Whiskey/Dr Saunders) we get fragments of Adele's memories that explain how the technology that gave people 'not what they want but what they need' ended up causing the mayhem we witnessed at the start of the episode where remote wipes and reprinting is now not restricted to Dolls but to anyone walking the streets.

This is fearless storytelling not least because Whedon & co. have pretty much mapped the direction of the show (or, not just mapped it but showed the audience said map: we see snippets of romantic pairings, we see the Dollhouse as a safe haven from above, we see Boyd fleeing, Whiskey/Dr Saunders scarless, we hear about 'what happened to November'). In short, this is an episode that functions just as powerfully as an 'ending' (which it almost was) and as whetting titillating flash-forward: I am even more excited now for season 2 than after seeing 'Omega'. This is Dollhouse we were all waiting for, with a sprawling mythology, a deeper purpose, and an array of well-grounded characters. That said, it might say something about the show as a whole that, being this its strongest entry, it showcases the least amount of screentime from Ms Dushku: albeit, she is more than capable and believable as Caroline than she ever was as Echo, but the episode instead finds itself weighing heavily on two of Whedon's regulars: Amy Acker and Felicia Day, and on Dollhouse's boss-lady, Olivia Williams, all capable thesps with Joss at the helm.

Overall, these make for great bookends to Whedon's new show and I'm glad they are being released to the public for not only do they enrich the stories and characters we got to know in this first season, but they also set up wonderfully the world and the tensions which will populate season 2. Brava Joss, brava indeed!

Awesome TV Week, or How 30 Rock + Dollhouse + BSG!

Eliza dancing!

- She's living the dream

- Yes, but whose dream?

- Who's next?

How dare you say that in front of the statue of Santa Lucia, the patron Saint of judgmental statues!

And of course:

Welcome back Ellen... 

[I am still deciding how I feel about all this and I doubt this episode helped me made up my mind at all, but a lousy, didactic and schematic BSG is better than most TV]

Dollhouse, or How Joss will Grace TV with his presence soon!

Courtesy of Ms Kristin over at E! Online, Mr Joss Whedon has made public news the development of an original show for FOX called Dollhouse featuring none other than Ms Eliza Dushku, of Buffy, Angel, Tru Calling and Bring it On fame.

As described in Krsitin's article:

Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse.

And from an excerpt of the hilarious Kristin-Joss interview:

In your own words, how would you describe Dollhouse?
The idea is those with the money or connections can access this secret highly illegal facility where they can basically fulfill their greatest fantasies. Most people assume that means sex—and on an occasion it does, because that is a lot of people's fantasies—but it's basically scenarios. They can basically reenact scenarios of romance, adventure or anything perfectly, because they become the person that you want them to be—they become that person. They don't act like that person, they are not a robot pretending, they become that person, and then they forget all about it. The problem is the character of Echo, Eliza Dushku's character, stops forgetting. She doesn't completely remember, but she does realize she is a person, and that she might have been a person before she did this, and she doesn't know what that is.

Needless to say, I CAN'T WAIT! Which I might have to do given the current WGA situation...
In the mean time, Buffy Season 8 Tradepaperback, collecting Joss's first 5 issues hit stands yesterday so anyone looking for some Joss wit should check those out, and if you haven't, do visit DHP and check out Sugarshock - his newest comic book creation.