Dollhouse First Episode Review

Dollhouse is the newest creation by Joss Whedon that premiered on Feb 13, 2009. He is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. Eliza Dushku plays a young woman named Echo, who is a member of an agency of people known as “Dolls”. The Dolls have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language. This new persona is not an original creation but an amalgam of existing personalities spliced together. The Dolls can be hired for crimes, fantasies or the occasional good deed. They become “Actives” once they are imprinted with the persona to do the job which is referred to as engagements. During the engagements the Actives are monitored by Handlers, sometimes remotely and internally. Handlers are working for the mysterious “Dollhouse” which their entire operation if highly illegal.

I found the opening sequence; while informative it was more confusing then helpful. It was also very forgetful and may have been more effective as a flashback later in the episode. The process of getting to the point where we understand what is going on took a little long and was making my interest wane. Once we started understanding the concept it started to grab my attention. Whedon is known for his dialogue and while realistic it didn’t have his wit and humour we are used to in this episode. Many seeds were planted in for the future but it was almost too much and may have worked better spreading them out over future episodes.

While a great concept I am not entirely sure how it could work. You are basically being shown a different antagonist for each episode just played by the same actress (Eliza Dushku). Not getting emotionally attached with the character because of the changing personalities could make you feel absolutely no empathy for her from episode to episode. On the flip side of this, each episode could be thematically different from the previous and entirely different concepts. I will give Whedon the benefit of the doubt and stick around for a few more episodes. The pilot holds your attention and is interesting but when it's all finished it seems like it was missing something.

2 out of 5
Colin enquist