Dollhouse (2009)

Cast: Eliza Dushku, Tahmoh Penikett, Dichen Lachman, Fran Kranz, Harry Lennix, Olivia Williams, Enver Gjokaj

Creator/Producer: Joss Whedon

Dollhouse isn’t for anyone who’s after instant gratification. Like other Joss Whedon shows, it pays to be patient and wait for the payoff. And what a payoff it is! Rumours of network intervention plagued the show from the early days, driving fans to fear that the show would be treated the same way Fox treated Whedon’s other short-lived scifi classic, Firefly.

The network intervention (that the first five episodes of the show remains standalone in order for people to catch on) was puzzling, considering one of Fox’s concerns was that the audience would find it hard to identify with the show when the lead character essentially doesn’t have a personality of her own. One wonders how standalone episodes would make people want to stick around and get attached to a show that looked and felt disjointed in the first 4 episodes. With such a unique premise, might not a story-arc be better off to establish the characters and the show’s seemingly existential query: you can take away someone’s personality, but can you really take away their soul?

The Dollhouse is a secret organisation that offers the extremely rich a unique service: dolls, or Actives as they’re called, that could be imprinted with any personality or skills the client pays for, fulfilling their every fantasy and every unresolved issue. In their inactive state (after their latest personality imprint has been wiped), the Actives – all identified in phonetic alphabet (Echo, Sierra, Victor, November) – remain in a childlike manner. The guardians of the Dollhouse, most obviously, brilliant-yet-sociopathic scientist Topher Brink (Fran Kranz), maintains that keeping the Actives in a childlike-state is for their protection. Chief among it is that the Actives have signed over their lives voluntarily, to escape a more violent and insidious world outside of the Dollhouse. However, FBI Special Agent Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) believes differently, convinced that the Dollhouse is instead involved in human trafficking. Like Fox Mulder, Ballard eventually becomes consumed in the conspiracy web, destroying his career as well as his love life in the process. But, as the Dollhouse’s number 1 Doll/Active, Echo (Eliza Dushku) slowly becomes self-aware, is there truth to Ballard’s paranoid beliefs after all?

Fans expecting typical Joss Whedon humour would probably be disappointed, as this is probably one of his darker forays. Both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel balanced the dark with Whedon’s unique brand of geek humour, but Dollhouse has a different subject matter altogether. Somehow, it seems improper to find too much humour in the seemingly grave issue of a person’s freedom and autonomy. And then there is the proverbial elephant in the room – is it rape and a new form of slavery, what the Dollhouse is doing to the Actives, sending them on engagements that they would have absolutely no memory of after a convenient mind-wipe? No one is the hero in this case, and even Ballard’s reasons for taking down the Dollhouse, and particularly his obsession with Echo becomes murkier than Angel’s past after a while.

The first 4 episodes is largely centred on Echo’s engagements, and as I mentioned before, feels disjointed. Paul Ballard’s storyline seemed contrived, and Tahmoh Penikett is severely underused. While I liked Eliza Dushku as Faith in Buffy and Angel, I am never really convinced that she can carry an entire show on her own; especially not when there’s a wealth of acting talent in Dollhouse. Furthermore, Whedon excels in writing for an ensemble and it is only when all these different characters start interacting with one another that you feel like the show is finally coming together.

Nevertheless, be it Fox’s intervention that resulted in a weak start or that the show just needed time to find its feet (let’s face it, season 1 of Buffy? Not that great either!), Dollhouse is top quality television that dares to pose very unsettling questions about technological advancements, human fantasies, and even our sense of liberalism. It is wasted on a network like Fox, and particularly on an audience that is so very used to J.J. Abrams’s brand of shiny contraptions, large explosions and instant gratifications – not that there is anything wrong with that, but sometimes, television needs a little more than explosions and big, earth-shattering revelations that you’d forget about in a week!

Final verdict on Dollhouse? Dare to challenge yourself, watch the show, think and more importantly, be patient! Buffy did not become a classic hit overnight either.

Popularity: unranked [?]