Dollhouse — Unaired Pilot and "Epitaph One"

I'll be honest: I picked up the Blu-Ray for the first season of Dollhouse as much if not more for the exclusive episodes as it did the season proper. While the back half of the season certainly grabbed my interest and mostly held it through the end, I found myself far more taken with the idea of watching both the original pilot, dumped when the networks called it "too dark and confusing" in favor of that tepid and largely pointless iteration that uneventfully debuted the show, as well as the fabled 13th episode, the post-apocalyptic "Epitaph One." When I got home to my PS3 I didn't even watch any of the aired episodes before diving into these bonus treats, and my thoughts on them are as follows:

[Note: This review avoids spoilers for the two episodes under discussion, but it assumes that you've seen the season's aired episodes]

Unaired Pilot -- "Echo"

The studio notes for this episode cited it as too confusing to appeal to a broad audience, the first sign that FOX would end up meddling with this show just as they had with Firefly before it. It (perhaps justifiably) put people on the defensive months before the show ever came out, and got the ball rolling on all the cancellation talk as well.

For all my love of artistic freedom, though, and especially for someone I adore as much as Joss Whedon, I'd have told him to re-write it as well. Where the studio feared that its tone would turn off the Idol crowd or something, I would have suggested that he simply cut the thing down a tad. For you see, "Echo" is a two-hour pilot extravaganza crammed into your average one-hour time slot. Even with the 5-10 extra minutes offered by that Remote-Free TV business, it simply contains too much plot, too many character moments and far, far too many answered questions.

For example, in this version of the pilot, we see Saunders' hatred of Topher, the Feds knowing too much about the Dollhouse to dismiss it, Boyd saying too much about the Dollhouse's evil before Whedon has fully established what a disgusting organization it is and, worst of all, Echo meeting Ballard. These scenes pepper the first five or six episodes of the season, and condensing them into one hour of TV gives us too much information about what should be a shadowy organization.

Nevertheless, it's a massive improvement over the version we got. "Ghost" didn't even feel like a Whedon-penned episode: its exposition was obvious to the point of cringe-inducing, this interesting world was ill-defined and, most surprising of all, it lacked humor. "Echo," as a strange contrast, contains too much of these elements. It's nice and clever, but it gives us too man details, and a running gag concerning Topher's use of the phrase "man-friend" simply grates (it actually builds to a nice dark one-liner from Boyd, then Topher uses the phrase once more later). Other lines contain real, working humor though, and for all the flaws of the Echo/Ballard interaction, it clearly set up Caroline's story far earlier, something that would have silenced a number of critics who cited the show as misogynistic for not immediately establishing a strong female lead. Rather than a revelation of Whedon's original, assured vision, "Echo" is more the polar opposite of the flaws of "Ghost" -- somewhere between the two lies the perfect pilot, but I'd likely place it on that line far closer to this.

Epitaph One

Now this is what I'm talking about. Joss Whedon is nothing if not bold: his four shows each contain wildly different tones, styles, approaches to humor, and themes, yet they all feature certain flourishes that make them immediately recognizable as his. His best work (as well as the best work of his finest writers) stands in open defiance of what might normally pass on TV, or that which takes him far out of his comfort zone (though the jury's still out on this show, which is one giant removal). I'm of course speaking of episodes such as "The Body," "Hush," "Objects in Space," and "Not Fade Away."

"Epitaph One" belongs on this list. Though neither written nor directed by Whedon, you can feel his guiding hand behind the script more than anywhere in the season's aired episodes, including one of the two that he wrote. It, more than "Man on the Street," "Spy in the House of Love" or either of the two parts of the finale, demonstrates that the show, despite its rocky opening and a continued set of unanswered, important questions (such as "What's the point of this anyway?"), indeed has a direction, and Whedon is a steady hand at the helm.

Set in 2019, ten years after Echo started exhibiting problems with her programming, "Epitaph One" shows us a world in chaos. A small band of filthy survivors moves through the streets of L.A., carrying with them a small child and her wiped father. At some point between now and the first season timeline, the Rossum Corporation (the owners of the Dollhouse) sold or allowed their technology to fall into other hands, and China discovered a way to imprint massive sections of the world populace in a manner similar to the cell call in "Gray Hour."

This group heads for the Dollhouse to find the imprinting chair to see if they can piece together what went wrong. They don't know what the construct really is, and when they discover that the institution that brought about the apocalypse was originally nothing more than a glorified whorehouse they don't know whether to laugh or find something to shoot.

They discover two things, though, that are far more important that the Dollhouse's original design. One is Whiskey, now scar-less and wiped, and the other a set of memories waiting to be uploaded into an Active. Through these memories we are given brief glimpses into the events that link the present with this horrible future, as well as character moments and even some relationship news. My favorite moments involved De Witt and Topher finally accepting the evil of their profession and their role in this cataclysm.

Giving us this information in the form of memories is a masterstroke, because memory is subjective. Some, perhaps all, of the scenes Whedon shows us could be slightly different if not outright false. We know that he's the king of continuity jokes, with callbacks and cross-references abounding in the Buffyverse, but this presentation ups the stakes: now the fans will look not only for these scenes to unfold but check up to see if anything differs.

"Epitaph One" is many things: thrilling, horrific, cerebral, gripping and darkly witty. Most of all, though, it is fearless. Written by his Doctor Horrible cohorts Maurissa Tancharoen and brother Jed Whedon, it's based on a pitch by Joss, one that would bring the high concept of the show to the fore while slashing the budget down to peanuts. Its predominantly hand-held direction (courtesy of David Solomon) lacks the spastic nature of shaky cam footage, and instead successfully creates a feeling of tension and realism without making us reach for the barf bags. Only someone with a firm grasp of a show's direction -- and let's not forget, Whedon also sowed hints for more than one future season in Buffy episodes "Graduation Day" and "Restless" -- would be so bold as to give away so much detail for a show's future. In anyone else's hands, something like "Epitaph One" would cause me worry. With Whedon holding the reins, however, it is a promise to the fans who stuck with this series out of faith in him that Dollhouse is going places, and I for one can't wait until September.

Numfar, Do the Dance of Joy! 'Dollhouse' Renewed For Second Season

http://www.thrfeed.com/2009/05/dollhouse-second-season.html

Look at it. Just look at it. I resigned myself to the inevitability of Dollhouse's cancellation long ago. Never mind the history with Fox: it simply wasn't a very good show. Then everything kicked into high gear in the middle of the season and I found myself biting my nails with every Whedonesque update. Early predictions following the finale's abysmal ratings (disregard that cancellation naysaying!) were understandably grim, with every cynical critic and insider betting the farm that Dollhouse would be put to pasture -- I apologize for that horrid metaphor-mixing, but I'm happy right now.

Then, something wonderful happened. News began leaking that Fox entered into serious talks with Whedon and the show runners, suggesting that the network had not simply canned the series in frustration. People started throwing out statistics involving DVR and online playback, as well as the inevitable profit margin afforded by a Whedon series on DVD -- consider how many times Serenity has been re-released on DVD and Blu-Ray in its short lifespan. The actors urged fans to email and even call Fox's offices, resulting in their answering services crashing from the influx. Within two weeks, the tide had completely turned, and all signs pointed to renewal. This can mean only one thing: President Obama has so re-shaped the American landscape and outlook that even Fox television can give us hope.

Now with sources confirming a renewal (the official announcement comes Monday, May 18), I have at last given in to the hope and excitement that I refused to allow myself to feel in the storm of gathering hype. I'm so excited that I'm writing this, a distraction from my usual style of shoddy criticism, because, well, I write when I'm excited (note to self: get laid). But while my head may be in the clouds right now, I've at least kept my toes on the ground, and I realize that Dollhouse still has a hell of a fight ahead of it. So let me discuss some of the conditions that will likely accompany the show's renewal and what they might mean for the series. (WARNING- THE REST OF THIS POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS)

1. Budget cuts. Get ready, because they're coming. Most of the early insider reports that hinted towards the show's renewal mentioned that Fox would expect drastic cost reduction to increase the chance for profit. The problem is: what can they cut? The only serious investment in the show was the actual Dollhouse set, but its costs were more or less negligible because they essentially took the place of the pilot the crew never shot (Fox paid for an order of episodes rather than funding a pilot to determine whether or not to pick up an entire series). Everything else has been fairly inexpensive. I don't know how much the actors and crew are being paid, but given that a sizable chunk are relative newcomers, while the rest (Williams, Dushku, Acker, Lennix, etc.) don't seem like the kind of A-listers to draw hefty paychecks, so I wonder if cutting cast would necessarily reduce costs significantly. Nevertheless, fans have been right to point out that Angel was on the receiving end of a budget cut for its fifth season, and most of us can agree that the show flourished under the pressure.

2. The time slot. Placing an un-proven, dense thematic web of a series on Friday nights was an early sign that Fox had little faith in the series' success, but it drew fairly healthy numbers for the time, even if they were consistently well-beneath even modest predictions. When paired with another science fiction show (the ailing Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) the show did well enough, but when Fox switched the lead-in with the final few episodes of Prison Break, both shows suffered horribly, and Dollhouse never recovered.

Some articles on Whedonesque reported that Fox is planning to keep the show on Fridays, which means one of two things: 1) Fox still doesn't believe that Dollhouse has a shot in hell of making a profit but just lack anything else better to risk or 2) they are genuinely trying to make Fridays a feasible night for profit. With DVR becoming more and more prevalent -- though I still don't have one... -- networks are slowly coming around to the possibilities of such devices. While it allows people to zip past the ads, devices that let consumers watch their favorite shows anytime slightly relieves them of the need to time their shows just right. Maybe we'll get lucky and it'll find its way to Monday nights with 24, but if the show does stay on Fridays, it still has a shot if networks continue to look at the many alternative methods of TV viewing that have popped up in recent years. Just please don't set it up to compete with Lost (as if all the recent Abrams vs. Whedon stuff hasn't been annoying enough already).

3. No more Remote-Free T.V. On the one hand, Remote-Free T.V. was an interesting venture designed to capitalize on the pros and combat the cons of DVR programming. By reducing the average 15-16 minutes of ads per hour to just a few 90-second breaks, Fox banked on the idea that it would take more effort to fast-forward through the brief commercials and would instead just sit and watch those. A great idea for the viewers, but cutting that much potential ad revenue from both Dollhouse and Fringe (which was also on the bubble for a while before getting renewed) threatened a show that was on shaky ground from the start and which both the show runners and executives admitted needed time to grow. While I enjoyed watching Dollhouse's later episodes, getting sucked in for what felt like an eternity, only to look at the clock and see I was only halfway through, the reversion to a normal T.V. format is actually a boon for the show's chances. Cutting out a whole ten minutes of time will save a lot of money, and the ad revenue will increase.


So, we know what Dollhouse has to contend with on the business side of things, but how should it adapt to these situations, not only to ensure profits increase enough to guarantee the show a solid run but to ensure that the show is good enough to deserve one. I do not presume to tell Joss Whedon or his crop of talented writers how to script their shows. Heck, I would not even presume to tell Dan Brown how to write novels -- though if I did, my advice would be brief: "Stop writing." But sitting here in my own cramped space of the blogosphere, what harm could I possibly do? It's not like anyone reads this anyway. So here are a few things I'd like to see happen to ensure that this renewal is not a fluke:

• More Dollhouse-centric episodes. Not only would this cut down on costs, but the most interesting episodes of the first season largely took place within the Dollhouse -- "Man on the Street," "Spy in the House of Love," "Briar Rose." When we stay in the Dollhouse we see it for what it really is: a vile machination run by people so intelligent that they've blinded themselves to the ethical nightmare of their work (or at least they just cover it up well). With Ballard, the only main character to exist outside of the organization, now working for them, we can spend more time in the set that's already been bought and paid for, and we can get to the bottom of the Dollhouse (which in turn could lead to a breakthrough more quickly, allowing at least some of the Dolls to break free and bring the place down).

• Let some characters take the week off. The chief problem with the series so far is that no one, not even the people who don't get their minds wiped at the end of each episode, is progressing very much. Reducing recurring and even main characters' screen time offers the possibility of focus on a select few per episode. After all, many of the best episodes of Buffy and Angel revolved around a single character. Plus, by rotating the cast slightly, you might only have to pay someone for 9 episodes as opposed to 13 (the second season will likely be another truncated one, by the way).

• Don't regress. The finale was clearly set up for the possibility of being the final episode of the series period, and because of it (and because it was made by Tim "there is no hope" Minear) we seemingly ended on a note of futility: Echo got all those personalities wiped, and went back to square one, except for the fact that she remembered her real name. Now that it's coming back, it's imperative that Joss not allow the show to return to the ghastly "Doll of the Week" format that defined the lukewarm and occasionally ice-cold first half. They need to hit the ground running with this one, to deal with the fallout of Alpha's attack and to address what Echo went through. Preferably, someone needs to awaken and fight the Dollhouse, but on nobler terms than the psychotic Alpha.

• Fix Victor. This one is pretty straightforward. I can buy Dr. Saunders' scars, as the real Dr. Saunders was killed before he could patch Whiskey up, and that the lack of a living medical staff left her permanently scarred. But now Whiskey is a qualified surgeon, and scar prevention is advanced even today. It's only natural to assume that they could make him look almost completely normal in the future. Not only does this allow Enver Gjokaj (one of the finest actors on the show) the chance to stay and do something, it reduces makeup time and costs, saving some cash.

• Make Amy Acker a part of the main cast. Yes, I know, it's silly to suggest a promotion at a time when budget cuts are on the horizon. But I went back and watched the last few episodes and, combined with the memories of my Angel binge at the end of last year, I'm certain that Amy Acker is just about the best actress on television. I couldn't name you five people on all four of Joss' shows who bring it as consistently and as amazingly as her (Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk are the only ones I might rank above her). I'm not sure why she doesn't get more work (I mean, it's a shallow industry, so even if she had no talent at all, have you looked at her?), but damn it, Joss better not waste this precious resource. Of course, this is totally wishful thinking, as Acker has already been cast as a lead on ABC's new show Happy Town (maybe she auditioned out of fear that Dollhouse would never make it), so the likelihood of her even appearing as frequently as she did are quite low.


So, Kevin Reilly, the man who helped keep NBC's crop of excellent comedies afloat when they all debuted to bad ratings (The Office, 30 Rock) and who became the latest president of FOX, delivered. Perhaps Reilly believes that, like those aforementioned shows with their shaky beginnings, Dollhouse is a potential gold mine, one worth the effort of digging to reach the riches just a bit further beneath the soil. As much as I've taken Fox to task over the years, Reilly's good people, and he happens to be one of the few at the front of a changing entertainment landscape who sees ways to work within the shifting paradigm. This stunning news gives Dollhouse a literal second chance, but we can only hope that, come the fall, Whedon comes out swinging and reminds everyone why he's the best damn writer to ever grace the small screen.

Dollhouse — Season 1

[Contains minor spoilers]

Has it really been five years since Joss Whedon graced T.V.-land with his presence? After the twin blows of both Firefly and Angel’s cancellations only a year apart from one another, Whedon seemed to retreat from the limelight somewhat, delivering only a magnificent Firefly spinoff and one of the best sci-fi films in recent memory and some great works on a handful of comic books (including launching series continuations of Buffy and Angel). At last, he decided to return to television, and the Internet rejoiced. Until we learned that he was working for Fox.

Fox, as you are no doubt painfully aware, canceled Firefly almost out of the gate, giving it only enough time to shuffle airing orders and time slots. The resulting resentment had absolutely no effect on Fox, whose primary demographic tunes in for exploitative “reality” programs and whatever half-assed pop collage Seth McFarlane is passing off as funny. So, when Joss came out of exile, only to wind up with the very studio that crushed him the first time around, many assumed the worst. And when Dollhouse first hit the air, all the cynics’ predictions were seemingly confirmed.

Dollhouse revolves around the titular construct, a near-mythical organization that hires willing (after a fashion) volunteers, hollows out their personalities, then inserts a new personality and traits to loan out to high-paying customers. Set at the L.A. branch, the show’s central character – protagonist may not be the right word – Echo. Played by Eliza Dushku, Echo is the most-requested “Active” in the Dollhouse; she works as a high-class escort, an FBI negotiator, even the target of some demented sport hunting. When the engagement is over, a handler calms her done and takes her to have her mind wiped.


It’s a concept that opens a number of thematic possibilities; far more than ever introduced in a Whedon show, in fact. The Dollhouse clearly stands for human traffickers, but their M.O. allows for commentaries on modern society: the anonymity allowed through increasing technology and impersonal communication, the desensitization that such anonymity engenders, and the very nature of free will.

I say possibilities, because for the entire first half of the season, not a damn thing happens. Fans got their first taste of dread when Fox announced that Joss’ initial pilot was “too dark” and “confusing” and Joss offered to make a more straightforward version to prevent episode shuffling (which ended up happening anyway). So, when the neutered pilot debuted in February, anxious fans got an occasionally interesting but overall tepid offering that barely introduced its characters satisfactorily, much less established any themes.

In it, Echo plays an FBI negotiator helping a wealthy man rescue his kidnapped daughter, which is a ridiculous way to start things off. We are given no solid reason for a man spending millions on a negotiator when the actual FBI would likely have gotten involved (and for free!), and when we discover that Active programmer Topher (Fran Kanz) also imprinted Echo with the memory of an abducted child which gives her an insight, it comes off more a pathetic justification for the plot than an intriguing development.

The early episodes all suffer from this problem: useless assignments that offer absolutely no insight into why anyone would pay millions for such a service. Easily the most absurd of these is a backup dancer for a hit-prone pop star, chosen to provide security while befriending the star. O.K., couple of things: 1) Why not just hire her as a bodyguard? 2) Why not just hire a real bodyguard for a lot less? 3) Are you kidding me? And it gets even worse when we learn that the star is actually suicidal and wants to burn out rather than fade away. A Britney Spears-knockoff has dreams of immortality. The episode as a whole is the most unbearable and useless piece of preaching since Angel’s “She” reminded Americans that female genital mutilation was wrong.

The constant personality shifts also require a lot of chops, and Dushku has come under fire from a number of critics for a perceived lack of range. While the actors playing Dolls Victor (Enver Gjokaj) and Sierra (Dichen Lachman) always seem to hit their marks and receive kudos, Dushku gets singled out for being too Faith-y. I presume they mean that she looks and speaks like Faith and therefore Eliza Dushku, so I'm a bit puzzled. Is Echo off in her imprints? Yes. That's the point. Truth is, Dushku has handled the majority of her imprints well, though some don't quite work. See über-writer Tim Minear’s first credit on the show, “True Believer”: Minear’s dark humor pervades the B-plot (involving Victor exhibiting emotion and sexual attraction to Sierra while in his wiped state, leading to a hilarious investigation by Saunders and Topher), but the main story concerning Echo infiltrating a cult via an imprint of a blind follower falls on its face. Even then, I'm less willing to lay the blame at Dushku's feet when the writing clearly lacked -- which, coming from Minear, was shocking.

Despite the relative ennui of these first five “Doll of the Week” episodes, their chief shortcoming is the complete failure to link the plots to the overarching mythology and thematic drive of the Dollhouse. FBI agent Paul Ballard (Tamoh Penikett) investigates the organization, but he seems to risk everything just because he’s captivated by a video of Echo with her true personality, Caroline. Ex-cop Boyd (Harry Lennix, Jr.), Echo’s handler, voices his concerns for how they manipulate Actives to branch manager Adele DeWitt (Olivia Williams), but he just sort of drops his protests after awhile. DeWitt explains it away by reminding him that people volunteer for the job and are paid well when their contracts expire, but for too long no one calls her on the hypocrisy of the statement.

When that changes, the show itself kicks off at last. The sixth episode, “Man on the Street,” intimated to us by Dushku and Whedon as the beginning of a true arc, so suddenly thrusts Dollhouse to the next level that the preceding five weeks of mediocre to downright arduous programming seem like a parody that hit the airwaves before the subject of its travesty. Apart from providing the first touching incident of Doll use (a wealthy man hiring Echo, not for sex but so he could show his “wife” the house she never got to see because she died in a wreck) as well as juxtaposing the rape of one of the Dolls by her handler with the heretofore unspoken reality that DeWitt and her employees send these people to be raped on a daily basis (just because you sign a contract doesn’t mean you give sexual consent for five years). I’m not entirely pleased that it took a “real” rape to finally put the truth out there, but it was an incredibly effective move. Also, we learned something about Paul’s neighbor/crush Mellie (Miracle Laurie) that proves that Joss could still surprise the hell out of us when he felt like it.

From there the show builds, if not thematically, then at least literally: “Echoes” manages to balance a key insight into Caroline’s past via a thrilling main plot and a simply hysterical side story involving a gas leak in the Dollhouse. “Needs” fizzles with its end reveal, but we learn what drove our Actives to sign up for the Dollhouse and it explains some of their earlier behavior, even if its hard to count it as character development when the purpose of the show is to suppress identity. “Spy in the House of Love” trumps even MotS in its gripping plot and story advancement, only for the late-game standalone “Haunted” to kill the momentum.

Happily, things rebound with force with the season enders. Whedon’s shows have never lacked for strong season finales, but Jane Espenson’s “Briar Rose” is the first definitive argument for the potential greatness of Dollhouse as opposed to sixth and ninth’s episodes, which simply argued that the show actually deserved to stay on the air. At last, we met the Big Bad Alpha, an Active that went insane when he “composited” all of his prior imprints and slashed his way out of the building, including giving Saunders her scars. Sadly, his identity was revealed long before when Fox’s constant meddling resulted in a number of spoilers hitting the web; nevertheless, Espenson and Whedon structured the episode in a way that kept it completely pulse pounding.

It’s so good that even the mighty Tim Minear (the man behind every almost every great episode of Angel in the first three seasons) cannot match it, though I suspect he was hindered by the fact that Dollhouse has rested on the bubble of cancellation since the get-go. Thus, the first 40 minutes, in which Alpha imprints Echo with an imprint of his old Active partner (whose identity was rightly guessed by me and many others before we learned it) and attempts to “awaken” the person who drove him to his rebellion. Then it ends with a whimper that leaves the story open and thankfully doesn’t box the series in, but it also clearly sets up the possibility that these 12 episodes are all we’re going to get.

Taken as a self-contained product (which it happily isn’t), “Omega” contains the best and worst of what Dollhouse has given us so far: it’s got flashes of too-rare Whedon humor (seriously, where were the jokes for most of the season?), the suspense that defined its best episodes, and someone finally gets to the bottom line of the Dollhouse’s hypocrisy: “You can’t sign a contract to be a slave.” On the other hand, it displays the show’s shallow side (Sierra and November get imprinted as bounty hunters to track Alpha, then are never seen again); its clumsy – especially for Whedon shows – dialogue; and the fact that it never gets around to explaining the actual purpose of the Dollhouse. I imagine that’s something that Whedon wants to take entire arcs to explain, but it’s frustrating that he wants us to just buy such an organization. And at the end, as with all things in the Dollhouse, all epiphanies are seemingly wiped away in an instant, leaving us wondering "What was the point of it all?"

At this stage, I like Dollhouse more for what it can be that what it is, which is a silly reason to like something I’ll grant you. Even a show that centers around a lack of identity must give us a reason to care about its characters, through its direction if not its lines. Dollhouse, to put it mildly, fails to do this; at this stage the only character I give a toss about is Saunders, which is almost entirely attributable to Amy Acker, who buoys the scarce writing devoted to the character with mystery and humanity. Characters like Ballard, DeWitt, Topher and Boyd should have been fleshed out, and only Ballard and DeWitt got any development at all. Combined with its skin-deep analysis of a handful of its many potential themes, it makes Dollhouse a show that you really have to will yourself to like rather than grabbing you with its interesting characters and its unique universe.

Still, when Dollhouse hit its stride, I found myself glued to the screen in a way I haven’t been since The Wire. It’s a far cry from classic Whedon, but he’s never tried something so ambitious. I attribute its lack of character development and its weak first half to Fox; remember, Firefly was nothing but character development, to the point that main plots really only served to advance its characters and its universe. It could have been Whedon’s magnum opus, but Fox canned it. Therefore, I believe that Dollhouse is Whedon playing to Fox’s M.O., though not in a subversive but desperate manner. On the other hand, a part of me believes that Joss made the show to challenge himself: I mean, who does character growth better? By forcibly removing character evolution, he's thrust himself into a bold, new territory that could reap big rewards.

Nevertheless, that does not excuse him for letting the show stumble along for weeks without even attempting to find a voice and the rest of the time laying the foundations that should have been established after a few episodes. The biggest mistake fans can make is to lay the blame solely at Fox's feet (somewhat hypocritical coming from the guy who devoted space in each of his first three paragraphs to disparage them, I know). The simple truth of it is: Joss himself admitted he wasn't sure how to proceed at first, and he acknowledged that he failed to tie in the plots of the early episodes into the larger story. I've seen some fans give it a pass, saying, "Well, Buffy was shaky its first season, too." But that notion ignores the glaring fact that Buffy was Joss' first foray into television, before he found the writers best suited to his vision and his style. This is his fourth series; by now he's accumulated some of the finest writing talent around, most of whom put in their best work with Whedon. I will agree with the comparison, however, when you consider that, like Buffy, Whedon and co. have a show with more potential than they perhaps realize at the moment, and only when left to their own devices and allowed to stretch the boundaries will the show grow.

As of this writing, I don’t know whether or not Dollhouse will come back for a second season, but, if we get lucky, I can only hope that someone lights a fire under Joss’ ass that forces him to build on these last few episodes and to carve a television program truly worthy of his name. Fingers crossed, everyone. [Ed: It is coming back! Huzzah!]