I'm with Consuela. The show was okay. Not great, not something I would watch ep 2 of if not for the fact that Whedon is behind it.
I was squicked out a bit at some plot elements, but I watch "Criminal Minds" every week, so some of the themes touched on aren't much different than that show. If we start getting into SVU territory, then I'm out. The thing is, this show makes "The Inside" look like Perry Mason - so I wonder just how dark they are planning to get.
I think Eliza needs to up her acting game though. I feel her skills straining at the weight of this. She barely pulled it off this week. Here's hoping that some of her roles recur, so we can connect to her a bit easier.
Maybe I'm having some holdover issues from Dr. Horrible. I could be wrong, I don't nor don't not hope I'm wrong, especially since my own meta issues are Joss' obsession with Eliza and her supposed potential.
Where does the crush thing come from? The idea of a writer creating an actor vehicle doesn't seem all that strange to me.
Just the various interviews. The whole "let's hinge an entire show and the job status of other actors and crew on the one girl that I like" rather than "here's a concept that I think works great a show and I think Eliza would be great for the role". I'm not that into the scene, what other films/shows have been centered around and inspired by an actor's presence/existence? A genuine "I'm going to create a role to showcase your talents, cuz I think you're awesome"?
Actors get development deals all the time, which are periods during which they're looking for a vehicle. Eliza was probably lucky in that there was a specific writer who wanted to write the vehicle for her.
I'm totally blanking on them now, but they're very common for former standups, and will just be called The "Standup's Name" Show until they work out a premise and a title.
Which puts me in mind of the Garry Shandling Show.
This is the theme to Garry's show.
The theme to Garry's show.
Garry called me up and asked
Would I write his theme song?
I'm almost half-way finished,
How do you like it so far?
How do you like the theme to Garry's show?
The whole "let's hinge an entire show and the job status of other actors and crew on the one girl that I like" rather than "here's a concept that I think works great a show and I think Eliza would be great for the role".
Dushku is the one who had the development deal. There would have been a show built around her with or without Joss.
Well, often actor's development deals expire without an appropriate show being created, but certainly the goal was an Eliza Dushku vehicle, and Joss signed up for that.
The first thing I felt about the show was: Wow, that must've been a bitch writing to all the network notes.
Could you make it sexier? Maybe something like that dance scene with Buffy and Faith? Could you make it less skeevy? Could you underline that we're against human trafficking? I'm not sure the audience is going to get the concept - could you underscore the premise several times? How about an action opening? Something like Fast and Furious. It's too ambiguous - you need clear moral lines here. So why don't we make the bad guy really bad? Maybe a child molester rapist type.
The woman in the refrigerator was an obvious nod but I didn't think it was a dodge about gender issues. Just hanging a lantern on it, and saying "Gender Issues! They will happen. But maybe not how you expect. Actually it's more about anybody's agency."
In a lot of ways it felt more like a Tim show than a Joss show. It was very noir-ambiguity, and S5 Angel and The Inside (to me). Or some of the darker eps of Firefly. With doses of La Femme Nikita and Alias.
Like "The Train Job" it felt very much like a quick network-forced rewrite. But still good. The nugget of story within it (aside from the premise) was intriguing: "You can't run away from a ghost." So, there's the reversal where the woman who survived the kidnapping, became Becky from The Inside and committed suicide lives on and gets justice/revenge/closure.
That was actually the most intriguing part of the whole thing to me - that the imprints come from real people. That you can doctor one, but it's not a "greatest hits" as much as a strong set that you can tweak. How many of the characters in the Dollhouse have bits of their past and personality going out on missions? More than a few I'd guess. That's gotta be a factor. What happens when Sierra goes out with a bit of Caroline's personality?
I'm intrigued by the backstory on Amy Acker's character. There was just the slightest hint that Olivia Williams' character (does she have a name?) might've been an Active herself.
Echo's original self was more evident than I expected. Caroline, right? Recognized that type. Global generation. Out to save the world. She made a mistake, and faced what? Life imprisonment. Somebody died in her do-gooding? And she took five years of mindwiping (sold as "we do good here") and gets off the hook.
Ballard's character reminded me of whassisname - Paul? From the Inside. Except not. I'm trying to think of who he's reminding me of in the Jossiverse and maybe it's Angel. Obsessive. Maybe Scruffy!Wes. That's closer.
The bit with the naked guy and videos of Caroline in college and dead bodies was all about the rogue active, Alpha.
Tim and Joss ought to only write for HBO. Thirteen episode seasons. All the cocksucker dialogue and moral ambiguity they could want.
Positive review of first three episodes (without spoilers) at IO9.
From that review:
*****
The girl-power is in there. One of our biggest fears about Dollhouse, going into it, is that Echo's just a puppet. She's not a real person, she's just a braindead non-entity. So if she kicks ass, it's because she's been programmed with ass-kicking skills, that aren't really hers.
Except the show neatly sidesteps that pitfall - Echo often exceeds her programming and kicks more ass than she's supposed to. She's not programmed to be a super-ninja in every episode, and her "engagements" usually go wrong in some unforeseen way. At that point, she has to find reserves of strength and courage inside herself, and it's beautiful to behold.
Addendum: I didn't really buy Eliza as the negotiator (Miss Pen). Emotionally she was present, but she didn't project the kind of contained intelligence (or do I want to say...coiled self-awareness?) of that character.
Something wasn't there. The kind of something Jodie Foster had as Claire in Silence of the Lambs. It was definitely a limit of Eliza's acting. And I'm a fan of her acting, but it could be an issue.
Still, I'm intrigued by the show and it's interesting to me that most of the takes I'm seeing here treat it as-is rather than what is (to me at least) an obvious pile of narrative compromises.
I can't emphasize enough how this first episode doesn't feel like the episode Joss would've wanted to write if he had months to write it. It feels like a lot of Joss-craft with a big Tim influence.
Addendum: I didn't really buy Eliza as the negotiator (Miss Pen). Emotionally she was present, but she didn't project the kind of contained intelligence (or do I want to say...coiled self-awareness?) of that character.
Yeah, this was a problem for me. As the party girl, I bought her. As the negotiator, she totally didn't sell it, which made the whole premise that much harder to handwave.
And beyond that, they gave away way too much in the first ep. The fact that (blank) ED doesn't know what's happening when other girls are being mindwiped. That the imprinted personalities contribute more than just expertise. That these are things they don't fucking check out before imprinting them. WTH? That completely blank (disturbing) bodies can wander around freely and see things they I guess are not supposed to see (though why would that matter?) Over a handful of eps, drawing it out, could be interesing. Throw that all into the first ep?
What ev. If this wasn't a Joss show I'd be done. As it is, I'll give it a couple more.
P-C, can you elaborate? I don't get this. It seemed pretty clear that when the Actives sign up, they know they're going to be mindwiped. The imprinted personalities don't know they're going to be zapped away, but that's not the same thing.
That's who I'm talking about, the imprinted personalities. They're basically tricking the Actives into believing they ARE these people and then ripping those identities away without their permission.
Now, that I think about it, I'm interested to see an episode where an Active is imprinted with some horrible personality (murderer or somesuch) that they would be none too glad to be rid of.
I'm intrigued by the backstory on Amy Acker's character.
There's backstory?
