Thoughts on Dollhouse, Episode 1

Usually I like to sit back and think about things before I talk about it - but like the rest of the internet, I want to talk Dollhouse now.

This past Friday, the first episode of Joss Whedon’s new Dollhouse television series aired, and I was watching unsure of what to expect. Well, that’s a bit of a lie - this is what I was expecting:

• some ground rules for the Dollhouse ‘Verse defined
• rudimentary information on the main character
• a rough sense of what sort of organization the “Dollhouse” is
• a glimpse of what life as a doll is like

I even prepared myself for Joss television series-openers. I re-watched the first episodes of Firefly, Buffy, and Angel this week just to get a sense of what we were in for when 9PM finally hit on Friday night. This allowed me to temper my expectations somewhat, and I think it was for the better - because I really have to say that, with the exception of the 2hr opener for Firefly, Joss shows can start off a little bumpy all in the name of setting up the show’s landscape for the series.

[spoilers on Joss’ past TV shows and Dollhouse, after the jump]

I don’t know how fresh the very first episode of Buffy is for everyone here, but it’s quite fresh for me now. I don’t want you to think I am some sort of aficionado on Buffy, because this was only my second viewing of the series opener, and my first viewing was just this past fall. But I really have to say that Buffy had quite a bumpy start… but knowing now how everything fleshes out, I think I understand why the episode is set up as it was.

When re-watching Buffy, the very first thing that was glaring to me was how different some of the characters were in the first episode in contrast to how they were after things were more fleshed out later in the series. For the most part the main characters’ personas were pretty much intact:

• Sure, Xander is seen “skateboarding” in this first episode, but he sucks at it.
• Willow is the geeky girl in love with Xander and willing to help anyone, even if it means helping with homework.
• Buffy is a reluctant Slayer wishing to be just a regular girl and trying to distance herself from the world of vampires.
• Giles is the naive Watcher, eager to train and teach his Slayer, but really clumsy at things outside of his Watcher’s role.
• Cordy is the stuck-up self-important ego-centrist, looking to remain popular when a new girl shows up at school by recruiting her as part of her entourage.
• Angel is his usual mysterious self, hard to read and helplessly drawn to Buffy.
• And my favorite? The entire cast of Sunnydale residents are wonderfully clueless and residing atop a Hellmouth.

But Darla? Wow. She was so different. Weak in comparison to an untrained Slayer? Fearful? At least she was working towards the return of the one that sired her, albeit as a measly side-kick to other seemingly lesser vampires. It’s so damned cool how this one character alone was so unfleshed out in this episode. She was portrayed quite differently in comparison to her appearances later in the Buffyverse, and that gave me a glimpse of what Joss can do with what appears to be such an inconsequential and seemingly unimportant character… he can turn a “nobody” into something as awesome as Darla.

I’m not sure if you understand what I am trying to get at, it would certainly help if you’ve seen Buffy and Angel. If Whedon’s track record holds, the characters he is introducing in this first episode are defining the foundations for the characters we’ll soon come to know. I feel that even the smaller unsuspecting bits of information we’ve been fed in this first Dollhouse episode will eventually come around full circle and surprise the hell out of us a couple seasons down the road - assuming the series last that long. Joss is a master story teller, able to weave past stories into a complex tapestry that just comes alive as he tells his tales… but it all starts out with story threads.

We’ve already been shown so much in the very first episode of Dollhouse; Echo was/is a woman in trouble, enough trouble to sign up as an active with the promise of wiping whatever she’s got messed up in erased from her record. How exactly do they intend to hold true on their promise? How would Echo ever know if they did? Would they just program her with a new “life” when her work term is up? How the hell does one ever know if such an organization ever intends to hold up their end of the bargain? They could just keep you as an active until you die, be it of natural causes or via an on the job accident.

We also know that the personalities that actives get uploaded into their minds are an amalgam of several other personalities, expertly woven together by the very shady Topher. The result is a personality that is honed for the job being paid for. We also learn that these memories are very real to the active once programmed. They have no inkling that they are simply a program running inside the human mind - they believe they are the person they’ve been made into.

And what if their personality and existence is brought into question? They are programmed to come home for reprogramming, to fix up the crack in the foundation of their personality… for their “treatment”. We have also learned that they can be reprogrammed with a slightly changed purpose, and redeployed for their engagement, or they can be wiped and returned to their simply clueless doll-state where any memories of things having gone wrong are erased.

We also know that what they do is morally a very very dark shade of grey - and we’ve got an agent named Paul on their case, desperate to prove the Dollhouse exists, and he’s hot on their trail. His whole Dollhouse-mission is not really accepted by his peers, and this man does not seem to let that bother him personally… he just wants to get to the bottom of it.

And the Dollhouse itself? It’s got a great cast of characters running the show.

Adele seems to be the head Madame, the one calling the shots from the top. She’s the face of the organization, the one that makes the deals with the customers. She’s fairly strict about what they do and what they will not do - in this first episode’s main case, they are only being hired as a negotiator by their customer. They are not to be the heroes, not to be the judge or jury as to what is right or wrong. They have been hired to facilitate the trade of cash for a little girl to get her back safely to her father, nothing more.

And she’s stern about this stance, but we do find out that she’s willing to bend the rules when it is the “right thing to do”. Heh, it’s funny to think that an organization involved in something so illegal would be doing, or would even have a sense of what is, the “right thing”. But that’s typical Joss for you, trying to confuse and keep things morally grey. I love it.

I had a hard time reading Topher. I wanted to like him, because he appears to have a really cool job within the Dollhouse. I want to know if he’s just responsible for uploading, downloading, and storing personalities from the actives, or does he actually do the leg work in collecting these personalities that are eventually combined and uploaded into an active’s mind. Do they do it on the living, or the recently deceased? I wish they’d given an inkling about that, but I am sure that will all be fleshed out later in the series.

Boyd is Echo’s handler. It sounds like each active has their personal handler… but I am not positive. I did not catch any other handlers being named or inferred, yet. Maybe he’s The Handler overseeing all operative within the Dollhouse. His job is to ensure the safety of the active when they are out on their engagement. I’m not too sure how I felt about the handler following around in a black van, with its sliding door revealing gadgetry to the world so nonchalantly. You’d think they really do their best to remain concealed if they were so morally ambiguous and requiring to stay unseen from the law.

I’d have to say that the black vans were actually my least favorite part of the whole episode, funny enough. Something about it made me uneasy. I don’t know, it kind of reminded me of how KITT had that transport he drive into at the end of a mission, it just felt cheesy and did not fit the secrecy such an organization would require to stay unnoticed from the rest of the world.

I am really looking forward to getting to know Dr. Saunders’ character more. With such a visually scarred face, I am sure there are some really twisted stories to be told. Is she just a really good doctor that’s helping with the Dollhouse’s cause, or is she herself a reprogrammed operative with the skills of a doctor uploaded? Did she just narrowly escape death and her scars, physically and mentally, force her to remain within the confines of the Dollhouse itself? Is she trapped or free to go? She’s a mystery right now, and I’m sure she’s got stories begging to be told.

And then there’s the remainder of the cast, the other dolls in the house. The newly recruited Sierra is introduced and kind of saves the day at the very end of the show. I love how her showing up and shooting the place up was so cold, precise, and as a matter of fact - yet, chances are Echo/Ms. Penn had the whole thing under control and the young girl was safe. Very grey indeed, and I loved loved loved it.

So, if you cannot tell, yeah… I really enjoyed the first episode of Dollhouse. If I had to rank it with Joss’ other shows series openers I’d say it was second to Firefly’s, making it better than Buffy and Angel’s openers in my books.

Buffy and Angel also had solid introductions to their series, but I felt Dollhouse was a little more polished and tight in comparison. But who knows, right? I’ve only seen one episode and the whole thing could just unravel into a big mess, or it could turn out to be brilliant. What I do know is that I really liked how we’ve been gently introduced into the world of an operative within the Dollhouse. We did not get to see a guns-a-blazing action extravaganza right off the bat, we got to see a rather straight forward hostage negotiation… but through this simple story we find out some much about the Dollhouse, the people that work there, the agents that carry out the paid-for engagements, and a sense that everything is not as smooth as they’d like it to be.

Life within these walls is going to prove very interesting, I can’t wait for more.