Review: Dollhouse
Dollhouse Review
Dollhouse is a show created by Joss Whedon that stars Eliza Dushku. The concept is following the main character named "Echo" who is a doll. She is what is called an active who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personalities in a somewhat similar style to the movie "The Matrix" (downloaded into the brain). The new personality is not a creation but a collage of different, existing personalities. The flaws help make the actives seem more real to whoever or whatever they are hired to do for gross amounts of money.
My review of the first two episodes is under the cut.
Cut:
The pilot episode was re-shot twice on Joss's insistence although fans speculate that it was really FOX network that had that done. The first episode is okay but not what fans wanted to see. It didn't have any of the humor or plot weaving that Joss Whedon is known for and it didn't make the concept "Snap" as an awesome idea. For the most part, while the pilot episode was okay, it wasn't mind blowing and didn't really click as well for me as a show.
I decided to give the second episode a shot mostly because I am a huge Joss Whedon fan and, lets face it, pilots aren't always the best judge of a show.
The second episode (which aired tonight), was leaps-and-bounds better than the pilot. The opening sequence really brought your focus onto the show and made you want to stay there and find out what the hell was going on. We begin to see the build up of the mystery plot; killings going on, more hints to Echo's past, and some awesome "snap" Joss dialogue.
The plot was pretty fast moving and had a lot of action, but I felt the action was helping the plot and not there just to be senseless action (unlike the motorcycle scene in the pilot episode). The case of the week was pretty interesting too although it started out boring. Actually the whole episode reminded me of that short story called "A Most Dangerous Game" which is about a guy that gets bored of just killing animals and decides human game would be more challenging.
I really liked seeing the hints about Echo and how her handler feels about this entire situation of the Dollhouse. There was a lot of great characterization being spewed everywhere this episode without making it seem to exposition heavy.
All in all? I definitely recommend "Dollhouse" as a show to watch. If you can't see it while it is being aired, it's also streamed at HULU.com and FOX.com. Try and watch it there before downloading it because I want to see the ratings go up so it stays for more than one season.