Dollhouse - Pilot: "Ghost"

[pointedview]

I'm mostly recycling the e-mail I sent to a friend as my LJ entry on this.

Pros:

• Harry Lennix as Boyd Langton -- I thought he brought the right amount of concerned gravitas as Echo's handler.
• Amy Acker as Claire Saunders -- To me, she was the most interesting character on the show. I definitely want to know why Claire has those scars. Acker is a very versatile actress: I've seen her play nerdy and sweet on Angel, and be equally convincing as a ruthless career climber on Alias. I look forward to seeing what unfolds.
• The set looks really good. Atmosphere, yay.
• That line about Edward James Olmos was awesome! Loved the Battlestar Galactica shout-out.
• The Terminator/Dollhouse lineup has already worked nicely in one way: the promos done by Glau and Dushku were a fun way of representing the Buffy/Firefly/Dollhouse continuum.

Cons:

• Eliza's gorgeous, but can she deliver all these different personas? She did fine with changing her body language as Eleanor Penn, but her accent sounded the same as it always does. I hope that was a deliberate decision for the pilot to make things easy on new viewers, but with all those different personalities imprinted, might she not have a different accent? Southern? Midwestern? British? Etc.
  
  I watched Alias. The writers often had Sydney Bristow (played by the talented Jennifer Garner) adopt different accents, and it worked beautifully. I'd like to see a little of that here, to emphasize the change, the transformation after imprinting. I know from past interviews that Dushku has said that the tomboy stuff comes easily to her, and she's always been one of the boys, but she's going to have to expand if she's going to succeed as the lead in this show (though I will say that I thought she got noticeably better as she settled into that role, especially during the retrieval scene). On the bright side, Joss is known for writing excellent ensembles, in which each cast member gets to shine at different times, so even if she's not as strong as one might like from show to show, she's got plenty of backup.

Overall, I thought it was an engaging pilot, if a little overglossed in parts (the motorcycle/dance club scene, for example). To me, that smacked of Fox intervention, though some fans are saying they felt like it was a little flashback to the Bronze, which I guess I can see.

Happy moment: seeing the Mutant Enemy for the first time in a while. Grr, aargh!