Here is what Dollhouse is missing:
1) Monsters with freaky powers that get looked up in books.
2) Eerie haunted weapons that make up for the fact that someone's life is going to be threatened for the second half every issue.
3) A weird younger sister out of nowhere who is secretly a key.
4) Characters you care about.
I like Fred a lot, even now that her face has healed.
For a two-dimensional metaphor for human trafficking, Echo sure does get some implausibly intense adventuring going on.
I could go on. I just feel like the grand overarching plot that has been charted out for the next 100 episodes was what they spent most of their effort on, which makes it even less powerful that those arcs are being fed with glistening half-baked chunks of exposition that doesn't fit the single ep stories.
The first five minutes of episode 2 are enough to keep me following that story so I'll keep watching, despite a bland predictability that no series should run into after a mere three episodes.
Down with sameness. Up with monsters and haunted weapons.