Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 10:05 am
I Have Seen Dollhouse
FOX
My TiVo may be on life support, but the DVD player still works, and midseason TV is starting to come in fast and furious. Among the screeners I've received is a little show by some guy who did something about vampires once. You don't want to hear anything about it yet, do you? I didn't think so. Ignore me as I write more after the jump.
OK, a little preface. I've watched the Dollhouse episode (given the history of remakes on this show, I don't know whether I can properly call it the "pilot") once, casually, without taking notes. I reserve the right to change my mind after I've watched it and marinated on it more. And I wasn't crazy about Firefly when it first debuted, in retrospect one of the worse calls of my career.
It was both better and worse than I expected, in different ways. One of my concerns about it was that—given Joss Whedon's talent for making absorbing serials—the case-of-the-week nature of the show would make it harder to grow attached to. (I'm assuming that anyone who cares at this point knows the premise already, but in case I'm wrong: Eliza Dushku plays Echo, an "Active," which is a person who has agreed to let a secretive organization erase his or her original memories and personality and implant new ones in them for "assignments" involving rich clients.)
Yes, this is certainly Joss Whedon trying to do What People Think Works on Broadcast TV Today—the legendary serial-procedural hybrid. But the first episode—in which Echo is imprinted with a kidnapping-negotiator's personality to secure the return of a rich man's abducted daughter—is well enough written to be absorbing. Writing a crime hour doesn't seem like Whedon's thing, but the episode is tight, suspenseful, with intriguing psychological twists and flashes of Whedonesque humor.
And the more serial elements of the show seem promising, at least. At the same time, an investigator (Tahmoh Penikett, BSG's Helo) is looking into the rumored existence of the illegal "Dollhouse" where the Actives are housed. A scene with a skeptical colleague addresses head-on a basic implausibility of the premise: why the hell does a billionaire need to turn to some kind of bizarre sci-fi brianwashing whorehouse to get the perfect date, or the perfect crime investigator, or the perfect whatever, when they can perfectly easily go out and hire one who hasn't had their personality wiped? His response: when you have everything, you want something more—more exotic, more perfect, more specific. Not so persuasive on the surface, but if the show is well enough done, hopefully we won't care.
Now the minus. Dollhouse as conceived (a heroine plays a different "person" every week) is less a series concept than an actress' showcase, a sort of extreme version of an Alias undercover premise. (In fact, the reports of how the show was conceived have said that Dushku essentially broached the idea as a showcase.) And the actress being showcased is Eliza Dushku. Now, I have nothing against Dushku. I thought she was fine on Buffy. But she's not exactly Toni Collette (who's playing a multiple-personality case on Showtime's The United States of Tara, which I have not seen). Watching her inhabit her imprinted "personality"—a tough negotiator with secret vulnerabilities—I did not see her becoming another person. I thought: Oh, look! There's Eliza Dushku with glasses and her hair in a bun!
If it weren't for Whedon's pedigree, I'm not sure I'd be dying to see a second episode. But for me, the main draw now is not seeing Dushku become a different person every week, but getting to see Joss Whedon become a different writer every week.
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James Poniewozik writes TIME magazine's Tuned In column, about pop culture and society. Tuned In, the blog version, is about the stuff we used to call "TV," whether it's in your living room, on your computer or -- once the networks figure out the technology and line up the advertisers -- in your dreams themselves.
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Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 10:17 am
Thank you thank you thank you! My anticipation level for this show is kinda trying to go off the charts, so I'm trying hard not to get my hopes too high.
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:57 am
"...But for me, the main draw now is... getting to see...(xyz-my appending) become a different writer every week..."
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Insightful. I should make a plaque of this quote and secretly mail it to my Exec. prods as a holiday gift--kinda clue them in on what's really up. Shiny accessories won't necessarily guarantee a hit.
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Dollhouse premise sounds interesting/promising JP, I'll take a gander.
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 1:25 pm
@bzdesk: I should note, btw, that I don't know how much JW will be writing--tho from the reports on the retooling, it seems as though he is heavily involved at least at the outset.
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Gotcha JP. Your allusion to a preference for the strength of the writing as opposed to reliance on star-power or the whole notion of broaching a show's premise as (primarily) an actor's 'showcase vehicle', was food for thought.
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Has Fox decided when this show will premiere?
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 4:10 pm
@yogi: February (Friday the) 13.
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Cautiously optomistic... anything else good on the horizon?
Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 11:56 pm
[...] 5, 2008 Well, I haven’t, but that’s the title of the first online review I’ve seen (hattip: [...]
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 2:13 am
[...] the original post over at Time’s Tuned In blog to learn what Poniewozik meant by that last bit (it’s not [...]
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 3:07 am
I think one of the things that I found most interesting about early trailers for the show was that it would have the ability to become any type of show it wanted: more than other procedurals, its multiple personalities could change on a dime. It's something that Alias always did quite well, to be honest: while Sidney's activities were always for a serious purpose, the nature of her disguises let them create some highly comic scenarios. Here, they could have blatantly comic scenarios with the right storyline, along with more serious interludes.
As long as Dushku is better than Torv on Fringe in terms of the role, I think that I see more potential in this concept than FOX's other serialized procedural. But, again, really curious to see it for myself.
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 10:59 am
[...] make television history, but there is still hope, I mean come on its Joss. Time Magazine posted a review online for the new show and had more than a few things to say about the [...]
Friday, December 5, 2008 at 1:34 pm
[...] Posted by Lev Grossman | Comments (0) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This By which I mean that. My colleague James Poniewozik has seen Dollhouse and blogged about it. He makes a good point: [...]
Sunday, December 7, 2008 at 7:06 pm
[...] I Have Seen Dollhouse My TiVo may be on life support, but the DVD player still works, and midseason TV is starting to come in fast and [...] [...]
Tuesday, December 9, 2008 at 1:10 pm
[...] An early review of the pilot for Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. [...]
Saturday, December 20, 2008 at 6:05 am
[...] | Uruloki & Time En ¡Vaya Tele! | [...]
Friday, January 2, 2009 at 1:10 pm
[...] který měli redaktoři možnost shlédnout. Zatímco předchozí recenze pilotního dílu na jiných webech byly veskrze pozitivní, Futon Critic se ale pustil do poměrně agresivní kritiky. Konkurenční [...]
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 2:30 pm
[...] has a somewhat mixed--though entirely persuasive--review of the first episode of the new show here.)--Christopher [...]
Saturday, January 24, 2009 at 3:30 pm
I can only send as much positive thinking as possible to the FOX heads, willing them to give Dollhouse more of a chance than they gave Firefly - the show that should be known to them as The One That Got Away.
Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 11:22 am
[...] I screened the pilot of Joss Whedon's upcoming sci-fi series about humans with erasable memories, the subsequent post got picked up and eagerly pored over within the Whedonverse. So I feel a kind of obligation to my [...]
Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 3:06 pm
[...] nejaký článok alebo recenziu, kde ju zhodnotia (dve takéto recenzie si môžete prečítať TU a TU). Tým sa okolo seriálu vytvára publicita, vďaka čomu sa dostáva do povedomia verejnosti [...]
Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 2:10 am
[...] mean that in the post-modern ironic sense), and questions about the lead thespian’s capabilities. All of which the mainstream entertainment media have taken as a sign of disunity, maybe speaking [...]
Wednesday, February 11, 2009 at 2:56 am
An interesting review, and fair, i'd say. I for one primarily watch Joss Whedon shows for his excellent writing and am simply glad to potentially have another Whedon airing on a regular basis. Compared to a lot of genre shows right now, it'll be nice to see a writer who doesn't feel the need to string audiences along with soap opera antics.
http://www.igp-scifi.com/dollhouse.html
Thursday, February 12, 2009 at 4:01 pm
[...] first episode of Dollhouse (that airs tomorrow night, Friday February 13th on FOX at 9pm ET) from Time Magazine’s James Poniewozik. Mr. Poniewozik reserves the right to change his mind (but mostly didn’t, here’s [...]
Friday, February 13, 2009 at 10:14 pm
[...] James Poniewozik isn’t that impressed: It was both better and worse than I expected, in different [...]