Dollhouse

[Chris Miller]

It may be that this will be cancelled, and in five short years, we'll have a feature fim.

But I hope not.

I'm enjoying it so far. Whedon definitely knows how to hook the attention and draw you in, and I though last week's episode was definitely the best yet. The Internet Millionaire character has to be the most developed minor character I've ever seen, but they used it to great effect.

My one problem with this is that, well, I'm not sure Eliza Dushku is talented enough to pull off all the characters she has to play. This might be by design, they might be gearing up to the fact that her Alpha personality, Caroline, is going to shine through. But generally, it's hard for me to buy that she's really these other people she's designed to be. 

[P.G. Holyfield]

I agree, Chris, on Eliza (I so love her name... and other attributes) Dushku. I still think the premise of the show isn't going to work long-term. If, as it appears, that the focus of the show might shift a bit from "active personality of the week" to the overall Alpha, Ballard, Caroline's personality taking over (still have to see the second half of the last ep.), then it might just have legs.

And yes, Patton Oswalt was SO much better in this than I've ever seen him in anything else. Awesome acting (and writing).

[NukeHavoc]

I was about to hang it up after the religious cult episode; the series just wasn't giving me any thing to really sink my teeth into. Echo has no real personality, her handler doesn't get much screen time, and to date we haven't had much of the Whedon dialogue that made Buffy and Firefly fun (and Astonishing X-Men for that matter as well).

That changed with Friday's episode. I can't remember the title of the episode -- it's the one with segments broken up by interviews of the "urban legend" of the Dollhouse -- but it delivered what I've wanted from Dollhouse. It advanced and expanded the mythology, gave us some good hooks into the characters, and started teasing out Echo's personality. Good stuff. Maybe not great stuff, but definitely good stuff.

[Kris Johnson]

I've already said my piece on the topic of Dollhouse, and I make it a point to never be in the first wave of fans for a Joss Whedon project.

[Tabz]

We (Kim my co-host of Joss'd and I) were prepared to hate Dollhouse before the first episode. We had heard the horror stories about how not-so-great it was. Kim's never been a huge Eliza fan and I was worried it had been pared down by Fox.

But then we watched the pilot and loved it. Most people won't believe that we can be open-minded about Joss Whedon (we are huge fangirls) but trust me... we can.

Maybe it was because we could see where the stories could go. A lot of the disillusion people had was thinking there was only one story and once it was told, the show wouldn't have anywhere to go. But Kim and I from the getgo saw tons of stories and opportunities (that have only been really dredged up in this last Friday's episode.

Maybe it's because we immediately loved Topher (and I immediately loved Boyd). We have the people we root for right away in the morally gray world.

Maybe it's because we like something different. There's not a lot of TV shows you can compare Dollhouse to. It's not entirely SciFi, it's not entirely procedural, it's not entirely anything really. But playing with the ethics and morality and the darker side of our world is what keeps me tuning in.

Most people want escapism when they watch TV and I get that. You want to know the heroes win (almost all the time) and the bad guys get caught. But what do you do when faced with a bad guy who you sympathize with? Or a good guy who is obsessed? I think the general TV audience can't handle it.

All I can say it all gets better from Ep 6 (for the people who need stuff pulled together and pointed out to them) .