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| Saturday, February 14, 2009 11:42 AM |
| On the Viewer - Dollhouse (Episode 1 - "Ghost") |
 by Fëanor |
WARNING: Here there be spoilers.
poppy and I caught the first episode of Joss Whedon's new show last night. The premise is that there's a secret, illegal company that houses a group of agents (called actives) who have their personalities and memories wiped clean, like blank slates (except... even more blank). When someone comes to the company and requests help with some kind of task, one of the agents is activated and loaded up with an aggregate personality and memory that's appropriate for that task. As far as the active knows, she is that person, and performing that task is what she's best at. Each active has a handler, and the active knows she has to come in at the end of the mission for a "treatment," although the active is not aware the "treatment" consists of formatting her brain, erasing all memory of who she just was and what she just did, leaving her blank and empty and ready for the next mission.
It's a fascinating concept, and really pretty perfect for a TV series - in fact, it's almost a metaphor, not only for the episodic nature of TV, but also for the constant transformations that an actor must perform. The first episode opens with Eliza Dushku's character discussing something with Adelle DeWitt, who is the woman in charge at the Dollhouse. What exactly they're discussing is never made explicit, but it slowly becomes clear that Dushku's character has done some questionable things in her life and now becoming an active at the Dollhouse seems like the only option for her. Sort of as a punishment, apparently. We don't learn much about who Dusku's character was before she became an active - not even her name. Once she becomes an active, she is referred to only as Echo. The first mission we see her on involves her hanging out with a rich young dude for a weekend and having as much fun with him as possible for his birthday. The two of them seem to forge a real connection. As she's returning to the Dollhouse, she wonders whether she ought to maybe go back to him after her treatment and see if the two of them can build an actual relationship. But of course, after her treatment, all memory of him disappears, and she roams the Dollhouse like an emotionless child, curious about why some kind of painful operation is being performed on another girl in the lab, but not that curious, and certainly not afraid. (But still, might be time to keep the lab door closed from now on, huh guys?)
Dr. Claire Saunders (played by Amy Acker - Fred from Angel) looks after Echo's health. She, like a number of other people at the Dollhouse, still seems pretty freaked out by the actives. She also has some odd scars on her face and a mysterious past which remains mysterious in this episode. The young man who loads and unloads the actives' personalities, and who seems to be the brains behind the science and technology at the Dollhouse, is Topher Brink (Fran Kranz), and he's really pretty creepy. Even he seems a little anxious around the actives, as if he's not entirely sure what they'll do, or how he should feel about them, but he goes about erasing them and rewriting them with nary a pang, and seems pretty pleased with what he can do. The way he looks the actives up and down (and the way he looks Dr. Saunders up and down, for that matter) is pretty disturbing.
One of the few people at the Dollhouse who seems to have a real conscience about all this, and a strong moral core, is Echo's handler, Boyd Langton (Harry J. Lennix). Perhaps one reason why he's still not totally okay with the way things are done is that he's new to the job. But he's also professional and efficient. Probably the most likable character on the show so far.
Another character we're introduced to is a cop named Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett - Karl "Helo" Agathon from Battlestar Galactica). He's been assigned to find and shut down the Dollhouse, but many people, including one of Ballard's immediate superiors, don't believe the Dollhouse even exists; they think it's just some ridiculous urban legend. Still, Ballard's stuck on the case, apparently because someone higher up believes it's worth investigating. And Ballard's determined to crack it, even if it means jeopardizing other investigations and getting in trouble with his boss. It's a pretty classic cop show dynamic - tough, determined policeman doing the job his way while his angry boss yells at him for it - but Dollhouse presents the dynamic in an interesting way, intercutting Ballard's dressing down by his boss with a scene of Ballard sparring in a boxing ring. As his boss asks Ballard if he can back off of the case a bit, Ballard has been beaten down in the ring. In the office, Ballard says, yes, he can back off, but in the ring, he gets back up and viciously pummels his opponent to the ground. It's clear Ballard is not the backing off type.
Ballard is convinced Russian human traffickers are involved in providing the Dollhouse with its agents (and it would be pretty interesting, morally and ethically, if it turns out he's right), so he pursues that lead in this episode, pushing a petty criminal around a bit in the hopes of shaking some information loose.
Meanwhile, it's time for Echo's next mission. A successful businessman's daughter is kidnapped, and he's told he cannot call the police, so he comes to the Dollhouse and asks for help. Miss DeWitt agrees to provide an expert negotiator, in the form of Echo. Interestingly, the mission objective is not justice, and not capture or elimination of the kidnappers; it's merely to make sure the transaction goes smoothly - that the girl is returned and no one gets hurt. Also, DeWitt tells her client not to mention the Dollhouse to the negotiator; it will only confuse her. Despite this, the client does make repeated, if oblique, references to the negotiator about her true nature, which is the apparent cause of the negotiator having a sudden and disturbing flashback to Echo's memories of the Dollhouse. I was sure Dollhouse's agents would start to short circuit eventually, but I'm a bit surprised it started happening already, in the first episode!
Anyway, despite that one malfunction, Echo's new personality seems perfect for the job. She's calm, cool, collected, and professional, and is maneuvering the negotiation toward a positive conclusion for everyone - until the exchange begins, she recognizes one of the kidnappers, and has a minor breakdown. It turns out he's the same one who kidnapped the woman she thinks she is, and he's a really twisted bastard who doesn't give back the kids he takes. Instead, after the money is acquired, he'll kill the rest of the kidnappers and keep the girl for his own personal use. Echo chokes this out, and the exchange explodes in gunplay. The client is shot, as is one of the kidnappers (thanks to the intervention of Langton, Echo's handler), and the other three kidnappers (including the twisted one) get away with the girl. Echo's handler brings her in, but on the way back, Langton realizes she knows what the kidnapper will do, and is probably the only one who can track him down, stop him, and get the girl back. He pleads with DeWitt to postpone Echo's treatment so she can complete this mission. At first DeWitt is not convinced - the mission has already failed spectacularly, and getting justice was never the true goal - but Langton turns her around by pointing out that the Dollhouse's overall goal is, supposedly, to help people, and they have a real chance to do that here. Next we see him running to the treatment room, where he finds Echo already getting up out of the chair. He slumps in disappointment, believing he's too late, but then Echo takes on the mannerisms of the negotiator and takes charge again, and he realizes he was in time after all. It's a tense and exciting sequence.
The episode is called "Ghost," and indeed it's full of them. Echo, as the negotiator, tells us that the kidnapper used to mock her by saying, "You can't fight a ghost." Echo herself is a ghost; it turns out the negotiator whose personality she's adopted killed herself a few years ago. When Echo gets to the kidnappers' new hideout, she manages to convince the two other men that one of their number is going to turn on them, and they turn on him first, shooting him down. "You can't fight a ghost," she reminds him. The remaining kidnappers are content to let Echo leave with the girl, but shots have been fired, so a backup agent barges in and eliminates the kidnappers, then brings in a cleanup team to wipe away all evidence of their presence. Still, the girl has been saved, and the negotiator and many other ghosts have been laid to rest.
But the episode's not over yet! At the very end the folks at Dollhouse are worried about some new trouble involving someone called Alpha, and we cut away to a home which has apparently been invaded and its residents killed by this same Alpha. Now Alpha is watching a home movie of Echo, before she was Echo, on the TV. Is this her parents' house, and has he killed them? Why? Is he a former agent gone bad? I'm definitely intrigued.
I've never been a huge fan of Eliza Dushku as an actor, but she handles herself reasonably well here. The rest of the cast is even better; I was particularly happy to see the friendly faces of Tahmoh Penikett and Amy Acker. As I mentioned already, the action is tense and exciting, and the concepts are fascinating and are being dealt with in a complex, intelligent fashion. The story is dark and twisted, but also really moving and effective. It's hard to say yet if this will be a great show, of course, but it has great potential, and I'm definitely sold on watching more. |
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