Dollhouse - season 2

 I just saw a post on another forum about season 2 starting tonight. Before that post, I hadn't seen a single promo or advertisement for the show's season 2 premier.

I will definitely watch, I like the show, but it seems like Fox has already abandoned it.

-Keith

This was an excellent premiere in my opinion.  Continued right from the high note that the season ended on.

Best episode for acting in the whole series.  This show works a lot better as an ensemble, where you feel like all the actors have a role.. I really like the direction this is taking.

 

Easily the best script for dialog.  I kind of feel like there was a writing sea change though.  I -really- liked Whiskey's subplot, which I thought was on fire.. every time those exchanges happened, or Whiskey was on screen trying to sort her situation out.. that was fantastic stuff.

Damned fine episode. I'm sad to see Acker go as I know she signed on with another show (she'll no doubt show up again down the road). She was so good in this episode. Especially the scenes with Whiskey and Topher (Rule of thumb - never say no to a half naked Amy Acker folks!). Whiskey's entire sub-plot was just amazingly well done IMHO. 

While Acker is moving on, we did get Alexis Denisof in what looks to be a recurring role. More Wesley can't be a bad thing as he's a fine actor and I'm curious to see whether he goes for a more bad buy role here. I didn't expect Bamber to play the villain but he handled himself well. Though I find it hard to not see Apollo.:)

Everything tonight clicked for me. It was the perfect balance between an engagement of the week style narrative with the perfect amount of macro-story related exposition. It honestly reminded me of the original pilot on the BD box set in terms of pacing which is a great compliment as I loved the original pilot!

I hope the remainder of the season is as strong as the season premiere!
 

Someone on Whedonesque said that Whedon promised to make the most of Amy's three episodes this season, so I guess she'll be in 3 episodes total. Amazing scenes between Saunders and Topher -- if felt like 2 or 3 episodes of their lives crammed into one.

Usually now I'd be craving the rest of the season, to marathon at least 4 or 5 in a row, but this show is so zig-zag in its path that I think I'll be fine just waiting for one a week, thank you.

Really good episode. Didn't much care for the story about the wedding and bomb-maker, but there were moments when it seemed clear that Eliza must have taken acting classes over the summer. She's getting better.

And I was pleased to see Topher's lab assistant is still there... and the new set with Topher's bunk ...and the improved opening sequence ...and JOSS what the heck were you doing with that Eliza and Amy kiss flashback!?? Trying to dampen the pants of a million+ viewers? Not a complaint, but I feel I was being taken advantage of! Which is of course the nature of the dollhouse...

A heavy episode, well done.

Next week's preview looks like filler. But at least the premiere was this good.

The Amy Acker stuff was really good tonight. Even if the Echo plot wasn't top notch, it was still fun seeing Jamie Bamber in something other than Battlestar Galactica.



In terms of acting, I think Eliza Dushku looks like Meryl Streep when you compare her to Dichen Lachman (Sierra). Lachman just seems to be acting all the time and couldn't come off any more unnatural if she tried.

To my knowledge, Dichen had 1 line last night.  (or am I wrong) I mean about 30 seconds.. so hard to say anything about her performance.  But I thought there were several episodes last year where she was very good in bit parts.

I watched this again this morning, and Acker just absolutely stole that show.  Her "sub" plot became the plot that mattered and filled in so many gaps in the show mythos.  Why she was created the way she was; the conflict that they ave when they do longterm assignments, how a longterm assignment who realizes they are a doll can't surrender the body because they know it's "death" to those experiences...

That whole storyline was brilliant stuff.

I don't like the opening credit sequence for this show at all. I understand all the love for Eliza (physically, at least) but it's too much to see nothing but her in credits and no one else.

I'm just happy to see Denisof again. It's been too long.

Now if only they could set up a crossover with David Boreanaz' Agent Booth teaming up with Denisof's senator to investigate the Dollhouse....it'll never happen but damn that would be amazing.

Plus, it'd be nice to see something other than "Battlestar" getting all the references. I never watched that show so I don't know anything about Penikett or Bamber other than what I read in these threads.

 Looks like this show won't last much longer if ratings continue to be as low as the season opener...

Here we go again.   I wonder how well DVD and Blu-ray sales did though, if maybe that justifies keeping it on the whole season.  I'd think it probably would since this is a Whedon show.

Great premiere which really tackled Paul_Scott's complaint that seeing the future in "Epitaph One" would make everything leading up to it seem tedious. What we didn't get to see in that future was anything having to do with the main cast except for Whiskey. Most importantly, we didn't get to see what happened to the original Echo/Caroline; the first foundations of the sanctuary preteen-Echo and the rest of the "Epitaph" crew were embarking off towards were laid in the final scenes of this episode. I still love the profound difference between how the serial killer mind handles being essentially omnipotent (Alpha) and how Caroline's mind is handling being essentially omnipotent. This show is definitely positing a huge nature over nuture argument.

"Brothers" is an absolutely brutal lead-in for this show. Say what you will about "Terminator: TSCC", but the two shows made a thematically sound block. "Dollhouse" would probably be better off leading at 8pm, because at least then it could catch some of the viewers who already out on the town by the time 9:00 PM rolls around. I dunno; I just really don't want this show to die.

Dollhouse #2x01 was one of my favorite premieres (behind House). It was enjoyable enough last season, but this is the first time I've cared if it sticks around. Previously, I was Drago on the matter.

I'm not a fan of blaming a lead-in for a show's performance. Certainly a lead-in can help a show, but if a show resonates with the audience, they'll find it no matter what. The real problem is SciFi generally struggles on network TV in prime time. On the flip side, it's generally more expensive and difficult to make. Not the best recipe, but I just try to enjoy what we get.

Sci-fi is my favourite genre but I find it so difficult to start watching a new series when chances are it won't succeed. I think Stargate and Star Trek were the exceptions. Both of those franchises had good long runs. Unfortunately I think Dollhouse's days are numbered. I hate that because I'm really becoming invested in the series. I'm still upset about Firefly another excellent series pulled way too early.

I think there's a bit of a self-fufilling prophecy when it comes to Scifi show, too. It's a genre where a disproportionate number of fans say, "I'm not going to bother watching it live; I'll wait for the DVD", sometimes justified as: "It's going probably going to get cancelled anyway, so why get invested now? If it survives, I can catch it on DVD."

"Dollhouse" might be an example of where that works out. For the second season, the studio, rather than the network, is fronting almost the entire bill. With "Epitaph One", Joss Whedon experimented to see if he could go back to working on a "Buffy"-sized budget and found that he could. The production costs were slashed dramatically. (The show is now shot with a younger, cheaper crew in 24P digital instead of 35mm like the first season; judging by 2x01, I'd say they managed to approximate the extraordinarily sleek look of the first season about 90 percent.) Because it's cheaper than most network shows, because its DVD sales are so strong, and because the studio's fronting a much higher percentage of the bill than normal it's not as ratings dependent as most shows on TV.

All that being said, I'm still not sure the show can survive with only 2.5 million viewers. FOX could probably run "House" repeats and get more viewers than that. I know they were willing to accept 3 million viewers and change when they picked up the show for a season season, though.

2X02 wasn't my favorite episode, but the horror moment was pretty creepy.  "Mommy's home."  It was nice for Ballard to see November / Mellie / Madeleine Costley.

I was a bit confused by Topher saying he couldn't do anything to Ballard unless he wiped him, but then he offers Mellie enhancements. It'd seem he could do what Ballard asked by downloading his personality, making whatever changes Ballard wanted, wiping, then uploading.

Can't get enough of Echo? Get Virtual Echo for your desktop. http://www.fox.com/dollhouse/virtualecho/
Edited by Mikah Cerucco - 10/3/09 at 6:47am

It definitely seemed like a regression back to the season one stand-alone model. I was a little sad to see the "Tara Butters/Michele Fazekas" writing credit, because their decision to jump ship from their own show to "Reaper" was the final nail in that show's coffin.

Dollhouse dropped to a series low A18-49 rating/share of 0.8/3 (2.09 million viewers) last night. It even scored lower than a repeat broadcast of The Forgotten on ABC. I can't imagine that Fox will let this go on for much longer... Too bad, it's a decent enough show but it just never seemed to attract enough viewers.
Edited by pitchman - 10/3/09 at 9:43am

I feel bad for the fans of the show, but after the series premiere, I decided to cut my losses and allocate my 42 minutes elsewhere.  I am apparently not alone.

Not entirely stand-alone. A lot of long-arc info was conveyed. It is starting to explain what makes Echo unique in her ability to remember (or at least have some sort of feeling memory) about her assignments, whereas none of the other dolls do -- they're starting to suggest that the brain may not be the seat of the soul, so to speak (at least not for Echo). And it's teasing us with the possibilities of who the informer is. Ballard also stated plainly that he is trying to bring down the Dollhouse, whereas before it was iffy whether he took the job and just accepted that the most he could do was try to be a good influence. And Echo is getting more personality even when she's wiped. (I liked her command to the car to "go").

I didn't know the show had begun again, but I found out just in time last week. All I'm expecting is 13 episodes. Whether they're aired, or simply produced and sold on DVD, looks like an open question with these kinds of ratings.


Edited by Will_B - 10/3/09 at 2:40pm

^ Even if Fox ordered 13 episodes, I'd be surprised if they can't pull the plug whenever they want.

I believe Eliza tweeted that they've shot 8 episodes already, so they probably did pay for 13. They'd probably still have to pay everyone even if they didn't actually make them, so they may as well make them. I hope.

Pull the plug on airing whenever they want? Sure. But pull the plug on paying for what they've ordered? I'm not the authority, but I doubt strongly it's that easy. If they've aired 2 episodes, but the producers have filmed 8, someone has to pay for those additional 6? The talent did the work (writing, acting, directing, etc.) so they get paid. Are the producers expected to eat that? The talent? No. The only reason they'd have filmed those 8 is because Fox ordered them. So Fox has to pay for them.
 
Now, if Fox today went and said, "We don't want the ones you haven't filmed yet," that's an even more complex issue. The writers are undoubtedly ahead of episode 8 if #2x08 has already been filmed. They'd get paid, right?

Like I said, I don't know the details of how the contracts are set up. Without knowing  the contracts, I see no guarantee that if Fox cancelled the series tomorrow, we'd still get all 13 episodes on DVD.

As someone else said in one of these threads, if Fox were to cancel Dollhouse, do they have something else that'll get more ratings to put in that slot? If not, they may as well just continue airing Dollhouse.

Anyway, it's nice to know that 8 are in the bag. That's at least 6 more to see on DVD even if they aren't aired.

 None of this was really new information though. We know Echo's ability to "remember" is a result of her composite event under Alpha's custody. We also know there was more limited interaction between her identities before the composite event. That the soul is different from the identity was made clear in the final episodes of last season, when Alpha reverted to sociopathic tendencies even after his original sociopath identity had been wiped. Echo is not violent, even in the face of the composite event, because Caroline was not violent. The idea of influencing the unconcious parts of the mind to release the hormones necessary for lactation raises interesting questions, but I'm not sure they were interesting enough to build an episode around.

Which leaves the storyline with the Senator. They're just dipping their toe into the water for that one.

I have to agree with you here. The network's already ordered the 13 episodes, so we'll definitely get those. I wouldn't expect a pick-up for the back nine, however.

The writers have already pointed out on Twitter they are very aware of low ratings.  Several fans are at least encouraging them to write up a good "closure" if all they have left is 4 unfilmed eps (they are apparently in the mid of filming 9, with 8 basically finished)

Its a tough row to hoe for any series when the weakest link is with the main star.  This last episode illustrated Dushku's limitations as an actress perfectly.  Her scene with the baby being taken away was wasted.  Dollhouse is at its best when the show focuses on the characters around Echo.

I keep thinking of how great this show could be with someone like Yvonne Strahovski as Echo.

I think it was, but not that episode.



Well that was my question. I didn't know how many they ordered, and I didn't know what happens in the case where an order is cancelled before work on episodes (which are part of that order) has started.

Slight diversion. I don't think Drive ever made it to DVD.