New Joss Whedon show announced: Dollhouse (1 Viewer)

[Josh Dial]

It means I dislike Joss Whedon, and most of what he is attached to (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), and, as such, I might be guilty of not paying attention to the simple things on Dollhouse (though I am honestly trying to rise above my dislike of Whedon, and judge the show on its own merits).

 

[Nick Martin]

Then isn't all this just a big waste of time for you?

 

[Hanson]

Well, there are numerous shots of Eliza in underwear and such. So it's not a total waste of time if you like that sort of thing.

 

[Nick Martin]

If that was truly the only reason to watch this show, I doubt anyone could seriously say they would watch it. I know I wouldn't watch it for that reason alone.

 

[Josh Dial]

Ahhh. See, I was under the impression Topher was literally the inventory of the technology. If he's really just the tech assigned to the LA office, then that completely answers one of my issues, thanks!

 

[Brian D H]

It was mentioned that selling fantasies is their business, but not their purpose. So perhaps the purpose is to turn all of their clients (ie: the rich and powerful) into sleeper dolls. Two possibilities:

1) Obviously if the dollhouses controls all of their clients they control the world. They are big-baddie evil, blah, blah. Echo, Alpha and Ballard have to save the world and we have a pretty good show.
2) What if things aren't so black and white? The dollhouse clients aren't just the rich and powerful - they are the rich and powerful who are WILLING TO SUPPORT THE EVIL PRACTICE OF TURNING PEOPLE INTO DOLLS. As was stated in the episode; all new technology will be used. What if the entire dollhouse project is to sacrifice a few "volunteers" to find out which rich and powerful individuals in the world are truly willing to use this technology for evil so that they can be eliminated? First indentify which powerful clients are evil, then kill them. This process can't be rushed because clients refer other clients. Only after identifying them all can they be killed. Afterwards the world will be ruled only by those who find the technology reprehensible. At that point they reveal it's existence and the world can be trusted not to abuse it further. This 11th hour twist would put Echo, Ballard and Alpha on the wrong side.

In other words, is the dollhouse trying to control it's clients or kill them?

 

[Patrick Sun]

I laughed whenever Topher and Adelle climbed over the railing.

 

[ScottH]

Kind of a let down after setting the bar so high last week. I want more of the FBI guy investigating the Dollhouse and less of the uninteresting weekly cases.

 

[Mikah Cerucco]

Adelle was looking rather nice.

I didn't enjoy this episode as much as last week's, but based on the previews for next week, it was a necessary step.

 

[mattCR]

I think it was the bridge you have to have for next week. It's now pretty clear that the Dollhouse is really a guinea pig testing station for Rossum a multi-national drug company (and other things).

 

[Will_B]

Agreed. The whole series has characters to appeal to different age sets -- Adelle for us in our upper 30s or even 40s, Eliza for the twenties, that alien Sierra for the kids...And on other forums people have been pleased that the FBI agent's next door neighbor love interest was heavier than is usually depicted. The show is trying to hit on all demographics. I hope it gets another season.

I *Loved* the ep.

Did it seem to anyone like there was a missing (i.e. deleted) scene in which Adelle and the uptight Dollhouse security guy must have had sex while tripping? They were too awkward with each other in the next-to-last scene considering that neither had seen the other stoned in the episode as presented. But for some reason they were.

I am glad that scene was deleted if it existed.

Because the Topher/Adelle situation was sweeter and more amusing.

 

[Josh Dial]

I also thought that entire scene was odd. I just chalked it up to the poor writing that was in most of this episode.

"We follow the red pipe for a while." *takes literally 5 steps* "We're here!"

???

 

[Scott-S]

Did anyone else notice that during the flashback scenes where Caroline was sitting around with her friends discussing all the outrage about animal cruelty etc. They were all eating big plates of what looked like meat. I wonder if that was deliberate?

 

[David Forbes]

I noticed that too, and thought the "red pipe" take-five-steps thing was amazingly stupid. It was like something out of a Get Smart episode.

I liked the show enough, but I'm not wowed by anything yet, and I wouldn't miss it if it got canceled.

I did think the scene with Adele and the head of security at the end was strange, especially considering they weren't even at the same location when the virus hit them!

 

[Hanson]

I've always had an issue with all of Joss' series, where there were frequently episodes were the main plot was uninteresting, but it was the further character and macrostory development that made it worth watching. This episode of Dollhouse was exactly that -- the whole plot was a redux of The Naked Time and in and of itself was uninteresting. The character and story arc stuff was watchable, but definitely not as propulsive as last week.

The whole "drugs affect everyone differently" points to the memory wipes not having the same affect on Echo as the other dolls.

 

[Steve Y]

Not a great episode, but I loved the irreverent humor in the sections with Topher/Adelle/Piano Boyd. (That's classic Joss Whedon right there.) It seemed like a "bridge" episode, so I forgave it for being a little boring - it's true that even in these ho-hum outings, we get important plot and character information.

It was cool seeing the dolls out & about giving orders to the head of security. (Victor in particular - nice to see him not weasly or wiped, even if he was playing out his programming)

The weakest sections were (I agree with you all here) Echo and the student "infiltrating" the building. It was poorly edited (probably for time). And you can only pull that, "this person seems nice! oh wait, he/she's evil!" so many times before the audience lets out a collective groan... please don't do it every freakin' episode!

Mainly though: not only was Echo/Caroline's backstory not very involving - I think that, as in Buffy, the lead character of this show has often been its weakest link. It's unfortunate. She does "strong personalities" OK, but her "innocent Alice" routine was pretty badly acted, and just took me out of the episode.

I maintain, as I did very early in this thread, that it's a mistake to "flash' back to Caroline's story so early in the series. I might just be saying that because so far it has proved incredibly pedestrian.

It might sound like I'm being overly harsh on a show that I've kind of championed for the most part, but overal, I don't sweat the "small stuff" on this show. It's MUCH harder to create a sci-fi / fantasy show set in the "real world". If you're on top of the gate to hell, or flying around in a spaceship, your audience is going to give you your benefit, but if you're in LA, among FBI agents, news reports and laboratories, your audience is going to nit-pick every probability into the ground.

My guess is that Topher is some sort of plant, and he inserted the programming into Echo last week himself. It would be just like this show to "divert" our attention away from... nothing at all. Though I'm mainly guessing that because this show seems to like playing the 180-degree character turnaround.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

I turned it off this week at this point in 2009 there is absolutely no reasone for Redux's of "The Naked Time/Now" even down tot eh little noise when they touch hands. Certainly is it lazy writing, but why would Whedon, even approve this, certainly there is enough topics within the show to explore like whay does Ballard even have a mission to huntdown the dollhouse, what is his connection to Caroline, that we should not be wasting time on this stuff, the scenes with Topher and Olivia Williams reminded me of the Picard/Crusher scenes, which were about as badly acted and written in 1987 !. I can overlook Ducshu's terrible acting and Topher's annoying character if you at least throw me an interesting story, last week's was the best of the series so far, but this week was a huge backstep.

 

[Will_B]

What is this "Naked Time" everyone is referring to?

 

[Will_B]

Yeah, everyone on every forum got a laugh out of that. I expect that was supposed to be two scenes, and involve some jogging in between to make the set feel like it was more than 5 steps deep. People also noticed the way that Echo did not have to get off her bike since she was magically already standing beside it the moment she parked.

Some of the rough editing in this episode was due to the performances. When the actors were pretending to be high, they were moving their heads around a lot more than usual, so you saw that there were more mismatches when shots changed during conversations.

 

[Hanson]

Not a Trekkie, eh?

The Naked Time - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia