Did I Fall Asleep?

Back in the fall, I checked out the Pilot of Dollhouse because of my first love of Joss Whedon's Firefly. To my (and many others) disappointment, it seemed awful. With such a fantastic premise of loading unique personalities into child-minded dolls (or "actives"), the episode was just about some lame hostage negotiation. With the mountain of fall television to plough through, I immediately stopped watching Dollhouse.

10 months later, with a $24 steal from Amazon.ca, I picked up Season 1 on Blu-Ray. Hearing good things about later episodes and wanting to see more Eliza Dushku on 1080p, I started watching the show again from the beginning, putting faith that the episodes will get better in time.

It certainly did. The mythology just builds and builds exponentially in every episode. A couple episodes later, you'll realize that the early episodes were just ways to demonstrate the capabilities of the Dollhouse technology. You become more invested in the morality of the Dollhouse management and the slowly becoming-self-aware Echo (hottie Eliza). As a viewer, you get the feeling that the Dollhouse concept is wrong--using clueless people for sex, adventure etc--but the writers make the management look like their actions are justified. With the 13 episodes, things move pretty quickly.

8/10



"I know you've heard colorful rumors about what an 'Active' is. Robots, zombie slaves — they are, of course, quite the opposite. The 'Active' is the truest soul among us."

"Tell me about the Dollhouse."
"Uh, it's pink and it opens up and there's teeny furniture and you put the boy doll on top of the girl doll and we learn about urges."