http://www.fox.com/dollhouse/ Who else has their fingers crossed that this is solid? I've heard the pilot had to be reshot (true?) and that critics are thinking Dushku isn't up to the acting demands. But the premise is cool, and Whedon can write like a bastard, so I'm still hopeful.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) Well... I'm a Whedon fan and thought Dushku was great as Faith the Vampire Slayer... but I feel like I need to "give this one some more chances to grab me"... and that's not too promising for the future of this type of show, IMO.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) An interesting concept to be sure, but the pilot only just managed to grab me. That said, the entire premise of the show has barely been touched thus far. It looks like next week should get things rolling a bit more. If Wheadon has one weakness it is that he tells a story slowly. That normally is a strength, but considering the general population has the attention span of a three year-old, it doesn't always work out well for him.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) She was the lead in the show Tru Calling and I thought she was great there.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) I just watched it, and I really liked it so far. I hope it lasts more than 4 episodes. I always enjoy seeing Reed Diamond. I just wonder about the long term outline of the story. An organization like Dollhouse seems to me to be unstable - they can't stand up to any sort of exposure or direct conflict, and if exposed to any will have to fold up shop and hide. The problem is that the specialness of the character only exists within Dollhouse, and if it goes away or she goes rogue, the show will be something very different. And it has to at some point because a) what I said about the nature of the organization and b) Whedon never ever lets characters sit still for too long.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) Yeah, I'm going to have to give this one a few more chances--the pilot didn't grab me much. It didn't feel much like a Whedon script, to be honest. No humor. No real interesting dialogue. No development of characters. Felt almost like an Alias knock-off without any of the brains or pacing. And Dushku is no Garner. I'm also less bullish on the premise now that I've seen it played out. As spejic notes, the whole thing feels like a house of cards. And the bigger problem is that without any continuity in the main character, it's going to be tough to care about her arc.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) The premise of the show beyond the first episode, at as I understand it, was only vaguely touched upon in the first episode.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) Just caught it on the tivo. My wife was really in to it -- I was not so much. Possibly due to a fear of commitment -- the last time a Whedon show was on Friday nights on Fox, it was cruelly taken from us before its time. Anyways, we'll keep watching, but I agree with a lot of the comments here -- the organization has a lot of infrastructure for requiring such a low profile, so it seems unlikely in the extreme that they can keep themselves secret for very long. They are also lacking in morals in a big way so it can be hard to watch a show that doesn't seem to have any good guys -- Echo herself doesn't count because she has no personality, so the only people we can really root for are the handler guy and maybe the obsessed FBI guy. The first job Echo was doing made her seem like a really expensive prostitute. At least they were able to rescue the little girl, although the organization keeping the ransom money was a nice touch.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) This pretty much sums up how I feel. My wife liked it, but it didn't really pull me in.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) That's both the good thing and the bad thing. Whedon does not build houses of cards without plans to detonate them. I mean, what organizations did his other creations belong to.. Springfield High School? The Council of Watchers? Angel Investigations? Wolfram and Hart? Families? Groups of friends? What happened to all of them in the end (or at least some point in the middle)? Hint: big pyrotechnics budgets. He could be setting up the biggest change of direction in any TV show ever. The problem is that Fox might not keep the show around until it gets good (and I have 100% faith it would). Viewers are not patient, and Fox less so.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) The premise that someone would knowingly subject themselves to having their memories erased and brains scrambled liked that is not entirely plausible and very disturbing. Would anyone here knowingly take that risk. Other than drug addicts and people on the very fringe of society with nothing to live for and looking for a quick buck would take the risk presented in this show.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) It seemed like at the beginning, Eliza Dushku was being given the choice of joining that organization, or going to prison or something worse. And Miss Dewitt or whatever her name was (not a good sign when you can't remember any of the character's names except for the ones named after the phonetic letters of the alphabet, e.g. Alpha, Echo, Sierra) promised Eliza that she would spend five years doing this, doing good things, instead of going to prison or whatever. Not that they kept that promise, since it seems like the #1 request of an organization like that would be for a really talented whore. And I thought there was a comment from either the handler or the geeky guy that all of the "actors" would have been spending the rest of their life in prison if not for the Dollhouse. So I think they tried to establish that the "actors" are people who didn't have a lot of options other than signing up for this job where they would spend a number of years being used and not remembering anything.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) I'm sure we'll learn more about Echo's backstory as we go along. It's not like we knew very much about the Tams at the beginning of Firefly.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) The hints from interviews are that Echo's personality or memory or something is going to start re-emerging. That kind of started when she had the argument with the client and had a quick flashback of the girl in the lab. Also they indicated some kind of glitch in the technology that can happen if actives are told about the Dollhouse. But then they bring the actives back to the Dollhouse while still active, so that's confusing.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) Just watched the first episode. I really liked it. Thought it was up to Whedon standards. The premise is fun and has lots of potential. Sure, there's some serious suspension of disbelief, especially regarding the ability of an operation that large and sophisticated to exist and function in secret. I also wonder how many different jobs they're going to be able to cast Echo in... as billreeves said, it seems like what clients would mostly want is a really talented whore. All in all, though, I thought it was very entertaining. Dushku was good, and it will be fun to see her play different characters. I'm curious to see where the show will go with its premise.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) We just watched tonight (thank you DVR!). So are females the target audience? Seems like my experience makes it unanimous - my wife liked it better than I - and adding in Demosthenes' vote, it is a bit surprising that a show that seems poised to serve as a sort of male fantasy (as per the Fox advertising campaign featuring Dushku and Glau seemed to promise) that the guys are not that into it.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) It felt like a weird mix between "Quantum leap" (the premise of being another character every week) and the Matrix (the technology used to make that possible) to me. I agree with the sentiment expressed earlier that there were very few sympathetic characters in the first episode. Not even the FBI guy was really likable. Only Echo's handler was. It was good enough for me to want to see episode two though.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) Maybe the attractive fantasy is that a woman gets to do an impossible variety of different exciting things all with a high degree of competence, not that a guy gets a girl that does exactly what he wants.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) Is the guy who gave Echo a helicopter ride Sierra's handler? She was the one that was the SWAT type personality in that rescue, right?
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) He seemed more like a deputy director of sorts, and I believe she was the SWAT chick in the rescue.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) Just caught it recently and while it looks a bit contrived and formulaic, the pacing is much quicker than what I've been used to seeing and Whedon didn't beat around the bush too much and moved from point to point. It seemed repetitive and you knew the direction but so long as this is only the beginning to set up what is to come, I'll give it another go. And Dushku is way fun to watch.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) OK, watched the second episode and I don't like it. It's just really unpleasant to watch. Confirmed that the Dollhouse organization is primarily a really expensive cathouse -- think about it, you have the technology to make anyone into anything, and you make whores? The only likeable character gets shot through the gut with an arrow -- I thought for a minute that Whedon was going to pull a twist worthy of M. Night Shyamalan and kill him off in the second episode -- fortunately, he's still around. My wife still likes it, though.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) Yes, but why else would anyone spend a large amount of money for a person to do an action requiring high skill? Because of the limitations of the technology, they can't be famous entertainment or athletic figures, and there are no other jobs that could financially justify a multi-million payout for only a few days of work. And jobs like bodyguards and assassins are actually low paying, and you wouldn't have demand for expensive ones except in very rare circumstances. From the stories I heard during the high point of the dot.com era, people will spend quite a bit for rented loving if they have the bucks and a desire for something unique. What I don't get is the resources of Dollhouse. They need a crazy amount of money for the science stuff, the nice pad, and the bribe money to keep people off their backs. Ok. That's just barely in the realm of suspension of belief. But they have their own personal army on standby, with at least one $10+ million helicopter and all the upkeep and maintenance that implies. And they have access to, and maneuvering rights over (if not ownership of) more than one communication satellite. This is only in the realm of governments or large multinationals. They can also make people's records disappear. Something further has to be going on. This might all be a test ground for a government black op. The episode itself had a often used plot, but it had one or two genuine moments of shock. It was entertaining for me.
Re: "Dollhouse" Premiere Tonight (R) My thoughts were very similar. Especially at the end of the episode, when the helicopters and SWAT-esque security team come in to rescue Echo and her handler... I was thinking that seemed like a lot of resources to save two essentially expendable figures within the context of their very large organization. Also, with all the sophistication it would require to run their operation and take care of the (apparently not infrequent) crisis situations and keep the whole thing secret, they got duped by some guy's fake ID? It was "intricate" enough to pass their rigorous background checks, but then after the guy goes nuts they can suddenly tell his jacket was all phony? I mean, this is an organization that pretty much specializes in phony ID's... Another thing that is bothering me. The tech guy (Topher or something?) is really annoying, and not in a good way. I find him distinctly unlikeable. The other characters range from somewhat likeable to indifferent, and I'm using "likeable" to also mean cool or neat in some way. Any way. That character really bothers me though. On the other hand, I will admit that the episode had some good suspenseful moments and did actually make me say "woah" out loud at least once. I am still intrigued by the premise and drawn in by what appears to be a developing arc. It seems like the show will alternate between self-contained plots based on Echo's missions/engagements, and plots which move this arc forward and reveal more information about her backstory and what is going on with Alpha. Clearly the show is hinting at something more involved. I will watch it develop as long as it doesn't start to really bore me.