Dollhouse: Suicide Run

OK. OK. OK? OK! OK. Holy shit! How the hell did I miss this?

There will be some Dollhouse (and Age of Apocalypse) spoilers moving forward, so, you know, enter at your own peril.

Awhile back, I tried watching the Firefly pilot on Hulu and bailed halfway through. I don’t remember why, but I do remember that I didn’t really enjoy it. The other day, I saw that Netflix had the entire season of Firefly available for Instant Streaming, so I figured I should give it a second chance. I figured I might have been put off by the Whedon-worship the first time, but now that I haven’t read anything recently about how Firefly was the greatest thing ever created by man, I can go in with an open mind and no hype.

Goddamn. Where was I from 2002-2003? This show really does live up to the hype! It’s incredible. I have converted to the Church of Whedon and my life is better for it. But now, I’m empty again. Firefly only lasted a season, I don’t intend to watch the movie, and Buffy and Angel are too big for me to handle right now. A friend of mine suggested I check out Dollhouse.

I remember seeing an ad for it back in 2009. Like, one ad…ever. I learned that Patton Oswalt was guest starring in an episode in season one, which meant that I was required, by law, to watch the episode on Hulu. Like Firefly, didn’t really care for it, and I think, like last time, I was put off by the entire Internet masturbating to Whedon. Go ahead. Think about that for a second. It’s not a pleasant image, right?

Right. So you can understand where I’m coming from.

When a friend suggests something to me, I pretty much, usually, at least try to give it a chance. I found Dollhouse on Netflix Instant Streaming and watched both seasons.

For those who don’t give a damn about spoilers but have no idea what Dollhouse is, Dollhouse, created by Joss Whedon, was a sci-fi drama on the Fox network from 2009-2010. The concept was that people down on their luck would give up their bodies for 5 years, and afterwards, they’d be free and be paid a boatload of cash for their indentured servitude. During those 5 years, the individual’s personality would be stored on cartridge and the body would become an empty shell, a “Doll”, who would be uploaded with different personalities depending on what the client wanted. Dolls could be anything from a sexual fantasy to a terrorist negotiator. The concept had potential.

Season one was pretty good, ignoring the problem the overall series had (I’ll write about that later). I know Fox forced Whedon to make the season filler heavy, as to make it more welcoming for people who never saw the show before, and I know it got a lot of flak from fans because of it, but I kinda liked it. We got to see what Dolls could do besides JUST sexing people up (which was what I kept assuming each episode would be about, like Sex in the City but for geeks). Meanwhile, Paul Ballard, an FBI agent keeps trying to find proof about the Dollhouse, which keeps the story moving. I also loved when actors from previous Whedon shows popped up. Not only does Whedon (usually) find great actors for his shows, but it also felt a little bit like a treat for the fans. And let’s not forget the episode Epitaph One, which is set several years into the future where the Dollhouse technology has essentially brought about the end of the world. I won’t get to into that particular episode until later, but it’s very important for the overall series.

The show did not do well, rating-wise, but it still got a second season. I felt that the second season allowed Whedon and friends to tie up the loose ends, so we could have a proper ending, and so they could do whatever the hell they wanted. They delivered on both parts. Especially the latter.

The season started off again, fairly similar to the first season, but it slowly became more story driven and near the end, it just went crazy. And I mean that as a compliment. One of the reasons why Epitaph One was so important was that it showed that Rossum, the giant parent company of the Dollhouse, was going to use the Dollhouse’s technology to destroy the world. Before that episode, the moral dilemma was that the Dolls were prostitutes or slaves, but now the moral issue is that the Dollhouse, whose side the audience is supposed to be on, is now responsible for all the future destruction we witnessed in Epitaph One. Instead of being misunderstood, the Dollhouse is now the root of evil, the apple of knowledge from the Garden of Eden. Also, in Epitaph One we see what becomes to the main cast, and it is not pretty. Epitaph One sets up season a much darker future. Knowing the grim fates of these characters, the second season reflects that and is darker in every sense: characters, plots, plot twists. Everything that happens has a depressing tone to it, which is completely fine, all things considered.

Dolhouse season 2 is an anomaly in television. From Fox’s perspective, it really was a pity season more than anything, but for Whedon, who realized there would be no season 3 at the start of season 2, it was a chance to make something unlike anything I’ve seen on television. Dollhouse season 2 is a television drama that, simply, has no concern of self-preservation, and as a result, not only does it do whatever the fuck it wants, it has several seasons worth of character development and plot twists revealed in a very short time span. In an interview with IGN, Whedon mentioned that he created the Firefly characters and the world with the assumption that it would go on for seven years. I’m pretty sure that he also thought ahead for Dollhouse. Granted, probably not 6 seasons ahead, but undoubtedly he had a lot of major things in mind, which are revealed in the last few episodes. But it never felt melodramatic, like a soap opera. Instead, it came off as fantastically dense, as if there never was any time to breathe and relax because the next big thing was just about to happen. The second season ended with Epitaph Two, which continues from Epitaph One, but focuses on what happened to the Dollhouse crew.

And that’s just what I love about Sci-fi apocalypse story chapters, where all the characters we know and love are faced with the ultimate foe: surviving in a ruined world. Will they rise above it and become heroes, or will they abandon their morals to survive, no matter what they might need to do? And, best of all, will they even last to the end of the story? There was an X-men miniseries called “Age of Apocalypse” where Prof. X died a young man and, in his absence, Magneto founded the X-Men, who battle a mutant called Apocalypse, who has pretty much destroyed the world. The reason why it’s one of my favorite comic book miniseries is the same reason why I loved the last half of Dollhouse’s second season:  no character is sacred, so none are safe. It’s real danger. Hell, in Age of Apocalypse, not only do, like, a fourth of the heroes die while on their mission, every character in the story is killed in the last few panels. Dollhouse doesn’t go this far, but it doesn’t hold any of its character’s lives as sacred either. I literally talked, yelled and even begged at my computer monitor watching those last few episodes, because it took characters I cared for, played with their lives and tossed them into the trash. It’s an amazing experience, but there’s one thing that bothers me.

There are plenty of awesome characters in Dollhouse, like Topher Brink and Bennett Halverson, but the giant turd that I think is the show’s Achilles’ heel is Echo, the Doll played by Eliza Dushku. The two reasons why she's the worst thing about the show are:

Reason #1) Echo has, like, three dozen personalities imprinted into her at once, and combines all of them in her head, forming her own personality. Instead of the show being more of an ensemble show with a few characters being special, the show essentially makes Echo Super-Chuck-Jesus-Neo and everyone else just obsesses over her. This means that the entire show rests on her shoulders, and that is a HUGE problem because…

Reason #2) Eliza Dusku cannot really act. Is she pretty? Yes. Very yes. Can she act? She can only play variations of three characters and she only does two of them well. Those characters are “party girl”, “girl next door”, and “tough girl”. She completely fails at the last one because she suffers from something I like to call “Cute-Rage”.

“Cute-Rage” (v) is when a character, who is typically female and attractive, attempts to be tough and/or angry but comes off as adorable. Ex. “Last night’s episode of Heroes was sick! Except for that one part where Claire Bennet was trying to be tough. LOL. She was cute-raging so hard, I just wanted to hug her!”

And Eliza has a terminal case of it. Every time she tries to be angry/tough, I just don’t buy it and want to cuddle with her instead. What’s worse is that she tries so hard. Whenever there’s a dramatic scene and someone doubts that she’s Super-Chuck-Jesus-Neo, Echo replies with “Don’t mess with me. One of my personalities is a sociopath”. Seriously, every single time someone questions her badass-ness, she has to explain to the other characters and to the audience why she shouldn’t be messed instead of just showing why. (We never see her even use her sociopath personality, so her threat is totally hollow.)

The real star of the show, Dolls exclusively, was a Doll named Victor, played by Enver Gjokaj. The man is a phenomenal actor. He’s gonna go places one day. One the show, Enver does everything, and he does it well. There wasn’t a single role he played, a single accent he did that I didn’t believe. Dollhouse was designed for versatile actors like him, not sexy cardboard cut outs like Dushku, and because he, and the rest of the cast, has to play second fiddle to Echo, the show suffers.

And that’s the only major flaw of the show to me: Eliza, which is really ironic as the show idea was hers and she brought Whedon on to make it. But if you can ignore her and understand that the second season, notably the last few episodes, is the most fantastic and unique suicide run I’ve seen in television, Dollhouse has earned its place in the Whedon-verse next to Firefly and Buffy.