Dollhouse (2009 -2010)
(Far more interesting than just about anything that happens in Dollhouse)
I started watching The Leftovers again the other night. I’d forgotten how messy and uneven that first season was but even in that how powerful it was as a series. For all that it is uneven, it hurls itself at the audience daring them to look away. That pilot as well. The dread that hangs over everything and how it starts to pull the threads together over its first hour before it all crashes down.
But this is not about that.
Joss Whedon is best known for Buffy. First the movie which became a cult favourite (I see you in there David Arquette) which spawned the series which became a cultural phenomenon. Even these years later, the show holds up relatively well. Particularly those earlier seasons when the show as focused on ‘monster of the week’ as metaphor for the teenage years. That and the way that Whedon was able to find a superb balance between the episodic nature of most network TV to that point, and serialised season arcs that had rarely been used.
This can’t be understated how much that was a significant shift in the structure of network TV. There had been shows that had evolved their worlds over time (the various Star Trek shows had done this well for years), had long running storylines that aped what soap operas did (Hill Street Blues as an example), or had driven a serialised format, network TV be damned (Twin Peaks as the ur text).
But what Whedon did was find the middle ground where there would still be episodic ‘monster of the week’ stories that a casual viewer could sit down and not be confused by in the first half of each season, and then towards the second half of the season the show would start to focus on, and progress, the overarching ‘big bad’ storyline arc. There are certainly seasons that do it better (seasons 1 to 3, season 6) but he had managed to cause a significant shift in TV.
Look no further than The Sopranos, one of the great shows of the late 90s/early 2000s golden age, which reworks that Buffy season structure to a tee.
Following the end of Buffy, Whedon tried his hand at a space western. Firefly. I know many lament the before it got a chance to get good cancellation but I am not one of those. I do not mourn the loss of Firefly, though I think the show is disposable fun in its short run.
Between 2003 and 2009, things were relatively quiet (he did write Alien: Ressurection, the much maligned fourth Alien film… which if I’m honest I actually kind of love cause I think that Jeunet does all kinds of weird things with the Alien lore that are far more interesting if a safer director had been tasked with that film) and then we got Dollhouse.
And it is terrible.
I fell down a TV Tropes induced rabbit hole some weeks ago and was reminded that Dollhouse was a show that had existed and that I had watched at the time.
It was the terrible winter of Vancouver. I was living in a Single Room Occupancy hotel in East Hastings, Vancouver (if you’ve been, you know). Snow blanketed the city for weeks. It took me an hour and half and four buses to get to work one morning because the city is simply not prepared for that kind of snow.
Home was a laptop, an internet connection, a closet of a room, a small bed, a fridge and a sink. Cigarettes were cheap. I was cold. I watched Dollhouse. I think I enjoyed it at the time but I may have been young and lonely.
The premise is simple enough. People have given up 5 years of their lives to essentially be mind wiped so they then can be hired out and imprinted with a personality. It’s kind of like Quantum Leap except instead of Scott Bakula coming into people’s bodies for the episode, people come into Eliza Dushku’s body for an episode.
Right. Erm. So…
Eliza Dushku plays Echo who is one of these Dolls (or Actives - like all sf shows, there is jargon but they play relatively loose with it). She lives, when not being hired as a brainless hooker, in a Dollhouse where there are other Dolls. The show mostly follows Echo on her engagements when she is hired out. Particularly the first half of the first season is essentially ‘engagement of the week.’ There’s not much to it (‘oh look, this week she’s been hired by someone that wants to hunt her for sport’, ‘this week she’s been hired by a grieving widower who is super rich and seems skeevy but is actually sweet’).
In the background there are hints of an overarching something at play. Tahmoh Pennikett plays an FBI agent trying to track down the Dollhouse. Alan Tudyk plays a Doll that went wrong and is now kind of a serial killer, and he for some reason is focused on Echo (probably cause she’s the lead character is my guess). And then the season ends and some things have happened and… whatever.
Look, we forget in the age of streaming that network TV is home to a weird collection of constraints that showrunners needs to work within. You need to have a home set and to keep the budget in check you’ll probably want to film there at least half the season (even with something like Lost which seem to break through a lot of the constraints, you can see there is a new home set every season).
You need to structure your episodes so they build towards the ad breaks.
You can be edgy but you gotta keep things in check. Echo can be a mindless hooker but that doesn’t mean you can show boobs.
You can build a season arc if you must but you have to make sure that people have a jumping in point, and there needs to be a few of them for people to hear about the show at work (which is why most network TV goes pilot → re-pilot → show in the first three episodes).
Constraints aren’t inherently bad. In fact, I’d argue that constraints are almost always going to be a source of creativity. What can you do within those constraints, how can you evolve storytelling within that framework. I mean, hell, look at Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (a great book where you can still see an editor at work) vs Order of the Phoenix (pure garbage where no one was saying ‘no’ to Ms Rowling anymore).
And Whedon had proved that within those constraints he could be a compelling storyteller. He did it across seven seasons in Buffy.
Fox got weird with Dollhouse. That first season is 12 episodes. Which is a peculiar number to order to series. Why? Well, they counted the pilot that never got aired as part of the order (12 + 1).
But then they also allowed production of an additional episode within the envelope of the first season but didn’t allow that to air (buh?). Instead they put that to be released onto the first season DVD (double buh?).
That episode was ‘Epitaph One’. And while I don’t think it holds up well now, at the time it is an absolute shot across the bow that changes the show significantly (and yet is only on the DVD…)
‘Epitaph One’ posits a future where the technology that underpins the Dollhouse could lead to an apocalypse where people are mind wiped and go on a world ending rampage.
The episode is cheap looking and doesn’t feature much of the main cast (though Felicia Day is there and that’s cool). But it suggests there is something more than Echo being used for the pleasure of rich men going on with where the show is headed.
It also, apparently, is what saved the show from cancellation. Proving they could deliver a cheaper show that made use of the main sets was enough for Fox to greenlight a second season.
Perhaps saying that the show is terrible is unfair. It is incredibly deficient but it also has elements that are far better than one would expect from a network show about mind wiped hookers.
For all that the premise is simple, it is also an incredibly cyberpunk premise that has considerable depth to be explored. If a person can be scanned and backed up and that back up imprinted on a Doll well then functionally that is immortality. The show even recognises some of those elements (yes, there is an episode where a dead person is imprinted on Echo so her murder can be solved), though time and again those are wasted.
The cast, with the exception of the leads of Dushku and Pennikett, are actually really good. Like far better than this show deserves. Fran Kranz is great. Olivia Williams shows why she’s one of the great unsung character actors. Amy Acker is never bad in anything. Alan Tudky has never met a role he can’t just smash. Dichen Lachman and Harry Lennix round out the cast, though they are called on to do less than the others.
And then there is Enver Gjokaj. He will later show up in an episode of Community as a war criminal boyfriend for Brita that Troy and Abed ruin (it’s a whole thing… go watch that show). But holy shit is he a revelation in this. His range is gigantic. His skill at impression is just a sight to behold, especially when he is called on to do an impression of Topher (Fran Kranz) in the second season which is just so spot on that you think that Kranz is doing ADR for the dialogue.
Plus, Whedon knows how to do TV. He whiffs more than he hits here but there are episodes where the A, B and C plots crash into each other in a way that demonstrates that not just anyone can do good TV.
There are a few quite good reveals that do the work of hiding things in plan sight for a long enough that the audience is surprised when they go down. And while one of them is relatively easy to spot, that one actually goes a long way to running cover for the other big reveal.
And it does have a tendency to find the emotion in its moments, even if it all adds up to not much.
The second season is where things fall apart. Alexis Denisof (this show is filthy with Buffy alum) joins for an arc that seems like it should land somewhere and just is confusing, hastily wrapped up and means almost nothing. Amy Acker stops being main cast and so disappears for most of the season. Echo starts to retain imprints (they are supposed to be wiped between engagements) and almost becomes a new person (or being). And about halfway through they found out they were going to be cancelled.
Now Whedon had a big plan for this show. That whole ‘people give up 5 years of their life thing’ is him calling his shot of a 5 year plan for the show. Instead, with cancellation just around the corner, he smashes through 5 years of build and reveals in the space of 4 episodes and it is just dire to sit through.
Given the compression, some of the reveals don’t even make sense. The big bad is someone entirely unexpected and doesn’t really bear up to scrutiny. Plus when he delivers his big bad monologue, rather than just admitting that the ones he has let live are the ones whose names are in the opening credits. And Echo is special cause reasons?
/Checks notes/
Sorry, I should have said that ‘because her spinal fluid has special properties that can be used to make a vaccine to stave off the impending apocalypse (from ‘Epitaph One’)’? Which, I just can’t even. This is the guy that is going to bring about that apocalypse but now he wants Echo’s precious bodily fluids to stop that?
And then the show ends with ‘Epitaph Two’ and we get a happy post apocalypse ending and whatever.
Here’s the problem. Eliza Dushku is a black hole of charisma and talent. Tahmoh Pennikett is much the same (which really we knew from Battlestar Galactica but kind of ignored cause the show was just that good).
I get that, particularly in the first season, Echo is supposed to be a pretty blank state (unless she’s been imprinted). But even that isn’t compelling in her hands. It gets worse when she starts to evolve and develop a personality in the second season. As Faith in Buffy she was given a role that called for her to be a Southie tough and one gets the sense she kind of is that in real life. Plus she was a minor character in that so it didn’t matter too much that she was kind of rough.
But here, she’s the central character that needs to carry this show and she just can’t. Everything being asked of her is utterly beyond her abilities as an actor. It’s hard to care much about a show when there is a gaping hole at the centre of it to the extent that episodes where she plays a background role are something the audience looks forward to.
And the ‘chemistry’ between her and Pennikett. Yeesh.
Which the show could almost survive if the writer’s room was worth a damn. Okay, that’s unfair, some of the people in that room delivered things like Dr Horrible which I kind of unabashedly love. But for all the depth the premise of the show presents, they are simply not equipped to explore it any meaningful way.
This thing could lead to immortality? Best waste that on a crap murder mystery.
Echo is becoming essentially a new species? Well, we won’t pay attention to that now.
The show is all wrapped up in cyberpunk tropes like identity? Nothing to see here.
Watching this show is to watch a killer premise be wasted one week at a time.
Plus, and I get the economics of this, but while the show says a lot about the treatment of women, particularly in the case of Dichen Lachman’s character and all she goes through… the show is skeevy levels of male gazey. I get it. You’ve got Eliza Dushku as your lead, of course you are going to put her in the skimpiest outfits you can get away with on network TV in 2009. But outside of Sucker Punch, I don’t think I’ve ever seen something that seems so unaware of what it’s actually presenting vs what it thinks it’s trying to say.
In the dark recesses of season two, I found myself considering the way we watch TV now. Obviously the streaming age is upon us but how does that change our consumption beyond simply meaning that we binge things rather than have a week’s gap between episodes?
This show doesn’t get made today. At least not looking anything like this. Yes, you can sand off those edges and get rid of some of its worst instincts (see above), and you’d probably cast someone who can act.
But this is the sort of thing that ends up on Netflix in this day and age. They would kill for a high concept story engine like this. They’d probably let it run for 3 seasons and then cancel it but they’d probably highlight it when it first dropped.
And chances are you’d end up with a tight, 8 episodes per season, show that cuts all the episodic filler in favour of a serialised arc from the jump. Hell, if HBO (or is it Max now?) stumped up for this show then you’d probably have a really solid writer’s room that actually would have the chops to dive into the premise.
Which is what makes the show so odd when you look at its context. Some of the golden age of TV had happened (primarily from HBO but also increasingly from AMC) but we weren’t properly into the streaming age just yet (that would come a few years later when Netflix started pushing original content), and genre was still a backwater in TV (at the cinema, the MCU had started but wasn’t so much a U yet as a couple of movies that had done big money - a couple of years later we’d get Game of Thrones on the small screen).
But this was on the cusp and it had no idea. And while it was almost at the point where everything changed, the fact that it precedes it by just that much actually makes the show feel much, much older than it is. This feels like a relic of TV that even predates the changing of the guard during the 90s.
There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that but this serves as just such a perfect example of why network TV rarely gave us anything worth a damn outside of sitcoms.