Dollhouse-Contains Spoilers for Pilot

Friday was the premiere of Joss Whedon's new show Dollhouse. I've been looking forward to it for a long time, but I think I do have realistic expectations. Here are my thoughts after watching the pilot episode twice.

Overall, it was an okay episode==not amazingly compelling and it had some flaws, but it also had some intriguing aspects. I'm not worried yet because most pilots are inferior to normal episodes. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two really outstanding pilots that were great episodes on their own merit, highly representative of the eventual show, and instantly made me decide I needed to see the rest of the series. Neither was a Joss Whedon pilot. Welcome to the Hellmouth and City Of are hardly among the better episodes of Buffy and Angel and Train Job, the episode that Fox aired as Firefly's pilot, is probably also one of my least favorites from that show. For that matter, the first seasons of Buffy and Angel are my least favorite seasons. I still love them, but they did have some issues. (If anyone is wondering, the two amazing pilots were Battlestar Galactica and Ugly Betty.)

Also because of the later episodes are supposed to be much better and by virtue of the fact that it's Joss Whedon, I'm not going to stop watching. I'm willing to give it a season to hook me.

Writers try to do a lot of things at once in pilots. They try to cram as much expositional and setting information in as possible without it being too dry, they try to make it action-packed to draw people in (which I don't feel is necessary unless you're watching an action show like Alias, but I think it's a network thing, especially a Fox thing), and they try to get you invested in questions and characters that will make you want to watch next week.

I did think it was too expositional, especially with the first detective scene. I think Tahmoh's character was Paul, but I still think of him as Helo/Karl from Battlestar. I'll call him Paul though. The boxing part was awkward (despite the fact that he was mostly naked and kicking the butt of Toa from American Gladiators!) and the dialogue part was boring and a little confusing. I would rather have seen the incident where Paul first became interested in Dollhouse or seen him mess up the Russian case than hear some random boss guy talking about it while Paul threw in some exposition here and there. I didn't get a real sense of his passion/obsession about it in that scene. After seeing the first few seasons of Battlestar, I know Tahmoh is an awesome actor. Although his character wasn't especially captivating here, I have faith (heh) that he'll be better as we get to know him later.

The episode did get me invested in two characters-- the handler character and Amy Acker's doctor character. Sure, the handler was an amalgam of Giles and Marcus Dixon from Alias, but I like those two characters. I was desperately looking for a character to relate to and root for and I found myself focusing on him. Echo wasn't doing it for me. I like the doctor because she also seems to have more of a conscience and definitely has a mysterious background to explore. Seriously though, can Joss not have Amy play a smart, but shy science type in something? She can be really funny.

Unfortunately, I 'm not into Echo yet. I think Eliza is wonderful at certain types of characters. I love her as Faith. I'm not sure about her ability to carry this type of show though. She can be wooden and she always seems a little too Faithy for me. I think someone like Summer Glau would rock the part because she seems more able to shift between really different personalities. It wasn't that Eliza was bad in this episode, she just wasn't hugely impressive and as the title sequence made clear, she is supposed to be the focus of the show. I'm willing to believe that it will be easier to like her once Echo begins to remember her own personality. I hope this will start quickly. The show needs an emotional center. Joss shows usually center on relationships and there aren't many here yet.

I hated Topher. He looks like a cross between Andrew and Mal and has the malevolence of Warren. I didn't find him funny, just really off-putting and despicable. If he is the geeky humor guy on the show, I'm not happy. If they eventually make him outright evil, I might be into him. I never really enjoyed watching Warren though. He didn't have enough layers. I also thought the boss of Dollhouse was boring.

The main plotline was okay. Hostage storylines aren't very original, but it kept my interest. The little girl and the dad were convincing and the kidnapper really was creepy. Ellie's personality was annoying (Do I need to scold you?), but I liked Ellie okay when she was breaking down. I don't know what that says about me. The end was a great set up. I'm much more interested in rogue murderous dolls and ongoing detective investigations than one episode plots. I like arcs. I think Joss always starts out trying to do stand-alone episodes to please the networks and then moves to arcs later. I'm hoping this will be true for Dollhouse too.

The dialogue wasn't great. That is surpising coming from Joss, but I guess to be expected since this was a total rewrite and supposedly had a lot of network interference. I know it won't sound as stylized as his other shows, but it can still have more character and sound more natural. There were a few classics (Have you ever tried to clean a slate? Also, she has asthma). I'll chalk it up to too much exposition for now.

Finally, a random annoyance. Did we really need the sexy Faith dancing in the non-existent skirt and the motorcycle chase? For that matter Fox, I don't really need to see sexy Summer and Eliza soft core promos either. They made me feel sleezy. Hello, these are talented people. You can promote the show on it's merits rather than their bodies. Besides, if you're going to exploit them, at least include some Tahmoh promos for the straight girls and gay guys!

Overall, it was pretty much what I expected. Not bad, but room for improvement. I think next week's episode looks much better and I'm looking forward to it! Grr. Argh.