Posts tagged joss whedon

Joss Whedon’s new show, Dollhouse, premiered this friday. This is his first TV show since Firefly and of course I’ve been looking very much forward to it. The show plot outline is as follows

In Dollhouse, Eliza Dushku plays a young woman called Echo, a member of a group of people known as “Actives” or “Dolls.” The Dolls have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments. They’re then hired out for particular jobs, crimes, fantasies, and occasional good deeds. In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a hidden facility nicknamed “The Dollhouse.” The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

I was a little apprehensive about getting my hopes up, since Whedon surprisingly chose to work with Fox again, and the studio has already given the show the dreaded Friday night spot. Furthermore Eliza Dushku plays the lead, and I really didn’t like her in Buffy. In this show she has to play a lot of different characters and I wasn’t sure if she could pull it off.

Now that I’ve watched the pilot I guess I have to get used to her, because I really liked it. Dushku actually did a pretty good job, and so did the supporting characters. There’s not much Whedonesque humor, but it’s a pretty serious show, so that’s expected. The main story line, regarding Echo becoming self-aware, is interesting, but what I’m looking most forward to is the storylines concerning the tasks of the Dolls.

Spoilers ahoy. E.g. in the pilot Echo gets the mindset of a hostage negotiator who was kidnapped as a child, and during her mission she encounters this kidnapper, which naturally has some consequences for the engagement. We also get to see a little Doll-as-a-Special-Forces-soldier-badassness in the end, I can’t wait to see Echo with the mindset of an assassin.