Dollhouse: The Complete First Season

Season Grade: B

DVD Features Grade: N/A

Overall Grade: B

It was quite a fortuitous turn of events that I ended up reviewing this title at a time in my life when contemplation over choices made seems to be at an all time high. After all you're reading the words of someone who could have very easily been a lawyer, politician or human rights activist who some how ended up founding an entertainment company instead. Go figure.

In the Dollhouse, individuals referred to as 'actives' (including our gorgeous leading lady Eliza Dushku) get to lead many different lives ranging from expert hostage negotiators to superstar body guards to the perfect date for an outdoorsy type or even a midwife for a wealthy family expecting a difficult birth. After each engagement his or her memories are completely erased and they become a blank slate just waiting for their next assignment and personality. Analogies to high priced prostitution and the oppression of the wealthy over the poor are of course drawn to these people and very much appropriately so, however I must admit to being somewhat jealous of the 'actives.' To be able to change your personality, background, skills and abilities as easily as we change our cloths is an enticing offer to say the least. The downside however is that after each new personality is erased a small amount of the memories linger within the active. So as Echo (Eliza Dushku who also serves as executive producer) is torn away from each new self, she retains a small amount of that persona and these flashbacks could very well lead to the uncovering of the person she originally was.

The creative team behind Dollhouse, including the uber-popular and successful Joss Whedon, made sure that this series wasn't going to only be a bunch of one-off stories that in total didn't amount to anything larger, as a result each show is more interesting than the last and each new hour adds another piece to the puzzle that is the entire season.

One of those continuing threads is found in the story line of Agent Paul Ballard. As we are taken through our adventures with Echo each week Agent Ballard (the chiseled Tahmoh Penikett) is hot on her trail determined to expose the Dollhouse to both prove it exists and also to shut it down permanently.

It's hard to watch a strong female lead in a series with a touch of sci-fi and lots of ass kicking and not draw parallels to the short lived, but awesome James Cameron series Dark Angel starring Jessica Alba. Unfortunately, Dark Angel embraced the sci-fi side of things a bit too much and lost their audience. Dollhouse stays very true to the modern world and keeps anything too futuristic or supernatural to a minimum.

Despite being a fan of Eliza Dushku and loving almost everything that she

brings her tough girl no nonsense presence to, I wasn't sure I was interested in getting sucked into another television series; especially considering how rare it is for shows to last past their first season or even their first few episodes these days. But that's exactly what happened. I was pretty much all in by the end of episode one. Once I saw the path they were taking with it and that it wasn't going to be a repetitive, formulaic 'kill-the-new-bad-guy' each week kind of show I was hooked.

The season starts out with a very strong pilot and has a steady continuous build until the end of the season. The moral ambiguity of what's going on and the culpability of those involved are always present so even as you're routing for one person or one agenda you are constantly questioning whether or not you should be; which makes for great television!

When the 'actives' are inactive and awaiting a new assignment they are in a childlike innocent state; as a result things like the coed showers have no effect on them. But of course for the viewers those scenes have us wishing this were an HBO show instead of Fox. The action aspect of the show is undeniable and aside from the fact that no one ever seems to really get hurt in spite of incredibly long knock down drag outs it's all done very well.

My one main complaint about the show is how 'by the book' the supporting characters are. Everyone is fulfilling a certain need in the story telling but there is very little about them that is fresh or new. As it turns out the stories are so interesting and there are so many twists and turns that it doesn't kill the show to have these cardboard cut out people running around, but it definitely has a negative cumulative effect on the viewer. When your two leads and each weeks guest stars are the only interesting people on screen that will eventually come around to bite you in the ass.

Fran Kranz as Topher Brink the resident science / computer geek vacillates between being quirky and endearing to highly annoying and stereotypical. Even after a full season I still can't tell if I hate him or not. The same can be said for Olivia Williams as Adelle DeWitt the head of the company whose always calm, cool and calculating British demeanor also rides that line of being way too predictable. The one supporting character that the jury is not out on is Harry Lennix as Echo's handler Boyd Langton. In this case I think Lennix deserves the bulk of the credit of bringing this character to life and adding way more to him than is on the page.

This season had a lot of familiar faces in supporting guest roles like Teddy Sears from Raising

the Bar, Mehcad Brooks and Aisha Hinds from True Blood, Matt Keeslar from Scream 3 and Psycho Beach Party, Patton Oswalt from Reno 911!, and many more. It's not quite the Law & Order roster of guest stars but for a first season of a brand new show it's nice that they were able to get some recognizable folks in there.

Unfortunately, with this particular title we were only sent 3 of the 4 discs in the set so I can't make any comment on any of the special features or the two unaired episodes that are on that fourth disc. So my overall grade for this review is going to have to be incomplete, but as for what I've seen of the show so far I can say that I'll be looking forward to eventually seeing what those secret unaired episodes have to share.

I was relived to hear that the show was in fact picked up for a second season because the ending of this season certainly leaves the door open to many interesting possibilities for the follow up. Plus, if it had been canceled I don't think I'd be able to recommend you spend the time getting sucked into this world if it was all over in a single season. So if you haven't seen it, it's safe to give it a try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Season Grade: B

DVD Features Grade: N/A

Overall Grade: B