Dollhouse

Of the various reasons to sing Dollhouse’s praises, my personal evangelism of the show (to anyone who would sit still long enough to watch) boiled down to pointing at Olivia Williams whenever she was onscreen and noting to my captive audience:

“There. That’s who you should be watching this for.”

That Adelle DeWitt was the first voice heard in Dollhouse is no coincidence. Not to slight any of the talented cast, but her performance was a subtle symphony—a pop of her calculating expression, a turn of phrase—that shaded every scene she took part in. Indeed, “Echo,” the unaired pilot episode, and “Ghost,” the series premiere, which are otherwise two very different episodes, both had her introducing the premise of the show in their openings.

Both began with a businesswoman and her client sitting in a warmly lit wood-paneled room. The woman poured her guest a drink while speaking calmly of the complications that brought them to her. Amid listing the entanglements of her listeners’ lives, she offered a choice, a chance to simplify, with an oft-repeated phrase: “This isn’t about what you want. It’s about what you need.”

At first blush, Adelle is the villain of the piece, because she is someone we all know and loathe: a supervisor. As head of theRossum Corporation’s L.A. …