Dollhouse

Why "Dollhouse" Struggles and "Fringe" Soars

Last night’s exhilarating, ambitious season finale of Fringe plunged the show headlong into fantastical territory, after a season of gingerly dipping its toes into that end of the pool. Viewers as a whole supposedly don’t like the sort of straight-up science fiction the Fringe finale embraced, as evidenced by the fan-lamented apparent death of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the low ratings suffered by Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse.

But if anyone can sell sci-fi to folks who just want to leave the TV on for a bit after American Idol, it’s J.J. Abrams, who currently stands athwart the entertainment world like a bespectacled, Apple Store-loving colossus. After comparing Fringe’s season-ender to Dollhouse’s murkier but equally excellent wrap-up to its season’s main story, I think I might know why.

Here are a few reasons why the same folks who shrug at Dollhouse seem to embrace Fringe — and one way in which Whedon’s latest creation definitively thumps Abrams’.

Warning: SPOILERS follow for Fringe and Dollhouse’s finales.

1. A simpler concept

On Fringe, bad, icky stuff is happening, and good (and good-looking) people have to stop it. That’s easy for anyone from Joe Sixpack to Jane Radcliffe to grasp. The series’ mission statement is just that — a statement. Dollhouse, in contrast, has more of a mission question. What makes us us? If you separate our minds from our bodies, does any part of us remain behind? If you allow us to overwrite our identities, and swap our bodies at will, could you destroy civilization? And seriously, how hot is Eliza Dushku in dominatrix gear?

OK, maybe that last one is less central to the series (answer: profoundly). But in general, Whedon is a philosopher who also likes to entertain; Abrams is an entertainer who dabbles in just enough philosophy to make his work look cooler. He’s not interested in the ethical implications of a mutated monster smashing up an airplane — he’s interested in the awesomeness of a mutated monster smashing up an airplane.

Fringe did veer briefly into meatier mental territory with the finale’s revelation that mad scientist Walter Bishop abducted an alternate universe’s version of his dead son, who’s since grown up never knowing his true origins. But in general, the only question Abrams’ work invites the audience to ponder is a simple and admittedly brilliant one: What’s gonna happen next?

2. Clear-cut good and evil

Mind you, I’m not saying we’ll have any idea who the various factions in Fringe’s world are working for, or what ends they ultimately serve — not until the end of the third season, at least. But we’re pretty sure that the hot blonde FBI lady, her hunky brooding surrogate brother-slash-love-interest-and-all-of-a-sudden-this-just-got-a-little-freaky, and his wacky lovable weirdo genius dad are the good guys. (Maybe not so much the wacky weirdo genius, but we’re constantly reassured that he means well.) Meanwhile, the slyly evasive lady with the robot arm? And that freaky English dude with the bandaged-up face and the one creepy eye? Yeah, they’re pretty much evil.

On Dollhouse, no one’s quite so cut and dried. The white-knight FBI agent out to rescue the girl is paranoid, slightly creepy, and ultimately putting her in danger. The bodyguard who keeps her in her cage also loves her like a father. The icy mommy figure is secretly ravaged by guilt and regret. The lovable wacky nerd is a self-loathing sociopath. The doctor with the scarred-up face is kindly and compassionate — right up until she isn’t. And the damsel in distress herself is in no particular hurry to be rescued, and may actually be the most powerful one of all. With the possible exception of Dushku’s Echo and the other dolls — who are literally different people every week — there’s no one on Dollhouse you can feel entirely comfortable rooting for. And we all know how much viewers love that sort of confusion.

3. Overdogs vs. Underdogs

Joss Whedon cannot help letting his geek flag fly. Part of the reason his work attracts such vocal, enthusiastic, and, well, bugnuts psychotic fans is that it’s centrally concerned with oddballs, outcasts, and underdogs. On Dollhouse, the titular organization is quite literally underground and off the grid, and the closest thing the show has to a conventional hero is a renegade with a threadbare career, mocked and despised by all but a handful of his coworkers — and possibly for very good reason.

Fringe, in contrast, has a sexy, lovable blonde knockout working with the full support of one of the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agencies, and nearly everyone around her telling her at every juncture how totally right she is about everything. For someone who works in a basement lab with a disgraced mad scientist, she’s got it pretty darn easy. Indeed, one of this past season’s lamest elements was the introduction of a cookie-cutter antagonist who threw roadblocks in Olivia Dunham’s path simply because he didn’t like her. And because she’d busted him for sexual harrassment that one time. And, oh yes, because he was evil. (And then he got set on fire by this one lady’s brain.)

To some extent or another, we’re all underdogs. The geekier among us may dream of being accepted (and powerful) without giving up our outsider status. But I suspect most of us would rather pretend that we’re one of those fortunate and often fictional people for whom everything goes right.

4. That dude with the melty face could be me!

The horrible (and, compared to the spooky elegance of The X-Files, often tiresomely gory) things that happen on Fringe happen on playgrounds and buses and oh, so very many airplanes, to regular people — for a given upper-middle-class, mostly-white, 18-to-34-year-old demographic value of "regular," at least. The notion of paranormal threats takes on extra urgency when you can easily picture yourself as the person spontaneously combusting.

On Dollhouse, in contrast, only the super-ultra-rich can generally afford to hire the Dolls’ services, which leads to a lot of plotlines about horse-loving heiresses, evil millionaires, spoiled pop divas, and a lot of other people to whom viewers not only cannot relate, but actively dislike. A lot of the series’ strongest moments have come when the Dolls deal with more regular people — most notably the pro bono case in which Echo counsels a horrifically abused little girl, which led to one of Eliza Dushku’s most appealing and compelling performances of the entire season. And the single best client of Dollhouse’s season, by a country mile, was Patton Oswalt’s regular-joe Internet millionaire, still quietly grieving for the one thing his money can’t recover for him.

Combined with one heck of a great lead-in from American Idol, I suspect those four reasons explain why Fringe is coasting easily into a second season, while Dollhouse remains tenaciously on the bubble. (I’m heartened by word that it may get a second season after all; it’s become a great show, and more than deserves a long and healthy run.) And in season two, let’s hope that Fringe takes a page from Dollhouse in remedying its greatest weakness:

5. A boring central character

As Olivia, Anna Torv’s got all kinds of ridiculous charisma — which is good, since her character’s as dull as a post. True, the show’s hinted that there may be reasons for Olivia’s drabness; a fellow veteran of the childhood experiments that may have given her dimension-hopping superpowers talks about living a quiet life and "wearing the black and gray," which sounds eerily like Olivia’s own wardrobe. (Wait! Does this mean Ned the Piemaker from Pushing Daisies also got dosed with Cortexiphan?)

But for the most part, Olivia’s spent the entire season frowning, delivering exposition, and occasionally kicking people’s asses. She proved entirely superfluous to the events of Fringe’s season finale, accomplishing absolutely nothing that drove the plot forward. Walter hung out with the Observer (hey, Abrams, the estate of Jack Kirby is waiting for its royalty check) and dug up his dimension-sealing device. Peter used said device at the last minute to stop the diabolical David Robert Jones from crossing between worlds. Olivia, uh, stuck pins in a map, shot some guys, and took an elevator ride to a chat with Leonard Nimoy in the CGI World Trade Center. When you can’t give your central character something vital to do in the season’s big concluding chapter, you’ve got serious problems.

Dollhouse seems to have the opposite problem. Echo’s evolved into a fascinating character, albeit one that Eliza Dushku only occasionally seems capable of pulling off. Her perfomances as Echo’s various incarnations seemed a bit too samey throughout the season, with a few notable exceptions. But the actress and the character really came into their own in the finale; the newly integrated Echo bolting up from her brain-wiping chair like a big damn superhero was an even more striking and iconic moment than Fringe’s delightfully ballsy concluding image. And her pipe-assisted beatdown of the series’ Big Bad gave Echo more power and conviction in a matter of minutes than Oliva Dunham and her FBI badge and gun have mustered in an entire season. (Also, no offense to the wonderful John Noble, but Alan Tudyk’s jaw-droppingly awesome guest shot on Dollhouse wins the crazy-off hands down. Give the man an Emmy already. Possibly five.)

In the best of all possible worlds — a concept Fringe has become only too familiar with — next fall will herald more spine-tingly popcorn thrills from Abrams, and more head-bending metaphysics from Whedon. And if we’re really lucky, Fringe will put a little more meat on Olivia Dunham’s bones, characterwise, and Dollhouse will emerge the basement and hang out with the popular kids a bit more often.