Dollhouse

Ah, Fridays. Cult night. Overlapping with Galactica’s final bow, Fox’s steadily improving Dollhouse (9/8c) delivers a turning-point episode, written by the show’s creator Joss Whedon, that includes an existentially fraught moment that sounds like it could have come from Battlestar itself. The hour is structured around man-on-the-street interviews about the “urban legend” that is the Dollhouse. An unidentified science prof lectures us to imagine a world in which “every part of you that makes you more than a walking cluster of neurons [could be] dissolved at someone else’s whim … We will be over as a species. We will cease to matter.” In this world, we’re not in danger of becoming robotic Cylons. We could be “dolls,” programmable vessels with wipe-able memories, designer drones, slaves to the rich and powerful who control our fate and identity.

This is the long-awaited episode where FBI Agent Ballard (Battlestar’s Tahmoh Penikett) finally comes face to face with the elusive "doll" Echo (Eliza Dushku), who he only knows as Caroline. He seeks to save her, but how can you rescue someone who isn’t aware there’s anything amiss? At one point they come to blows in a serious smackdown (reminiscent of some of Buffy’s wildly choreographed mayhem), with Ballard at a distinct disadvantage because he doesn’t want to further damage this lost soul. She has no such compunction—although Echo does reveal a mystifying agenda likely to set mythology buffs buzzing. (A separate twist involving Ballard’s world floored me.)

The intrigue is thick within the walls of the Dollhouse as well, as the PTB continues monitoring the curious relationship of dolls Victor and Sierra. “The dolls don’t have sex drives, do they?” puzzles one of the handlers. “They’re all broken,” opines Echo’s overseer Langton (Harry Lennix) later in the episode. And as security chief Dominic (Reed Diamond) concludes much later on, “They’re not as ignorant [as in innocent] as they pretend to be.”

This is a juicy episode, but also one that illuminates Dollhouse’s central dilemma: how to make us care about characters (the “dolls”) who are basically blank slates between imprints, while exposing us to the nefarious misdeeds of the Dollhouse staff, who with the exception of Langton and the scarred, fretful doctor (Amy Acker) are either coldly or smarmily played. Wolfram & Hart this ain’t, and more’s the pity.