Dollhouse

US, March 28, 2009 - After last week’s well done and involving episode, it would be nice to say Dollhouse followed up with another strong installment, keeping the momentum going. Yes, it would be nice to say that, but unfortunately, that wasn’t case.

Looking strictly at the ongoing plot, yes, "Echoes" added to the storyline of the series by giving us our first fleshed out look at who Caroline was before she became Echo, and some hints (though there are still missing pieces) of what led her to sign up with the Dollhouse. While out in an engagement with the motorcycle loving client from the first episode, Echo sees Freemont College on the news and is suddenly driven to drop everything – including her handcuffed client/sex buddy – and go there, because she recalls it from the past.

And as it happens, she’s not the only Active at Freemont at the moment – An experimental memory drug has been causing bizarre and fatal acts on campus. The lab where the drug was created was inside the Rossum building, and it seems that whatever Rossum is, they’re the company behind the Dollhouse.

The big element of this episode was that pretty much every character got exposed to the drug, causing those who are not Dolls to lose their inhibitions and making them act in outlandish, uncharacteristic ways. This type of episode is a tried but true one for genre shows, and indeed Joss Whedon did it on both Buffy ("Band Candy") and Angel ("Spin the Bottle"), though in those cases it was in the guise of everyone acting younger. Of course, the difference there was that we’d known the characters longer before this occurred – and that they were interesting characters. I’ve been watching both the original Star Trek and The Next Generation recently on DVD, and it struck me that both shows also did a "everyone acts crazy" episode very early on in their runs too – And just as it was here, that was a mistake, because we need to know and care about these people in their normal identities first before you can show their flip side.

If nothing else, the Dollhouse action figures will have all sorts of fun fetish outfits Here, the show is already struggling with how bland (DeWitt, Laurence) or off-putting (Topher) most of these characters have been so far. So seeing them act wacky and crazy wasn’t fun so much as annoying. This was another episode where the energy and timing was just off. There were a lot of moments where the characters were saying nonsensical things to one another, and it was meant to be funny. Instead, it came off as bad avant-garde theater. During several of the scenes in this episode, I felt like I was in that episode of Spaced where Tim and Daisy are watching that horrible play Brian’s ex-partner performed. Yes, I get it – DeWitt and Topher are acting like they’re high. And sure, it’s mildly amusing to see DeWitt act all silly, but that got old really fast, since I don’t care about DeWitt enough to enjoy her lighter side. I don’t love her. I don’t hate her. She’s just there, acting stern and giving orders. Only here she’s giving orders and bouncing on a trampoline. And Topher’s already annoying enough that having him babble like an idiot was just groan inducing.

Meanwhile, Echo (in the guise of "Alice") was accompanied by a student, Sam, in her goal of getting into the lab – which we saw via flashbacks was something she did as Caroline. It was very obvious Sam wasn’t to be trusted, and there were also some unnecasarily silly moments along their journey. I loved when Echo and Sam basically just got up and ran out of the quarantine room they were being held in, then walked in plain sight across the campus, and she tells him, "Wow, that worked! Thank you!" Yes Alice/Echo, getting up and walking away while someone’s back was turned worked! It was a pretty cool plan indeed.

I know, I know. Early on, I observed this show didn’t have as much humor as we’re used to from Whedon, and I’ve said that an ongoing problem is not being invested in who Caroline/Echo is as a person. And here we have an episode with a lot more humor, which also shows us who Caroline is, and I’m not happy. But if you’re going to include humor (and Dollhouse doesn’t need to be funny, just good), it should be natural and amusing, not forced and mannered. And Caroline so far seems pretty lame – yeah, she’s an animal activist. Okay. Otherwise, there was nothing particularly engaging about her. Some of her dialogue was just stilted and bad, such as her proclaiming, "I told you Rossum was evil" when she and her ill-fated boyfriend Leo broke into the lab, or her big, "I’m your girl!" exclamation as Leo lay bleeding to death. Angel and The Shield veterans Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain wrote this episode, which was directed by frequent Buffy and Angel director James Contner. What is it about this show that manages to turn out such weak output from such talented people?

The screener FOX sent out a couple of weeks ago contained last week’s "Man on the Street" and next week’s episode, "Needs", but was conspicuously missing "Echoes" – the same thing that occurred with the initial screener sent to journalists, which had the first, second and fourth episodes, but was missing "Stage Fright", another notably poor installment. I haven’t watched "Needs" yet, wishing to see the episodes in the correct order, but I am hearing a lot of positive buzz about it and it certainly looks like it could be very cool. After "Man on the Street" helped elevate this show, I’m certainly hoping "Echoes" was a brief hiccup, heading into an otherwise strong second half of the season. The ratings for "Echoes" were a series low, with less than four million people watching for the first time, meaning a second season looks even less likely. But if these 13 episodes are all we get of Dollhouse, it would be nice if this troubled show at least went out on a high note.