Dollhouse

I don’t know what Tom Shales’ problem is. The usually savvy TV critic’s review of Dollhouse, Joss Whedon’s latest round of you-hold-the-football-Charlie-Brown-and-I’ll-kick-it with the Fox Network, is so unaccountably venomous, you’d think the show ran over his dog at some point. I’m happy to report I’ve got no such problem with “Dollhouse” — except maybe with the way Fox is marketing it.

Tarting up star Eliza Dushku and fellow Whedon alum Summer Glau to do promos as pouty-lipped nerd bait, and giving them inane and insulting come-ons to read off to the sort of lonely fanboys who are home to watch TV on Friday night, is about as classy as you’d expect from Fox. It also smacks of self-fulfilling prophecy, considering “Dollhouse” is slated in the same Friday night “death slot” that did in Whedon’s Firefly — and, oh, pretty much every other Fox sci-fi show not named The X-Files or Fringe.

As with Firefly, a swift death for Dollhouse would likely be a shame, judging by the pilot. It’s not perfect, and it bears the clumsy pawprints of network meddling — having been completely rewritten and reshot, presumably to meet Fox’s demands for more sexy chicks and motorcycle chases. But on the whole, Whedon’s new series is intriguing, entertaining, and full of promise.

For those of you not connected to the geek grapevine at any time in the past six months or so, here’s the 411: Dushku plays Echo, an “Active” working for a covert agency known as the Dollhouse. Most of the time, she ambles around the Dollhouse’s lush confines in yoga duds, a docile and childlike blank slate. When needed, her brain is stuffed with a custom-made personality built from bits and pieces of other people’s lives, and this new personality is dispatched to perform a mission, whether it’s as simple as a weekend date or as complex as a life-or-death hostage negotiation.

Before she was Echo, the pilot hints that she was Caroline, a young woman in a lot of trouble, who may have been coerced into a five-year stint as a living doll to escape whatever went wrong in her life. The fun begins when bits of Echo’s memories begin bleeding unexpectedly into the false personalities with which she’s implanted. Either Caroline’s still in there, trying to get to the surface — or Echo’s beginning to manifest a soul of her own.

I’ve never been a card-carrying member of Dushku’s fan club — when it comes to sighing heavily over members of the Buffy cast, I was always more of an Allyson Hannigan guy — but her work in “Dollhouse” is hands down the best I’ve seen from her. In the pilot, she’s Eleanor Penn, an icy negotiator whose buttoned-down demeanor can’t quite hold together a broken jumble of seriously bad childhood damage. And when things go bad for Eleanor, Dushku really steps up to bat, delivering a moving and compelling performance.

Not surprisingly for a Whedon production, the rest of the cast pretty much buries the needle on the awesomeness scale. The likes of Olivia Williams, Harry Lennix, Tamoh Pennikett, Reed Diamond, and Amy Acker (for whom my enthusiasm has been abundantly documented) give Whedon a phenomenally deep bench of talent. They don’t get a lot to do in the pilot, but they’re very good at fleshing out the hints of complexity their characters possess. New faces in the cast include the striking, almost unnaturally good-looking Dichen Lachmann, as a fellow Active named Sierra, and Fran Kranz, as the glibly amoral techie responsible for the Actives’ programming. Whedon loves to reflect his nerdy fanbase (yours truly admittedly included) in ugly, unnerving mirrors, and Kranz’s compellingly creepy Topher is no exception.

The result is something good, but not great. I suspect the original pilot the network gave a thumbs-down was far better and smarter, but unlike his equally hasty do-over for Firefly, Whedon manages to make this second take work reasonably well. Also, despite a few flashes of wit, “Dollhouse” is not yet as funny or daring as Whedon’s previous work. And you know what? I’m OK with that.

I love Firefly now, but when it first aired, the first few episodes Fox deigned to broadcast were honestly just OK. Firefly, like Buffy and especially Angel, took a little while to hit its stride — and when it did, it became face-rockingly excellent with almost frightening speed. Given a writing staff well-stocked with such talented Whedon pals as Jane Espenson and Tim Minear, I have no doubts that Dollhouse will do equally well once it finds its footing. In the meantime, it’s smart, fun, entertaining TV, easily as watchable as any of my favorite classy cable dramas.

I hope Fox keeps its promise to give the show a full 13-episode season to build an audience. Really, you’d think the network suits would have learned by now: Joss Whedon - creative tampering + time to grow a following = lurid, obscene bales of money from DVD sales.

If Tom Shales doesn’t want to stick around for the fun, well, I suspect that’ll be his loss.