Dollhouse Better Now That Network Took Their Grubby Paws Off of It (Episode Recap, Sci-fi, US)

I've been waiting until episode six to review Dollhouse, because, as all of us Joss Whedon fans knew, the network insisted on rewrites and various changes to the first few episodes. I faithfully watched the first five episodes, but they were like a low-rent version of Alias. It didn't full-on suck, but it was far from brilliant.

Episode six is much closer to what the Dollhouse pilot should have been. In fact, it really could have been the pilot. I felt like I would have fully understood the premise, based on this episode.

I'm a huge fan of the action genre. I've watched a lot of major and B action movies, both domestic and international. Buffy always had great action sequences, and this episode of Dollhouse brings it, and blows Buffy action out of the water. The cinematography and choreography of the fight between Echo and Paul Ballard equaled a great action movie sequence. Eliza Dushku and Tahmoh Penikett had a visceral energy in their fight sequences that Sarah Michelle Gellar didn't come close to achieving. This one action sequence surpassed the best of the Buffy fights in energy and technical prowess (sorry fellow Buffy fans).

You can definitely see how advances in filming and choreographing action have really improved in the years since Buffy.

The writing of this Dollhouse episode was on a whole other level from the first five episodes, which were the suck. The concept behind the show (the lack of free will in our lives, how much of our mental space is really our own, human trafficking, rape, etc.) was handled in a natural and more intelligent way. Unlike the pilot, which was grossly overwritten and stage-y, you got the idea of what Whedon was going to explore without feeling like the writer was reaching out of the screen and grabbing you and yelling in your ear, "Hey, this is my theme now. Did you get it? Are you sure?"

It was weird, but the show looked better too. The tech was waay cooler and much more visually dynamic. The way Topher (the science guy) used this new tech showed how the brain mapping worked in about 30 seconds of screen time. The other episodes spent a lot of time explaining it.

The Buffy we remember contains seven seasons of wit, so I think that holding Dollhouse up to Buffy on the humour front isn't a fair comparison this early in the series, especially since Buffy season one was not as strong as the other seasons. There were some clever bits of dialogue and scene in this Dollhouse episode that made me smile, but this was a pretty serious 40+ minutes. This has only been one episode, so I'm going be patient and trust that with Whedon now fully at he helm in the Dollhouse, humour will come with time.