A Very Late Review on Dollhouse

So I finally caught up on Dollhouse, and…

….it's not too bad.

Some may say, "Why'd it take you so long to watch it?" Some may say, "You aren't helping the show by not watching it until now." Some may not realize how the nielson ratings work, apparently. To those people I say, it just didn't interest me at all. It actually looked kind of boring from everything I saw about it.

Anywho, the show's not bad. It got off really, really slow. Just like most of what Whedon does, it took a slow progression to get the storyline and the characters to be full and interesting. I think the last couple episodes have done that. Really since episode 6, "Man on the Street". Before that episode, the first 5 are pretty close to throwaway with a little bit of character development thrown in. I imagine if the first 5 weren't there, the last 4 wouldn't have been as good as they ultimately were.

(More after the bump)

That's not to say that the show doesn't have it's flaws, because it does. I don't understand how it would be in any way possible to run the concept of the series the way it currently is for, say, 4 seasons. It seems like a very challenging proposition. You can't have Echo and the rest of the dolls mindwiped forever. There has to be progress. Your protagonist must eventually win, and you can't keep her like she is for very long or the audience will get sick of going right back to the beginning again and again. This is a problem they seem to be having immediately, because they're already getting Echo to slowly come out of her shell when she's in the "pet" mode. It'll be interesting to see how quickly they change the mission of the series because of this.

The characters are steadily becoming complete. Everybody you can sympathize with to a certain extent, which is very much a Joss Whedon signature move with his main cast of characters. Even Ms. DeWitt you can identify with a bit after episode 9. By the way, the character is played brilliantly by Olivia Williams.

Boyd, Topher, Victor, Sierra, Dr. Saunders, November…all have pieces to them that are slightly interesting or compelling in some way. I'm sure if we get more than one small season of this series (which I highly doubt) we'll get to know these characters more.

As for former agent Paul Ballard….he's a bit iffy with me. There's too many questions up in the air about him to make him a heroic character at this point. How did he become obsessed with the Dollhouse? Is his obsession something that could hurt his case? Is his obsession with Echo/Caroline really…well…a-sexual? I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but there's something that kind of creeps me out about the guy.

Overall, the first 9 episodes of Dollhouse have kept my interest and I'd like to see more of it. Unfortunately, with the ratings the way they are, it's not looking good. Recently, SciFi Wire reported that the future isn't looking too bright for the series.I'm not obsessed with Dollhouse the way that Ballard is, but I'd like to watch some more of it. Let's hope that happens.