Dollhouse

Joss Whedon specializes in nerd bait. (Admittedly, the only thing of his I've seen in Firefly. I'm getting the first disc of Buffy the Vampire Slayer tomorrow to see if it's worth all the fuss.) The nation's nerds (lots of them, anyway) eagerly anticipated tonight's premiere episode of Dollhouse.

I don't know how other nerds, especially more devoted Whedon geeks, felt about it, but I . . . well, I didn't feel anything about it. I'd have to give it a 5 out of 10, I guess.

The key problem is that I am not sold on Eliza Dushku as an actress. I find her very blah. This ought to work in her favor, since the premise of Dollhouse requires her to be blank person sometimes, but she's not even very good at that. She overacts not having a personality, which you wouldn't think would even be possible. (Joss Whedon obviously disagrees with me in his estimation of her acting talents, since apparently he invented the show specifically so Eliza could play lots of different characters. Whatever.)

I'm also not entirely convinced about the premise itself. There's this shady company that lets really rich people hire women (and also maybe there's one dude?) to do stuff for them. Stuff like being their girlfriend for a weekend or negotiate hostage situations. Now, those two things do not have much in common. It just seems to me like a lot more trouble than it's worth to run this shadowy, super-secret organization to provide beautiful odd-job women. Why would the guy who needed his situation negotiated come to these people instead of finding a real hostage negotiator? (There's a also a sub-plot about some FBI guy trying to expose the operation even though none of his higher-ups believe in him. I didn't find that very engaging.)

One other factor that gives me pause is that it needs must be an ensemble show, since Eliza Dusku's character, Echo, can't carry the show per se, since she isn't aware of what she is a part of, who she is, or that there's anything going on at all. She's the centerpiece, but the show also rests on the peoplel that make her go. And those people, at least so far, aren't all that interesting. The nerd who reprograms her after her "engagements" is fairly grating. But I do want to find out how the doctor character (played by Amy Acker) got those weird scars all over her face.

All that being said, I should re-state that it was not a bad show. There was awkward exposition dialogue, but you've got to forgive that kind of thing in a pilot episode. Other than that, it was fine. Better than a lot of shows out there, that's for sure. It wasn't as funny as I was hoping Whedon would make it, but it wasn't boring either. Finally, one good thing about the premise is that they aren't going to run out things to do (and, of course, it will probably get cancelled before they get a chance to).

I'm pretty sure I'll watch it next week (unless, by some crazy chance, I do something other than watch TV on a Friday night). Again, for all its limitations, it's still better than most shows on television. (Including, at this point, Ugly Betty. Man, that thing has gone downhill fast.) And I would guess that it's going to get better over the next several weeks.