One New York Life

Should the Dollhouse finale that aired last week turn out to be of the series rather than the season, Joss Whedon will be able to, again, lay the blame squarely at FOX’s feet. There was a distinct and obvious difference between the two halves of the short season. The first five episodes — monster-of-the-week format, slow to nil character development, and way too much reliance on Eliza Dushku playing someone other than Faith to carry the show. Whedon said he had more influence on the show from the sixth episode on. Not surprisingly, this was where the series turned a very obvious corner. Monster-of-the-week went away, Dushku faded in to part of the ensemble rather than the main focus, the other Dolls were developed, the Dollhouse’s employees were developed, character dropped more in to Whedonesque shades of gray, and the show just got better and more intense.

A couple of points:

Spirituality: Twelve episodes of this show was enough to fill the curriculum of a sophomore philosophy class. Maybe it’s just me, but I dig that. It would be PHIL201 and it would be called “The Essence Of You — Spirituality In Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse”. It goes hand-and-hand with the entire concept in Fringe concept where Massive Dynamics is able to download things out of people’s brains after they die. I mean, it’s got to be possible, right? Someday we’ll figure out what things to probe, what wires to hook up, what to do to download the data out of people’s brains. The whole Dollhouse concept really just takes that to the next level. If you could take the entire imprint out of someone’s head and put it somewhere else. And the whole concept of “would that be you” vs. “the immortal soul”. I mean, what are you if not the collection of your memories and experiences. Would it be you? Would it just be something that thinks it’s you? Would you seamlessly see what it sees? What if they made a copy of you while you were alive? What about after you were dead? It’s like the Star Trek conundrum made in to a show. Dr. McCoy stopped using the transporter because he believed that disassembling yourself at the molecular level effectively killed you and what was reconstructed was just a copy of you with your memories.

Topher: I’m one of the few people who absolutely adored Fran Kranz’s Topher. I thought his portrayal of “genius who just knows he’s better than you” was brilliant. Topher’s a guy who walks around a world with people in it who can’t possibly understand things like he does. He jumps between mildly and rudely condescending depending on how much of a waste of time he feels the current conversation is and the amount of hope he has that you’ll understand what he’s saying. He’s a self-aware version of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. Sheldon’s hopelessly asshole-y and condescending. So is Topher — but Topher KNOWS he’s doing it and simply doesn’t care. The character was encapsulated perfectly in two parts of this season. In the finale — Ballard, Langton, and DeWitt are talking about Alpha stealing the hard drives containing Caroline’s original imprint (the one that will restore her after her five years). One of them says something about “what about the soul?” Topher gives them a withering, disdainful look, says “I’m going back to work. Let me know how the whole ‘God’ thing turns out?”, and leaves. The disgust was perfect. He understands the human brain. He understands what makes us us. To him, people who hold on to any other ideas are no different than people who thought rain was magic. Second, in one of the episodes, it’s revealed that he is allowed to imprint a doll for “personal use” one night a year. The imprint he creates is essentially a female version of himself. He has to create a person to relate to. Geniuses generally aren’t fun people to hang around and this particular genius does work that nearly all of his peers would find immoral and creepy. I think Topher’s one of the most interesting characters on the show. This is a summary of something I posted over on Movie Joe’s blog. I will carry this torch until the end.

Victor: Enver Gjokaj‘s was far and away the breakout actor on the show. He’s the only one of dolls who brought new and different personality quirks to each imprint. It’s like he’s the only one who got the memo that each personality imprint was supposed to be unique.

DeWitt: The lady that runs the Dollhouse. Before the show turned, Adelle DeWitt was relegated to creepy British lady who made decisions and was a compliant madame to this cathouse. After episode six, when she started to develop, we got a lot more depth to her character. A woman who loved and lost (so deeply that she imprinted Victor with her missing lover’s personality and carried on a secret affair with a doll). A woman willing to break the rules for friendship — an entire episode revolved around her taking an imprint of her friend with the instructions to download it in to a doll in the event of her murder so she could solve it. And, as an aside, that is a TREMENDOUS storyline should this show somehow make it. Ms. Dewitt’s friend willingly came back to the Dollhouse to essentially be killed all over again. Well — what if she didn’t? Isn’t that like a half-season storyline? Especially considering the resources someone with enough money would have to do this?

Alpha: As Big Bads go, Alpha turned out to be a bit disappointing. I understand the concept of the crazy doll with all his personalities overlaid with one another. But really, we’ve been down this road before. Joss loves him some bad guys with multiple personalities. The actor pulled off crazy relatively well but I just wasn’t in to the character.

Ballard: One minor complaint was Ballard’s sudden decision to work for the Dollhouse. He hunts them for all this time and they ruin his life and he suddenly volunteers to work for them? I get him wanting to be the Dollhouse’s Moral Compass and all but I had a hard time buying that he suddenly gave up the whole idea of bringing them down to join up. I guess maybe he wants to see Caroline’s five-year bid through.

The show is smart. Really smart. When Whedon’s fingerprints started appearing, the show got markedly better. The cast is really good and there is a huge story to tell. I honestly thought it would be difficult to make this show consistently interesting. I was wrong. It’s fantastic and it really deserves a full season to explore the philosophical mind-f*cks.

It’s original, creative, and maybe we can give something that’s not a procedural crime drama a shot? Maybe?