Joss Whedon’s new television show, Dollhouse premiered last Friday, and the first episode is now available online. I’ve seen it twice, and it held my interest both times. Whedon is obviously planting the seeds for a lot of backstory and plot lines, including the apparently criminal mistake made by the lead character, known as Echo once she enters the Dollhouse. (Eliza Dushka of Buffy the Vampire fame plays Echo.) The first episode also hints at something interesting — and disturbing — in the past of a doctor at the facility played by Amy Acker, another of Whedon’s top finds from Angel.
What is the Dollhouse? It’s an illegal operation that signs up semi-willing participants to have their personalities erased so that they can be reprogrammed for particular missions — er, “engagements” — ranging from high-end escort services to mercenary-type actions. In the first episode, Echo helps negotiate the release of a kidnapped girl.
I’m looking forward to more. Just don’t screw it up, Fox. By the way, Universal, where are the Serenity sequels? If you get your marketing act together, I’m confident two additional films would make money, especially now that the stars are better-known actors.
On a completely unrelated note, we watched Blindness, an awful, terrible, grotesque little film to be avoided at all costs.
Fran Kranz is amazing in The Dollhouse. Is anyone here a big fan? I also found him on showbizzle.com – this new website for actors. Characters like THESE show off their stories. haha, it’s hilarious at times.
What didn’t you like about Blindness? I saw it was going to be on at the cinema but decided to give it a miss, and then thought that maybe I should have seen it. Was it so bad?
The premise is that everybody (except one lady) goes blind due to some illness that scientists can neither identify nor cure.
Much of the movie takes place in a quarantine building, in which some of the blinded inmates behave basically like barbarians.
The overall theme of the movie is that people are fundamentally not in control of their lives. The sighted woman, for instance, takes very few constructive actions that were possible to her.