Dollhouse

Hi there,

I just wanted to take this (brief) opportunity to say goodbye to Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. We hardly knew ye.

I can't say Dollhouse was my favorite show, by any means, though it is, (was), one of the few I watched regularly, (again, due to my respect for Joss Whedon), and when all was said and done, (last Friday, for those of you keeping track), it turned out to be a neat little show.

Little, I say, because it went barely two seasons. One very uneven and the other a slow-ish, but steady climb to potential greatness. Yes, there was some great stuff there in the last eight or nine episodes. The arc moved swiftly and with many surprising twists and turns. And, while the end might not have been totally organic, (me thinks Joss poured much of seasons three and four into the latter half of season two), it was pretty damn good TV.

I'm a big Joss Whedon fan. Buffy The Vampire Slayer remains one of my favorite shows, (and one of TV's best of all-time). It helped redefine serial shows in the 21st century and many of todays great ones, (Lost, I'm looking at you; 24, Heroes, if you like, and many, many more), are a product of Joss Whedon's game-changing sensibility and style, blending stand-alone metaphorical allegories with season-long story arc and series-long character-arcs. He seemed to single-handedly usher in the TV on DVD/DVR phenomenon, which now dominates most of our viewing habits.

That said, Dollhouse never totally found its footing. It works fairly well, though, as a two-season mini-series, complete with great science-fiction-style concepts and questions that blur the lines between 'right' and 'wrong', 'good' and 'bad', etc. It explores, (for my money), facinating philosphical terrain, mostly around issues of identity and the role of technology in our blisteringly-fast moving society. What makes you you? Is it your body? Is it your mind? Your memories? Your environment? What if we one day had the ability to free ourselves totally from such limitations and live forever as 'ourselves', going from body to body, human identity to human identity...it's all pretty heady, but timely and largely unexplored in such a popular and potentially large-reaching medium. Questions worth asking, I'd say.

I think shows like Dollhouse, it's predecessor, Firefly, (which did so well on DVD they made a follow-up movie), and even Lost, which has benefited tremendously from a fixed end-point, are the way of the future for American TV. Short two-four season lifespans that play out a lot more like their Brittish counterparts. Excellent for the short attention spans of the modern media-savy.

So farewell Dollhouse. Thanks for the (short-term) memories.
If you're a fan of Joss Whedon, challenging sci-fi, or just unconventional TV, I urge you all to check out the complete series when it comes to DVD.

D.A.