Premise and Motivation: "Dollhouse"

Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” never had a chance, did it?

It’s not talking about it’s well-documented trouble with FOX, or even Whedon’s problems with his own original pilot. It’s about the premise itself.

If you’re a nerd who lives under a rock, or in Canada or something, here’s “Dollhouse” in a couple of sentences:

“The Dollhouse is the headquarters of an organization that provides clients with high-priced “Actives”, brain-dead humans with personalities that can be “built” for any situation the client requires. Also, they’re kind of mysterious, so of course some FBI guy is trying to expose them. He’s largely inconsequential, but he’s played by Tamoh Penikett, so, you know… AWESOME.”

There’s a litmus test for good fiction, which is you must never question whether or not a premise makes sense. It doesn’t matter if it’s science fiction, or fantasy, or real world drama, because a competently crafted story world has its own rules for viewers to follow – realistic or not.

“Dollhouse” unfortunately, runs into the most fundamental flaw in genre fiction. When a viewer questions why someone would pay a large sum of money to have a Hostage Negotiator built from the ground up rather than pay considerably less money for an actual hostage negotiator, the only possible answer is “because otherwise, there’d be no show.”

The viewer is doing too much of the work. Yes, great shows are challenging, but that challenge is a reward for deep viewing. In “Dollhouse”, the viewer is asked to keep the show together on an almost mechanical level, rather than interact with it on an emotional one. In the first episode aired, “Ghost”, a viewer would have a hard time actually growing to care about Eliza Dushku’s Echo, because they’re spending too much time subconsciously rationalizing her very existence.

That’s unfortunate, because Dushku is doing a decent job, with a role that will never pay off. A viewer can’t get into any of the characters she plays weekly because they’re gone so quickly, and the speed at which a viewer must identify with them necessitates that they be broadly constructed stereotypes. Echo herself, is difficult too – she plays on the parts of the human psyche that want to protect weak or childlike creatures, which limits the depth of involvement. It’s reacting instinctively, rather than with true emotion. When Echo only understands death as “sleeping”, it doesn’t beg someone to care, it makes them sad because they’re only caring in the same way they’d care about someone else’s child.

The rest of the acting is a big problem. The secondary players are all Whedon stock types, but the actors this time around aren’t up to the challenge. The best of them is Harry Lennix’s turn as Echo’s handler, Boyd Langdon. There’s nothing to the character outside of a warm father figure, but Lennix plays it well. He’s touching when he needs to be, and alternatively physically intimidating to villains and coworkers who threaten Echo’s safety. It works just fine.
Now that we’ve had three Whedon-created TV shows, it’s become abundantly clear that the impact of the show hinges on one of his regular characters, the wisecracking friend. Whedon shows are all about complex emotions, and that character – Xander in “Buffy”, Wesley in “Angel”, Wash in “Firefly” – grounds the viewer emotionally. He can disarm a situation with a joke, and his status as a joke factory means he has the most emotional gravity when called on to act dramatically. That character is Topher Brink, played by the – there’s really no other word for it – terrible Fran Kranz. Kranz plays Topher with no range, thus he loses the most important function of the character. Kranz just reads jokes, instead of given the viewer an immediately relatable protagonist.

Tamoh Penikett is a huge star in the making, but the determined Paul Ballard isn’t really showcasing the range he showed as Karl “Helo” Agathon on “Battlestar Galactica”. Penikett has the stoic action hero thing down, but that’s all “Dollhouse” is really asking of him. Ballard is an emotional brick wall – he shows up, grunts at some people, then races off to find the Dollhouse, motivated by apparently nothing but duty. A character driven by duty can work, but it relies on the viewer knowing why. Duty isn’t a motivation in a vacuum, it’s a motivation created by… a second motivation. You’re driven by duty because of lineage, trauma, moral outrage, etc...

Look at Spider-Man. He’s definitely duty-centric (“With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility”), but that loyalty stems from the trauma of Uncle Ben’s death. Ballard may very well have an interesting backstory, but there’s not a single second where he’s allowed to show any depth.. His best scene is actually worse for his being in it:



Miracle Laurie nails every second of this scene, but she’s up against the black hole of emotion that is Paul Ballard. He gives her absolutely nothing. There’s not even a sense that he’s missing her obvious come-ons. He’s either incredibly mean, or has an inability to relate with humans. That could be interesting, if they go with it as a character trait rather than a lack of depth. It’s a tough line to walk, but it’s worked before.

Although its future is currently pretty bleak, “Dollhouse” looks like it may have an outside chance of success. The second episode “The Target”, is considerably better than the pilot, if only due to the fact that the “engagement” Echo is sent on seems like it makes a little more sense. Couple that with the fact that the commercials make it seem like next weeks episode is going to be dead-on correct – where else are you going to find someone with bodyguard skills that can also sing and dance like a professional backup dancer? – it certainly looks to be on a more suitable path. It just may turn out that the flaws are too numerous, and the cracks too deep, for there to be a reason to stick around.

Then there’s this scene, while a little condescending, really nails a watchable and intriguing dynamic. Damn, though, does it have to work its ass off to do so.