Dollhouse got off to an inauspicious start last week. The reviews have been decidedly mixed and the ratings for the premiere have been less than sparkling. I found several things to like about the show, but questions remains. How will Dollhouse keep itself from being a show about custom made hookers? When will we see more of Whedon’s true style? Is this show already DOA?

Dollhouse kicks off with some flash back action. One of the active’s code named “Alpha” escapes and kills all the other actives except Echo. Its clear that Alpha is the naked man who figured out Echo’s identity last episode. Throughout the episode, we got several flashbacks of the aftermath of Alpha’s escape. Alpha has made himself into a composite of all the badasses in the Dollhouse and seems to be unstoppable.

There is a new client at the Dollhouse, hiring Echo as his companion for a trip to the great outdoors. The client is played by Matt Keeslar known to nerds as the star of ABC family’s The Middleman. The rugged outdoorsman and Echo are rock climbing, bow hunting in the wilderness and having sex in a tent. Not particularly interesting until we finally discover the real purpose of the trip. He wants to hunt Echo. He gives her a head start, and his psychotic hunt begins.

Echo’s handler Agent Boyd is parked in the woods waiting and monitoring her. While waiting he’s approached by a man dressed as a forest ranger.  The fake ranger is working for the psychotic hunter and holds Boyd hostage to give his boss a chance to kill Echo undisturbed. Boyd’s overpowers his assailant and begins to try to track Echo and the hunter.

I have to admit that I really like agent Boyd. He’s played well by Harry Lennix and is believable as the show’s voice of reason. His character is integral for the show to work, I think Whedon chose well with Lennix.
While running from the hunter, Echo is drugged making her even more weak. The drugs cause Echo to have visions of herself before the Dollhouse and of Alpha‘s killing spree. The cracks in her psyche seem to be what much of the future of the series will hold. Although I know something like that has to happen to give the series momentum, I pray they we won’t be walking down the same awful path that My Own Worst Enemy did.

After Boyd gets free, he tracks down Echo for extraction. Unfortunately, the hunter is close behind and he wounds Boyd. Echo and Boyd continue to run, now with Boyd bleeding all over the pines. Echo realizes that the only way to escape their hunter is to go after him rather than run. Its a silly but satisfying reversal. Now armed, a new game between them starts. After a few scrapes, Echo and the hunter end up in a standoff. Echo gets the better of him and stabs him in the neck with one of his arrows. Shaken and exhausted, she returns to the injured Boyd and safety. Back at the Dollhouse, the group tries to figure out how a psychotic got past their screening process. Alpha is behind the psycho hunter as well.

The thrust of the show is beginning to show. Certainly there will be moments where we get titillated by the actives acting like custom hookers, but it looks like there will be some more depth. The idea of a perfect insane killer running loose looking for a way to destroy the Dollhouse will at least give the show a shadowy bogey man. That might be the missing piece to a pretty good piece of Sci-Fi.

Dollhouse is the new series from the mind of Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. Its been a rocky road to get to the premiere. On various occasions during development Dollhouse looked like it would be jettisoned. Punctuating those troubles, Dollhouse has arrived with mixed signals sent by Fox. The series is on Friday nights, not usually a place to put programs with a high priority, but also came with some fanfare as Whedon always brings along his cult of nerds and bloggers. Friday night is a tough night to thrive from. Someone with Whedon’s built-in audience though, has a chance at success.

Dollhouse is supposed to question our ideas about morality, identity and feminism. I know this from listening to interviews with Whedon himself. Those plot points just aren’t fully fleshed out in the pilot. However if you take those deeper philosophical structures out of it, what’s left is a show that has promise but doesn’t yet have that Wheadon-baked feel.

The show begins with Echo. Echo is a woman with no life of her own. She’s implanted with the wishes and desires of her clients. When the client’s job is done, Echo returns to the Dollhouse where her memory is wiped for the next job. At first it looks like the Dollhouse isn’t much more than a high end brothel. It becomes clear rather quickly, that that isn’t the case.

Someone at the FBI is interested in Dollhouse. They have had an agent attempting to uncover the organization for some time, but without success. Most of the agents think its an urban myth, but one is adamant about its existence. Paul, played by Tahmoh Penikett from Battlestar Galactica, is the sad agent saddled with that burden. He’s clearly going to be a good addition to the cast. I like his style and nothing adds spice like a rogue FBI agent.

A young girl is kidnapped and her father, a wealthy businessman seeks the Dollhouse organization for help. Echo is set to manage the exchange. Implanted with all the tools needed for negotiations, she leaps into the fray. After some intense negotiations, the client is clearly rattled. His fear for his daughter overwhelms him and questions her motives and abilities. His accusations trigger some of Echo’s true memories of the Dollhouse. There are clearly some glitches in the system.

Paul the FBI agent is staking out a crummy bar hoping for some tidbits about the Dollhouse. A talkative man is throwing money around and Paul corners him. Paul demands that he help link him with the Dollhouse. He’s laying the seeds of a very very contentious relationship.

At the exchange point, Echo and the client confront the kidnappers. Echo’s handler, an ex-cop, is watching but Echo is convinced something is wrong. The kidnappers won’t play fair, shooting the client and running off with the little girl. The handler extracts Echo in the chaos. Echo has memories implanted from a former kidnaping victim and the current kidnappers are the same as those in her memories. I appreciate that the former sentence is clumsy, but the moment is quite stark. She know the kidnappers and she knows that the little girl is not safe. Since her handler is a cop he can’t help but want to be involved. He demands that he and Echo be allowed to chase down the kidnappers despite Dollhouse’s secret. After some tense moments, the head of Dollhouse relents.

Now with a mission, Echo is coming to the rescue. She has figured out the identity of the kidnapper and approaches their safe house. She exposes the true ringleader as duplicitous to the others and a gun fight breaks out. Echo saves the girl and in that moment another one of the dollhouse girls bursts in, taking out the kidnapers. All is well now and the agents return to the Dollhouse to have their memories removed.

Whedon’s pithy dialogue isn’t in full force on this pilot episode, but his guiding hand is all over it. Very rarely is a series pilot come out as fully formed as Dollhouse. There are holes and plot problems but the show has as much potential as I’ve seen this season. Whedon has done what the canceled My Own Worst Enemy was trying to do. Namely, find a plot device that gives the viewer a way to examine the duality of human nature. I’m looking forward to next week.