Dollhouse: Ghost

As I hinted at the end of my review of The Robots of Death, I have the intention of reviewing other shows. Most of these were made by Joss Whedon, and so...

First of all, I'm going to lay down some ground rules. I don't intend on rating the Dollhouse or Firefly episodes out of ten. The reason for this is that the former took forever to find its stride, and there's so little of the latter for any serious comparison. And if that sounds like a cop-out, then sorry.

So. "Ghost" sets up the world of Dollhouse. Caroline, who was just trying to find her place in the world, "just like she said," is coerced into becoming an Active. Actives are people who get programmed to be whatever their clients want them to be. Her handler is Boyd Langton, alias that jerk from The Matrix Revolutions. He apparently has some moral qualms - when Echo says "you're good people," he doesn't really seem to believe her. Anyway, her memory gets wiped - in reverse chronological order - and she returns to her blank state. Get used to this character, because we're going to be seeing her a lot for a season and a half.

The guy who wipes her is Topher Brink, a smarmy geeky tech who calls Boyd "man-friend" a lot (again, this is going away in Season 2). Basically think Andrew from Buffy with a lot more brains and a lot less sexual ambiguity (...maybe).

After this, we see a kid get abducted from her home, and roll opening credits.

"She's completely helpless" is the first line after the credits; does this mean Echo or the kid?

The kid, as it turns out - her father asks DeWitt to program a negotiator. This scene also introduces Mr. Dominic, one of the more-interesting-without-being-annoying characters (sorry, Topher). After that, we meet the doctor, Claire Saunders, played by Amy "Fred" Acker. Her first scene is a one-on-one with Echo, and the Faith-Fred shippers (you know there must be at least one of them) rejoice. Something fell on Echo, it turns out, and she can't remember it (it was probably her lover, but I'm amused by the fact that things falling on limbs was introduced in the very first episode).

Echo wanders upstairs and meets Important Doll #2, Sierra, formerly Priya. Her mind's being wiped, painfully. Topher explains that because it's her first time, they need to do more extensive work on her. The phrase "active architecture" obviously isn't being thrown around in front of the dolls - or maybe it just hasn't been invented yet.

Two things to point out: Saunders slinks through the back of the scene rather eeriy right when Topher starts talking about "forgetting all this." Secondly, Ivy's not in that scene.

Moving right along, we get introduced to Paul Ballard, an FBI agent who's not getting anywhere in his investigation of the Dollhouse. He's physically threatened a Senator - obviously not Daniel Perrin - and gone through a divorce. "If you have everything, you want something else," Paul says. This is all intercut with a boxing match to demonstrate that Paul isn't the giving-up type. His superiors tell him to stay away from a human trafficking case. He says it won't be a problem. Guess where we'll see him next?

Meanwhile, Echo gets imprinted as the negotiator in the kidnap case. Anybody thinking the writers could save themselves a lot of bother by making the kidnappers in league with the human traffickers is sadly mistaken. In a clumsy infodump, we learn that Boyd is an ex-cop (I say clumsy because Dominic never says anything about ex-cop heroics ever again for the rest of the season).

The father namedrops Edward James Olmos, because Whedon is obsessed with Battlestar Galactica. We also learn that Topher can mess up people's bodies - or at least the way they percieve their bodies. Topher watches Sierra on a treadmill and says that whever someone's running, the question is are they running to something or from something, and the answer is always both. "Achievement is balanced by fault," Topher says, and "Everyone who excels is... hiding from something." And he looks at Saunders - she with the facial scars - as he says that.

There's some plot stuff that pertains just to this episode, but as I said, I'm not really doing reviews of each episode on an individual basis.

Paul watches Lubov, one of the Borodin goons. Lubov - spoiler alert - is really Victor, another doll, and he's basically the same character as the art critic in "Belonging."

Echo's imprint - Eleanor Penn - was kidnapped as a kid. So that's three outright kidnappings in this plot, and yet they don't use this as an easy way to bring Paul into the picture. That's not to say he gets nothing to do - he gets to menace Lubov in the men's room.

The exchange gets shot to hell - literally - when Eleanor Penn recognizes one of the kidnappers. Note that this is the only time Echo gets so severely hamstrung by just random stuff Topher put in her brain.

Dominic goes ape about everything that went down at the dock - he's a great character, he's interfering and making the plot take longer, but he's doing his job and he's got his reasons. Reed Diamond sells it so well. He's not an obstructionist on a power trip, he's a guy who's seriously concerned with doing his job, even at the expense of one single mission.

DeWitt tells Boyd that he hasn't been here "as long as some of the others," which is slightly less jarring an info-dump that the earlier one, and it's arguably more important - though it does make his eventual promotion a bit stranger. Surely there's a handler who can actually, uh, handle their Active? (Whoops, that was a bad choice of words considering what happens with Sierra).

When Boyd finds out how emotionally damaged the imprint is, and what it might do to Echo, he has another conscience attack. Apparently.

Also, the serial rapist in this story has been going through girls, more than a bit like the Dollhouse itself.

Echo tries to get the kidnappers to make the exchange fairly, but Sierra comes crashing in with a shotgun and spoils the whole thing. Too bad that never goes anywhere - Eleanor Penn's not coming back until she's one of many voices in Echo's head, and Sierra's imprint's never coming back.

Lastly, as the dolls get into their beds, you can see the back of Victor's head.

There are some flaws in this, as far as first episodes go - some of the infodumps are just a bit too brazen. It works in most places though. We know who the Dollhouse staff is, and we have a few hints about how the rest of the first season - and beyond - will unfold.