Dollhouse: Stage Fright

Here we are, kiddies. It’s the one with the pop singer, the one where Sierra gets her lamest imprint, and the one where Echo flashes a bunch of people just out of the camera’s field of vision.

It opens with one of those concerts that’s honestly more burlesque than music – but fortunately this doesn’t last long because one of the backup singers gets brutally burned by a pyro effect gone wrong. The singer bolts and the camera lingers on a creepy guy.

Then we get Saunders telling Boyd not to tear arrows out of his body himself. He tells her that she can call him Boyd – is he already flirting with her?
Melanie catches Lubov trying to sneak into his apartment. She’s barefoot (foreshadowing!!) and they do a little bit of talking – basically so we remember who Lubov is, so that it comes as a shock when we see him later in the Dollhouse.

The starlet needs to “remind everyone that she’s an artist [who] actually sings the damn songs.” Ah, what a jolly version of my own take on the pop music scene. Seems there’s been lots of sabotage – someone’s trying to kill the starlet, whose name is Rayna. Her manager asks Adelle for some help, so away we go. She doesn’t need bodyguards, she needs a friend. Aw.

So to recap, thus far Echo has been programmed to be a hostage negotiator (after briefly being a girl wearing a shirt), a date who gets hunted, and now someone who gets to hang out with a “musician.” For a show that claims its going to be exploring human sexuality, it’s not delivering in these early episodes.

(For the record, those of you so inclined might want to flip back to my review of “The Mysterious Planet,” where I spent some time blasting Robert Holmes for giving us some subpar nonsense. The same principle applies here. Joss Whedon is better at setting up shows than this.)

Okay, Elisa Dushku can sing. Not exactly lead-singer quality, but she can definitely carry a tune. The little duet she does with Rayna is pretty cool. Though it is a song about freedom, and let’s remember that she’s not going to have any of that until Season 2.

Saunders berates Topher, revealing in the process that sometimes they do “altruistic” engagements. We’ll get exactly one (possibly two) of these in the series.

Despite the fact that we’re three episodes in (and therefore in Fox-mandated “Stand-alone-ness”), there is some continuity – neither Echo nor Boyd are really on top form. Though in the next scene we get to see her in her bra, so yay female empowerment!

Rayna flips out over a mint, thus eradicating the last shred of sympathy I had for her, and then it’s back to the Enver Gjokaj show as Paul and Lubov meet for the last time. Hilariously, Lubov suggests that he should sign up, and someone who I had to rewind the disc to make sure wasn’t Echo walks past in the background. Come on, casting director, don’t do that to us. The music gets all dramatic and we know that Paul’s about to touch on one of the themes of the show: “We come up with something new, the first thing we do is destroy, manipulate, control.” “People are mostly crap,” Lubov says, in a great line.

Boyd says he’s “happy they double-tracked this.” (meaning he’s glad there are two Actives on the case, but anybody who knows about music production knows that double-tracking is something else). But Paul also says that Rayna is “shallow, vapid and narcissictic,” which explains why I don’t like her. Topher mentions that Joe Hearn is handling Sierra – more subtle foreshadowing. Then Topher wipes Lubov, revealing that he’s really Victor. Shock!

This is one of those episodes that are a paradox of early Dollhouse. It does stuff for the arc, and I like some of the little details, but the actual plot of the episode isn’t particularly… good. It just doesn’t work for me.

Part of the problem is that it makes us listen to the same godawful pop song and dance routine twice. The second time, there’s a sniper setting things up, and ooh, suspense, but the soundtrack’s trying to be all ominous and not in any way pulling this off with that wretched beat in the background.

After the commercial break, the show’s suddenly, um, over. Any hope we’d had that the plot would wrap up halfway through the episode gets horribly dashed. Sierra is Rayna’s number-one fan, and Rayna, disgusted, actually manages to act sympathetic. Huh. But, um, why did the Dollhouse think this was a good idea?

Echo asks Sierra if she’d take off her clothes and run down the street if she told her to. No, but she would if one of the handlers did. Bwahaha.

Lubov sets Paul up for a date with a bunch of gunmen. It ends with him being shot in the gut. This is going to be a recurring theme of the series. Nevertheless, because he is a badass, he is able to take out all his assailants even with a gaping wound in his side.

We meet Hearn, who seems more lazy than evil, though he mentions that the previous Sierra “got the job done.” Not creepy yet… just wait…

Echo realizes that Rayna has a death wish, and the scene ends with her saying “I just wanna be free” from inside the cage that’s going to take her to the stage. When we get back from the act break, Rayna’s singing a song about a stalker. How convenient.

Sierra gets up on stage because of a fantastic coincidence. Then Echo beats up a bouncer, gets on stage, and uses a spotlight to find the sniper. Okay, I get that dolls are programmed to be awesome and all, but, um, she doesn’t have superpowers.

Echo and Rayna have it out. “Are there any drugs you’re not on?” Awesome line. Rayna complains about how she’s not real, she’s just everybody’s fantasy, blah blah blah, Whedon used to be a lot more subtle when he had one character talk about another character without really intending to. Still, despite the blatant analogies, this episode still tends to work a tad better than the previous one, bad music and all.

…but then Sierra gets kidnapped just because the plot’s not over yet and we still have 20 minutes to kill. Yup, double-tracking was a great, great idea. Just like it was in “The Final Frontier.”

Echo notices the hostage is Sierra, who she met in their mutual blank slates at the beginning of the episode. But more importantly, her manager realizes what a self-centered brat his star really is. Yay! And yet, because Echo is programmed to like her, she still wants to help. Yup, that’s the only way for shallow pop stars to have friends. Tell it like it is!

Dominic doesn’t quite subscribe to this; when Adelle asks him if he likes Rayna’s music, he dodges the question like the smooth bastard he is.

Sierra gets menaced in a well-directed scene. Yay. Fanboy is suitably creepy. Meanwhile Rayna’s going through the same routine again, alone in her warehouse. She’s as much a robot as Echo is, really. Not very subtle. But Echo actually has something else in mind, because she actually does recognize Sierra. Topher explains that Echo’s hardwired to protect Rayna (she’s preventing Rayna from committing suicide), but that doesn’t seem to be a possibility because she’s going to use Rayna in a hostage exchange. Let me repeat that: it doesn’t seem possible to Topher or Dominic – two people who absolutely, as prerequisites for their jobs, should understand the nuances of the Laws of Robotics.

It turns out of course that Echo’s just doing the big old hostage therapy thing, getting Rayna to realize that yup, she actually does love her life. Still, there is that underlying current of “I remember Sierra.”

Also, Hearn shows up again and is a bit creepier towards Sierra.

Dominic recommends they send Echo to the attic – because again he can’t sort out that whole Second Law thing. It’s a nice touch, but it calls into question his qualifications – and not in the way we’re probably intended to question.

Saunders says that “Echo wasn’t always the best,” which Boyd interprets as meaning that Alpha was once the best. Ha ha.

This isn’t my favorite episode, for a number of reasons. I don’t really like the bratty pop star, which makes me glad that she gets some comeuppance at the end. Still, it’s got plenty of redeeming qualities. The creepy fan is a much more believable and identifiable villain that Mr. Most-Dangerous-Game in the previous episode. This episode got better after it started, just like the show did as a whole. The only problem is, nobody stuck around to watch it.