Dollhouse: Out With A Bang!

For some backstory for anybody who doesn't know but cares to, check out Mo Ryan's various writeups about "Dollhouse" here.

Ironically, I am of multiple minds about Dollhouse. I've gone into every episode with almost zero exceptions, been disappointed, been entertained, been put to sleep, but more recently been amazed, excited, and impressed. The first season of Dollhouse was pretty weak. I think even the producers and writers would cop to that. The show is a very highconcept sci-fi drama with many moral, cultural, and technological implications that were rarely touched in the first season. Instead, the show played up to the most base human instincts: sex, greed, power and violence.

In its second season, the show took a lot of those same ideas and fleshed them out and explored them in new and interesting ways. While the first season had maybe five episodes I would consider "successful," every single episode in the second season has come through and delivered, elevating what was just a "cool idea for a show" into a great series that will be missed. It was an incredible thing to watch this season and after every episode think, "That was the best episode yet!"

Once the ax went down and the series was unceremoniously canceled while not even airing (don't EVEN get me started..), the producers were given a chance to finish the series in a proper way. We should be thankful. Most shows don't get that chance. With Dollhouse, where the endgame was pretty obvious from the first episode (Echo gets out), the showrunners had a double task of pushing their premise to the limit in a condensed way.



So far: They've outdone themselves! The last six episodes of the series, played in doubleheader fashion, have been almost note-perfect. They've had just the right blend of action and adventure. They've touched on politics. They have not ignored the best characters in the show: Victor and Sierra. They even went all Eternal Sunshine and it wasn't cheesily-done.

There's now just two episodes left, airing in early January, and I have high hopes that this series will end better than most series ever get a chance to.