Dollhouse

So yeah, Dollhouse. Thoughts.

I just finished watching the second episode. As far as I noticed, people held off on reviewing the series after the pilot, which was a good call. The pilot basically said "Hello, I am the premise! Goodbye!" It was interesting, but left you waiting for the other shoe to drop. In essence, the pilot set up a fairly formulaic adventure of the week series. Echo gets a new personality each week to deal with some new problem. Agent Ballard slowly gets closer but never quite finds the Dollhouse. You could milk two or three seasons out of that, and it wouldn't be that bad. Take a look at Burn Notice for a show that gets a lot of mileage out of a solid cast and a good formula.

But the thing is, this is a Joss Whedon show, so we expect more. Joss Whedon's shows have over arching plots, and season or series long adversaries. That's where episode two comes in. It says to us "Hello, I am the Meta-plot! My friend premise is here too, but I think you and I can be great friends!" And we all breathe a sigh of relief because that's what we were waiting for.

Rather than discuss the plot of either episode I'm just going to talk about possiblities for meta-plot. There may be spoilers though. So far the plot hooks established:

An escaped Active, Alpha, with a composite personality and a tendency to cut people up. (Note: Something about being called Alpha leads to weirdness. Alpha was a rogue agent in the MiB cartoon and the master AI in RvB: Reconstruction.) He spared Echo's life during his killing spree.

A myserious naked guy who knows Echo's past. Odds that it's Alpha- 2:1

Mark Sheppard, world's greatest character actor (Badger-Firefly, Romo Lamkin-Battlestar Galactica, Whatever the villain's name was-Bionic Woman, Awesome bank robber-Burn Notice, I watch too much tv), plays his least sketchy role ever. Odds he's actually sketchy- 3:2

Dollhouse has mysterious backers. Odds they're evil- 1:1

Echo is retaining some memories, at least subconsciously. Not giving odds as I'm pretty sure that her developing her own personality is the main plot of the series.

Odds that at least one character we've already met is secretly an Active- 5:1

Some mysterious agency orchestrated a massive plot to hire Echo for a round of "Most Dangerous Game," involving hiring a psycho outdoorsman, hiring a mercenary disguised as a cop, falsifying a complete background, and killing two people. During the chase she drank a canteen of drugged water that made her start to see past incarnations of herself. Odds that the whole plot was a Xanatos Roulette to get her to do that- 3:1

Alpha killed the aforementioned mercenary. Odds are split even whether he was doing it to protect Echo or cover his own tracks.

At one point the Actives' base programing was Ninja. They flipped out and killed each other. Odds that that is awesome- Chainsaw:Bacon