Dollhouse – the end?

As promised some time ago I haven’t been blogging weekly about Dollhouse, the latest show created by Joss Whedon. However with the final episode being shown last week in the US (not to forget about the 13th episode, but the season is over) and the likelihood of a second season remaining slim I thought I’d try to digest my thoughts on the show. If you are staying spoiler free don’t jump below the cut as I’ll be talking about the season as a whole, and won’t spare details when needed.

The show didn’t really start with too much of a bang. Joss Whedon shows always have a season wide arc, a theme that gives continuity while allowing the freedom to duck off that path from time to time. The first half of Dollhouse was extremely episodic. Which when you’re talking about an organisation that programs people means that you have a lot of potential episodes. They were mostly pretty fun, and certainly entertaining but where was the punch? Where were the big questions about personhood?

Those questions arrived in grand style with the “game changing” 6th episode, Man on the Street. Suddenly were weren’t just talking about the adventures of one plucky active, we were looking at the Dollhouse as a whole. It’s really a shame that the show had to wait till the half way point to really start telling the stories that the creators had obviously been wanting to tell. I’m not going to wade into the conversation around whether Fox did or did not hijack Dollhouse in the first half of it’s season, but those more formulaic first episodes really didn’t do the concept justice.

There is so much discussion about the concept, a highly illicit and underground organisation who programs people at the whim of the extremely wealthy which uses the proceeds of this high end slavery ring to finance scientific research for an even shadier parent company, that I don’t have a whole lot more to add. To get caught up though check out io9.com who have some very insightful commentary.

However what I will say is that Dolhouse showed through it’s first (and maybe only) season that TV can be a medium to ask some tough questions on the nature of a person and whether the ends truly justify the means. While technology was at the heart of the Dollhouse I don’t really see the show as saying that use of technology will make us less human, but more that technology is an amazing tool that has no sense of morals or ethics. That is up to the people who use it.

The cast of people in the Dollhouse are an impressive array of conflicted, complicated characters. They are aware of the morally grey area they inhabit and yet constantly convince themselves that what they’re doing is a good thing. It’s rather strange to root for a character who you find so morally reprehensible. Topher (the programmer) is the character that embody this the best I think. He’s a loveable, quirky character in best Whedon form who also rips peoples personalities from their brains and then plugs a new one in. Not quite so loveable any more. By the end of the season we are starting to glimpse a little of the self-loathing that he must struggle with. After all, as one Doll asks, why did he programme her to hate him so much?

At the end of the day Dollhouse turned into a complex show that actually required you to think about things, rather than always getting the answer handed to you. There are more stories to tell and hopefully a second season will be signed off so that everyone involved gets that chance. If not, well I’ll always have the DVDs.