See, back in March, I wrote this more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger piece for The Atlantic's website, published the day Dollhouse's sixth episode aired, in which I said the show didn't live up to Joss Whedon's feminist vision and that the show would have to make the show's protagonist, a young woman named Echo/Caroline who gave up her identity under duress to live life as a blank slate and sent out into the real world to enact rich people's fantasies, a real person in order for the show to succeed. That very night, Whedon proceeded to do exactly that with the show. I don't think I've ever whiplashed between pride and regret on a piece so quickly (though I think the analysis of why Whedon's work is effectively feminist stands up all right). If you're out there, Mr. Whedon, I apologize. (And someday I'll publish the full content of the very thoughtful responses you sent to my questions.) The subsequent episodes proceeded to floor me.
Dollhouse isn't Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it's not kicky and fun in between the slayage and the angsting. It's not Angel, it's not particularly tied to any given place, nor does it have a brooding hero with a significant backstory. And it's not Firefly, with its vision of a tight-knit crew set against the world. Dollhouse is fundamentally a drama of isolation, about the very adult dilemma of having to learn to cope with what's inside your own head, and the fact that you don't actually know what's in everybody else's. The show asks how you live with yourself if you're an extremely discriminating pimp, if you're so socially isolated that you literally erase other people for a living, how you travel between worlds if you're theoretically a nice guy who happens to enable a form of human trafficking. Echo/Caroline's conundrum is a nightmare: how do you live with yourself if there's nothing there to live with?
Dollhouse's first season was about drifting through life as a blank slate, unaware of your condition. I imagine the second will address what it's like to lose your personhood and know that you've lost it. To me, that sounds like a significant question, and it could solve one of the first season's central problems, that Eliza Dushku isn't necessarily a variable enough actress to carry a different and fully believable personality in every episode. If Echo stays a bit more engagingly constant, and Dollhouse explores the compromised, deeply human cast of characters he's assembled, the show could have a strong second season. In the meanwhile, I'll be buying the DVD, watching the never-aired 13th episode of the first season, and keeping my fingers crossed.