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Two, two, TWO reviews of Dollhouse in ONE!

This has been a long time coming for Episode 10 of Dollhouse, but couldn’t come soon enough for Episode 11! Oh, man, it’s been rough to really get my thoughts together for Ep 10, entitled “Haunted”, but once I formulated them, I almost didn’t even want to review it, because it was just so incredibly awful that it defied belief. In contrast, Ep 11, entitled “Briar Rose” was so absolutely brilliant that it blew my frakkin’ head off.

But first, let’s talk about “Haunted”. It was bland, boring, uninteresting. No real drama, no real mystery, no real fun. It was like a hybrid of Murder, She Wrote and Quantum Leap, which I consider to be both terrible shows. Basically, the conceit is this. A wealthy woman and friend of Adelle’s dies. A week or so before she dies, she is asked to have her memories downloaded by the Dollhouse. Her reason? She believes someone is going to murder her. After her death, Echo is imprinted with this woman’s persona. We have the requisite questions about life after death and the possiblity that the Dollhouse gives for immortality. Yawn. Echo presents herself as a young friend of the dead woman as she goes to her funeral to investigate who may have killed her. Was it her young beefcake hubby? Was it her ne’er-do-well brother (played wonderfully by veteran character actor Gregg Henry)? Was it her deep-in-debt son? Was it her resentful, bitter daughter? Meanwhile, back at the House, Topher requests to have an Active imprinted to help run a security sweep, and Sierra is imprinted. But the imprint is actually someone exactly like him, who he can play laser tag with, talk sci-fi pet peeves with, and toss around a Nerf ball with. The reason? It’s his birthday. And Adelle gives him this one day every year to do this. So Adelle has a heart. Yay. And Echo goes through the requisite red herrings, heals the familial wounds, and finds her killer. Double yay.

What was so utterly disappointing about “Haunted” was that that it was written by a supposed trifecta of Jane Espenson (who has worked on pretty much all of the best TV shows in recent years like Buffy, Angel and BSG) and Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, the co-writers of Joss’ brilliant Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Any one of these writers alone should guarantee good television. But maybe it was because there were too many writers… maybe that’s what killed it. A mish-mash of too many ideas and not enough real exploration. Also bad is that super-veteran director Elodie Keene (who has done episodes of everything from L.A. Law, Boston Public, and Felicity to genre gems American Gothic and Strange Luck) doesn’t bring anything really interesting here either. It was just an awful standalone ep, and I just can’t fathom for the life of me how they could put an ep like this into a high-risk high-concept show in its first season on Fox. It’s almost like they want the show to fail, adding an episode like this with nothing interesting, new or fun…

…which is pretty much the polar opposite of “Briar Rose”. “Briar Rose” was ridiculously great.

It starts with a homeless-looking man and a hand in a dumpster, as every great tale does. It seems like it’s going to have a very Law and Order kind of opening, but it edges more toward horror. Then we see Echo in a classroom as a very nice and understanding DCFS-ish kind of lady reading the Briar Rose (or The Brothers Grimm version of Sleeping Beauty) tale to a bunch of youngsters. One little girl is very upset about Briar Rose not having the smarts to avoid her prophesized fate and having to wait for a prince to save her. It seems that she’s very upset about this. Back at the apartment of Agent Ballard, he is packing and very unceremoniously handing Mellie her hat. Mellie is very upset and distraught about this and is trying everything she can to convince him to stay with her. Because he knows that she’s really a Doll, and that she’s a Doll that will kill him if she is asked to, he has to give her the douchebag treatment so that she’ll leave him alone. He is Agent Paul Ballard and he has a mission: Save Caroline and stop The Dollhouse. When she leaves, he follows the black van that takes her away, and he discovers the building that seems to access The Dollhouse. He then turns to the one contact he has in the Bureau who doesn’t think he’s totally over the edge, Loomis, and he tells him her theory that the actual structure that The Dollhouse is in is actually physically underground. And in order for it to be self-sufficient, an environmental design expert of genius intellect must have done it. The only lead he has now is a man named Stephen Kepler. He goes to find him, and meets him. Kepler (played by the genius-level actor and former pilot of the Firefly-Class ship Serenity, Alan Tudyk) is a total agoraphobe. He also seems to be growing several pounds of a certain illegal leafy smokable plant in his apartment. Thus Ballard has leverage. And unfortunately, he has a partner that can help him get into the Dollhouse, despite all of Kepler’s warnings.

Inside the Dollhouse, a hand-delivered flash drive for the Attic-ed Mr. Dominic has arrived presumably from his buddies at the NSA. Unfortunately, it was meant specifically for him, and only he can open it without losing the data. So Victor is imprinted with Mr. Dominic’s persona, and they’re able to unlock its contents. It’s about a murder that strikes a significant resemblance to how Alpha killed his victims. And the murder took place near one of the Dollhouses in Tucson. So now Sierra is imprinted with the skills of an FBI forensic specialist and sent to examine the corpse. Also, Topher goes into the imprint that Echo was given, and it shows that the very deeply troubled young girl that Echo is reaching out to is her assignment. Topher imprinted her with very similar personality traits, so that the young girl can see what she might be when she grows up: Someone with a chance.

All is well and good with Echo’s engagement, and she’s brought back. Meanwhile, Ballard and Kepler are making their way through the ducts and passageways and finally hit paydirt. Kepler, with his passive-resistance stance, hopes that he can access a computer within the Dollhouse so that he can shut down all security and get Ballard to where he needs to go. After a clothing exchange with a Doll, a KO’d Topher, and a tazed security guard, Kepler and Ballard are working out their plan to get to Caroline. Once Ballard does, though, he is confronted by good ol’ Boyd, who tells him that Ballard should leave and never come back before he brings all of the security down on him. Well, naturally, this doesn’t go down too well with the prince who has come to rescue his sleeping beauty, and a dynamic fight ensues. Echo is concerned for both parties, but finally sides with Boyd and helps him to take down Ballard. Kepler has yet to be discovered though. When Ballard is questioned by Boyd and Adelle, Sierra contacts them with some very disturbing news: The body that was found was a former environmental designer named… Stephen Kepler! So… who has Ballard brought into the Dollhouse? The question is answered with a few very sickening slashes of a scalpel…

“Briar Rose” is the perfect example of what this show is all about: building and revealing. It builds tension and suspense that’s so thick, it could be cut with… well, a scalpel. It builds on the existing mythology of the show by bringing its protagonists and antagonists full circle. And it reveals some incredible surprises. This is what this show needs to do with every episode. It can’t afford in this pilot season to waste time with episodes like “Haunted”, because by episode 10, we know what this show is about and what the Actives are for. We don’t need another standalone episode that just does nothing to advance the mythology. And this episode was written by Espenson, but going solo this time, and she’s brought what made Whedon’s other shows great and also her other great show (BSG) to what they are when they’re at their best. Directing this ep is Dwight Little, a feature filmmaker of such masterpieces as the delightfully hokey “Rapid Fire” with the late, great Brandon Lee and “Marked For Death” with the not-so-late, not-so-great Steven Seagal. But he brought his action film know-how to other great shows like Tim Minear’s The Inside and some eps from Day 5 (the best day so far) of 24, and now, with this episode. He gives it time to build, and then he unleashes holy hell on the unsuspecting viewer. The centerpiece of this episode though is Alan Tudyk. He’s appeared as the kooky but always good-natured friend in films like “A Knight’s Tale” and, of course, as Wash on Firefly. He also took a very creepy turn on an ep of C.S.I. as a convicted child molester. He’s got the chops to play the strange-but-likable guys and also can do the scary and disturbing. And as Alpha, he finally has the chance to truly shine and do both. The scene with him and Dr. Saunders is very, very unsettling.

The only thing I can say now, with one episode to go in the season, is an open statement to Fox: PLEASE DO NOT CANCEL THIS SHOW. It’s just starting to really really get off the ground with its potential. And with eps like “Briar Rose”, and previous eps like “Man on the Street”, “Echoes” and “True Believer”, this show can be truly great.

Rating for “Haunted”: 1.5 out of 5

Rating for “Briar Rose”: 5 out of 5

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