I stayed away from the Internet hype - positive and negative - for Dollhouse. I just heard "Joss Whedon" and "new show," and tuned in. All I expected was for it to be good. (My Whedon background: love Buffy, meh Angel, haven't seen Firefly (yet), love Dr. Horrible, love the Buffy comics.)

After tonight's episode, I looked around at some reviews and fan reactions. Then I decided I would stay far away from now on. The same reaction I had when someone posted the original pilot's script, saying how much better it was. I'm not going to get worked up over something we're not going to get, period. After I'm invested in the characters and the show, I might be interested in checking out "what could have been," but right now? I want to watch the show we're actually getting.

I was surprised at how strong the reactions were to "Ghost." It seems everyone was either expecting something on par with the best episodes of Buffy, or expected it to suck because they have a hate-on for Joss Whedon or Fox. Very little commentary seems to be about the actual content of the show. (And, hilariously, I've read a few comments that complain about the show being "dumbed down" and yet missing some very simple points.)

What's interesting about Dollhouse is that if anyone else were creating this show, I'd be interested, but cautiously so. I would be worried about it being overly procedural (ironically due to being overly enamored with being able to do something different each week) and eventually getting bored with it - fortunately, plot points for an overarching story are planted from the beginning. I would also be worried about this just being some loser's fantasy: Hot chick doing cool stuff.

That's what we get right away in "Ghost" - Eliza Dushku on a motorcycle and a skimpy dress (if you could even call it that). If someone else were writing this, what you see would be what you get. But Joss Whedon is good at playing with expectations and subverting tropes. Echo may look cool, but how creepy is "did I fall asleep?" Or her wide-eyed, child-like expression? And that's not even keeping in mind that this is just dressed-up human trafficking and prostitution here.

In this regard, I think Topher will be very important to pay attention to. He reminds me very much of Warren (with a dash of Andrew?) from Buffy, and Dollhouse is almost the episode "Dead Things" on a larger scale. It is in that episode a lot of shifts occur - The Trio's quest for "sex slaves" is called what it really is, rape, by their victim. Their antics at being "supervillains" stops being a joke when Warren commits murder. Rather uncomfortably, the show took the things the audience was laughing at, then starkly laid it out for it really was.

I do get the sense that the show, at least for now, is trying to walk the very fine line between "accessibility" and just doing its own thing. But I think this may ultimately work to its advantage by first lulling viewers into a sense of familiarity with action/thriller plotlines. Let them think Echo is cool. They'll be like Topher - completely amoral with no self-awareness. I'm not sure whether there'll be a specific point where the creep factor comes crashing down, as opposed to continuing to weave it into each scene. (There's something wrong with you if you're not the slightest bit squicked at, say, each time Echo has/is implied to have sex.)

I was definitely annoyed at how sexed-up the advertisements for the show are. But after seeing the first two episodes, it comes off very tongue-in-cheek. And it's even funnier when I think Fox probably doesn't actually understand what this show is about, and is doing it unintentionally.

The miscellaneous:
- Joss Whedon had read/seen Ghost in the Shell, hasn't he?
- Love the theme song.
- Fascinated by Topher (obviously).
- Looking forward to seeing more of the relationship between Boyd and Echo after this week's ep.
- Excited Amy Acker's on the show; Fred was the only thing besides Spike that was particularly enjoyable about Angel.
- The show is wildly hilarious...in a dark way. ("She's near-sighted. And has asthma." How is that not funny? Or the whole "Why not give them ninja skills by default?" exchange.)
- I'm hoping the fact Fox has limited commercial breaks for the show and that they invested so much into the set early on means they're intending to nurture the show the way they're pushing the (exceedingly mediocre at best) Fringe.
- I apparently didn't get the memo that Eliza Dushku can't act and has no charisma. Whoops.
- I'm being so bad. I'm not supposed to be looking at English websites today.
- Go watch Dollhouse.