In Praise of…. Dollhouse

I am as surprised as you are to find myself writing this.  I acquired access to Dollhouse via a swap of films with a mate of mine – I got Up, Finding Nemo, Wall-E and, slightly incongruously in this collection, Dollhouse and the Usual Suspects.  She got Pulp Fiction and a lot of science fiction.  We have a mutual appreciation of each other’s tastes….
Anyway, first thing I did was watch Up, because let’s face it, who wouldn’t?  And when I’d dried my eyes from watching Up, I then went onto watch Wall-E and had a similar emotional reaction.  By now feeling pretty drained, I left the world of relentless DVD watching and did some actual work for a while, and so the Dollhouse experience remained largely untouched.  To be honest, I wasn’t that keen.  I mean, I knew the pros – a TV series written by the same guy who brought us Firefly (cowboys in space – I know that doesn’t sound like a great sales pitch, but seriously, try it…) and Serenity (cowboys in space blowing up really really big stuff in a really cool way, with an almost hint of an idea built into it that every now and then sneaks out beneath the explosions….)  I also suspected a few cons – episodic structure leaving itself not necessarily that open to character development, sexy women a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in many ways) kicking things in a satisfactory but not necessarily that cohesive way, let’s not beat about the bush, I had doubts.

But then I went to work in Kent.  And make no mistake, I worked pretty damn hard, but at the end of working pretty damn hard, by brain hurt, and I really just wanted to relax and watch something reasonably undemanding with possible kung fu action thrown in.  And there’s not much to do by yourself in rural Kent.  The Usual Suspects merited, I felt, a good percentage more of my brainpower than I had going spare at the time and so, dubious and concerned but too tired to complain, I fired up Dollhouse.

Remember everything I said above about what I thought it was going to be?

Well I was wrong.  I mean, no – there’s stuff being kicked and ladies in tight clothes doing said kicking – and it does occasionally lapse into a heavily episodic structure, but hell, let’s not get too picky here.  Because all things considered, and to my slightly embarrassed surprise, it’s really… actually… rather good….
I still feel quaintly embarrassed admitting it now, because let’s face it, the characters are so sexy and the kung fu is so… kung fu-ey… that there’s still a part of my brain which can’t quite digest the idea that I’ve been glued to the screen for the last few weeks working my way through it.  But I have.  Very much so I have.  And very much so, it’s very much not totally crap.  There’s, honest to god, ideas in there.  Actual ideas about actual stuff.

So yeah.
Dollhouse.
Go see.