PixelVixen707

Sometime during last week’s premiere of Dollhouse, I’m sure a viewer cried “rape.”

The opening scenes set up the dilemma: Eliza Dushku plays a biker babe tearing through a wild weekend with a total stranger, having sex, alluding to ropeplay, dancing with him in front of all his friends. But before the titles, we learn that Dushku’s character - well, her primary character - isn’t really a biker chick; she’s a woman who was brainwashed into riding bikes, and having sex with this man, who paid for the privilege. Did she consent to this?

It’s sure to trouble some, and while I won’t dissect that particular issue, I bring it up because it reminds us what we expect from Joss Whedon: we buy into his gift for creating compelling female characters.  But we expect him to take good care of them.

I’ve only seen one episode of Dollhouse. Didn’t like it much. But I was intrigued, on grrrl-power grounds, by its premise, which revolves entirely around female characters, how they tick, and who they are.

Let’s see if I can sum up the premise. Eliza Dushku plays a woman in trouble who signs up with a mysterious organization called the Dollhouse. The Dollhouse manages a team of superagents who can possess any skill, acquire any talent, play any role and solve any problem, for the price of a small fortune. The catch is that the superagents are largely manufactured. The moment they join, the women (and men) of the Dollhouse have their minds wiped clean. They wander around the secret headquarters as empty vessels with the simplicity and good will of toddlers (and the bodies of supermodels). And they stay in that state, until their handlers activate them - which means implanting them with the memories and talents of another real person, and sending them into the field.

Let’s get the Hollywood jokes out of the way.  It’s all too easy to read this as a metaphor for how Joss Whedon sees his talent - brainless, eager children, waiting for his scripts. (Charlie Jane Anders plays with this intriguingly, over at io9.) But that’s okay, because all that stuff was in the pitch.  Whedon wants us to break down the fourth wall and meta-watch his show.

Take a scene where a scarfaced doctor, played by Amy Acker, treats Eliza Dushku for injuries acquired on the job. (A lurid Sapphic charge sparks between them when Acker offers a massage. Come on, Whedon! You used to take girl-girl couples seriously!) We understand that Acker and Dushku are playing parts on a TV show. But Whedon knows we’ll also see Fred and Faith, their Buffy/Angel characters. And we also recognize Acker and Dushku, the burgeoning stars whose struggling careers the megafans are following.  (Did you catch Acker on The Ghost Whisperer? … No?) You can even go a step farther and acknowledge that beyond the fame, Acker and Dushku are actually real live people, who have bad breath and smelly laundry and parking tickets.

Whedon wants us to pay attention to all of this, to stick our fan fork into every layer of his carefully-baked fiction cake. And in a way, this might be the trick that makes the show work. After all, the protagonist, Echo, is a blank sheet of paper. There is nothing to engage with at all until her handlers plug a new brain into her. Normally, you wouldn’t launch your show with a protagonist nobody can care about, unless that’s the attraction: you lure people in by letting wonder who Echo “really is,” and how her experiences, which should be wiped clean every time, actually stick to her and shape her life.

And it’s not like there are no characters to watch.  In the story-of-the-week plot, Echo turns into Ellie Penn, a hostage negotiator who frees a small girl from the clutches of kidnappers. In an all-too-lucky plot twist, we learn the main kidnapper is also a child molester - and he molested Ellie, when she was a little girl. The original Ellie, the one whose brain was jammed into Echo’s head, used the trauma to become a successful hostage negotiator. It also drove her to suicide. Thankfully, Echo’s a little better at being Ellie than Ellie ever was, because she not only rescues the little girl, she offs the molester and gets her revenge - and makes it through unscathed. In the space of an hour, Ellie gets an introduction, a conflict, and a resolution.

But we’re stuck with Echo.  Every character has an identity at their core, a believable personality that we might relate to, and feel drawn to.  That core life hooks us.  It doesn’t have to be complicated; Buffy wasn’t. But where’s the hook here? Will a protagonist emerge from Echo’s shell? Or are we supposed to keep our eyes on something else? Because at the end of the day, people follow a show because they care about someone.  On a serialized television show, there is nothing more important than the characters.  Not the plot, not the twists, and lord, not the “premise.”  If we don’t buy these people, we don’t watch. At some point, Whedon has to stop playing tea party and treat his dolls as human beings.

Or, not. The ads for the show focus on one thing and one thing only: bodies. The clumsy sex jokes and nude shower scenes, the shot of another active writing in agony with nothing but a handtowel to warm her nipples - it all says they’re aiming not for Whedon’s feminist grad student cult, but for the thirteen-year-old everyboy, who wants his women as blank as possible.

Sure, I’m not immune to a little eye candy. Tahmoh Penikett, I’ll bear your half-human seed any day.

(Image: kk+)

But beefcake ain’t a draw. I’ll only come back for the characters. Whedon has given us plenty - but we still don’t know how he’ll treat them.  Will he make them engaging, and real, and play to their dignity as made-up human beings?  Or will he get lost in his own in-jokes and references?  At the end of the day, will he violate our trust?