Review:
Dollhouse Season Two Made Me Fall Asleep For a Little While

I don’t hate Joss Whedon. To assume so would be awfully silly and uninformed of you, as the truth is I have envied the man for as long as I’ve had facial hair. The thing of it is, no one is perfect. Sometimes even Einstein would create some oh great idea that would revolutionize his field, only to be shot down and have to go back to the drawing board. Dollhouse was one of these things. For Joss Whedon. Not Eintstein.

It’s not that the idea was necessarily bad. Not at all, it was intriguing and left you thinking “Hmm.” The problem is it’s also complicated and morally ambiguous and it’s hard to devote your self to a show when you’re left wondering at the end of each episode if you can really get behind the character or anything that had actually just happened. Also Dollhouse had a tendency to bore.

But the first season managed to spice things up a bit before the end, and it left me with hope that the second season would continue to get more interesting. It did too, but not right away. The first number of episodes were some of the dullest so far, and really seemed to screw viewers away. So Fox cancelled the show, and suddenly it got good. Suddenly Joss realized he had eight episodes left and a whole lot of story, but nothing was going to stop him from finishing his story. Things got better. Much better. The pacing went from torturous to Sonic the Hedgehog speeds, and everything just seemed to have been given a shot of awesome. Or maybe ecstasy.

The plot twists started jumping out the woodwork, and important characters were given exciting arcs that would always lead to a quick and usually satisfying conclusion. It seemed so clear, the best thing to ever happen to Dollhouse was getting cancelled.

It’s good that Joss Whedon got to wrap up his stories, and tell everything he wanted to tell. Despite my love/hate relationship with the show, I wanted to see where he was going with everything, and my curiosity was rewarded. For people who want to be able to start watching a show and see a full conclusion before dying of old age, Dollhouse would be an excellent choice to pick up on DVD and check out for yourself. A lot of interesting questions are asked, and there are some genuinely fine moments.