Dollhouse

Ultimately, you'll want to think about Dollhouse more than you'll want to think about watching Dollhouse.

The first episode's biggest flaw is that it lacks humor, a hallmark of Whedon's writing. Thankfully, this is rectified in future episodes.

There are caveats, but they would trouble me more if the creator were someone other than Whedon.

Given the artfully vague hints of an intriguingly desperate past for Echo, as well as Whedon's track record, we ought to cut the show some slack. Let's see if Whedon can bring this doll to greater life.

All those ingredients make for a stew that, initially anyway, needs salt....Having seen two more promising later episodes, I say give Dollhouse time. And in the meantime, enjoy the set, the so-called dollhouse.

Overcrowded with plotlines, high-tech gimmicks and ambition yet empty of emotional connection and purpose, Dollhouse tries so hard to be so many things it winds up being nothing much at all.

To the extent this sounds interesting, it isn't: Half the dialogue seems to have been written for barking dogs, the other half for mewling kittens, and the cast performs accordingly.

In a perfect world, Dollhouse would be a good show. It's not.

Good, dirty fun.

Whedon is a vastly better storyteller than anyone involved in "My Own Worst Enemy," so Dollhouse can be very engaging, even if the premise doesn't make sense. Dushku isn't as versatile as the role demands--many weeks, the only difference in Echo's persona seems to be her wardrobe--but Whedon and his writers certainly are.

The pilot is, in fact, baffling, and needlessly so.

Dushku plows into her role with gusto. I've seen three episodes of this strange, mesmerizing show, and it has grown on me.

Dollhouse is less about the ninja kicks and witty banter than it is about instant transformations, and about making the audience care about a character who's likely to behave differently every time we see her. That Dushku mostly pulls this off is a happy surprise, as is Dollhouse, which has survived "Firefly"-like trials of its own to get this far.

The shows are fun and exciting, Mr. Blow, perfect for a stay-at-home Friday night, having a few guys over for beers, or recording and watching when you wake up Saturday afternoon, after all that hard partying.

Dollhouse isn't awful, but neither is it remarkably good. It's a passable hour of entertainment that shows potential to improve but flails and confuses (and occasionally bores) from the start.

Even as Dollhouse sounds like other TV shows and movies, it is also utterly strange, its premise literally ridiculous and intriguingly metaphorical.

Combining intelligent layers of mystery with sly dialogue and a steady flow of action, Whedon has crafted a provocative, bubbly new drama that looks as promising as anything to hit the small screen over the course of the past year.

Joss Whedon is one of television's most talented visionaries, but his latest series--the highly anticipated midseason drama Dollhouse--is a major disappointment.

Dollhouse is stuck between two worlds, unable to lead us from reality into fantasy.

Though the show is quick and exciting in its particulars, slick and captivating in its details, it is unfolding slowly as a whole, with perhaps one too many investigations, conspiracies, return-of-the-repressed traumas, and busy backstories curling leisurely into view.

Although Whedon infuses Dollhouse with an impressively detailed story line and social structure as well as nifty production values, the show lacks something for viewers to grab onto.

Dollhouse has an amusing premise, but the universe it inhabits in the early episodes is thin and bland.

While it's haunting, cerebral and gorgeous, it's also a little cold, though the flashes of humor help. Like its actives, it's a marvelous piece of engineering. But I hope it develops a personality of its own.

The result is a show that his most devoted fans will debate and embrace, and a mass audience just won't get.

Dushku does wonderful things to a tank top, but her grasp of this vague, personality-changing character is a bit of a muddle. What's left, then, is a series with a hollow center that doesn't initially make you care about its mentally malleable protagonist.

No doubt Dollhouse will make a good computer game, although it looks like one already.