Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before; Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame, creates a unique show unlike anything else on television. The show is put in a terrible timeslot when no one with a social life would tune into. Then it is cancelled early in its run, despite the outcry of a few dozen nerds who subsequently make online petitions to bring it back. So the network finishes showing the episodes that were made, getting even worse ratings than before. Then they eventually dump the show on DVD, where it remains a cult classic and a constant reminder of “the one that got away.” It’s what happened to Firefly and what will undoubtedly happen to Dollhouse shortly. The difference between the two shows is that Dollhouse is just not any good.

The general plot of Dollhouse is that there is a house run by a secret organization that implants memories and personalities into women, referred to as “Actives” or “Dolls,” who are hired by a client to carry out a variety of tasks. Eliza Dushku plays the main character, Echo, who signs up to be a Doll for five years as a means to escape from some unnamed trouble in the interim. The episode then fast-forwards to Echo acting as an escort for a man’s birthday party as an example of what the Dolls do when on an assignment. She is then picked up by a man in an unmarked van and taken back to the Dollhouse, where she goes to have her memories and personality deleted, leaving her temporarily blank until she is needed for service again.

At this point, the story cuts to an FBI investigator who has been trying to uncover the Dollhouse with no success thus far. His boss is ripping into him for the little amounts of progress he’s made, with a video-chip of the investigator boxing to serve as a visual aid for how savagely he’s being beaten by his boss. Then, after a few minutes, it cuts back to the rest of the plot. It was an extremely disjointed and out of place interlude that would have been better served for a later episode when the basic plot points had been established.

Echo returns as a hostage negotiator, which allows for the opportunity to show the shortcomings of the reprogramming of the Dolls. The woman whose memories had been implanted into Echo was once kidnapped as a child, by the same men that she is negotiating with no less, and this triggers flashbacks to her childhood. These flashbacks begin to cause her mind to unwind, intermingling some of her own memories with the implanted memories.

All in all, the episode did what pilots are supposed to do: establish the characters and allow for future exposition of the plot. However, it lacked the quality and cohesiveness of Whedon’s previous show, Firefly, but will more than likely share the same fate of cancellation in a matter of time.

Dollhouse has an interesting premise paired with a not so interesting execution, and fails to live up to fans’ expectations.