Dead Dollhouse

Last night’s post-apocalyptic finale marked the end of television wunderkind Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, a show that offered intriguing moral explorations and kick-ass action sequences but took too long to find its footing and sense of direction. It’s a show that probably could have been—and occasionally was—first-rate, but life will go on without it. It won’t be missed nearly as much as Whedon’s brilliant Firefly, a really fun and powerful space Western with a first-rate cast that nevertheless failed both as a tv show and a big-screen movie.

The Dollhouse series finale takes place in 2020 and is a sequel to the unaired episode of the first season, “Epitaph One.” In the last Dollhouse episode, Echo/Caroline discovered that her former handler Boyd was actually the great evil architect of the Dollhouse and facilitated Topher’s development of technology that could remotely turn any human on the planet into a doll. Even though Echo/Caroline defeated Boyd and blew up parent company Rossum’s headquarters, apparently it wasn’t enough to stop the technology from all but destroying the world.

In the future, chaos reigns as most of the human race has been turned into doll/zombie people, and there are only a few people who still remain their human selves. They are called “Actuals” and are the target of these zombie dudes. If you didn’t see “Epitaph One,” which is entirely reasonable since Fox never aired it, you’ll be a little lost, as I was until I decided to watch it after all. Echo is traveling with two other Actuals named Zone and Mag. Oh yeah, Echo is actually in the body of a little girl named Iris. Echo backed up her personality at the Dollhouse prior to the events of this episode as a safety measure. The real Echo is M.I.A., but this one is doing the best that she can. It’s eerie to hear Echo’s very adult thoughts come out of a little girl. Cool concept.

Bad news: Caroline/Iris, Zone and Mag are captured by a group of mysterious baddies while trying to find the mythical Safe Haven. These guys work for Rossum head honcho Harding (who also is in a new body) and are about to serve their prisoners for lunch. But Ballard reveals himself to be one of the prisoners, and he’s exactly where he wants to be. He knocks the crap out of Harding and Echo bursts into the room and rescues Caroline/Iris, Mag and Zone. Harding sees Echo and asks her “Did you ever think that if you hadn’t cut off Rossum at the head, the tech might have never gotten out of control? Echo’s response: she shoots him in the head. My kind of woman.

Also here is Topher, who after discovering that he was the unintentional architect of the destruction of the free world, has gone a little bit Looney Tunes. Echo, Topher, Ballard, Caroline/Iris, Mag and Zone head to this farmhouse where Adelle, Priya and her son (that’s new) T live. Echo explains that every day that Topher didn’t do what the Rossum villains wanted him to do, they’d execute an innocent human being in front of him. So that also contributed to his bonkers factor. But Echo believes that he might be able to reverse the process, resulting in anyone with “active architecture” being reset and reverting to their original personalities with no memory of the last few terrible years. Yay! I can’t think of a better solution.

Tony arrives with a bunch of stout-looking dudes and they’re all ready to help. The complication: Priya and Tony have been on the outs for the last several years, since Priya wanted to raise her son away from all the bad crap and make him as sheltered as possible, while Tony continued to fight the good fight. I guess I can see both points of view, but I have to side with Tony on this one. Oh yeah, Ballard and Echo are on the outs as well…though I never really understood why they were on the ins (is that the right term?) in the first place.

Regardless, everyone gets to go on a little nostalgic road trip together back to the Dollhouse, because apparently that’s where the technology is that Topher needs to do his thing. I’m going to stop here because the episode takes some pretty wild turns that I don’t want to spoil. Suffice it to say that we get some epic battles involving slow motion and Echo blasting a shotgun, a major character bites the dust, another gets to do some Armageddon-style climactic self-sacrifice, Adelle and Echo hug at one point (gasp!) and Alpha returns but is totally…different. It’s a wild and creative episode that wraps up the series satisfactorily but also leaves some loose ends to play with.

I’m sorry Dollhouse is gone. While I was often critical, the last half of this season was really pretty spectacular. But maybe Joss Whedon will do the smart thing now and develop a project for cable. He just isn’t a good fit for the networks. He’s too creative, too out-of-the-box. But rumor has it the president of FX is trying to woo him right now. Personally, if I had any money to give Whedon, I’d encourage him to whisk Nathan Fillion away from Castle (temporarily of course, because I enjoy that show) and put a Serenity sequel together. I know I’m not the only one still wishing for one…

Season 2, Episode 13: Epitaph 2: Return (originally aired January 29, 2010)

For more on Dollhouse, click here.

Fridays at 9/8C on Fox

Photographs courtesy of Fox and IMDbPro.