DID you ever have a really great date, and then the per son inexplicably disappeared, never returned your phone calls and even blocked you from his/her email list like you were a freaking stalker?
Well, hey, don’t feel bad. Maybe it’s not you, after all. Maybe you didn’t misread the signs, you don’t have cat breath and didn’t talk with your mouth full. OK, you did that, but that didn’t cause the full-frontal rejection. Maybe you had the world’s greatest date with an “Active.”
I know this now because I just watched Fox’s new, much-hyped show “Dollhouse,” from the guy who brought you “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel.” And unlike the aforementioned ideal date that went south, I’m not in love, but I am intrigued.
The show, like many, many others that came before, centers around a highly secret, “highly illegal underground group” that does highly secret, highly illegal things. Like all the others, this rogue group of elite karate-techies is being hunted by the feds.
What’s different here is that the group has a group – great looking women who were in such trouble that the only option out was opting out of real life. And they don’t care about the good of humankind.
These women, called “Actives” have their memories wiped out and then continually imprinted with other memories that will serve them well on each “engagement.” Actives, like the Marines, are all that they can be – even if they have no idea of who they are while they’re being all that. They can be hired out as prostitutes, girlfriends, hostage negotiators and, yes, world class killers.
The most active Active is Echo, played by Eliza Dushku. Right off, let me tell you that Echo is no “Alias.” Or, at least, Dushku is no Garner. She just doesn’t have the on-screen charisma.
It’s off to a slow-start tonight. Echo is hired to be a great girlfriend, then returns to the mysterious “Dollhouse” to be reprogrammed into a hostage negotiator.
But it’s next week when Echo is reprogrammed and hired out as a mountain-climbing, cross-bow-shooting prostitute, that things get really good.
Keeping the Stepford Assassin going is her handler Boyd (Harry Lennix); the capo di tutti capi, Adelle (Olivia Williams); the techie, Topher (Fran Kranz); and, of course, the handsome agent who’s trying to track them down, Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett).
Good, dirty fun.