Joss Whedon Thinks This Week’s Dollhouse Will Live Up To The Hype

I had the opportunity to participate in a teleconference with Joss Whedon today, in advance of Friday’s mind-blowing new episode of Dollhouse. This was my second phone chat with Joss, so that’s totally old hat now. Really. That wasn’t me you heard nervously cracking her knuckles while waiting for her chance to ask what was sure to be a less-than-brilliant question in the presence of not just Joss but some other big names in TV news – TV Guide, E!Online, Sepinwall…I have no idea how I got invited, but I did and I bring you scoop!

Eliza Dushku as Echo in Dollhouse / courtesy of Fox

Brace Yourselves…
“Mindblowing.” “Stunning.” “Jaw-dropping.” Those are just some of the words those lucky enough to have seen the next two episodes are using to describe what’s coming up on Dollhouse. And they’re right. A couple of the reveals in “Man on the Street”, airing Friday, March 20 at 9/8c on Fox, will have viewers rewinding to make sure we saw what we thought we saw. (A tip: set your DVRs now!) Says Joss, “For all of us [cast and staff], this episode was when a lot of tumblers fell into place. We walked away from shooting that episode and felt like we’d found another layer. We’re really proud of that.”

Why Are They There?
Joss touched on several of the characters surrounding Echo, revealing that we will indeed find out more about Amy Acker’s Dr. Saunders in the coming weeks: “I love that character, not just because it’s Amy Acker, but because she wears misery and torture on her face, literally. We definitely learn how Claire came to this fabulous career. In the last few eps we get to turn the Acker up pretty high.”

However, we are not going to find out why Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) is so obsessed with Caroline and the Dollhouse, at least not in the first season. (“In season four, it’s a whole two-parter!”) Ballard is about to be sent through the wringer, though. “We’re about to send him forward in ways he does not expect. We want to challenge him and make it as hard for him as possible to explain himself why he’s doing what he’s doing.”

Boyd Langdon (Harry Lennix) is another character whose motivations will have to wait for another season to be revealed, although Joss admits that he’s “had a feeling” about what brought Boyd to the Dollhouse since before the role was fully written. His relationship with Echo is something that will continue to evolve as the rest of the season plays out: “Boyd definitely cares about Echo more than his job requires, but he doesn’t have the opportunity in these first 13 episodes to really do anything to help her. He wants to protect her and the only truly safe place in the Dollhouse is his paternal feelings for Echo. Their relationship is going to have to shift, in ways I can’t get into yet.”

Whither the Wit?
Whedon fans have often commented on the lack of that trademark wit in Dollhouse, compared to the rest of Whedon’s ouevre. Will Dollhouse bring the funny? In short, not so much. “This is not a comedy. This is not a light-hearted romp that [my] other shows were,” says Joss. “There’s definitely funny stuff coming up, but it doesn’t build like a comedy and it wasn’t designed to be a comedy.”

How Did We Get Here?
Another constant question is how the Actives become involved in the Dollhouse. Is it voluntary? Is it “sentencing” for crimes committed? We’ll have some light shed on that subject in the next couple of episodes when we find out how Sierra, Echo and a couple of the other Actives came to the Dollhouse. Of course, this being Joss, the answers aren’t simple or easy.

Is the Dollhouse a Brothel?
Blame it on the marketing but it seems like most casual viewers think Dollhouse is little more than a show about call girls and boys, hired to be the perfect sexual partners before having their minds erased and sent out on the next gig. Those who have been watching for the past five weeks realize that the premise is much more complicated. So far Echo has been on two engagements that involved sex (that we know about). Her other assignments have included being an expert safecracker, infiltrating a religious cult, and being the best friend/bodyguard of a suicidal pop star. Is that because the network wanted all the sex toned down? No, says Joss, he always intended for the show to be about more than sex.

Eliza Dushku and Tahmoh Penikett duke it out on Dollhouse / photo courtesy of Fox

“I pitched it as Alias meets Quantum Leap,” he recalls. “The type of engagement was always supposed to be shifting. She would be solving crimes, she would be helping people, she would be committing crimes… sexuality was a big part of it, and the most edgy part of it, but not the only part of it. I thought of her, more than anything, as a kind of life coach. As the person you absolutely need in your life at a certain moment. As the person who will change you or comfort you or take your life to the level that you want it to be. That could be something nice, evil, sexual, any number of things.”

Are you still watching Dollhouse? Are you as psyched for this week’s episode as we are? Leave your comments below!