Joss Whedon’s new show Dollhouse premiered on Friday night. It’s only the second show in the last three years that I’m going to be watching on a regular basis. 30 Rock is one of the others, of course, and this year’s Fringe has done a great job of holding my attention.

Whedon’s history is good with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and of course Firefly and the movie it spawned—“Serenity”:imdb.

Something struck me about Whedon’s writing while I was watching Dollhouse: he’s got a reputation for writing strong female characters and, while this is true, he also seems to write replaceable female characters.

What exactly does this mean?

Joss has a history of killing characters, and for the most part these characters tend to be women. Kendra the Vampire Slayer died in season two, Buffy died twice, Cordelia Chase was killed off Angel, Willow’s girlfriend Tara, the mortal demon Anya and Buffy’s mom all died.

I’m not saying it was only women who died: Wesley Wyndham Price died and Angel’s certainly died more than his fair share of times. In the Firefly ‘verse Wash & Shepherd Book were the only mortalities. I’m just saying that a lot of women die.

Adding to this is the fact that Joss’ main female characters seem to be designed to be replaceable. Buffy had a built in replacement plan, and one that was executed on—no pun intended. At any point during the series Buffy could have died (permanently, as opposed to the two temporary deaths she did have) and a new slayer would have been born. Instant replacement for your show lead (although the show’s name might have proven…problematic.) Tara & Anya were visitors to the Scooby gang, and thus temporary by their very nature.

Dollhouse doesn’t even mention Eliza Dushku’s character (named Echo while at the Dollhouse) by name, and the very nature of the Dollhouse Actives makes them temporal. Personalities erased by the Dollhouse, all that needs to happen is to have Echo die and a new show lead can be swapped in. The premise has the plotline built right into it: all that’s needed is the right mission.

Is this just smart business? If Eliza Dushku starts asking for too much money or doesn’t renew her contract, killing Echo off and replacing her is a sure way to reduce costs (at the risk of ratings of course: legs like those are hard to find.) This may be the case.

I doubt there’s anything more sinister involved: Joss has a reputation for writing strong female characters, and it’s a trend that goes all the way back to his Alien Resurrection script. Inara and River Tam are the toughest characters in the Serenity universe, although Kaylee fills a more steretotypical female role.

Dollhouse’s ratings were miserable, in any case, so I doubt we’ll get to see how this world grows much. Paired with the high cost low ratings Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles it seems like this is a full season show at best. There may not be time to see if Eliza Dushku is replaceable after all.

Posted by skooter at 2:26 AM This entry is filed under Entertainment.
This entry is tagged: Angel, Buffy, Dollhouse, Firefly, Joss Whedon, Serenity, Television