I watched the premiere of Dollhouse online yesterday. I'm a fairly big Joss Whedon fan—I like Buffy, love Firefly, and never got into Angel, although you have to respect any TV show that turns their main characters into Muppets for an episode or two.

The premise here is that a secret organization pumps their agents full of memories and then sends them out to do their bidding. The agents are blank slates who can then be used for anything: Hostage negotiation, assassination, prostitution, etc.

I guess what Whedon was aiming for here was a kind of early Alias, anything-goes vibe. Part of the problem is that Eliza Dushku is no Jennifer Garner. She's such a blank slate I can't even believe she's a blank slate. And I assume that the show is built on Dushku's character, Echo (FRAUGHT WITH MEANING), eventually achieving some sort of self-realization, which means one thing: At some point, she'll have to do some acting. This is going to be problematic.

The other problem here is the story just isn't that compelling yet. I don't know if the men who are controlling all the kick-ass Charlie's Angels 2.0 women are supposed to eventually become good guys or what, but I find the whole let's-program-a-beautiful-woman-to-do-whatever-we-want thing kind of repulsive. Unless there's a mammoth, sweeping story that links everything and turns into a giant conspiracy thriller, it's just not worth it. And Whedon isn't great at giant sweeping stories. He's better at characters, and at creating moments. And I don't think that Dushku has the chops to pull it off, either.

Still: I could watch that woman get on and off a motorcycle all day long, so I'll give it a couple episodes to grow on me.