Why Dollhouse's Original Pilot Will Make A Better Second Episode

http://io9.com/5038028/why-dollhouses-original-pilot-will-make-a-better-second-episode

I know you're concerned that Joss Whedon is making a new pilot for his
mind-wiped puppet show Dollhouse, and turning the original pilot into the
second episode. What if this ruins the show before it starts? But you can
forget that worry, almost as if a high-tech device had erased it from your
mind to make way for a new personality. We've looked at both pilot scripts,
and the original pilot really does work way better as a second episode.
Spoilers ahead.

So as you've probably heard, Whedon's original pilot sets in motion a ton
of subplots and launches a bunch of character arcs, which we all hope will
play out over the course of seven (or twenty) years. And the new pilot is
much more straightforward. It just introduces the idea that Echo (Eliza
Dushku) is an empty vessel, who can be programmed to "be" anybody and have
any skills.

Here's the good news: the first two episodes of Dollhouse will be a nice
one-two punch that will hopefully draw in tons of addicted viewers. The new
second episode isn't just a whole cannery full of cans of worms — it's also
like a mini-thriller, a suspenseful action movie full of weird twists and
turns. In particular, the most compelling twists revolve around FBI agent
Paul Ballard (Battlestar Galactica's Tahmoh Penikett).

Ballard is the guy who's on the trail of the Dollhouse, where you can hire
a mind-wiped "Active" to play any role you want. We see him in the first
episode too, including an awesome scene of him justifying his investigation
juxtaposed with a sequence where he kickboxes someone and nearly loses. But
he really comes into his own in the second episode, as the Dollhouse
becomes aware of his investigation and tries to shake him off.

We have a long noir-ish scene where Ballard tries to get information from
an undercover agent, Keene — and we don't realize until later that Keene is
really Victor, one of the Dollhouse's "Actives." He's just been programmed
to think he's an undercover FBI agent, to throw Ballard off the scent. When
that doesn't work, and Ballard gets hold of a photo of Echo, Keene/Victor
feeds him some information that leads him to a meeting with Echo herself.
(We showed a clip from that scene a while back.)

Echo tells Ballard she's looking for her missing sister, and she needs
Ballard's help. Ballard seems to buy it at first, but it's too good to be
true, an actual lead in his stalled case after so long. He's all like,
We're a team now, and they share a tender moment — until Ballard pulls a
gun on her and accuses her of telling him what he wants to hear.

Then Echo gets the gun away from him and puts two bullets in his chest, and
we realize she hasn't just been programmed to think she's looking for a
missing sister. She hasn't even just been programmed to deal with Ballard.
She's been programmed to be a psychopath, which she proves later by trying
to go into the hospital and finish Ballard off.

Echo gets lots of great moments in the second episode, too, including an
early sequence where she sits by the bedside of a "nineteen year old alkie"
who's detoxing after drinking a bottle of vodka and a ton of percocet.
(It's this "pro bono" good deed that seems to start Echo remembering stuff
when she's supposed to be empty and mind-wiped.) We go straight from Echo
talking to Danika, the nineteen-year-old girl, about staying sober, to a
scene where she's at a wedding, drinking champagne and dancing with the
bride's ex-boyfriend, whom she's crazy in love with. (I mistakenly thought
this scene was from the new pilot, in my writeup a couple of weeks ago,
because that page got mixed in with the new script pages.) We see her being
a Latina gangster for another client, who's having some trouble with a
local gang. We also get some hints about her backstory, including the fact
that she has a visible reaction when Ballard asks her if her real name is
Caroline.

Other characters also get some cool moments, including Boyd, the "Actives"'
handler, and Topher, who programs them. They worry about the fact that Echo
and two other "Actives" are starting to herd together during their
supposedly blank periods. We learn that Boyd is suffering pangs of
conscience over the idea that the mind-erased "Actives" are still people.
Topher says it's just like Boyd's tie: it doesn't keep Boyd warm, but Boyd
wears it anyway. We're all programmed, but at least the Actives get to have
an awesome range of experiences. And morality is programming as well. At
one point, Topher calls Boyd "man-friend," and Boyd says not to call him
that. "We're not friends?" Topher says. "We're not men," Boyd responds. We
also get some awesome scenes with the Dollhouse's head, Adelle Dewitt, and
the doctor who looks after them, Claire Saunders.

All in all, when the first two episodes of Dollhouse air, they'll be like
an introduction to this fantastically off-the-wall concept, followed by a
whirlwind tour through all of the bizarre and creepy possibilities it opens
up. Anybody who watches both episodes will be a Dollhouse fan for life.
[Thanks to The Ugly for the script]
-- 
Jolan Tru
Filippo "Hytok" Simone
http://perestroika.iobloggo.com/