It's tough not having a personality to call your own. Just ask any of the brainwashed beauties who regularly get their memories erased before donning new disguises in FOX's new sci-fi drama "Dollhouse." The show premiered two weeks ago to, deservingly, very little fanfare.
In Dollhouse, young people called "Dolls" are carefully monitored by their "Handlers" within a hidden futuristic compound called "The Dollhouse," where they are kept blissfully unaware in between their illegal assignments as "Actives" in the real world.
Actives are Dolls who have been temporarily endowed with new skills and personality traits. On assignments, Actives are hired to do just about anything: good deeds, crimes and even sexual favors.
In order for them to take on these new qualities, the Dolls must have their memories wiped clean. Still though, faint recollections of past missions -- past lives, if you will -- can sometimes accumulate on a Doll's mental slate.
Then all hell breaks loose -- as it does for main character Echo (Eliza Dushku, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), who over the course of the series finds a personal identity separate from those given to her.
But for all its promising (if not slightly overcomplicated) material, "Dollhouse" vastly underachieves. Stale dialogue and uninspired acting ultimately do in the brand-new "Dollhouse" before its floorboards have even been nailed down.
The hour-long series premiere, for example, which is available in its entirety on FOX.com, does not do much with a plot that features Echo transforming from a weekend fling into a hostage negotiator.
Sandwiched in between unexciting melodrama about FBI detective work and the suffering marriage of Echo's handler are the usual ingredients of a TV thriller: gratuitous sex shots, esoteric techno-babble and useless aphorisms about human existence.
Worthwhile characters could have minimized these flaws. Unfortunately, though, none of the characters introduced on "Dollhouse" even borders on memorable. Echo, like all the other head cases, is a supermodel-type hottie, but is about as deep as a puddle.
At first I gave "Dollhouse" a little credit: Perhaps its cardboard characters are so unpliable and corrugated because the show is pointing to the importance of cultivating self-identity, or something.
But after realizing that "Dollhouse" is essentially what happens after "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004) and "The Island" (2005) have been put into a blender and shredded, I'm inclined to think that these Dolls are insubstantial because "Dollhouse," simply, is just not that good.
But if you want to check it out, it airs on Fridays at 9 p.m. on FOX.
