Dollhouse Ends

And it's an awfully strange ending. In a lot of ways, the second-to-last episode felt like the real ending to the series. The final episode is a sequel to an episode that never aired--the infamous extra episode that was added to the DVD--that felt almost like an imaginary possible future. Much of the second season is filled with portents that only make sense if you've seen that episode, and in the final episode, that imaginary, possible future becomes established history, and we see the aftermath.

And once more (with feeling), Joss does the same thing he did with Tara in Buffy and Wash in "Serenity" and proves himself the master of the out-of-nowhere beloved character death. Bastard.

Dollhouse was not a show that I was looking forward to before it premiered, but it was amazing how this show about high-tech prostitutes convincingly morphed into a show that addressed basic concepts of personhood and simultaneously became an action-drama about the end of civilization. And if the final episode featured some Frank Miller-style over-the-top silliness, it also contained some touching drama and a fitting end for a series that became much more than it appeared to be at first.

I look forward to Joss's next project.