Almost through a re-watch of Dollhouse. I thought I would try to fill in Season One, since I missed doing reviews for it when it aired live.
This show held up way better than I thought. It didn't have the OMG of Buffy or the unique style of Firefly, but the story was solid and there were flashes of truly creepy. There was a cohesion to it that I didn't get the first time around - probably because I was letting my expectations get in the way.
Even the early stand-alone episodes could be seen working the themes. I think they were fumbling towards the idea that identity is always a construct, the result of processes beyond our control. Sometimes it is more obvious than others. Art. Commerce. Parents. Traumatic experiences or ordinary ones like who we sit with at lunch.
I can see why it was a bit of a challenging sell. At least at the beginning of Buffy there a clearly defined heroine. The audience knew who they were supposed to root for and the stories were designed to make her active and successful. Dollhouse deliberately hid the primary characters' personality and then made them frustratingly passive about the situation they were in. And the one person who was running around trying to "bring down" the bad guy? Well... he was kind of... not very good at it.
But the payoff at the end once the world-building was done was fantastic. It's such a shame they never aired "Epitaph One" live on-air. It was a great hour of television that crystallized the story and upped the stakes immensely, giving weight to random stuff from Season One and setting up Season Two perfectly.
[ Check out my original Season Two reviews of Dollhouse. ]