Justin Cox Presents:

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Last Friday Joss Whedon’s new TV show, Dollhouse premiered. While it may sound like something else, the Dollhouse is a place where girls memories are erased and then implanted with those of someone else in order to get a job done. It’s kind of hard to describe. Think Dark Angel meats Alias. While the show itself was pretty enjoyable, the cast left me scratching my head. Basically everyone on the show is someone I recognize from somewhere else, but aside from the main star I couldn’t place anyone. So, my faithful readers, I did some research and here’s what I came up with. Behold, the Dollhouse cast and why they were so familiar:

The cast of Fox's new Dollhouse.

Eliza Dushku
This was the easy one. She’s pretty recognizable. Dushku plays the main character, Echo, and has been in a number of Whedon shows in the past including Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the spinoff Angel.

Harry Lennix
This is Echo’s handler, Boyd Langdon. Basically Boyd Langdon is to Echo as Marcus Dixon is to Sydney Bristow. See how I did that? But looking into it, I recognize Lennix from his part in day six of 24 and as Commander Lock in The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions.

Reed Diamond
Meet Laurence Dominic, basically Boyd Langon’s boss — or direct superior at the very least (I’m doing this on one episode, deal with it). While I couldn’t recognize where I knew this guy from, looking at his IMDB page made it pretty clear: Diamond was the brother of the main character in the good but short-lived Journeyman.

There are a couple of other characters played by actors whose faces I recognized, but after looking through their resumes there’s nothing I can see as to why I should know them. I don’t know what that says about their careers, but as least I recognized them, I guess.

Either way, Dollhouse has the potential to be a pretty good show — depending on the stories and personalities they cook up for Dushku’s character. Then, of course, there’s the Fox factor. Fox tends to not allow shows like this the ability to survive by either canceling them outright or airing their episodes out of order so the show makes no sense and no one wants to watch it; see Dark Angel and Firefly. Hopefully Whedon get’s a few episodes to work the show out and let the stories unfold. Dollhouse airs Friday’s at 9pm on Fox.