[SPOILER ALERT] If you haven’t seen Epitaph 2, the finale of Dollhouse, then stop reading right now. Go check it out on Hulu here or cable if you have an On Demand service. Just watch it, because it’s terrific! Joss Whedon has to end a series early again, but this time he has an opportunity to wrap up the storyline so completely that it will leave you wanting to see all the earlier episodes once more.
[Again, SPOILER ALERT... just cuz]
This isn’t going to be a full review, TV Squad has you covered there, but my thoughts overall. First I want to comment on the death of Paul Ballard. Whedon has this thing with sudden unexpected deaths of major characters. Remember Wash in Serenity? Well, the Ballard thing hit me the same way. It wasn’t until the end that I saw what he was going for, and it wrapped up the whole SF implications of the Dollhouse tech in such a new and unique way. Bravo! What a way to squeak out a happy ending. I also think that the scene with Sierra and Echo where Echo laments about not letting Paul get closer showed just how terrific Eliza Dushku is as an actor.
And speaking of the acting, almost every single person on this show, and especially those portraying actives, had to jump in and out of different characters sometimes on the fly and in the same scene. That’s freaking hard! They did it every week flawlessly, in my opinion.
I know a lot of people out there are mad at Fox Television, but they shouldn’t be. The network gave Dollhouse a second season even though the ratings have not been that high. We should be grateful for that, because we have to remember that TV is a business and that business is driven by ratings. Dollhouse was a smart show, and there is plenty of room for smart TV across cable (e.g. Sons of Anarchy, True Blood, Dexter, Mad Men), but broadcast network TV requires a hefty amount of viewers, and the harder, thought provoking genre shows would probably do better on a cable network. There’s definitely a hunger out there so hopefully someone at SyFy is listening… 
