Fox's "Dollhouse" Has the Feel of Joss Whedon's Fourth TV Triumph

It's been five years since Joss Whedon has presented a show on network TV -- and much too long since we've enjoyed weekly doses of entertainment from the deliciously warped brain that gave us Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly.

Tonight, the dry spell finally ends with Dollhouse, a new Fox series premiering Friday night at 9 ET. Give it a chance, and then another one, because it takes two episodes for this new series to get up to speed. But once it does, it has the feel of Whedon's fourth straight TV triumph.

Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku, the bad-girl Slayer on Buffy, as a woman who is given a chance similar to that once given to the desperate young heroine of La Femme Nikita: Put yourself in our care, she is told, and you'll be absolved of past misdeeds in exchange for being specially trained for a series of top-secret missions.

The difference, in Whedon's vision, is that the young lady in question agrees to a five-year deal in which she becomes, essentially, an empty vessel -- a childlike, docile blank slate onto which is imprinted a composite lifetime of false, borrowed, very convincing memories. Presto: Like an actress accepting a new role and script, the very impressionable young woman (given the code name Echo) receives a force-fed mental download, and she becomes whatever she's told she is. A lovestruck woman. An outdoor adventurer. A master thief.

Very rich people pay to have her, and other men and women like her, embody the stuff of dreams, or supply a skill set elusive or missing in real life. All these "Actives," as they're called, live in a high-tech living quarters called The Dollhouse, where they're pampered between jobs like human Kobe beef. When they return from an assignment, their memory is erased, as are their skills, until they receive another job and download.

Except.

Except that this is Joss Whedon we're dealing with, so Dollhouse turns out to have a lot more going for it than a cross between Fantasy Island and Cinemax After Dark. It takes a while to unspool these plot threads, so that's why embracing this show requires a bit of patience.

But stay with it, because the intriguing wrinkles include a former Active who's run amok and become a killer, an investigator who's closing in on finding the clandestine Dollhouse, and, most of all, Echo herself, who turns out to begin to retain certain memories and impulses, like a blackboard that's not quite erased.

In the three episodes sent for preview, Dushku gets to show some range: party girl, glum hostage negotiator, ultra-confident safecracker and so on. And among the supporting cast, the very supporting regulars include Amy Acker from Angel, Reed Diamond from Homicide: Life on the Street, and the very commanding Olivia Williams, as the operator of the Dollhouse.

Given Whedon's track record, I'm more than willing to give him some time to spread his wings, and unfurl his latest TV series slowly. After all, he's made three excellent TV series already -- and that's not counting his Internet masterpiece, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

By the way: After 3 p.m. ET Thursday, you can hear my new interview with Joss Whedon on National Public Radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Just click here.