American Horror Stories: Dollhouse

August 28, 2022 12:38 PM - Season 2, Episode 1

In the season premiere of this anthology series, a woman discovers that she wasn't interviewing for the job she thought she was interviewing for.
posted by kittens for breakfast (2 comments total)

I've stuck by American Horror Story through some pretty choppy waters, man. But AHSs' first season was so dire it took me by surprise. And it took me over a month to watch this. To be honest, I am shocked it even exists; the first season was so shitty that I presumed it wouldn't be back. But here we are.

And I have to say it: This is a dramatic improvement over any installment of the first season. It helps that "Dollhouse" just looks like AHS; S1 had a cheap SyFy knockoff feel to it, which is weird, since it was produced by FX. The production values in this episode are high, and the acting is uniformly excellent. Real suspense is built!

Unfortunately (IMO), the ending turns on a connection to AHS: Coven that doesn't quite play like a Deus ex machina, but also isn't really earned by anything "Dollhouse" was up to. The episode could have ended more or less the same way without any intervention by the Coven, and I'm inclined to think the witches were shoehorned in as fanservice. Maybe that will work for some audiences, but I was disappointed that AHSs apparently lacked the self-confidence to let the story be a standalone.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:49 PM on August 28, 2022 [1 favorite]

I definitely would have preferred this to be a stand alone. They seem to use the original series as a crutch instead of really exploring stories that only need a single episode to tell.
posted by miss-lapin at 9:19 PM on August 28, 2022 [1 favorite]