There's no future apocalyptic enough to compensate for a cast of characters that are completely unintersting and unappealing.
My recipe for fixing the show: get rid of Echo entirely. If Dushku in a dress with a hemline halfway to her neck isn't enough to lock in an audience, then her sole reason for being on the show has vanished and there's no point to Echo's existence.
Instead, how about actually focusing on interesting characters in an interesting story? You need a dynamic actor at the center of the story, who will compel viewers to keep tuning in, while they figure out what the heck the plotline is.
Alan Tudyk was the guy for the job: keep his Alpha character (tho I'd give him a catchier name - Whiskey and Yankee would be my first choices, or maybe Golf or Uniform just to be weird) and make him something less than totally psycho, but certainly not a normal person either.
Just steal the Dexter premise of a charismatic but dangerous and mentally ill person trying to navigate a tricky situation. If the actor can get the audience rooting for the character, the writers have the latitude to have the character do some very iffy stuff, and still get away with it, and not feel compelled to come up with bullshit excuses why the main character is actually a poor widdle victim (which is a self-defeating approach since it simply engenders the audience's contempt).
If Tudyk's character is a psycho "normally," then the Dollhouse doesn't have to be eeevil, which is a hackneyed way to handle the premise. To do the unexpected and make the main character evil, and the Giant Scary Corporation actually kind of nice and trying to be helpful would flip the cliche on its head and open up the possibility of some fresh material being introduced.
My recipe for fixing the show: get rid of Echo entirely. If Dushku in a dress with a hemline halfway to her neck isn't enough to lock in an audience, then her sole reason for being on the show has vanished and there's no point to Echo's existence.
Instead, how about actually focusing on interesting characters in an interesting story? You need a dynamic actor at the center of the story, who will compel viewers to keep tuning in, while they figure out what the heck the plotline is.
Alan Tudyk was the guy for the job: keep his Alpha character (tho I'd give him a catchier name - Whiskey and Yankee would be my first choices, or maybe Golf or Uniform just to be weird) and make him something less than totally psycho, but certainly not a normal person either.
Just steal the Dexter premise of a charismatic but dangerous and mentally ill person trying to navigate a tricky situation. If the actor can get the audience rooting for the character, the writers have the latitude to have the character do some very iffy stuff, and still get away with it, and not feel compelled to come up with bullshit excuses why the main character is actually a poor widdle victim (which is a self-defeating approach since it simply engenders the audience's contempt).
If Tudyk's character is a psycho "normally," then the Dollhouse doesn't have to be eeevil, which is a hackneyed way to handle the premise. To do the unexpected and make the main character evil, and the Giant Scary Corporation actually kind of nice and trying to be helpful would flip the cliche on its head and open up the possibility of some fresh material being introduced.
