The DVD has only been out a week, so no real spoilers, but I have a few thoughts about the two unaired episodes of Dollhouse.

* "Epitaph One" is as ambitious and as amazing as promised—definitely my favorite episode of Dollhouse and one of the top Whedonverse episodes of all time. It is, in every sense, just great, laying out a blueprint for the future of the series that is so compelling I'm not sure we need to actually see any of intervening episodes. (As far as I'm concerned they'd just be killing time before we get to "Epitaph Two," which is what I really want to see.) Joss and his co-writers have been pretty open with the fact that the episode came out of the assumption that there wouldn't be any more; people reference "Objects in Space," but the comparison to the season one finale of Sledge Hammer! seems much more apt. Have they written themselves into a corner? It'll be interesting to see if Joss & Co. can make the second season work when the real story now seems to be happening in 2019. Will people really sit still for john-of-the-week episodes with the stakes raised so much higher? Or will season two be more like Lost seasons four and five, with flashbacks and flashforwards that meet somewhere in the middle? Honestly I think I'd be most happy if they stuck with the "Epitaph" frame for good and did 2009-2018 just in flashback. It's not like we're getting a third season; don't leave anything on the road.

* Speaking of 2019: Was that a Dark Angel shout-out? The episode definitely had a post-Pulse vibe, and Joss and Dark Angel have something of a checkered past: widely understood as a Buffy rip-off, Dark Angel was unceremoniously canceled in favor of Firefly, which was later (you may have heard) unceremoniously canceled...

* The unaired pilot is, I think, probably a little worse as a pilot than the actually aired pilot—a rare case of network interference not being all bad—but it's pretty clear that Joss bitterly prefers it. (I haven't listened to the commentary yet, but apparently he has a lot of thoughts along these lines there as well.) Not only did he make oblique references to the original pilot throughout the season and in Epitaph One *and* bring back the astoundingly unimpressive Chrissy Seaver for "Omega," but he ended the (aired) season on the same audiovisual image—a whispered "Caroline"—that the original pilot ended on. The implication seems to be that the whole of the first season gets us to the same place the pilot did in just one hour.

* The most interesting thing about the unaired pilot, I think, is the discovery that Eliza Dushku is actually pretty good at doing a series of drastically different characters when it happens in rapid-fire, three-minute bursts. It's only over the course of a full episode that she really struggles as an actress. The hints toward Future Caroline in "Epitaph One" look like the latest attempt to explain away the one-note-acting; we'll see how this plays out.

Sunday misc.

* Calling bullshit on the feel-good story of the week, Britain's Susan Boyle.

* Why can't clowns and cops learn to get along?

* The Sunday Herald has your brief history of manga.

* Joss Whedon on the future of Dollhouse.

So how far of an arc have you planned for the series already?

When I pitched it, I gave them a six-year plan with a lot of leeway for change. But what I really mapped out was the first 13, and even though we start in a different place than I had originally intended, we end up exactly where I'd intended in the 12th episode. Then, in the 13th episode, things just get stranger. There's some twisted sh-- coming.

Can you give us an idea of what to expect from the second half of the season?

The second half of the season, especially starting with episode six, "Man on the Street," just kicks the entire franchise up a huge notch. It's where we start to pay off on everything we've been setting up for five episodes in terms of the relationships and the progression that Echo's going through. And then I just start twisting the knife and I don't stop. Hopefully it's still accessible to people; we're still doing standalones and every episode has its own resolution, so it's not just a rabbit's hole. The first half was definitely, "This is the world and here's how it works." And then the second half just takes that up to an intense level and then we really start to mess with the audience.

Stick around for some creepy and unprofessional comments about his coworker Eliza Dushku.

Attention Whedonites: the new spin on Dollhouse is that it starts getting good with episode six.

AVC: It isn’t like Joss is some new kid on the block, though. He has a lot of shows under his belt, and he’s got this large cult following. Is it frustrating when you get that kind of feedback?

ED: Honestly, yes. I understand it from a business perspective, and from Fox’s view, but at the same time, we’ve now done 13 episodes, and people have said that the show took off once they finally realized that Joss is best off left alone to do his thing. That happens around episode six—six through 13 are just extraordinary. I love one, two, three, four, and five, but Joss’ first script that he did after the pilot is number six, which is called “Man On The Street,” and it is just unbelievable. From that point on, the world unfolds in Joss’ way, with Joss’ speed, and it’s really remarkable.

Sorry, but Twitter doesn't lie: Eliza Dushku just can't act and it drags Dollhouse down every minute she's on screen. As I said somewhere in the Tweetspace, if this were The Helo Show with Amy Acker it'd probably be the best Joss show ever.

Keep hope alive for next week, Joss's choice for the premiere and an episode Fox allegedly effed with less.