TV is the New Reading

With ‘Dollhouse’ finale,

Friday nights come

to a screeching halt

With the seriously game-changing final moments of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” second season, I’m really hoping that FOX either reconsiders and shows a little compassion for the dozens of fans who’d followed the show in its move from Mondays to Fridays and into oblivion or, failing that, that “Terminator IV: Salvation” will wrap up the loose storylines flying around.

Initial indications suggest that it will not, and in fact, will barely acknowledge the small-screen contribution to the story -- beyond allowing John Connor to be in his early 30s, which the small-screen’s initial time-jump made possible. The movie is set in 2018, sometime after the computer network SkyNet destroyed human civilization by launching nuclear weapons in America, Russia and China. It features Christian Bale as resistance fighter John Connor, and explores his rise to power. An as-yet-unnamed fifth “Terminator” project is slated to complete the saga.

So sci-fi fanatics who tuned in faithfully on Friday nights to watch Katee Sackhoff kick Cylon bum in “Battlestar: Galactica” until that ended and Summer Glau kick cybernetic android bum in “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” until that ended can still catch at least one speculative fiction entry Friday night with the reappearance of Alpha in Joss Whedon’s critical masterpiece “Dollhouse.”

‘Dollhouse’

Alan Tudyk showed up last week as Stephen Kepler, a paranoid genius environmental designer responsible for installing the Dollhouse -- a secret operation in which the megarich hire young, pretty people programmed to order -- at the behest of “Battlestar’s” Tahmon Penikett as ex-FBI operative Paul Ballard, who has been tracking the operation long enough for the operation to start tracking him.

Ballard gets them both into the Dollhouse specifically to track Echo, one of the “actives,” (that is, programmable dolls), played by Eliza Dushku. All the while, Kepler is whining and whinging that he doesn’t want to, can’t survive outside his apartment, can’t survive in the Dollhouse, etc. etc. etc. Once inside, he and Ballard split up and Kepler’s Alpha persona takes over.

Alpha is the storied “composite” who, while a doll in that very Dollhouse, incorporated 43 different personalities and went berzerk one fine day, surgically slashing and murdering all of the dolls (except Echo) and some of the staff, including Dr. Saunders, played by Amy Acker. Like Echo he let her live, but unlike Echo, he left her deeply scarred.

By the end of the episode, Alpha approaches Echo because he sees in her an ability to “composite” as well -- that is, retain elements of her past programming and access them, subliminally, for her own survival.

Friday’s episode might be a season finale, and it might be a series finale. Either way, it promises to be a spectacularly well-written presentation of series’ creator Joss Whedon’s overarching message of personal alienation and self-direction in the face of corporate hegemony.

“Dollhouse” airs, possibly for the last time, Friday at 8 p.m. on FOX.

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