All language subtitles for Dollhouse S02EX3 Defining Moments_EN

Okay. Well, as you can see, we're back.
And it's a party, literally.

We're shooting a party scene,
a little flashback of Echo's.

And so it's our last shot of
what's turned out to be a pretty long day.

Action!

But here we are.

Here we go again.

And cut! One more, please.

- A mark!
- WOMAN: B mark.

DIRECTOR: And action!

We were pretty much in a

"We'll wait and see that you're canceled"
situation at the end of Season 1.

No press.

And I never actually tried to maneuver

the studio or the network
into picking up the show.

I just tried to get them
to air the 13th episode.

But they ultimately didn't do it.

That to me said,
"Okay, well, clearly, we're canceled."

The safest thing we can do
is just cut our lines and go on lockdown.

Lockdown.

I think everyone was really uncertain,

but I had a good feeling.

And I thought,
because of what happened with Firefly,

I think the network wanted
to give this show a second chance.

I love this character.
I want her to come back.

TIM MINEAR: We were expecting
to not come back,

so we had sort of thrown the kitchen sink
at "Epitaph One."

WHEDON: Just before we did
the Paley event for Dollhouse,

they called me to say,
"Look, you're not actually canceled."

FRAN KRANZ: I was working with Joss,
we were working on this movie,

and I saw him coming
from 50, 60 feet away,

and he was like...
So it was pretty awesome.

Season 2. Who knew?

WHEDON: This season...
Clearly, we weren't a big hit,

we had just gotten this 13-episode
lease on life and all bets were off.

We said, "Screw it. Let's just make this
what we think it should be."

WHEDON: This season has been
very much more assured,

where we came in understanding
our characters and our premise

and using that to bring
the Dollhouse together as a family.

- What a beautiful fake family.
- Do we look alike?

What we were trying to do was clear to us,
what hadn't worked before,

but more importantly, what had worked.

TAHMOH PENIKETT:
I went to Comic-Con for one night,

and I did the press lineup at the EW party,
and all the reporters were like,

"So, Joss Whedon says he's gonna take
your character through the wringer.

"You're gonna be in the pits of hell."
And all this stuff.

I was like, "Whoa, okay."

So I went to the party, I'm like, "Heard
you're gonna give it to me this season?"

He said, "Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, I am."

(YELLING)

WHEDON: We kicked Echo up a notch so
that she really could start to self-actualize

and not be that blank slate that
people weren't really responding to.

I'm afraid of Caroline.

If she comes back, where will I go?

ELIZA DUSHKU: I felt like
it gave me a chance to play Echo

and who she's come to be,

beyond Caroline,
beyond Echo, the blank doll,

and what she was capable of.

(GRUNTING)

The fan response was instantaneous.

"We like this.
This is the Echo we wanna see."

(SCREAMING) Stay back!

They threw me some curveballs

and were having fun with me
as an actor and with the character.

What you're not getting, man friend,

is that this whole operation
is dependent upon me.

We see the tough bitch losing control.

That is the last time you will ever
speak to me like that.

Topher has been one of the highlights.

I didn't want to cause any more pain.

The evolution of the characters

is ultimately what draws audiences
to all of my work.

There never seems to be an end

to what Joss can do
with his characters and his world.

He always likes to make
the audience go somewhere

and then sort of turn it on its head.

Take it easy. It's...

What did I miss?

This is not my original body,

and nor will it be the last
that you will hear of Boyd Langton.

WHEDON: You know,
we believed in taking chances,

and this season has been
really gratifying because of that.

Last season, I was very conscious of
not having this be a Joss Whedon joint.

It's not a house party for my buddies.

This season, I said,
"Okay, now it is a party for my friends."

Look, Joss is boss!

We're a big, whacked-out,
dysfunctional family.

This is what I have to live with every day.

Mainly, I've been taking care of Joss'
garden and making him a lot of coffee.

Oh, he's so weak.

WHEDON: Yes, I wanted
to get Alexis in there,

and, yes, I wanted to get Summer in there.

And I had these two roles
that seemed tailor-made.

Dichen and Andrew and I
were all drunk and dancing,

and Dichen's like,
"Maurissa should be on the show."

Guess we're stuck here awhile.

Mag and Kilo, I believe, is called...
(IMITATING PORN MUSIC)

Sexiness.

We did things like having John Cassaday
direct an episode, who hadn't shot before,

but who I knew had a great visual sense,
which you can see in "The Attic" episode.

Action!

We have a very similar sense of
storytelling, a bit of a shorthand.

Joss knew that I had an eye
towards doing this sort of work

and wanted to get behind a camera,

and he's given me this chance
to do something.

I don't think we quite got it that time.
Let's do it one more time.

Those are chances that I would not have
bothered to take with other shows.

But this was one where
we just could feel how thin the ice was.

You're sitting here
and you're just like, "Hey..."

(LAUGHING)

And the whole time
they're having their scene...

By the end of the second season,
we were getting into

"We are clearly going to be
canceled again" territory.

So there was a lot of work to do
to build towards the final crisis.

- It's the apocalypse!
- WOMAN: Again!

We really wanted to bring back that
future storyline. We were in love with it.

But we also had all the main characters
to pay off, and that was a lot to do.

WHEDON: Dr. Saunders was very much
a part of the heart of the piece.

Then we found out
we only had her for three episodes.

Luckily, I got to shoot the scene between
her and Topher in the server room,

which is my favorite work of mine
on this show by a long shot.

You need a fricking treatment.

Why shouldn't I love you?
Aren't you lovable?

Aren't you Big Brother?
Aren't you the Lord my God?

This season,
they've really gotten a lot of great ideas.

And now, they're like,
"Wait, we had so much more to say."

There're all these characters
we would've loved to have paid off more.

You know I got stuck into the Attic,

and it's infinitely more horrible than
I could've even imagined.

Obviously, Mellie/November /Madeline.

- It's my last day.
- I'm gonna cry.

LAURIE: I think the way they end it
with her and Paul is very poetic,

and the way it's supposed to be.
And I think the fans will be happy.

WHEDON: Well, we always
have more in store.

I had a whole vision of the show
sort of evolving into almost sort of...

We refer to it as Charlie's Angels,
Adelle's Angels. Victor, Sierra and Echo

go on these missions, anywhere
where the tech was being abused,

you know, go solve the problem,
fight the power.

Echo is the leader,
Sierra was kind of the anchor,

and Victor would start
spinning out of control.

You hit him. Why did you hit him?

He's still connected.

I wrote up the whole proposal
and spoke to the studio,

and they said,
"Oh, yeah, but you were canceled."

Like, on that day.

So the last episode was exhausting,

because there were so many people,
so many payoffs, so many things,

and then, I think,
we gave Echo what I like to think of as

one of the weirdest happy endings
I've ever come up with.

I've never seen Joss end something
in a way that wasn't beautiful.

You're all watching the DVD,
so you know how it ends.

But we ended in the apocalypse,

and she's imprinted
with her love and her man.

Am I...

Are we...

Joss came in,
and I sensed something from him,

there was something on his mind.

We did our first scene with everybody
in the room, for the first time.

It was at the end of "The Attic"
when everybody is there, and we go,

"Now we're a team,
we will take down Rossum. "

And that was a good time
for me to come to everybody

and congratulate them and
announce that we'd been canceled.

In the middle of going,
"Yay, we're all together,"

it turned into a cry of grief.

And then it was on the Internet
about three seconds later.

We were like... Oh. You know?
It was a very bizarre moment.

But there's no good time to say it.

TANCHAROEN: In a way, our second season
was sort of like a bonus season,

because nobody ever thought,
with our ratings, that we'd get picked up.

But it just goes to show
how hard our fans were pulling for us.

Well, obviously,
from the initial inception to Season 2,

there were a lot of bumps in the road.

Some people were made
very uncomfortable,

because we were dealing with
issues of sexuality,

and by not exploring it, the more
it seemed to be the elephant in the room.

Hopefully, people can take feminist ideals
away from this.

The idea was, very simply,
this woman doesn't exist.

She literally doesn't exist,
and she builds herself from scratch.

To me, that is the most powerful act
that a person can do.

This season, I've done a lot of identifying
and a lot of personalizing

with the things that Echo went through
and lived through.

All of the fears and strengths
and insecurities

and triumphs and failures.

I mean, all of these emotions
that have been in my own life

and sort of started in my adolescence.

It's been a very cathartic show.

Funny

that the last fantasy
the Dollhouse would fulfill

would be yours.

WHEDON: I wanna do everything.

I still love television
because like with Dollhouse,

we get to examine the question
that we're interested in

over and over from
all these different angles.

I love telling stories.
That's why, ultimately, it doesn't matter.

Would I do more TV? Yes.

Would I try to make sure that
it was TV somebody wanted to watch?

Yeah, that might be on my list.

Joss is the kind of person who
never wants to, artistically, be stalled.

And that's really inspirational to me,

so, I mean, I can't wait to see
what he does after Dollhouse.

He just never does the same thing twice.

The thing that was so compelling
about the show, for everyone writing it,

is just the gray area we were always in.

GJOKAJ: The good thing is that
the show kind of felt like

a different TVshow every single time.

We were constantly mixing things up,
and when we hit, we hit really hard.

It's funny, you know, a dollhouse,
when you think about it,

you can add rooms.

But also, the shape of the dollhouse
is constantly changing

as you're shifting around rooms.
And that's kind of the way this show was.

I think Dollhouse ultimately was probably
not right for network television.

But this is where Eliza was,

and Eliza was the reason
I thought of the show.

And she's the person
I wanted to do the show with.

I just can't think of a show that could've
been so personal and so special to me.

And it's been two of the best years
of my life.

I do feel like I made some mistakes
along the way in structuring the show,

and knowing the network
that I was making it for.

But I'm enormously proud of
this weird thing that we accomplished,

this thing that we created,
this family that we got to build,

and this world we got to explore.

I love this show. I'm grateful
that this came into my life,

that it crawled into my brain
and that I got to play in it for 26 episodes.

I wouldn't have had it another way.

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