“Nothing is what it appears to be.”

That’s what Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) tells Eliza Dushku’s character Caroline — not Echo — in the first scene of the first episode of Dollhouse. DeWitt seems to think Caroline is volunteering for whatever she has in mind for the next five years to help the young woman start anew afterwards with a “clean slate,” but reluctant Caroline feels she has no choice in the matter. Apparently, Caroline got into some kind of mess while trying to take her place in the world and make a difference, “like she always said,” and signing up with what we viewers know is the Dollhouse will allow Caroline to pay restitution for her undisclosed transgressions.

Soon, we see Caroline, now renamed Echo, get her mind wiped by resident Dollhouse geek Topher (Fran Kranz) in that special chair. After the process, she walks around in a daze, and it’s clear she has no idea what’s going on because (1) she frequently replies to questions with “I don’t remember” and (2) she looks appropriately bewildered when she walks in on Topher prepping new Dollhouse agent Sierra (Dichen Lachman). A blank-faced Sierra later saves Echo’s butt by killing a brutal child kidnapper and rapist and wounding his cohorts.

The first full case on the series requires Echo to get uploaded with the identity of Eleanor Penn, an ace hostage negotiator, to manage the safe extraction of Gabriel Crestejo’s (Kurt Caceres) young daughter Davina (Haley Pullos), who is kidnapped by a group of four criminals demanding $5 million ransom. Topher explains that Dollhouse operatives’ temporary identities are a composite of many other people’s real identities, which explains why Eleanor has asthma and wears glasses to correct her nearsightedness when Echo has no such traits.

Echo’s first brush with regaining her wiped memories occurs when Gabriel, angry at her independent and unique approach to negotiating for his child’s life, begins pestering her with a barrage of questions about her alias’ background that he knows will unnerve her because he knows her brain has been wiped. After all, he’s the rich man who could afford to hire a Dollhouse operative in the first place.

As expected, Echo cracks a bit, experiencing a rush of uninterpretable images in her mind that momentarily overwhelms her. Yet, we soon learn the primary reason she becomes disoriented is because one of the real people Eleanor’s memories are based on was kidnapped as a young girl by one of Davina’s kidnappers. And, he was ruthless, leaving her for dead in a river after repeatedly sexually assaulting her and assuring her she “can’t fight a ghost.”

This rape and abduction survivor’s memories ultimately allow Eleanor to save Davina from the refrigerator the kidnappers lock her in, after Eleanor convinces her former kidnapper’s colleagues that he plans to kill them and take Davina to torture and kill later once they finish counting the ransom money, just like he’s done in the past.

Although I’ve always felt Eliza Dushku’s range as an actress is confined to variations on a “tough chick” persona, “Ghost” works for me because the central case is interesting and less predictable than it initially seems. The best thing about the episode, however, is Battlestar Galactica veteran Tahmoh Penikett, whose FBI Agent Paul Ballard is currently the most interesting character on the show.

Ballard, determined to prove the Dollhouse exists, has been enthusiastically ruffling the feathers of prominent politicians, notorious criminals, and a few upstanding citizens alike. After his superiors give him an extremely stern talking to near the beginning of “Ghost” — they can’t really punish him, though, because someone above them has put Ballard in charge of locating the Dollhouse — the agent approaches Victor (Enver Gjokaj), the son of a well-known Russian mobster, and gives him the opportunity of a lifetime: either help him find the Dollhouse or watch his family of crooks go down.

As of now, Dollhouse has one great character (Ballard) and several good ones (Echo; scarred Dollhouse doctor Claire Saunders (Amy Acker), and Echo’s dedicated ex-cop handler Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix)), not to mention a very intriguing and promising future plotline. The last is introduced in the final scene of “Ghost” when we see a shirtless man with his back to us placing a photo of Echo in an envelope as a video of her plays on TV and the camera passes over two dead people behind the man. The photo, inscribed with the scribbled message “Keep Looking,” will eventually land in Paul Ballard’s hands.

How did you like the first episode of Dollhouse? Share your opinion in the poll below or the comments section.

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Dollhouse airs Fridays on Fox at 9:01pm EST.

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People reports what female television viewers — and some male ones — worldwide have been waiting to hear for almost a decade now: Dr. Doug Ross, also known as George Clooney in thousands of fantasies every day, is returning to ER, the medical drama that established his reputation as a certified hunk or hottie or whatever description is in vogue these days.

Loyal devotees will recall that Clooney’s last appearance on the long-running series was way back in 2000, marking the end of his six-season stint on the show as a regular cast member. Yet, it’s fitting he would return now as the drama’s 15th and final season winds down after a four-episode extension announced by NBC last week.

And, apparently, show runners are going all out to make the doctor’s final visit a huge occasion for fans. People states that although it’s not known how many episodes Clooney’s famous face will appear in, since neither the network nor Warner Bros. is commenting, one thing they do know is that closed sets are being used during the actor’s scenes to keep everything “under wraps.”

I stopped watching ER regularly a few seasons ago, but I will definitely be tuning in when it’s Clooney time. This is just the sort of development needed to pique my interest in the series after all these years.

How about other Clooney fans? Is the news that he’s finally agreed to return to the show now that he’s a mega movie star a good thing in your opinion? Or, do you think having him around might create an unnecessary distraction? Please do vote or leave a comment below and then get excited to see Doug again soon.

And, to state the obvious, I wonder if Clooney’s fellow holdout Julianna Margulies will give in next so we can get a little Doug-on-Carol Hathaway action, as well, for old times’ sakes. If only… Maybe that’s hoping for too much though.

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ER airs Thursdays on NBC at 10pm EST. The series finale is currently scheduled for April 2.

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Expected complexity aside, something still seems to be missing from Damages this time around: last season’s urgent (emphasis intended) sense of mystery that arose the moment bloody, dazed, and nearly naked Ellen Parsons appeared onscreen and meandered through the streets of Manhattan before winding up at a police station, where she was questioned by two perplexed detectives.

This season, we get a far less intriguing opening with Ellen again, who, in contrast to Season One, is cool, calm, collected, blood-free, and fully clothed, yet typically gloomy. She tells someone we can’t see that they shouldn’t be scared and then corrects herself. The person should be scared — terrified, in fact. And, she has the perfect solution to their problem, namely a gun aimed their way that just might help the truth set them free.

After this one-sided exchange, the episode reverts to six months ago, a time-jumping device that sometimes made me dizzy during the freshman season since it, along with jumps forward, was employed so much. Too much, some might say.

Six months ago is just a month after Ellen’s fiancé David was murdered. Ellen is now collaborating with FBI Agents Harrison (Mario Van Peebles) and Werner (Glen Kessler, a co-creator of and writer for the series) to bring her boss Patty Hewes down from the inside. The strategy is to convince her to take on what currently seems like a harmless HMO infant mortality case set up by the FBI. Patty, on the other hand, is literally going insane with guilt over her role in Ray Fiske’s suicide and related events during last season’s Arthur Frobisher case.

When Ray’s ghost shows up in her office during one particularly vivid waking nightmare about his suicide, Patty follows his advice to relieve her conscience by coming clean to Ellen about certain unrevealed details of the Frobisher case. Ellen, thinking this will be the big confession that will finally help her destroy the woman she holds partially responsible for her fiancé’s murder, arranges to secretly record the conversation for the FBI.

All she gets out of the exchange, however, is an admission that Patty had a stillborn daughter named Julia over 30 years ago and Patty’s suspicion that whoever attacked Ellen at Patty’s home near the end of the Frobisher case was actually looking to kill her, not Ellen. Neither is anywhere near the smoking gun Ellen desperately wants, and she seems to resign herself to the two to three years the FBI agents claim are required to take Patty down their way…

…until the end of the episode, when we go forward six months, back to the opening scene. Ellen tells whomever she’s talking to that it’s just the two of them, face to face, but it looks like the other person’s not going to tell the truth after all. As a result, Ellen admits she lied, too, and then she fires two shots at the still-unseen person. Intriguing, yes, but not to the same extent as the previous season-long mystery.

As for the other peripheral characters, there’s no Marcia Gay Harden in this episode — she debuts on next week’s “Burn It, Shred It, I Don’t Care” — but we do meet newcomers Danny Purcell (William Hurt), a man who shares a tense past with Patty and comes to her for help that she initially refuses to give, as well as Ellen’s fellow Post Traumatic Stress group therapy member Wes Krulik (Timothy Olyphant), a kindred spirit in despair over a nonsensically murdered loved one who understands exactly what the young lawyer is going through.

Thus far — before the inevitable labyrinthine plot twists go into overdrive and nothing is what it seems to be — Danny appears to be struggling with how to reveal damaging information he has that can bring down an entire industry, all without getting his family killed. He fails at the last part since his wife Christine (lovely Paige Turco, wife of Lost on Mars’ Jason O’Mara, who I really wanted to hang around — alive — for the entire season) is murdered at the end of the episode.

One final plot thread — besides Frobisher hiding out in a New York hospital to recuperate from almost getting murdered — involves wealthy Independent politician Sam Arsenault (James Naughton). He’s set to fund Patty’s New York-based charitable foundation to fight hunger, which results from her guilty conscience and her law firm’s share of the huge Frobisher settlement.

Sam suddenly reneges, though, when Republicans, who loathe Patty, offer to back him for Governor. Eventually, Sam’s Yale-bound daughter Lily makes headlines when she’s busted for coke, and the Republicans immediately withdraw their support.

By now, we longtime viewers know Patty well, and it’s obvious before the PR disaster even happens that she set the whole thing up to force Sam to come crawling back to her, which he does. So, before Danny calls her to the scene of his wife’s murder, we get a very, very happy Patty with her name at the front of a major foundation — the Hewes/Arsenault Children’s Hunger Initiative instead of the original Arsenault/Hewes Children’s Hunger Initiative— whose endowment has been doubled by Sam.

Patty may be predictable, but she’s damn good, too, although she does seem much softer these days than I ever imagined possible. That could be a problem down the road if viewers get tired of enduring teary-eyed scenes where the tough-as-nails broad they know and love sees dead people and looks scared out of her mind.

Damages airs Wednesdays on FX at 10pm EST.

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After watching last night’s “Hello, Goodbye, Amen” episode of 90210, I have to wonder if showrunners are serious about viewers believing Harry Wilson is intelligent enough to be the principal of an entire high school. If so, he’s got to be one of the dumbest administrators in the history of secondary education, too.

In short, here’s what happened on the episode, which takes place right after winter break at West Bev:

ANNIE

Suspicious Annie and her mother Debbie finally convince totally clueless Harry (He’s my son! I just know he is! I feel it in my gut!) to ask Sean to take a paternity test before handing over $200,000 that Sean claims his no-good, dead adoptive father, who supposedly committed suicide, owed as a result of his gambling addiction (Yeah, right!). Of course, Sean cuts out before test time, but not until he turns psycho on Annie and tells her he thought she, of all people, would understand what it’s like to want a chance at a Beverly Hills lifestyle. Clearly, he thought wrong.

NAOMI

Naomi, who spends most of the episode trying to make Annie jealous about her much too-close and thoroughly skeevy relationship with Sean, blames Annie for screwing her family again when Sean vanishes without a trace. It turns out that her mother Tracy made a deal with her father in their acrimonious divorce and gave in to some of his demands to get the money to give to Sean, who stopped by for it before disappearing, along with the private investigator Harry and Tracy hired to find their child. Tracy is the episode’s second biggest idiot, followed closely by her boorish and boring daughter, who so needs to get over this lame rivalry with Annie. It grew old, like, five episodes ago.

ADRIANNA

Adrianna learns her rehab buddy Hank tested HIV+ after relapsing. Most distressing of all, she slept with him a couple of times — along with a whole bunch of other guys during her slutty druggie days — and she discovers she’s pregnant, but not HIV+, when she gets tested at Kelly and Brenda’s insistence. All 16-year-old Adrianna can think about after learning the devastating news, however, is what Navid, who’s completely absent during this outing, will think. Judging from the brief promo after the episode, we’ll find out next week, and it ain’t good.

KELLY & BRENDA

Kelly and Brenda finally mend fences when Brenda reveals she’s thinking about adopting a child after recently learning fibroids she had removed in the past have left her unable to bear children. Maybe the two women will get over sleeping with the same guy yet again — this time teacher Ryan — after all.

DIXON

Assuming that cheerleader Christina is romantically interested in him — and neglecting to share that assumption with Silver — when she lavishes attention on him, Dixon eventually learns she’s not only bisexual and has a girlfriend, but her father Franklin Whitney, the owner of a record label, knows more black people in Beverly Hills than Dixon imagined even lived there. Finally letting Silver in on why he’s drawn to Christina — she’s black like him in a very white town — Dixon is surprised that all his girlfriend wants is to meet Denzel Washington at Christina’s father’s celebrity-filled gospel barbecue. Obviously, the waif has her priorities in order.

The longer this episode wore on, the more tiresome it became to me, mostly because it was ridiculously clear that Sean was a fraud and a scammer from the get-go. Watching people get taken that easily isn’t my idea of entertaining, but I did enjoy the tremendous camp value of Kelly’s clownishly over-mascara-ed eyelashes (What was up with that? Did she shoot her scenes on the makeup artist’s day off?) and Adrianna smiling like a doofus while making a speech about her former drug addiction in front of her rehab buddies. The last was just so perfectly inappropriate and downright weird — honestly, her cheeks must have ached after the director yelled “Cut!” — I couldn’t help but smile — or rather, laugh — myself.

But, that’s just me. What did you think of “Hello, Goodbye, Amen”? Leave a comment and/or vote in the following poll to share your opinion.

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Vote below to share your opinion. The poll will close when the next new episode of Ghost Whisperer airs, currently scheduled for Friday, January 9, at 8pm EST.

FYI: Grrl TV is giving away copies of the Ghost Whisperer Spirit Guide to lucky winners of the Ghost Whisperer Giveaway. Enter for your chance to win before the contest closes at 11:59pm EST on Wednesday, December 31st.

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