WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE: Eliza Dushku on the run. In the woods.

Our sporadic discussions of television resumes.

Dollhouse

OK, so we’ve got this new show by Joss Whedon, right? And it’s on Fox, right? And this is the network that basically screwed the pooch with Whedon’s last show, Firefly, which was broadcast out of order on Fridays, got dismal ratings and was canceled after 11 episodes. And now Fox is maybe doing the same thing again, airing the show on Friday night when no young people are around to watch it. And Whedon has been going around complaining about all the demands Fox made on the new show, about what amounts to a bunch of brainwashed prostitutes going around kicking ass and solving crimes for the rich and powerful, and how the series doesn’t start to really reflect his vision until Episode 6. Got all that? All right, so Episode 6 aired Friday, and it kicked ass. Sort of. See, Tahmoh Penikett—Helo from Battlestar Galactica—plays this violent, unstable FBI agent trying to uncover the secret superpower whorehouse, and in this episode he becomes totally unhinged and loses his job because he’s getting played by the superpowered whores, and Eliza Dushku, who’s like totally the hottest woman on television, is having problems with her prostitute-brainwashing software and keeps remembering things she’s not supposed to, and there’s some kind of sinister former whore, whose brainwashing went wrong, out to kill everybody, but the episode got terrible ratings thanks to Battlestar and March Madness, and basically we need to start sending Fox doll heads right now to save the show that just started getting kind of cool before they even think of canceling. OK? You have your orders. BEN WATERHOUSE. Fox, 9 pm Fridays.

Lie to Me

Admit it, you’re sick of House. Sure, the medical procedural still bristles with energy every time cantankerous Brit Hugh Laurie shoots down another upstart intern. But really, we all know the initial diagnosis of lupus is waaay too simple. Fox cures House fatigue with another procedural, Lie to Me. This time it’s cantankerous Brit Tim Roth doing the verbal prizefighting, as “deception expert” Cal Lightman, who can tell if a subject is lying—or sad or angry or totally turned on—just by looking at them. There’s a lot of scientific blather about micro-expressions and body language as Roth’s crack team helps the police and other interested parties solve crimes and save days, but the whole thing really just boils down to a fun game of spot the liar, with regular viewers scoring higher each week. The plot lines are rote (who shot the Korean ambassador’s son? Has the gangbanger-turned-jailhouse prophet really reformed his ways? Is Lightman’s daughter lying about sleeping over at her friend’s house?) but contain enough twists to keep viewers watching. This week, the dual plot line revolved around the team’s effort to free two young Americans sentenced to death in Yemen for holding a couple doobies while Roth comes to grips with a longtime friend turned potential—you guessed it—LIAR. Lie to Me’s nifty recurring shtick of using footage of celebs and politicians as examples of the emotion the plot focuses on that week—from a displeased Obama to a disgusted Jessica Simpson—lends a cool, true-life edge to the proceedings. Now, if only Roth had a limp and a cane…. KELLY CLARKE. Fox, 8 pm Wednesdays.

Kings

Let me put this out there: I don’t understand a moment of NBC’s new prime-time soap opera (OK, I guess it’s a drama), Kings. Even though I watched the pilot, and tried to pay attention to the second episode, I was lost the first time Ian McShane opened his mouth. McShane—who was so excellent in Deadwood but here comes off as wooden in the wrong way—plays King Silas Benjamin, the well-entrenched leader of Gilboa, a fictional land fighting over territory with a bunch of other fictional countries. And that’s really all you need to know about the plot. Kings is campy and talky in the worst ways possible, all of which detracts from what should be the main premise of the saga: getting more screen time for the unbelievably hot Allison Miller, who plays Benjamin’s feisty daughter Michelle. If anything, Kings is entertaining—is that Enya covering Coldplay on the soundtrack?—in its desire to bring a big-screen-worthy epic to television. Let’s just hope they spot the show’s real pawn before it’s too late. MICHAEL MANNHEIMER. NBC, 8 pm Sundays.

The Office

At last, The Office is about something again. The show’s best seasons (2 and 3, of course) riffed on the hazy divide between self-worth and performance evaluation: In their talking-head confessions, the characters wanted to prove they weren’t pigeonholed by what they did. Lately, they’ve been defined by whom they did, as the sitcom struggled to prolong the spark of Jim & Pam by unveiling Michael & Holly, Angela & Dwight, Angela & Andy, Angela & Her Cats. It’s become a bedroom farce in the boardroom. But last week, everything changed with the arrival of Idris Elba (Stringer Bell from The Wire) as Michael Scott’s new superior, Charles Miner. (With the episode’s plot focused on Michael trying to go over Miner’s head to reach corporate honcho David Wallace, online wags wasted no time in noting that the entire episode could be summarized with Steve Carell shouting, “String! Where the fuck is Wallace?”) Granted a rare epiphany, Michael recognized that he’d tied his entire identity to a company that, at best, patronizingly humored him. So he quit, declaring with unprecedented calm, “You have no idea how high I can fly.” The Office is unlikely to reach its former heights, but at least it’s testing its wings. AARON MESH. NBC, 9 pm Thursdays.