Whedon's Dollhouse - off to a good start

I am approaching Dollhouse with caution, but the first episode was excellent. Yes, the show is about desire, but not only about fulfilling desires. So far it asks questions like "Should every desire be fulfilled?" and "Should something be pursued regardless of the means?". The lead scientist at the dollhouse is a manipulative amoral character, and this is not portrayed as a good. The operation is being questioned within by some of its own workers, and there are FBI types trying to discover and shut down the operation. And Joss' storytelling is too good to make this a bunch of River Tam Kicks Some Butt episodes.

Like Firefly, the show does not portray a sugar coated humanity. The will of man is ugliness in this fallen world. But so far the aspects that caused me to approach with caution have been handled tastefully. I'm not saying this is a family show. It is not. Children should not watch it; nor should anyone who is struggling with pornography.

The first episode has the main character (Echo) sent on two missions, on each with a different personality. In the first she is hired buy a guy for a pleasure weekend. In one scene we see her dancing in a super short (butt cheeky) dress; she makes reference to some kinky stuff that happened over the weekend; in her deprogramming we see very short clips of these events from her mission. But we aren't subjected to sit through sensual scenes. In the second mission Echo is a smart and controlled negotiator sent to bring back a man's kidnapped daughter. Nothing objectionable here, but there is some strong talk about pedophilia which makes one squirm in disgust.

nota bene: When I say "objectionable" I am talking about things that cause a typical man's imagination to run loose. I am not referring to violence. I'm all for fiction about killing the bad guys.