Joss Whedon is one of those guys, like Cameron Crowe or Aaron Sorkin, who have these rabid fan bases and inordinate reputations — it’s almost taken on faith that a new project of one of theirs is going to be good. They all create stories full of glib characters who are so cool that you wish they’d come from your life, who always say the exact right thing you wish you could have said.

Eventually, though, these guys falter. Sorkin had Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Crow had Elizabethtown, and now Joss Whedon has Dollhouse. When these failures happen, fans do a lot of equivocating about what elements failed to work or what excuses can be made to justify any mediocrity. Really, though, they’re just proof that the tricks these guys employ have always been pretty thin and annoying.

Whedon’s new show, Dollhouse (FOX) is no exception. Like his other work, namely Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly, it’s a sort of Sci-Fi action hybrid. In this case, it’s about a mysterious organization that uses agents who have had their memories erased so that they can then be implanted with all the skills or memories necessary to carry out secret missions like hostage negotiation or looking really hot in a miniskirt.

Our main character, Echo (Eliza Dushku) would appear to be the star attraction (probably because she looks the hottest in the aforementioned miniskirt), and we follow her as she takes on one assignment after another while trying to suss out just what this shady organization is really up to and maybe find out who she really is. Meanwhile there’s an FBI Agent (Tahmoh Penikett from Battlestar Galactica) who is basically trying to do the same thing.

I think.

Problem is, none of this makes any sense at all. The Dollhouse is not (at least as far as we know) a government operation, since the characters constantly talk about going to jail if they’re exposed. Furthermore, we know that their services cost millions of dollars per case, so it is only within the reach of the extremely rich.

It seems to me that if you have a whole bunch of money, you would just hire a real hostage negotiator or some such other mercenary to do any dirty work you might find necessary. If it’s criminal activity, I see no reason to involve an even more secret criminal group to assist you, since the Dollhouse’s methods are absolutely going to be more expensive and difficult to retain than even a highly rated hit man, kidnapper, or what have you.

Then there’s the issue of the memory wipes. Why is Echo trying to figure out her true identity if, as we’re repeatedly told, the agents volunteer for this kind of work? And how do you get a job like this? Are there want ads? Perhaps this is more fully explained in later episodes, but I was simply too bored to wait around for the answers.

And that’s just what’s wrong with the idea.

Dushku is a very pretty lady, but she is simply not actress enough to play multiple characters across multiple episodes. And how come every single “expert” she plays has to be an insanely hot babe in tight clothes? Aside from the obvious ratings boost.

And all the clever dialogue and hot chicks with machine guns in the world can’t cover the fact that the individual cases are just derivative and boring. It’s like any number of episodes of V.I.P. or Charlie’s Angels or Knight Rider or whatever.

Same crap, different network. I’m just sick and tired of these quasi-serialized shows that contain these large overarching mysteries but feel the need to drag out the main stories and character arcs in between episode after episode of one-off cases and shows that don’t advance the main plot. Current and increasingly frustrating examples include Life, Burn Notice and Lie to Me, all much more interesting shows than this one that unfortunately have begun boring me to tears because they’re basically all the same exact show.

Meanwhile, people continue to watch Heroes, which it pains me to say is actually BETTER than Dollhouse. Yeowch.

Matt Lynch is The Voice’s TV critic.