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San Francisco, 4:39 PM
Sun Nov 8
11 posts in the last 24 hours
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10/27/09
10/26/09
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10/26/09
Boyd doesn't do "nothing" about Echo's sentience - he actually helps her, giving her an access card. And that doesn't surprise me at all. We don't know why Boyd works for the Dollhouse. (In this episode Adelle mentions that all the employees other than Topher were chosen because they are morally compromised, and in Omega, Boyd remarks to Ballard "There's always a girl.") However, it's clear that Boyd is deeply troubled by the Dollhouse's work, and resigned at best to his own involvement in it. Far more powerful than his feelings about the Dollhouse are his feelings for Echo. He wouldn't turn her in, either because he wants her to bring the Dollhouse down, or simply because he couldn't bear for anything bad to happen to her.
As for Adelle - The show has always made it clear that she is charmed by Echo, and treats her differently from other dolls. Maybe she sees herself in Caroline? And the "morally compromised" comment applies to her. The Rossum boss says that Roger is the least of her indiscretions. So we get the sense that she may not have come into the job completely willingly, and she's certainly not free to leave now ("You wouldn't like the retirement package"). And she now knows that Rossum doesn't share the moral code that allows her to justify the Dollhouse. So she's probably feeling very ambivalent about her work right now, and less likely to police the behavior of her charges.
10/26/09
10/26/09
Are we watching the same show? Dichen Lachman is possibly the only person on the show that can be outacted by Eliza Dushku. She's got the grand total of one facial expression, and her acting boils down to how loud her voice is. It works just fine when she's a doll, and I used to think that this was on purpose, but now that she got more screen time, it looks as tho it's just plain old bad acting.
It was a great episode none the less. The whole nightmarish scenario of being driven crazy with pills scared the crap out of me. I loved Fran Kranz, I think he's really getting into his own as Topher. Both the character and the portrayal are getting better by the episode. And the creepy mother/son vibe between him and Adelle is something I'd like to see more of. Adelle is also growing on me.
And Enver Gjokaj is definitely the best actor on the show.
The only thing I really hated about the episode is the bird symbolism. I mean come on, I expected something a bit more challenging than bird=me and bird surrounded by blackness=me sad. Also, if that (the drawings) happens only after Sierra sees Nolan, what kind of fucked up message is the show sending? Like there's different degrees of rape or something?
IMHO, that's just lazy writing.
And another thing, the directing was crap, there was no way to tell what was happening when and I got confused about the time line more than once. #dollhouse
10/26/09
10/25/09
10/25/09
And I just love the imagery of Priya standing up as a dark silhouette against her painting on the wall after killing Nolan.
10/25/09
The only thing that I wasn't sure if I bought was Topher's growing conscience. I mean, he's a diagnosable sociopath. Can someone like that just spontaneously grow a conscience?
Oh, and I think Boyd does do something about Echo's growing sentience. He hides it from the Dollhouse and gives her a key. I don't see why he'd be the "company man" and tell Adele when he so obviously finds the idea of the Dollhouse repugnant. #dollhouse
10/26/09
Here's the thing: he "freed" Priya to confront her attacker but if he wanted to really play with people he could have programmed her with sleeper assassin and cleaner skills herself. #dollhouse
10/26/09
I will say that I'm not entirely certain that Topher is innately a sociopath. I wouldn't be surprised if his amoral, non-empathic condition was due to the chair somehow. #dollhouse
10/27/09
As to the sociopath angle, he just doesn't seem to have that sort of "tear off wings" for kicks thing you usually see. Put him up against Dexter for instance, who is constantly having to intellectualize all of his interpersonal emotional responses.
[en.wikipedia.org]
10/27/09
10/25/09
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10/25/09
1) Made preemptive war okay- responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of people.
2) Made torture legally acceptable, even necessary and have used the media (24) to justify it.
3) Brought the world to the brink of financial destruction and then made the uppowerful people pay for their loses. (BTW, listen to some recent This American Life episodes for some great stories about the humans and their thinking behind the failure to regulate and selling crummy CDS to investors)
We can look at what the powerful rich people do to the dolls but also what they currently do to conscious people. Think about all the people who have enabled the three things above, not just the Top Powers We all have to pay the mortgage so we convince ourselves we have no choice or convince ourselves that we are actually on the moral side, "I'm defending my country from terrorists. I'm helping interrogators find out from terrorists where the ticking time bomb is! I'm contributing to the GNP and helping people get homes they couldn't have gotten otherwise. "
What ethical choices have we made that helped us arrive in positions that enables the rich and powerful to accomplish their goals?
I think of the communications people in the White House who worked with Cheney and Bush to do the linking that Saddam was working with Bin Laden. Their job was to write speeches that linked the two. Then there are all the cable TV people who, when someone pointed out this blatant linking attacked the people who called it out as "UnAmerican". They knew that it was BS, (as Richard Clarke clearly explained) but they did it anyway. This moral comprise directly lead to billions of dollars being spent and 100,000s of thousands of lives being lost. Did they convince themselves that the story was true? Or if they knew it wasn't true, there were plenty of other good reasons to do this. "Well Saddam was a bad man. So even if he wasn't behind 9/11 we should do something anyway."
How many in the media were waiting for someone else to make a better argument against the war?
Think of the lawyers who made torture okay. What did Yoo and Bybee tell themselves they were doing? Do you think that their counter parts at Rossum corporation wrote the contracts for the Dolls?
I wonder if the clients have to sign contracts? Corporations like Rossum are doing extra legal things yet they still have the dolls and clients sign contracts. Why? Does the contract say that if raped they have to go to arbitration like KBR and Halliburton? Who is that contract really for? They don't dare let it go to court. #dollhouse
10/25/09
[www.ted.com] #dollhouse
10/25/09
Charlie. Excellent, excellent review. Thank you for digging into what is going on in this episode on a deep level.
I love the Dollhouse writers for tackling these issues.
Who would sign a contract that says if you are raped you can't do anything about it? (Like the Dolls did)
Thousands of women sign that contract every dad when they go to work for KBR in Iraq. Jamie Leigh Jones, the woman whose alleged gang rape at the hands of co-workers at defense contractor KBR inspired the bill Sen. Al Franken got passed
which prohibits the government from contracting with companies that refuse to allow employees to pursue rape allegations in court.
[rawstory.com]
30 Republican men voted against this. Rossum corporation clients? What did they tell themselves that made them okay with this? More relevant to us is the question "How did I facilitate this morally repugnant act by these Senators. I"m not a monster so do I spin it so that I can tell myself it's not about Rape it's about business?
Read this letter from the Kansas City Star then read the attacks on the person who wrote the letter and the Senator who introduced the bill. [blogs.kansascity.com]
The commenters are so filled with hate against Franken that they can justify rape. Would they be in favor of what the Dollhouse does? Sure, as long as it was done for national security. What if it wasn't done for national security? I can hear the rationalization now, "The Dolls signed a contract, they are like actresses in Porn movies. They had free will. Nobody forced them to sign up. It's all legal. Besides the Rossum corporation has only one duty, to deliver value to the shareholder." #dollhouse
10/25/09
1) In terms, of presaging Epitaph One, we have Topher at the beginning working on the remote wipe technology, talking to himself.
2) Does anyone else think it's kind of cheating to have Priya back in the Dollhouse, but this time under her own steam? She killed a man who was trying to violently rape (and possibly kill?) her...if they'd successfully "disappeared" Nolan, they could've just let her go, she could've just run off. Maybe Boyd wouldn't let her (he has a conscience, but we still don't know how much), but it seemed a little convenient that she was back, but now it's sort of ok she's there.
3) Do we think she knows that her first handler raped her? Probably not I guess.
4) With giving Echo the access card, let's be honest: is Boyd the spy from Season 1? That's long been the theory (very supportable by the Boyd/Ballard stuff in Season 1), though I'm new to these comment boards so I don't know what people here are thinking. That would also explain why, in Epitaph One, he has to run off and can't even stop for medical treatment if he needs it.
5) I agree with whoever said that it's weird how they're doing nothing about Whiskey's escape.
6) I'm so into the differences between the Echo/Boyd relationship and the Echo/Ballard relationship. Paternal/Watcher-y versus sexual/romantic. Remember in the very first episode, where Boyd was kind of down because Echo'd "finally met the right guy" but now was getting wiped? Whereas Ballard has a revulsion against all her romantic engagements. And Boyd hated the fake marriage (which was Ballard's idea) in kind of concerned fatherly way. I still really like the bit early on when Boyd initially thought of Echo as an empty simpleton, inhuman, worthy of some derision, but the whatsitcalled, I want to call it Imprinting except that means something else on the show--when the active is made to trust the handler completely. That act of bonding really affected Boyd. The Handler-Active relationship is one of the most interesting part of the show I think.
Man I loved this episode.
10/25/09
4)I've long since thought Boyd was the spy.
5)I'm sure they're keeping tabs on her. My theory is she's actually keeping in touch with Boyd. #dollhouse
10/25/09
10/25/09
Or in other words, by the time Mr. Ambrose makes that demand, DeWitt will believe that they can all just hole up inside the Dollhouse and fight off any attempt to remove her. #dollhouse
10/25/09
10/25/09
Doesn't this indicate that both Adelle and Topher, at the very least, should have known *something* was going on when all of a sudden the woman at the center of this seduction attempt turns up as a possible doll because she's cra-zay??
Also, I loved Priya's paintings about birds. Nice touch of symbolism - she became a caged bird, and then when she had the chance to be free she chose to remain in the cage. Interesting.
Lastly, what was Wild Bill talking about when he mentioned that Mrs. Lonely Hearts wasn't Adelle's only "indiscretion"!?!?!? My ears totally perked at that one. I know she's "morally compromised" and all... but what else exactly has she been up to as Dollhouse Mistress!?!?!?!? Want more details plz!!!!!! =D #dollhouse
10/25/09
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10/25/09
The use of paint is intriguing. One of the last scenes is an image of Priya rising in front of her own painting (in Nolan's house) as a black shadow. It recalls the paintings Sierra makes in the DH... Topher and Boyd (and we, at first) seem to interpret the shadow as Nolan, an evil, outside force, but from the last scene, I think she was painting herself all along.
And then you go back, and look at the scene in the shower, with Victor and Sierra playing around, painting each other... marking each other? Recognizing that each is similarly screwed in the head, damaged?
I think Priya chose the cage, because she just couldn't live with the memories. She realized she was killing a part of herself, by doing this wipe... I think that's what the last beer was about, a stand-in for a last cigarette (but cigarettes aren't cool anymore, so...)
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