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Dollhouse Tonight
The buzz is quite good. I'm looking forward to it. But over the summer, my reservations about the show increased rather than decreased. Thoughts on Epitaph One below the cut.
Everybody loved this episode. So I've watched it three times to try to see if I could get over my problems with it -- but no luck. As a story it's very entertaining and well-done -- not at all boring even watching it three times in a row. But it has really lowered my hopes for the series as a whole. Three things worry me:
1. Echoes (episode #7) was a disappointment because Caroline's backstory turns out to be a totally dull and grating cliche. I've got no affection for the character and pretty much want her to get squashed like a bug. I'd been hoping there were more layers there or that Echo, at least, would be something other than Dudleyette-do-right. Well, in Omega, it turns out that Echo just wants to do good. The only layered thing we know about Caroline is that she agreed to be wiped in the first place (that's not a small thing). But even that layer seems to be gone in Echo who reacts 180-degrees differently to her situation than did Alpha. I don't watch the Jossverse to root for pure heroes saving the day. But as of Omega it seemed more likely that this was the case. And Epitaph One just seems to say that's really how the whole show will run out. Echo will save them all, or at least be their best hope for salvation. Gag.
2. The folks who run dollhouse all have plenty of potential to be more than corporate tools. Epitaph One tells us that they will all learn their lesson. Just exactly the one we thought they needed to learn from the beginning. They were children playing with matches and they burned the house down. (Yes, that's a line -- in fact that's probably THE epitaph). I don't watch the Jossverse for stories to unfold in an utterly predictable way. But here it is. Again with the cliche.
3. At the end of Man on the Street there's an interview with a professor who says that this technology spells the end of the human race. Now that was something I could get behind. We're steadily increasing how much of human nature we can control. There's going to be an inescapable push to engineer our future generations to be smarter, better, more. We'll design better and better environments to get the otucomes we want. That's all in the mix here. Not to mention the way this technology serves as a metaphor for the way advertising and popular culture end up forming us into the people that the advertisers want us to be. So I was very enthusiastic about all the subversive ways this show could point out the subversive ways we are destroying human freedom or human nature without noticing that's what we're doing. There were a lot of ways to go. Fast forward to Epitaph One, though, and it turns out that the danger of this technology is much less insidious than that. On the contrary, it's just going to let bad people create armies so they can blow up the world. Woo hoo. Yes that's an apocalypse. And yes, this technology could go that way. But the dystopia that we could have been shown would be one where evil people had imprinted our presidents, entertainment folks and so on so that they could totally control the world and all the people in it without one of us noticing that the apocalypse had happened. My evil people are just smarter than Dollhouse's evil people -- cause really, what good is it to have a world blowed up when instead you could have billions of unwitting slaves working for you and leaving you in total power?
Whatever. The good news is that I'm sure everything in Epitaph One can be written around if Joss, et. al. decide to. All the reports on the new season are good. But Epitaph One read to me a bit like Lynch's treatment of the Shanshu prophecy... and I'm consistent enough to say I don't like that kind of flattening of meaning even if it comes from Joss himself. So, me, less optimistic.
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For me it all depends on what direction they take it. Part of me is a bit miffed that Epitaph One is a definite future, but at the same time being told how it all ends (and that ending being dull and cliché) is something I find quite interesting. It's like being told to ignore the 'plot' interest and concentrate instead on everything else that's happening, which I think lends itself to a constant critique of the characters. I feel like, in that sort of context, Echo can't be treated uncritically, because otherwise the show will have cut itself off from two sources of interest, which seems a bit loopy.
Of course, Joss has a tendency to write things that look cleverer than they really are, and it's very possibly it will just be sooper-shiny-Caroline against the mean-nasty-world. But, dammit, after years of the comics he's due something decent...
Or, in other words, *bounces*
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I missed Dr. Saunders' take on Caroline in Needs -- I'd love it if they did more with that (and there's plenty of room to).
And I do agree that there are ways they could go, even in this framework, that would be really interesting. Being less hopeful, doesn't mean having lost all hope!
I assume you saw the preview clips from Vows? Tonight should be really good.
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I missed Dr. Saunders' take on Caroline in Needs -- I'd love it if they did more with that (and there's plenty of room to).
She tells Boyd at the end that Caroline wasn't leading the dolls to freedom, but to terror and chaos - DeWitt says basically the same thing to Caroline (that the dolls will find the stimulation and conflict of the outside world overwhelming), but gets almost literally shot down. The question is, I suppose, whom Gray Hour proves right. I can't say I thought Echo was coping particularly well in that episode...
Ee! I can't believe I have to wait till tomorrow morning to stream it. Damn time zones!!
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I'll comment back tonight just about whether or not I'm squeeing at 10:00 pm EDT!
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I did at the beginning, mostly because I was scared of her being cast as a similar character (Joss seems to love that archetype), but now she's become so different, it's amazing. Hats off to AA, definitely.
I'll comment back tonight just about whether or not I'm squeeing at 10:00 pm EDT!
Ooh, do let me know! I might well still be awake. *ponders fic-writing*
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Hope the fic writing is going well!
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