Overdue (aka No Longer Relevant)

Alright. I have a few posts in the queue that are long overdue. And I refuse to go the usual route of letting them die alone. So, a solid month after the airing, here are my thoughts on the Dollhouse finale. I'll break it down into things I liked, and things that disappointed.

What I liked:
- I liked that Alpha's obsession with Echo was not actually based on his recognizing her brilliance, or her capacity to be like him, or anything that justified his treating her like an experiment and plaything. I liked the reveal, be it contradictory to all that was built up, that Alpha just became obsessed with an unhealthy crush.
- Amy Acker. Though I'm sold on Eliza Dushku as Echo, sometimes during assignments I find myself thinking about Faith (during her fight in the restaurant with Ballard, I actually said aloud "This is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Battlestar Galactica crossover episode." Though I've never actually watched BSG. This is my distaste for Watchmen [the comic, not the movie, which I haven't seen] make me a bad nerd. Among other things). But Amy Acker, not surprisingly, is amazing in every new role. I completely forget her character in the last scene and totally buy into whatever she's playing that minute. I wonder why few if any fans saw the Dr. Saunders being a doll thing coming - what a perfect way for Joss to utilize her versatility. I mean, to my understanding the last time they worked together, he killed off her character just to create a chance for her to play something else.
- Topher's facade cracking. Please, please, please, let this continue to develop in season two. Topher, the goofy asshat, taking a introspective and serious turn could have major positive implications for the direction of the show.
- Ballard feeling discomfort and conflict around November. His reactions to her in Briar Rose were infuriatingly simplified. The ending would indicate that she's being phased out, which is really frustrating. I feel unsatisfied. Speaking of...

What I Didn't Like:
- The playing up of Alpha's violent past and the playing down of the Dollhouse's recklessness with him. This was a huge problem for me. If this was the case, why was it even significant that Echo retained memories? I'm a little interested in Ballard's talk of souls, since the intersection of science and spirituality is always a rich and worthy topic, but, I feel like, they're undermining their own point. Society controls us - except you can't change people! I'm deeply disappointed by this 'evil people are just evil' mixed message.
- The instantaneous of Echo's enlightenment (conveyed so user-friendly-y via monologue) followed by the erasure of that enlightenment. No struggle in either direction.

Well, at this point the show has been picked up for a second season, and I'm glad. I still believe in the basic concept, and despite the missteps, I want to see where it goes. Oh, and if I get my hands on the unaired actual finale, maybe I'll write something up on that. The shots I've seen from it have been most titillating.

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Hmm.

Today I was asked: "So, what does a feminist do?"
To which I replied: "Anything they want to."


Oh my gosh I'm going to write about Dollhouse and share things from rallies in RI but just for the minute have Joss Whedon's Equality Now speech:

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Briar Rose Thoughts and Theories

Here be Dollhouse spoilers!

Predicting plot details of my favorite TV shows correctly inflates my head in a very special nerdy way, and Maia at Alas, A Blog independently put together the Alpha has an imprint of Topher theory I put forward a few weeks ago. Alan Tudyk has also stated that "the fact that Kepler's mannerisms are so similar to Topher's was not an accident". Whether or not this will be the catalyst for a character change in Topher that I was hoping it would be is perhaps less likely. Especially if the show doesn't get much farther.

So, after the last episode, new theory. Thinking about what the future would hold for Victor now that he's had his face sliced up, I realized that Dr. Claire Saunders is a doll. I've felt from the first few episodes that she's an inaccessible character intentionally, though at first I thought she was Alpha's person on the inside. One of my viewing buddies smartly pointed out back in that everyone-gets-high episode that Saunders is the only one kept out of the mix - I thought it was because it would reveal too much about her, and in a way that's true, because her reaction would have revealed she was a doll. (That episode was also useful in establishing that Topher was not a doll, which I had wondered about.)
Then, of course, two episodes ago came the revelation that Dr. Saunders never leaves the dollhouse. I am a bit ashamed I didn't put this together right then. Last night, I was first tipped off when Dominic said "Whiskey", which is part of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet which all the dolls are named after. I didn't know why everyone would act like he was talking about the drink, but it makes sense if the doll he was talking about was in the room. Then, of course, came Alpha's leading question, "Did you always want to be a doctor?"

I thought this was too obvious to write about, actually, but my viewing buddies seemed perplexed by my conclusion at first.

As far as the more philosophical content of this episode, I was feeling the "it's not your fault you can't leave" message, but then not so much the "the prince is the dream of the princess" message, though that might have been for lack of clarity. This is a much longer post, but a problem I have with Joss Whedon at times is that he always has these leading strong women whose power was forced upon them from men. The thing with Buffy was that the show lasted long enough for her to fully explore and eventually undermine the source of that power, not only making it her own but ultimately sharing it with other women. I don't expect Echo to undermine the Dollhouse(s) and welcome the other dolls to share in her power quite yet. But I am tickled with anticipation to see her to undermine her savior, Alpha.

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Damn you, Joss Whedon

For getting me so emotionally invested in this show.

So, not a full recap or analysis or anything, but yeah, the Episode That Changed Everything delivered. We abandoned the adventure-of-the-week set up, and I'd be happy to never go back- Echo is still central, but we got really involved in the other characters.

Sexual violence got serious treatment this time, and I thought these things were important: It was clearly treated as rape even though Sierra didn't say no or physically resist; and the rapist handler, whose name escapes me, tried to excuse his behavior because the Dollhouse is "in the business of using people". Obviously the excuse isn't acceptable, but I think Joss was wisely making a connection of sexual violence to the environment of objectification and exploitation.
Things that bothered me about Sierra's storyline: I can't recall if they actually used the word "rape" - I know Dr. Saunders said "Sierra's had sex" after the exam, but I don't know if they changed the language after it became obvious that she didn't (and really, couldn't) consent. Also, a little mad at Boyd for letting the other handler attempt again in order to "catch him in the act" instead of, oh I don't know, asking Sierra about him. Of course, it was hugely satisfying to have him punched through a glass wall with his fly down.

The big thing that changed with me is that I am now completely invested in the fate of Mellie/November:


I saw the reveal coming, but it was still a bit heartbreaking. Previews for future episodes indicate possible revolt against the Dollhouse. Can she just be the main character now, please?

Unrelated to this episode: another blog pointed out how wildly inaccurate the homebirth scene was... which I really should have noticed, since I've seen homebirths. Though Topher's probably not a mifwifery expert, and you probably couldn't get away with a completely accurate homebirth on TV (we need to throw a sheet over her- for medical reasons!), this is a still a case of ball-dropping. Oh well. I appreciate the attempt, if not the execution.

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The Problem with Echo (which is not actually a problem)

Alright, so. I've been putting off writing about Dollhouse because - besides the fact that I've only been casually engaged blogging lately - the series is young, and I felt analyzing the shit out of it was a little premature. It was episode two, and a lot of people seemed to be complaining that "this is not a feminist masterpiece yet!", and, you know, wait.

But, I want to get some writing on it in before the alleged mind-blower next Friday. I don't really want to talk about this past Friday's installment, True Believer - except for Victor's man reaction, which I'll get to in a minute. I want to talk about episode four, Gray Hour, because for me, it solved a fundamental problem a lot of people seem to have with the show, and it made me realize a direction the show could go in, which excites my obsession with the construction of identity to no end.

Particularly after the first two episodes (once again - dude, you have to wait) I read a lot of complaints along the lines of "there is no one to root for". Or relate to, or sympathize with, or what have you. Everyone who works in the dollhouse is evil (Dominic), borderline evil (Topher), or at least has big whomping moral gray area (Boyd). The dolls are either a completely fabricated person or a completely empty person. Well, people with moral gray areas seem to be a staple of the Whedonverse, so I think the answer for a lot of people was to root for Boyd, especially after episode two, The Target, in which we realize that he actually cares for Echo and prioritizes her over the dollhouse itself.

But, Echo is the main character. Though I hope, and think, we will see an episode with someone else in the A-Story (though I suppose it could be argued that The Target was really more about Boyd than Echo), this is clearly Echo's story. And the story we're following is about a person without an identity. And that's a problem. Right?

I think the pilot, Ghost, partially answered this concern for me: we can relate to Echo in an imprinted state, because even though we know it's all made up, it's incredibly real to whatever person she is that day. So we can relate to the main character for the length of the episode, which can be effective, as I think it was in Ghost - especially since we were reminded that, even if it wasn't Echo's real experience, these bad memories were real. But maybe this only works to an extent. Without something steady, it'll get harder and harder to buy into Echo's persona-of-the-week.

Episode three - I don't actually know what it was called because it was, admittedly, the weakest episode so far, the only time so far I've felt THE METAPHOR! was being shoved in my face. But the revelation that Echo was "adapting" to her assignments indicated something important - that Echo does not have a consistent identity on assignments, but she does possibly have a consistent underlying personality, that her self is shading her imprinted personalities. This doesn't really solve the relating-to-Echo problem either, though, I think, since it's not really clear what these glitches imply, except of course plot twists aplenty.

And that still leaves blank doll-state Echo to deal with. The tabula rasa state may be the closest thing to the dolls' "true" personality, and they're, you know, empty hats. Which is why Gray Hour is my favorite episode thus far, and why Victor's man reaction is important (I'll get to it in a minute!).

In Gray Hour, we're watching Echo - not Caroline and not an imprint, but wide-eyed empty-headed Echo, and we find out she's not an empty hat - she's a person. She doesn't just sit around gaping and asking where the massage table is. She gets scared, she thinks about art, she makes a connection to one person and abandons another - she's not a plaything. She's not a blank slate, not really. She's a person who just isn't given a chance to be one. And this, for me, solves the who-do-we-relate-to problem once and for all, but also asks a lot more questions.



Victor's man reaction, i.e. his crush on Sierra, is another example of this. We're being shown that not just Echo, but Dolls in general aren't robots, they're people. DeWitt's cold demand that Victor be "scrubbed" and the whole forced utopia is, you know, goddamn disturbing in this light.

I took a college course called "Science, Literature and Gender", in which we read The Cloning of Joanna May, which deals with identity in a different sci-fi scenario. Sparing the details, since this is already really long, the class talked about the idea of a whole identity versus fragmented identity. The former is usually what we think of as "identity", but the latter isn't necessarrily a bad thing. Joanna May had several outward "selves" whereas Echo has several inward "selves". Joanna May ultimately doesn't become "fragmented", but multiplied, her power increases by virtue of being split up. This possibility for Echo - which I thought of when she uttered the heart-stirring line, "I'm not broken" - really excites me.


Ok. Miscellaneous other things about Gray Hour:

I like the midwife intro, because the show finally winks at us about having too much sex, and because, yay midwives! Even though it seems only the super-duper rich can afford them - or maybe the super-duper rich don't trust ordinary midwives. Whatever. "Yay midwives" stands.

Alas, A Blog took issue with the portrayal (or lack thereof, I suppose) of sexual violence in this episode, which is totally understandable. For me, though, since the people in the show are programmed to consent, I feel much more disturbed by the "consensual" sex that's constantly happening and so far hasn't been dealt with at all. Here's hoping for improvements in this whole area.

(If I could make a subtitle for this post, it would be "And a Journey of Self-Discovery for... Topher?")

Topher knows from the get-go that Alpha would be able to achieve a remote wipe, only thinking it's impossible because he assumes Alpha is dead. If no one understands this technology but Topher and Alpha, and imprints are made from real people, could this imply that Alpha has an imprint of Topher, or at least part of Topher? It's not implausible - if something happens to Topher, how else could they keep the Dollhouse running? I've been toying with the idea that some of the faculty in the Dollhouse are dolls themselves, that this may even be the true meaning of putting someone in "the attic", and this reveal would put a new angle on the exploration of identity. We don't sympathize with Echo's constructed identities because we seem them come and go, sure, but if, say, Boyd or Saunders or Dominic were revealed to be a doll, then how does our relationship to the character change? How does the character's relationship to other characters change? Would they defend their long-term constructed personality or reject it? Of course, I'm thinking more and more that this isn't going to be the case.
BUT, if Alpha has an imprint of Topher, what implications could this have for Topher's sense of identity? Could this be the thing that takes him from witty loveable douchebag to - well, something more interesting?


Alright, that's all. My fangirl is showing.

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