hazelk | Dollhouse 2.01 Vows (Reply)

This was riddled with references to exteriors. Senator Wesley defined by his suit. The long, long montage of Echo being unwrapped from her wedding dress. Echo imprinted as an FBI agent, playing a bride while being legion. Topher’s,

You don’t know me! That’s the contract. You don’t know me and I don’t know you. Not fully. Not ever.

All we ever have is exteriors. And yet the fascination with what’s inside, like the beautiful but deadly heart of Martin’s bombs. The possibly destructive belief that there has to be something, the someone(s) Echo believes lost but not gone. The ultimately quixotic Caroline. Claire Saunder’s nemesis, who Whiskey was.

Claire begins the episode hidden in the shadows and ends it driving out into the light (echoes of Fred leaving home at the end of Shells). We first see Echo in bright bridal sunshine, by the end she’s the one hiding, watching from the dark. They’re opposing mirrors, character versus actress. Claire the bride who sparked, the rat who bit, Galatea seeking vengeance on Pygmalion.

CLAIRE: I’m nothing but excuses
TOPHER: You’re human (intended to comfort)
CLAIRE: Don’t flatter yourself.

Here’s a thing. Most of the imprints are designed to last no longer than a short engagement. We’re told longer term, like Echo’s engagement with Martin, is problematic Dr Saunders was possibly Topher’s first attempt at a permanent imprint. Maybe in asking for it Rossum were testing the limits of the technology. Part of proof of principle for anatomy upgrades. In any case that would make Claire Topher’s masterpiece but she's performing outside his parameters. He made her hate the smell of him and she generalized that to all of him. Bodies not so separable from minds after all or the literal from the metaphorical. Claire does seem to be a very metaphorical thinker, she attacks him with metaphors for her condition (the bride of Frankenstein, the lab rats) and uses the grand narrative of enemies falling in love as a story to unravel her storyteller.

Big tonal discrepancy between storylines. Until the very last scene Echo’s seemed to be all about Paul, mostly how low can he go (I’m with Boyd). On reflection I think the plot might have been less contrived than it first appeared. Paul always said the honeymoon was never going to happen and the conveniently suspicious photograph appeared immediately after the scene with DeWitt told him how Echo was glitching. So what if the ‘even worse plan’ was always an end game, almost a test of Echo’s special qualities, her worthiness. Part of the dialogue fit “All you had to do was remember who you were.” Did Echo ‘remember’ before it was knocked back into her? It would muddy up the rape aspect (or the made me a killer aspect, or the did experiments on me aspect) still further. Who’s being raped – imprint, active or actual? All of the above. Who’s the rapist – client, programmer, handler, madam or the entire institution? I’ve always liked that it’s institutional, rape culture not just rape.

Liked not exactly the word.

We never did learn Boyd’s excuse.