Dollhouse 2.02 "Instinct"
Oct. 3rd, 2009 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkApparently the ratings found that “always a lower place” for this Friday’s episode of Dollhouse and for the first time this makes me kind of schadenfreudy
Quick recap: Topher is waxing lyrical to Ballard about having designed an imprint that alters the body as well as the mind. He foresees imprints in the future that could cure cancer. Cut to Echo demonstrating (in a way that was about as physically plausible as the balcony sex scene in Dead Things) that the change Topher was talking about was lactation.
Echo’s been imprinted to play wet mother to a baby whose birth mother died during the event. The father can’t bear to be with his son but has read enough pop psychology to know that if someone doesn’t bond with the child pronto it will inevitably grow up a sociopath or even a Dollhouse client. Echo’s imprint gets suspicious that baby daddy’s 24/7 work habit is really another woman and breaks into his private papers to confront him with the photographic evidence of his actual wife. Baby daddy is freaked and tries to call the Dollhouse off, Echo overhears, thinks he wants to kill her and get rid of baby. She runs but gets captured and wiped. However, mother love is so cellular it can’t be wiped, she escapes to go after baby but daddy talks her down and gets to keep the adorable sprog.
Meanwhile the B plot has ex-doll, Madeline/Mellie/November occupying an expensively empty looking apartment (stripped back to the original in a nice metaphorical touch), living an expensively empty life in a slightly retro styled dress, the colour of which recalls the grey linen suit Kim Novak made iconic in Vertigo. Adelle calls her back for a diagnostic in an actual (blue) suit (OK I’m reaching with the fashion references, maybe it is just the name) where she bumps into Paul and explains that she’ll be Echo’s mirror for the episode. The real mother who sells her soul for the chance to sleep walk her grief away as opposed to the constructed one prepared to suffer any and all emotions in the name of wakefulness.
I think it’s that construction which bothers me. I mean things get off to a bad start with Topher’s genius invention turning out to be induced lactation, which a) we can already do (and it doesn’t cure cancer) and b) involves tissue growth that no amount of skiency blue lighting can render instantaneous. But they make a big play throughout the episode about mother love being deeply physical, lodging in places beyond the ken of neuroscience. I don’t disagree. It can be very physical. But it’s not pretty. It’s lank haired and bloodshot eyed. Brutal and tedious and often ambivalent (but we don’t talk about that). Mother and child bond like soldiers surviving the trenches and it shows. Echo makes it look like a Pampers advert or an outtake from The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and neither are real even though Eliza brought her A game as did Miracle playing Mellie with no there, there.
Quick recap: Topher is waxing lyrical to Ballard about having designed an imprint that alters the body as well as the mind. He foresees imprints in the future that could cure cancer. Cut to Echo demonstrating (in a way that was about as physically plausible as the balcony sex scene in Dead Things) that the change Topher was talking about was lactation.
Echo’s been imprinted to play wet mother to a baby whose birth mother died during the event. The father can’t bear to be with his son but has read enough pop psychology to know that if someone doesn’t bond with the child pronto it will inevitably grow up a sociopath or even a Dollhouse client. Echo’s imprint gets suspicious that baby daddy’s 24/7 work habit is really another woman and breaks into his private papers to confront him with the photographic evidence of his actual wife. Baby daddy is freaked and tries to call the Dollhouse off, Echo overhears, thinks he wants to kill her and get rid of baby. She runs but gets captured and wiped. However, mother love is so cellular it can’t be wiped, she escapes to go after baby but daddy talks her down and gets to keep the adorable sprog.
Meanwhile the B plot has ex-doll, Madeline/Mellie/November occupying an expensively empty looking apartment (stripped back to the original in a nice metaphorical touch), living an expensively empty life in a slightly retro styled dress, the colour of which recalls the grey linen suit Kim Novak made iconic in Vertigo. Adelle calls her back for a diagnostic in an actual (blue) suit (OK I’m reaching with the fashion references, maybe it is just the name) where she bumps into Paul and explains that she’ll be Echo’s mirror for the episode. The real mother who sells her soul for the chance to sleep walk her grief away as opposed to the constructed one prepared to suffer any and all emotions in the name of wakefulness.
I think it’s that construction which bothers me. I mean things get off to a bad start with Topher’s genius invention turning out to be induced lactation, which a) we can already do (and it doesn’t cure cancer) and b) involves tissue growth that no amount of skiency blue lighting can render instantaneous. But they make a big play throughout the episode about mother love being deeply physical, lodging in places beyond the ken of neuroscience. I don’t disagree. It can be very physical. But it’s not pretty. It’s lank haired and bloodshot eyed. Brutal and tedious and often ambivalent (but we don’t talk about that). Mother and child bond like soldiers surviving the trenches and it shows. Echo makes it look like a Pampers advert or an outtake from The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and neither are real even though Eliza brought her A game as did Miracle playing Mellie with no there, there.