Dollhouse 2.11 "Getting Closer"

[hazelk]

Dear Joss/Tim,

You shot Bennett. No love.

You had Saunders shoot Bennett. Love.

You shot Bennett cold just so Topher would feel bad. No love.

You shot Caroline washing Bennett’s hair. Selfish viddy love even though I don’t think I can use the scene and will end up going with a random Vertigo makeover insertion. But you tried. I appreciate that.

I think the current run of episodes would work better if the first season had started with the unaired pilot, skipped pretty much everything but the last two aired S1 episodes and aired Epitaph One. It’s a perfectly good sci-fi thriller with interesting trimmings but I am a bad person and can’t help mourning the “having its commodification and eating it,” ideological trainwreck, the old show used to be or tried to be or failed to be or whatever. It was icky but in a new way. Also it’s hard to reconcile the S1 Adelle and Topher we got with the ones we have now. Unaired pilot Adelle perhaps, she was scared of the higher-ups and could be spun as sekritly waiting for her chance to strike back at them. Actual S1 Adelle was far more cynical and I don’t believe that Adelle has been convinced any plucky band of heroes striking back at Rossum would do any good even if she cared about good. Topher has had a more complete (and conventional) naughty boy redemption arc - reading the fanboards it feels like he’s become the Spike of this show. He does have that every mother’s son thing going for him and, well, not immune. Mother of sons here. But bad mother because I prefer my fictional sons be punished not redeemed. This could still happen. The apocalypse could win.

I though it was interesting that Caroline assumed Bennett would want to be more herself and that Bennett wanted to be less - I think Bennett envies her dolls and that's part of why she treated them badly.

I think Adelle is to Topher as Caroline was to Bennett and Boyd was to Clyde 1.0. Topher/Bennett/Clyde are the genius programmers/artists who all feel betrayed by their more worldly partners. But although Adelle did trade Topher's designs to Rossum and Caroline did abandon Bennett, we've been shown that neither were as completely self-serving as their genius friend believed them to be and I think there's going to be a similar reveal for Boyd.

Boyd, Adelle and Caroline are all chameleons, deceivers, self-made dolls. The doll makers (Topher, Bennett) lack that facility. There’s something circular in the relationship between them. The people with power over the makers resemble the made.

I don’t believe Clyde’s story of betrayal by his best friend at Uni could have been that simple. He wasn’t designing Facebook on a laptop, neuroscience is expensive. Rats are expensive and human subjects (for Clyde 2.0) even more so. Also illegal. Some organisation paid and procured for them. Next episode is called the Hollow Men not the Hollow Man. If they need to cut the head off the snake (and that snake is a hydra) I think it’s the body that needs burning not the head.

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

I think Adelle is to Topher as Caroline was to Bennett and Boyd was to Clyde 1.0. Topher/Bennett/Clyde are the genius programmers/artists who all feel betrayed by their more worldly partners.

Nice thread of connection there, yes.

[hazelk]

Plus it makes a falsifiable prediction. We'll see.