Dollhouse 1.01

[hazelk]

When I first heard of it the premise of Dollhouse sounded like the twisted love child of The Girl Who Was Plugged In and Normal Again. This would have been a very good, very creepy thing. Up close it also sounded like Buffy as seen from the perspective of the Watcher’s Council. The Slayer was always a doll to them even if they made mission not money from her and never programmed her for sex. One difference is that in BtVS the Watcher’s Council didn’t appear until Season 3 and the full horror of the system wasn’t made explicit until Season 7. For a long time the viewer was sucked into rooting for the set up as if it were a standard hero’s journey and when the truth was finally exposed that audience complicity made it into a personal epiphany which many rejected along with the show.

Dollhouse tells us right from the beginning that it’s a bad wrong thing. Even without the overt references to human trafficking, the very first engagement Echo goes on she’s someone else’s perfect weekend, a blow-up birthday treat programmed to simulate not only sex but emotions. The brief glimpse of Sierra’s first time she’s wired up like a prime piece of laboratory specimen in a place where they do do awful things to rats. Despite all this the surface gloss of the series rather undermined its disapproving stance. Tonally the pilot had all the dissonance of a forced hybrid of Objects in Space with Charlie’s Angels. It was particularly jarring in the kidnapping story, which hit every emotional note on cue but never convinced physically. Even Eliza’s shoes were wrong. It played like a comic book version of the things even standard cop shows do more convincingly. Maybe because they are all cop shows now – mysterious private agencies, even morally ambiguous private agencies, belong in the sixties or certainly pre-recession. No-one believes in billionaires right now.

I’m being critical because the show did promise to be about power. What men want to do to women and what very rich people expect to do to the merely middle class but also about the temptations for those with relatively little power to give up what little they have. For someone to look after them. It can still do that but I think they need to avoid basing engagements on grittier genre fare, the discrepancies are too glaring.

For all the complaints that the dolls would be impossible to root for I already feel interested in Echo/Caroline, I think Dushku’s strong personality works well here given that she’s supposed not to be so easily erased. Lead (and executive producer) aside, the most promising parts of the show relate to the Dollhouse itself. Who runs them and what else might they want this technology for? Where do they get the downloaded personalities that Topher amalgates and does he see himself as an artist or a technician? In what capacity did Adele know Caroline before she became Echo? What convinced Boyd and Amy Acker’s characters to do the jobs they do? How blank are the blank slates and what capacity do they have to re-write themselves? Do they want to?

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

Good comparison about the premise and the long-delayed look at the Watchers.

I think they need to avoid basing engagements on grittier genre fare, the discrepancies are too glaring.

That's an interesting comparison. And yes, I thought the question of how these personalities are acquired rather more interesting a question than what they do with them.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I think Joss can write good comic book bad guys but that's not really what he's going for here. I think Minear could do it but I don't trust him to write the dolls. Hopefully they can find some kind of happy medium before the show gets axed. But the premise has got under my skin a lot. Where do these memories come from. Are they all from dead people. did they consent ? Adelle seemed to know Caroline, did she know Eleanor? Topher is like a writer creating people from bits and scraps of archetypes. Or pre-existing characters like a fan writer. And he literally makes them come alive.

[yourlibrarian]

LOL, now that's an interesting comparison, yes.

[bop-radar.livejournal.com]

So far, of all the posts about Dollhouse, yours hits closest to how I felt about it.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I was beginning to feel like a very bad feminist indeed.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Not one but two Tiptree references! Awesome.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Stories that get into your bones.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

oh.hell.yes. I SCARILY identified with Burke as a teenager. (But of course the Burke we get in this version isn't really Burke, she's Daphne....sigh.)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

She is but there a could be a story in that. Not about Daphne the princess in the tower that the Paul? guy wanted to rescue but Daphne the soulless meat puppet who nevertheless was able to hold on to the memories of being Burke for at least a few hours after Burke was gone. I mean having seen the second episode and read the original pilot script it does seem as if that's something Joss wanted to explore. How even with no memories, no me there, it's still possible to begin to construct a personality from nothing. Like those people who can only remember 30 seconds at a time after a stroke. I'm not sure if it's a story you can tell on TV and on glossy network TV in particular or that Joss is the person to do it but I'm probably sad enough to keep watching just in case.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

How even with no memories, no me there, it's still possible to begin to construct a personality from nothing. Like those people who can only remember 30 seconds at a time after a stroke

YEAH....oh man, that would be a fantastic story. And maybe even if (okay the example I am thinking of here is of all things Friday the Thirteenth Dream Warriors, but bear with me) she could draw strength on all the people she'd been forced to be? If the little remnants of them here and there could help her, somehow, couldn't be that easily wiped out. sigh. Now _that_ would be something I'd love watching.