Dollhouse 1:11 Briar Rose

[hazelk]

Where did Topher get the imprint of an eleven year old abuse victim to build Echo’s imprint from? People are volunteering girls like Susan for experimental scans? Sadly believable.

Mellie was programmed to throw herself off a bridge for not being a good enough girlfriend. Shades of April in I was made to love you.

Dominic’s horror about waking in Victor’s body. He was always so contemptuous of the dolls. Irony.

So Dr Saunders is an imprint of her/himself like Margaret last week. Or maybe like ‘Susan’ the improved survivor version. In Whiskey’s shell it was so easy to believe she was a nice lady doctor who cared about her lab rats but Alpha implied the original was less so. She examined him. Made sure he was healthy. Intact.

Alpha, still in eco-warrior mode, says we’re all simply cells in a body. It might be true for each person making up his gestalt.

Sierra’s shoes! I think Topher’s master’s dissertation must have been about programming people to be able to walk in those things. There’s something very old Hollywood about the ridiculousness of the outfits in this show.

Fairy tales pre-date Hollywood. Briar Rose (isn’t she really called Aurora?) was programmed with multiple gifts before she was cursed. How is a chair like a spinning wheel?

The Dollhouse deals in fantasy. It makes it real. It spins strings of zeros and ones on a computer chip into living breathing girls and boys. It makes people out of things and fatally blurs the line separating the two. It’s not about abduction or rape or trafficking or human experimentation. It’s about objectification from which all the other badness flows. It’s about making stories into people and people into stories. But stories have a life of their own and these storytellers have been careless. They’ve left a door to the id unlocked and now the monsters are free.

Comments

[quinara]

It’s about objectification from which all the other badness flows. It’s about making stories into people and people into stories.

And that’s why it’s fabulous. [I love this comment, by the way. You’ve completely captured the show.]

And is that what the whole Whiskey bit was about - I knew something was going on, but my knowledge of the NATO phonetic alphabet failed me.

Poor Mellie I think showed the flaw in these personalities to order - there’s only so much you can make a whole person and still have them completely meshable with someone else. When the meshing isn’t happening they inevitably end up with a massive hole in their selfhood.

[hazelk]

My Dad had one of those two-way car radio things back in the seventies (it was totally work related) and I remember the Tango-Whiskey part for some reason. Also people were talking about it on Whedonesque. It makes sense of the casting though - she seemed so young for the job.

Yes, poor Mellie, she's over determined or something and I kinda hate Paul for rejecting her even in the actual Dollhouse. That little "your prince is here" smile he had when he opened Echo's sleeping box made me think of Captain Hammer.

[quinara]

And it explains the shoes!

I love that Paul is being completely deconstructed (even as I also kind of hate him) - I was so sure at the beginning of the series that he was being set up as the romantic lead. It fills me with all kinds of vindication.

[umadoshi]

But stories have a life of their own and these storytellers have been careless. They’ve left a door to the id open and now the monsters are free.

This is a beautiful summary. ^_^

[geeked answer]

[starboard]

How is a chair like a spinning wheel?

It's nothing like a spinning wheel at all.

[hazelk]

I think Helo's palying him really well too. I still believe in him - I think he believes in him and he's not wrong about the Dollhouse, just about everything else - it's all he has left.

[hazelk]

Thank you.

Re: [geeked answer]

[hazelk]

I stand outgeeked :-)

[jeeps]

i don't think mellie was literally programmed to kill herself if paul rejected her, if that's what you're saying. i seriously doubt the dollhouse is going to sacrifice an investment that way. however, it is safe to say that the level of devotion to paul with which she most certainly was programmed would "naturally" lead to such a choice on her part.

i love your last paragraph.

[hazelk]

I agree about Mellie, I was being telegraphic. She was written as wanting to be the good girlfriend so much that when she failed she would want to throw herself off a bridge. I suppose that (possibly not thought through enough) side effect of her motivation could have been meshing with the programming I assume she does have to make her want to leave when they need the handler to pick her up and that might have influenced the method of suicide.

Thank you!