Dollhouse 1:12 "Omega"

[hazelk]

The good
I think this show works best when it draws on stories I like. I like fairy tales so Briar Rose was a hit, and I liked Haunted when it was riffing off Douglas Sirk melodramas but the Murder She Wrote of it not so much. The first half of Omega with Badlands/Blue Velvet/Bonnie and Clyde/Bride of Frankenstein (and that’s just the B’s) running through it like Brighton Rock (eaten but not seen), the multiplicity of sources like metacommentary on the plot, I liked that a lot. Lars-the-yuppie’s predicament was literally the story taking revenge on its would-be creator and that was cool. I liked that Alpha’s alphaness was native to the character, as it made his existence the result of the Dollhouse’s decision to contract anyone they could get. This wasn’t just hubris, they made a Faustian bargain and lost.

I knew ‘Omega’ was going to turn on Alpha but it was still fun to watch and I liked the contrasting attitudes to their absent selves. Caroline and Echo yearning to be whole where Alpha abhorred his own vacuum. But also Whiskey choosing nurture over nature, who she’d become over who she was (but she was also the best of the Dolls, the one who inhabited her imprints most fully, maybe becoming was her nature).

The bad
This is my unpopular fandom opinion. I don’t trust Tim Minear. I think he’s a great writer, he can do feel and think and I was raised in the cult of funny so that’s a big point in his favour. As is Darla (the character) and Home (the episode). But I know that politically we’re poles apart and I suspect that true of fictional interests as well. I have a very strong attachment to the ‘seemingly weak person finds that she’s strong’ narrative and while I don’t think he’s agin’ it I don’t think it’s a story Minear is particularly drawn to. Echo saying she knows who she isn’t is a nice moment but it lacks the conviction of Buffy’s

“What’s left?”
“Me”

Or River’s “My turn now” or even the girls around the world montage in Chosen.

More than that, for all that he’s generally described as a dark writer the thing Minear does portray with conviction is redemption and I don’t care. It’s a thing. I particularly don’t care about the ‘man in search of absolution’ type of story that AtS largely was and I’m positively repelled by the ‘woman achieves it through self sacrifice and childbirth’ that Darla’s story became. No Darla here, but there was this sense of the episode straining to become Ballard’s story, his Home. He saved the girl. In Briar Rose he got to be Captain Hammer and that was a little harsh but I still don’t buy him selling his soul to the Dollhouse in return for Mellie/Madelaine’s. Not least because it makes no sense to make amends by perpetuating the system that caused the whole mess in the first place. If they get a 2nd season I hope its going to turn out that he and Echo agreed to try and bring down the beast from within its 5 star belly before Boyd caught up with them because otherwise Echo contracting herself back into slavery makes no sense either.

The problematic
Much of what’s problematic about Dollhouse feels deliberate to me but not everything. The institutional rape with plausible deniability, the constant objectification and audience complicity, all seem to be part of the point (to me). But Alpha’s ascent being inspired by Echo follows a pattern that had already been established three times with Sierra without being commented on. Women, some women, drive men crazy. His desire for her unattainable physical beauty causes Priya’s millionaire to spend a fortune on forcing her into the Dollhouse, her stone cold foxitude there is the reason her handler gives for becoming her rapist and in the undergarden of LA’s Eden it’s not Eve but Victor who is tempted (and punished for it). Both Echo and Sierra are textually blameless for all this but it still feels as if something is not being addressed and I think it should be.

Comments

[amber]

Both Echo and Sierra are textually blameless for all this but it still feels as if something is not being addressed and I think it should be.

I cannot thank you enough for bringing up a real issue present in Dollhouse as opposed to the things a lot of people seem to be ranting about which feel like deliberately constructed problems to me as well.

I also resonated really strongly with "Echo saying she knows who she isn’t is a nice moment but it lacks the conviction of [Very Powerful Jossverse Quotes] — I totally agree. And it's not Dushku. A lot of people want to pin it on Dusku but I really think she did her best with a bad scene. It seemed such a turnabout from the rest of the morally ambiguous series, and in any other show I probably would have been satisfied, even though it was hitting me over the head with its feminism, that it was letting the girl make a stand at all. But it's Joss, and because it cannot hold a candle to some of the best River and Buffy lines and because it felt really out of place in the series I found I just didn't appreciate it.

Anyway, I've been reading through your Dollhouse posts and they're wonderful, so I'm subscribing to you, hope that's not too creepy! Thanks very much for making some wonderful points.

[hazelk]

It seemed such a turnabout from the rest of the morally ambiguous series
Yes this. They may get to a point further down the line (now there is a line) where such a scene could work but it hasn't been earned yet. The fake revolution of Needs is more where they're at now. And subscribing not at all creepy :-)

it hadn't been renewed yet

[klytaimnestra]

It felt a little forced to me also, that Dushku scene, because - unusually for Joss - it hadn't been earned yet. But I think what he was thining was, this may be the very last chance I get to say this, because chances are this isn't going to be renewed.

And if it is renewed, I can use it and earn it later (I suspect he went on to think.)

So, yes, a bit forced, not quite right yet. Where Alpha felt TOTALLY right. Turning on the person who turned him in there - himself? That's PERFECT. Who sold him into slavery? HE did. I loved that.

I found Alpha much less interesting though once they made him simply crazy. Serial killers don't interest me so much.

Re: it hadn't been renewed yet

[hazelk]

I think part of the unearnedness comes from how rushed the ending was and while we got no real explanation for Paul signing up at least there was a whole scene giving some indication of the the bargain he thinks he's struck. All we see of Echo is her back in the box. But I'd be fine with these things being fleshed out in S2 or even hinted at in the mythical episode 13.

Alpa was a very Caliban-like character to me, I didn't see him as simply crazy just that crazy was definitely part of the mix.