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shadowkatBefore launching into a review of the series, a few observations and caveats:
1. I still think we have to watch at least six episodes of this series to really know where it is going.
2. Mark A. Shepard wins the award for the most recurring guest appearances by an actor on TV. In the past two weeks - I have seen this guy on BattleStar Galatica, Burn Notice, Leverage, and now Dollhouse.
3. Whedon has apparently cobbled together the same producing and writing team he had in the fourth and fifth seasons of Angel, with a few notable exceptions - Bell and Fury. And he's provided his writers with the ability to write and direct their episodes. Which means that what we see onscreen is what the writer intended or about as close as you can get in this medium.
4. This show is not as creepy and disturbing as I expected and many people I've read indicate. Of course I may be interpreting it differently and I can certainly see how people may see it -otherwise. But this is true about everything - I've discovered. Heck, there are folks out there who have managed to be creeped out by the Brady Bunch and Doctor Who (- which I can also see. Heck - I've been creeped out by Doctor Who.) People - you bring your own subtext to everything you watch - that's what makes it interesting.
Dollhouse, as I've stated in prior posts, reminds me a great deal of the 1990s series on USA Network -La Femme Nikita. Or La Femme Nikita meets Ibsen. Except with a bit more of a twist and a little less violence - La Femme Nikita not Ibsen (there's no violence in Ibsen). In some respects this is actually more interesting than Nikita was. The marketing of the series is a bit annoying - to such an extent, that I posed a question on Hulu to Whedon asking: To what degree is your work affected by the network and/or ratings? For example - I know the WB insisted you have Spike in S5 Angel and use him immediately - to what degree did this change your storyline or affect it? Or Fox's marketing of Dollhouse as a sexy action flick - to what degree does that influence your story? (Or something to that effect, I think he's been asked it before - and I don't think I'll get much of an answer, if I get one at all. But I was bored yesterday, so what the hell.) I wanted to ask to what degreeidiotic fan write in campaigns, essays, and protests affect your writing? But decided to restrain myself.
5. Sometimes I wish Whedon would cast against type more.
Dollhouse
The synopsis or central theme of Henrik Ibsen's play "A Dollhouse": "A person can’t be happy when falling into the mold of someone else. To be happy, one must be oneself and know oneself. Since all of Nora’s life, she followed right behind her father and her husband, she did not know herself and had to leave to learn. "
Henrik Ibsen's A DOLLHOUSE has a new revival on Broadway - where the men are played by actors who are 3 feet 6 inches and the women played by actresses who are 5 feet 7 inches.
This is to emphasize the theme of catering to a blustery patriarchy.
In the play, Nora plays with her children as if they are dolls, as it steadly becomes apparent that Nora herself is the Doll, she has played the roles her father and husband dictate and not her own. To some extent, women fall into this trap playing the roles men dictate to them. But is this limited to women or both genders? Are men also playing the roles we dictate for them.
Several years ago way back in the 1980s, I saw a play on PBS' American Playhouse - that starred Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon. It has haunted me ever since. The title of the play was "Who Am I This Time?" In the play, Susan Sarandon's character gets the part of Stella opposite Christopher Walken, who is playing Stanely. She falls in love with him while doing the play. Until it is over. And she realizes he has no personality. He doesn't know who he is when he is not playing a role. The characters he plays on the stage define his identity. He is the perfect actor - he can be anyone. But he can't be himself. He is a tabula rasa without the script. Without the writer defining his role.
The central arc of Dollhouse reminds me of those two plays. Echo and her fellow actives are tabula rasa, blank slates, until they are chosen to play a role in someone else's play. They are called "actives" - another word for "actor". Their lines, moves, thoughts, are scripted by Topher - the writer. He plays god with their brains, imprinting the emotions, memories and personality required by the script.
As Reed Diamond's character states at one point - you are nothing, you don't know what to feel, you don't even know what sorry means, without us telling you.
Some have compared them to children - but that is a John Lock view of what children are. I disagree. Children are not necessarily blank slates. They think. They feel. And they build memories. Nor are they really robots...so much as people who are in what may be referred to as a childlike state or the state of someone who has no mind, no personality, until it is written.
At the start of "Ghost", Caroline is told by the head of the center that she would have a clean slate. Experience everything she wishes, do anything, but not have to deal with the nasty memories of it. Each experience is new. A clean slate.
Caroline responds - "the only problem with clean slates is that they are never that clean, there's always something lurking beneath that can't be erased - an echo."
And in "Ghost" - Miss Penn, the negotiator character Echo/Caroline plays, tells the bad guys - "you can't fight a ghost. You can't lie to the ghost. You can't hide from a ghost."
In some dramas - the identity of the person is established at the beginning of the series.
Here - the mystery of Dollhouse is who Echo is. Is there a person or a personality left behind? And why did Caroline choose to become Echo? Did she choose? And why did the Dollhouse choose to take her?
This series feels a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzel. The characters are in a way jigsaw puzzles - who they are and how they are defined.
While "Ghost's" - "A" (the episodic or storyline that is closed at the end of the episode)-storylines focused on Echo attempting to save someone else or please someone else, "Target's" focused on Echo attempting to save herself, proving she deserved to live and was more than just an echo. (That was an actual line in the episode - "prove you deserve to live and are more than just an echo.")
In "Target" - Echo wasn't the main target, so much as a pawn - a means to get at the Dollhouse. We have two people going after the Dollhouse through Echo - Alpha and Agent Ballard. One is a rogue former active and one is an FBI agent. We cut between the two.
And it can't be a coincidence that Ballard is going after the guy who Echo had the great date with in episode one, Ghost. Who we also get a flashback of via her handler's pov - where she's stating, I need to tell Jason how great he is, how much I love him, before I forget - remind me to do it after my treatment. Jason, of course, has moved on - he's with another girl - Echo forgotten, except for Ballard forcing him to remember. (Echo is the opposite - she wants to remember Jason but is forced to forget by Topher and the Dollhouse. Jason wants to forget Echo but is forced by Ballard to remember her.)
Both Ghost and Target have romantic set-ups - or set-ups that I've seen in romance novels, the perfect date and the romantic trip with the great outdoorsman. Both turn awry but in different ways. Whedon seems to like to flip romantic conventions upside down and on the ass. I see Whedon as the anti-romance writer, which I guess makes his stories a bit painful for people who are really into that sort of thing? The second one - in "Target" - goes nutty, when Echo discovers that Conlon is an insane killer, who after having great sex, suddenly tells her that he will give her a fifteen to twenty minute head start before he shoots her down with an arrow, much as she had shot down the deer.
It's during this chase - that Echo enters a ranger's cabin and drinks water from a canteen. The water, Conlon tells her, will give her a bit of a spin. What it does is make her realize that she may just be playing a role. None of this may even be real. She's just remembering things that make no sense. Seeing mulitiple versions of herself, mulitple roles she has played. One of the memories - and the most clear - out of all of her memories - is sitting on the floor of the shower covered in blood while dead bodies surround her. Here she realizes they are dead, while at the time - she did not know. Looking up she remembers seeing a man with a knife, but she can't see his face. As she tells her handler, when he locates her, I don't think the man had one. He's a shadow. Maybe he's not supposed to have a face. Are you real, is any of this real? And why is it that I trust you, when I don't remember you?
The trust we are told through flashback has been imprinted on her by technology, it is not real either. It is manufactured. Everything in her life is to a degree manufactured. But her body, but the chase.
And later, we are told, Conlon is a fabrication as well. Nothing about Conlon was real. We don't who he was. Or where he came from.
What we do know is Alpha - the Alpha Male. He was an active. Who became aware and whose memories became a composite. They'd experimented with Alpha, allowed him to keep defensive skills, a background in ninja, in case of an emergency. But it backfired on them and they ended up with screaming and blood. Now Alpha is loose and for some reason or other is fixated on Caroline/Echo. I'm wondering if Alpha is the one providing Ballard with information, or if it is someone inside the Dollhouse - a disgruntled soul, who had been traumatized? Maybe Dr. Samules? Whose face Alpha cut up like a jigsaw puzzel?
Also what was the point of Alpha sending Conlon after Echo? To make her aware? To have her find her own inner strength? She does find it in both Ghost and Target - but in different ways. In Ghost - it is quieter - it is the determination to save the little girl and how. Knowing with absolute certainity that the girl is in the refrigerator. And in Target - it's her ability to put her shoulder to the wheel, a salute that Conlon repeats more than once - to save herself from Conlon. Note she kills Conlon in self-defense, stabbing him in the neck with an arrow, not her handler or protector. Then mocks him by doing the salute - shoulder to the wheel. In most tv shows - the handler would have saved her. That's usually what happens. Here she saves them both. And she goes back to him, cuddles, for safety and reassurance.
The men in this universe - also have defined roles to play - either protector or killer.
What are they beyond that? Alpha and Ballard. Reed Diamond (I don't know what his name is) and the Handler. Even Echoes male clients - either a guy wanting the girl to be everything he dreamed, or someone he can victimize. The one who hired her as a negotiator - did not ask for a woman - he asked for a man and got a woman, small, petite, who looked like a librarian or a school teacher.
When they erase Echoes memories, pull it all out of her, bit by bit, until she's clean - a blank slate once again, we are left thinking, ah, "the tabula rasa" again. Except...for one little exchange. Reed Diamond taunts her. Tells her that she has no feelings. No thoughts. And people just keep dying around her. Maybe she should die too. (An ironic speech considering the source is a man who kills people for a living.) She acts as if she doesn't understand his words. Feels nothing. Until he turns his back, and she salutes, much as Conlon had shown her, shoulder to the wheel. The salute Conlon tells her that his father taught him - one can't help but wonder if Conlon's father is Alpha.
This show has a lot going on, but rather simplistic A plot-lines, which may be annoying to some, particularly viewers who prefer complicated A plot lines and simplistic B - it requires less committment to the series, you can skip episodes, and/or just watch the ones you like. I think the reason the A plots are simple in this show is much the same reason Angel and Buffy's A plots were - you can't have a complicated A plot on top of a complicated B arc plot - or you will confuse the audience - which is the mistake that My Own Worste Enemy kept making. Shows that have more complicated A plots - are shows such as Bones, Numbers, CSI, Mentalist, House - where the B plot line is fairly simple and focused on workplace dynamics such as who sleeps with whom, etc. What I like about Whedon's A plots, is more or less the same thing I like about Leverage, Nip/Tuck, Supernatural and House's A plots - they act as a sort of metaphor for the B plot line or arc. Here - even the titles of the episode are metaphors - Ghost and Target - both referring to Echo. And both are plotlines that refer to Echo's sitch, she's a ghost in a shell, controlled by an organization that is mostly hidden from her (pretty typical of most large organizations), and a target of those seeking to bring down that organization or expose it. They also refer to her own struggle for an identity - is she just a ghost? Or is she more? Can she be more? Is she defined solely by her role within the organization or group, or can she be seen as an individual with her own identity outside of the group?
Her bed is in a hive like circle, underground. And she lives and cohabitates with others, with no sense of herself apart from them. She's a cog in a wheel - the wheel is the circle in which she lies her head. When she mockingly salute's Reed Diamond's character at the end of the episode - she in a way pushes her shoulder to that wheel, steps out of the circle, and is no longer just a cog in its makeup. She asserts her individuality.
Curious to see what the next few episodes bring. According to Whedon's interviews online - I'm guessing the sixth one by Tim Minear brings things into focus. I'm not as big a fan of Minear as Whedon is, I liked his writing in Angel, Wonderfalls and Firefly, but not in Drive or The Inside (the two series he created).
1. I still think we have to watch at least six episodes of this series to really know where it is going.
2. Mark A. Shepard wins the award for the most recurring guest appearances by an actor on TV. In the past two weeks - I have seen this guy on BattleStar Galatica, Burn Notice, Leverage, and now Dollhouse.
3. Whedon has apparently cobbled together the same producing and writing team he had in the fourth and fifth seasons of Angel, with a few notable exceptions - Bell and Fury. And he's provided his writers with the ability to write and direct their episodes. Which means that what we see onscreen is what the writer intended or about as close as you can get in this medium.
4. This show is not as creepy and disturbing as I expected and many people I've read indicate. Of course I may be interpreting it differently and I can certainly see how people may see it -otherwise. But this is true about everything - I've discovered. Heck, there are folks out there who have managed to be creeped out by the Brady Bunch and Doctor Who (- which I can also see. Heck - I've been creeped out by Doctor Who.) People - you bring your own subtext to everything you watch - that's what makes it interesting.
Dollhouse, as I've stated in prior posts, reminds me a great deal of the 1990s series on USA Network -La Femme Nikita. Or La Femme Nikita meets Ibsen. Except with a bit more of a twist and a little less violence - La Femme Nikita not Ibsen (there's no violence in Ibsen). In some respects this is actually more interesting than Nikita was. The marketing of the series is a bit annoying - to such an extent, that I posed a question on Hulu to Whedon asking: To what degree is your work affected by the network and/or ratings? For example - I know the WB insisted you have Spike in S5 Angel and use him immediately - to what degree did this change your storyline or affect it? Or Fox's marketing of Dollhouse as a sexy action flick - to what degree does that influence your story? (Or something to that effect, I think he's been asked it before - and I don't think I'll get much of an answer, if I get one at all. But I was bored yesterday, so what the hell.) I wanted to ask to what degree
5. Sometimes I wish Whedon would cast against type more.
Dollhouse
The synopsis or central theme of Henrik Ibsen's play "A Dollhouse": "A person can’t be happy when falling into the mold of someone else. To be happy, one must be oneself and know oneself. Since all of Nora’s life, she followed right behind her father and her husband, she did not know herself and had to leave to learn. "
Henrik Ibsen's A DOLLHOUSE has a new revival on Broadway - where the men are played by actors who are 3 feet 6 inches and the women played by actresses who are 5 feet 7 inches.
This is to emphasize the theme of catering to a blustery patriarchy.
In the play, Nora plays with her children as if they are dolls, as it steadly becomes apparent that Nora herself is the Doll, she has played the roles her father and husband dictate and not her own. To some extent, women fall into this trap playing the roles men dictate to them. But is this limited to women or both genders? Are men also playing the roles we dictate for them.
Several years ago way back in the 1980s, I saw a play on PBS' American Playhouse - that starred Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon. It has haunted me ever since. The title of the play was "Who Am I This Time?" In the play, Susan Sarandon's character gets the part of Stella opposite Christopher Walken, who is playing Stanely. She falls in love with him while doing the play. Until it is over. And she realizes he has no personality. He doesn't know who he is when he is not playing a role. The characters he plays on the stage define his identity. He is the perfect actor - he can be anyone. But he can't be himself. He is a tabula rasa without the script. Without the writer defining his role.
The central arc of Dollhouse reminds me of those two plays. Echo and her fellow actives are tabula rasa, blank slates, until they are chosen to play a role in someone else's play. They are called "actives" - another word for "actor". Their lines, moves, thoughts, are scripted by Topher - the writer. He plays god with their brains, imprinting the emotions, memories and personality required by the script.
As Reed Diamond's character states at one point - you are nothing, you don't know what to feel, you don't even know what sorry means, without us telling you.
Some have compared them to children - but that is a John Lock view of what children are. I disagree. Children are not necessarily blank slates. They think. They feel. And they build memories. Nor are they really robots...so much as people who are in what may be referred to as a childlike state or the state of someone who has no mind, no personality, until it is written.
At the start of "Ghost", Caroline is told by the head of the center that she would have a clean slate. Experience everything she wishes, do anything, but not have to deal with the nasty memories of it. Each experience is new. A clean slate.
Caroline responds - "the only problem with clean slates is that they are never that clean, there's always something lurking beneath that can't be erased - an echo."
And in "Ghost" - Miss Penn, the negotiator character Echo/Caroline plays, tells the bad guys - "you can't fight a ghost. You can't lie to the ghost. You can't hide from a ghost."
In some dramas - the identity of the person is established at the beginning of the series.
Here - the mystery of Dollhouse is who Echo is. Is there a person or a personality left behind? And why did Caroline choose to become Echo? Did she choose? And why did the Dollhouse choose to take her?
This series feels a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzel. The characters are in a way jigsaw puzzles - who they are and how they are defined.
While "Ghost's" - "A" (the episodic or storyline that is closed at the end of the episode)-storylines focused on Echo attempting to save someone else or please someone else, "Target's" focused on Echo attempting to save herself, proving she deserved to live and was more than just an echo. (That was an actual line in the episode - "prove you deserve to live and are more than just an echo.")
In "Target" - Echo wasn't the main target, so much as a pawn - a means to get at the Dollhouse. We have two people going after the Dollhouse through Echo - Alpha and Agent Ballard. One is a rogue former active and one is an FBI agent. We cut between the two.
And it can't be a coincidence that Ballard is going after the guy who Echo had the great date with in episode one, Ghost. Who we also get a flashback of via her handler's pov - where she's stating, I need to tell Jason how great he is, how much I love him, before I forget - remind me to do it after my treatment. Jason, of course, has moved on - he's with another girl - Echo forgotten, except for Ballard forcing him to remember. (Echo is the opposite - she wants to remember Jason but is forced to forget by Topher and the Dollhouse. Jason wants to forget Echo but is forced by Ballard to remember her.)
Both Ghost and Target have romantic set-ups - or set-ups that I've seen in romance novels, the perfect date and the romantic trip with the great outdoorsman. Both turn awry but in different ways. Whedon seems to like to flip romantic conventions upside down and on the ass. I see Whedon as the anti-romance writer, which I guess makes his stories a bit painful for people who are really into that sort of thing? The second one - in "Target" - goes nutty, when Echo discovers that Conlon is an insane killer, who after having great sex, suddenly tells her that he will give her a fifteen to twenty minute head start before he shoots her down with an arrow, much as she had shot down the deer.
It's during this chase - that Echo enters a ranger's cabin and drinks water from a canteen. The water, Conlon tells her, will give her a bit of a spin. What it does is make her realize that she may just be playing a role. None of this may even be real. She's just remembering things that make no sense. Seeing mulitiple versions of herself, mulitple roles she has played. One of the memories - and the most clear - out of all of her memories - is sitting on the floor of the shower covered in blood while dead bodies surround her. Here she realizes they are dead, while at the time - she did not know. Looking up she remembers seeing a man with a knife, but she can't see his face. As she tells her handler, when he locates her, I don't think the man had one. He's a shadow. Maybe he's not supposed to have a face. Are you real, is any of this real? And why is it that I trust you, when I don't remember you?
The trust we are told through flashback has been imprinted on her by technology, it is not real either. It is manufactured. Everything in her life is to a degree manufactured. But her body, but the chase.
And later, we are told, Conlon is a fabrication as well. Nothing about Conlon was real. We don't who he was. Or where he came from.
What we do know is Alpha - the Alpha Male. He was an active. Who became aware and whose memories became a composite. They'd experimented with Alpha, allowed him to keep defensive skills, a background in ninja, in case of an emergency. But it backfired on them and they ended up with screaming and blood. Now Alpha is loose and for some reason or other is fixated on Caroline/Echo. I'm wondering if Alpha is the one providing Ballard with information, or if it is someone inside the Dollhouse - a disgruntled soul, who had been traumatized? Maybe Dr. Samules? Whose face Alpha cut up like a jigsaw puzzel?
Also what was the point of Alpha sending Conlon after Echo? To make her aware? To have her find her own inner strength? She does find it in both Ghost and Target - but in different ways. In Ghost - it is quieter - it is the determination to save the little girl and how. Knowing with absolute certainity that the girl is in the refrigerator. And in Target - it's her ability to put her shoulder to the wheel, a salute that Conlon repeats more than once - to save herself from Conlon. Note she kills Conlon in self-defense, stabbing him in the neck with an arrow, not her handler or protector. Then mocks him by doing the salute - shoulder to the wheel. In most tv shows - the handler would have saved her. That's usually what happens. Here she saves them both. And she goes back to him, cuddles, for safety and reassurance.
The men in this universe - also have defined roles to play - either protector or killer.
What are they beyond that? Alpha and Ballard. Reed Diamond (I don't know what his name is) and the Handler. Even Echoes male clients - either a guy wanting the girl to be everything he dreamed, or someone he can victimize. The one who hired her as a negotiator - did not ask for a woman - he asked for a man and got a woman, small, petite, who looked like a librarian or a school teacher.
When they erase Echoes memories, pull it all out of her, bit by bit, until she's clean - a blank slate once again, we are left thinking, ah, "the tabula rasa" again. Except...for one little exchange. Reed Diamond taunts her. Tells her that she has no feelings. No thoughts. And people just keep dying around her. Maybe she should die too. (An ironic speech considering the source is a man who kills people for a living.) She acts as if she doesn't understand his words. Feels nothing. Until he turns his back, and she salutes, much as Conlon had shown her, shoulder to the wheel. The salute Conlon tells her that his father taught him - one can't help but wonder if Conlon's father is Alpha.
This show has a lot going on, but rather simplistic A plot-lines, which may be annoying to some, particularly viewers who prefer complicated A plot lines and simplistic B - it requires less committment to the series, you can skip episodes, and/or just watch the ones you like. I think the reason the A plots are simple in this show is much the same reason Angel and Buffy's A plots were - you can't have a complicated A plot on top of a complicated B arc plot - or you will confuse the audience - which is the mistake that My Own Worste Enemy kept making. Shows that have more complicated A plots - are shows such as Bones, Numbers, CSI, Mentalist, House - where the B plot line is fairly simple and focused on workplace dynamics such as who sleeps with whom, etc. What I like about Whedon's A plots, is more or less the same thing I like about Leverage, Nip/Tuck, Supernatural and House's A plots - they act as a sort of metaphor for the B plot line or arc. Here - even the titles of the episode are metaphors - Ghost and Target - both referring to Echo. And both are plotlines that refer to Echo's sitch, she's a ghost in a shell, controlled by an organization that is mostly hidden from her (pretty typical of most large organizations), and a target of those seeking to bring down that organization or expose it. They also refer to her own struggle for an identity - is she just a ghost? Or is she more? Can she be more? Is she defined solely by her role within the organization or group, or can she be seen as an individual with her own identity outside of the group?
Her bed is in a hive like circle, underground. And she lives and cohabitates with others, with no sense of herself apart from them. She's a cog in a wheel - the wheel is the circle in which she lies her head. When she mockingly salute's Reed Diamond's character at the end of the episode - she in a way pushes her shoulder to that wheel, steps out of the circle, and is no longer just a cog in its makeup. She asserts her individuality.
Curious to see what the next few episodes bring. According to Whedon's interviews online - I'm guessing the sixth one by Tim Minear brings things into focus. I'm not as big a fan of Minear as Whedon is, I liked his writing in Angel, Wonderfalls and Firefly, but not in Drive or The Inside (the two series he created).
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Date: 2009-02-21 10:05 pm (UTC)and I loved seeing Mark Sheppard in this, he is on our TVs a lot, but he does bring a texture to his performances, a layered level of complexity, that not every actor does. Besides, I've met him and I like him! LOL
I really agree that it would be nice if Joss would cast against type, but not every writer/creator feels comfortable doing this... they have done it brilliantly in 'Leverage' and it continues to pay off for them (didn't you love the ending to their last episode?!?!). Joss is a fairly conventional thinker in this regard, but he makes up for it (IMO) with a lot of emotional depth that most TV shows avoid.
I totally loved every second of this episode:
it was exciting and gripping, but to me the emotional arc was the most important part of it...
we learned a lot of stuff about Alpha, about Amy Acker's scars, and about Ballard's hunt for the Dollhouse... (and of course we have the "Most Dangerous Game' thing)
we even got weird hints about things that will probably pay off later: Lasagna girl probably is not just a random neighbor(!),
but it was the story arc of Boyd becoming Echo's handler, and the bond they forged, that really was at the emotional heart of this episode...
when Echo turned to Boyd in the woods and said, "do you trust me?" I really teared up,
in fact I cried when he gave the response "with my life"
and at the end of her fight, when she embraced Boyd, I thought I could hear her hearing his heartbeat...
but then the scene opened up to show that we were hearing the helicopters coming to save them.
THAT was awesome! I had liked a lot of things in the first episode, but this episode left me feeling really emotionally invested.
I also really liked the CGI tongue in the Hulu ad! LOL
no subject
Date: 2009-02-22 08:43 pm (UTC)