I think the episode was less interesting than the metastory. Some very interesting things are being hinted at – for instance, that Echo (and other dolls) remember things about their mission and their life in the Dollhouse.
The motivation for the rock star to want to die was incredibly weak. There are so many other ways to get away from her to do what she wanted while still keeping her fan base. I wonder if that was meant, at least in part, to be referring to Whedon himself.
But the story arc is what will make the show, not the individual episodes. Whedon is laying the groundwork for something and I’m curious to see what he does with it.
There was a switch but it wasn’t during the mission. In the Dollhouse after the mission, Sierra is coming over to thank Echo (or maybe just say ‘hi’) and Echo warns her off. That implies that both Sierra and Echo are starting to retain memories of their jobs. I thought that moment was one of the most powerful moments in the episode. I’m looking forward to a show with more good moments like that.
I certainly didn’t see it coming, and was surprised that they revealed that they’re up to “V” and that they’ve gone through several Sierras. That means my estimate of fifteen-ish surviving is bogus, because there can always be new ones assigned to the letters.
There’s a “YO DAWG” joke here but I can’t bring myself to complete the circle.
That cliche was there, but it was hardly treated sympathetically by any of the characters. Certainly not by Echo’s persona. I think it was made clear that the pop star was in some deep, deep mental illness. My only issue is that Echo’s solution was unconventional but also must be harmful to the pop star (what the fuck was her name?), yet it was treated as though the pop star got through it in better shape than she got into it. That’s not believable to me.
Anyway, besides that I am still liking this show well enough to keep following it, and am really looking forward to how it moves when Joss’s own shows start appearing.
THe nod at the end hints at things to come - I don’t like that Victor ws an active - simply gives too much power to the dollhouse folks - which means there is no choice but for the actives to rebel.
And of course, the Active’s will be ‘oh so powerful’ simply becuase of all the different traits that have been downloaded into them (aka ‘alpha’).
Sierra was there “in case things went really bad” - thanks to Rayne, she ended up becoming the target of the stalker/fan.
I’m thinking Rayne had to have some time to heal - a sudden stop after a 10-12 foot drop secured by the wrists has to dislocate the shoulders and other stuff - especially since she wasnt in on the plan to be prepared.
I’d love to believe that there’s a method to the madness of the names of the actives we’ve seen so far, but in my opinion they’re just using the names that sound the coolest. I mean, nobody’s going to rally behind a character named Golf unless he’s a hilarious dweeb, and an active name Hotel is just begging for sex jokes.
I have very mixed feelings about Dollhouse so far. On the one hand, I’m very intrigued by the overall story arc and I think the show itself is fascinating. On the other hand, like others I’m really missing the typical Whedon wit. The problem is, most of the characters are too serious to pull off witty banter. In Firefly and Buffy, all the characters (and actors too, I suppose) had that edge where they could add sarcasm and entertainment, even more serious characters like Simon and Zoe.
For those that are saying “just wait, Joss has to get his mojo going and is better at the overall arcs,” I’ll agree with you on Buffy but Firefly had the feeling and the awesome right out of the gate. Maybe it’s the Fox execs screwing with the show in the first few episodes. I’m going to stick with it until it’s inevitable cancellation but I think this type of plot may have been a bit too ambitious. Once Echo fully realizes what’s going on (which we know she will at some point) the show will lose the “imprint of the week” format and then where does it go from there?
Also, is anybody else getting the impression that the in-between-imprint actives are supposed to be a large group of River Tams? I feel like they’re supposed to have the same demeanor and child-likeness with a dash less of crazy. In fact I think Summer Glau would be a perfect active if she wasn’t already playing a robot in the previous hour of television.
Ah, you’re forgetting that prior to this Wheedon has been writing comics – you know, the genre where ordinary folks can fall thousands of feet through the air then get caught by a flying superhero and have all that kinetic energy redirected from vertical to horizontal in a split second, and be unharmed by the experience.
And now, ironically, FBI-man has a direct connection to the Dollhouse. How this plays out when Victor’s wipes/imprints start to break down ought to be interesting to watch.
(And I don’t think they just snatched Lubov off the street and reprogrammed him. That seems like a good way to call attention to yourself, plus they’ve already demonstrated that they’re very good at planting Actives seamlessly where they want them.)
Why would the client be an Active?
Anyway, yeah, in the big pretty office DeWitt and Dominick discuss how Sierra was there basically to divert the stalker’s attentions from the pop star just in case finding him first didn’t work out. That’s why they set her up as having won the “#1 Fan” contest – they knew publicly calling someone else her #1 Fan would be something the stalker would get crazy jealous about. The plan was that they would follow/trace Sierra and storm the castle with the Dollhouse SWAT team to take care of the stalker, but Echo bunged that up because she got creative with her programming.
Also that they’re aware that they’re not supposed to be retaining memories. They’ve figured out that they need to keep it under wraps.
I agree, there were a whole slew of implications with just a split-second head shake. It isn’t just that Echo is “special” – perhaps the technology is fundamentally flawed. Or that it fails on a certain percentage of subjects due to biological differences that no one’s accounting for.
We’re starting to see some threads of the larger tapestry, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all weaves together.
Not as much on Buffy as on Firefly, but good point.
So…will Echo eventually maintain her core memory episode to episode? I’m not trying to spoiler anyone, but I’ve kind of assumed that she won’t be completely mind-wiped every episode and that the way things are on the show now are not they way they will remain.
If Echo maintains a core personality, but can be uploaded with various skills weekly, the wittiness may return…and Boyd may find out and be able to help her with her missions weekly.
Building up the personality is obviously an expensive business. From a business perspective, it makes sense to have high value traits such as hostage negotiator, race car drive, kung fu ninja etc.
Why would the Dollhouse organization spend money making an Australian nerd fan? Even in the Whedonverse, I can’t imagine many people willing to spend $100,000+ for a night with her.
What if the manager went to the Dollhouse and ordered one pop star, knowing that she make him many more millions than she would cost?
I don’t think that’s what happened, but it’s an interesting premise.
The manager probably just provided a fan for them to copy.
I think the show is moving in a great direction. It’s not as awesome out of the gate as Firefly, but it’s far better than the first few episodes of Buffy.
They’ve already established that the imprints they use are composites of traits pulled from multiple “persons” they have on file. Hostage-negotiator Echo wasn’t just a single hostage negotiator, but a combination of several of the best ones out there. So with that in mind, “Australian fan girl” was likely a composite of fangirl personality traits pulled from a bunch of on-file personalities that also happened to have high-value skills. Who’s to say that one of the hostage-negotiators they have on file didn’t go all squee for a boy band in the privacy of her own home?
More seriously, people with specialized computer-skills are often also shy and awkward, for example.
I’m thinking that that’s exactly what a “composite event” is. Retention of (parts of) previous personalities over time. Alpha happened to retain some violent/crazy traits as well as whatever else he’s got. (Or perhaps he was already violent/crazy, which was why he was their first pick to try the mindwipe on. If it goes badly, oh well, it was just a violent criminal the world is better off without.)
Alpha (and eventually, Echo) may have also started remembering who he was before being wiped the first time, which could have contributed to his rather extreme desire for violence/revenge. I don’t think they know exactly what happened, since it’s clear that it was the first time it did (Alpha being the “oldest”), and they weren’t able to grab him to study his brain.
I don’t think Dollhouse management would go for that. Part of the way they make money is to have their Actives be reusable and only renting them out for a limited time. Plus they’d have to have a dedicated handler for the pop star, too, plus security CYA concerns to keep the Dollhouse under the radar – they’d still have to pay those salaries, which means an ongoing cost which would be passed along (and probably not cheaply) to the client. I honestly think that the cost demanded by the Dollhouse would be high enough to make actual profit from such a thing very unlikely. They charge millions for a weekend, after all. Even if it were just around $2 mil for 3 days, that works out to more than $243 mil a year. How many pop stars pull down a quarter billion a year? And they’d still need to pay touring costs etc. out of the remaining $7 mil before you could get to paying the manager.
I think it’s interesting that we don’t really know where the personality donors come from, nor if the donors know that they’re having their brain copied. In the first episode, Topher told us that they
But we also know that the original Miss Pen killed herself after they copied her. Likewise, Topher’s use of the word “amalgams” seems interesting. What makes an amalgam different from a composite? The first is done intentionally using whatever technology they have… the second happens unpredictably. But both are presumably a blending of the different traits – if a Composite Event is so dangerous, why on earth would they tempt fate? And how long before we see someone – perhaps a wealthy terminally-ill someone – pay for the privilege of being copied and downloaded into a nicer body?
I am a big concept-weenie; I prefer a great concept that’s executed half-heartedly to a show with fantastic execution that’s not terribly thrilling. I’ll probably be sticking around for the whole 13-episode season and seeing what they can deliver.
I’m enjoying the show so far. I think it will be interesting to see where they take the concept over the season(s). The thing I like about Buffy and Angel (I’m on season six Buffy and season two Angel) is that I became attached to the characters. It takes time to build up good characters and I’m liking what I see so far. The handler and the FBI guy seem to be developing in interesting ways and so is Echo. I will be sticking around to see how things develop.
The *client * (Biz) was Rayna Russell’s manager, who was apparently acquainted with the Dollhouse Madame (Adelle DeWitt) and had, I think, used Dollhouse services previously.
I’m not sure why I thought Rayna Russell would turn out to be an active other than the existing relationship between Adelle and Biz (did she offer him an Active for while he was in town?), and it seemed to me to be the obvious reveal after Rayna’s “Do you think they grew me?” questions of Echo.
A question for all of you who are commenting on how creepy the premise is: Does this really come as a shock to you? It was fairly obvious to me that it was going to be creepy the first time I heard of it, and I have to think it’s not accidental. It’s certainly not something I’m going to hold against the show.
I think people are saying it’s creepy (I know I did in the threads for the first and second episodes) because this is not a simple hooker/man who sees hookers situation.
The Actives stumble around after the encounter so thrilled about the time they spent with the guy and then turn into functional children. And I thought it was sick that even in a situation that’s not based around “the world’s most expensive hooker” (the hostage negotiator), they still gave her memories of being brutally raped for months on end as a child.
So not only is the premise creepy, but we’re constantly being reminded just how creepy it is and then, just for kicks, an extra layer of creepy is drizzled on top to make the whole thing feel just plain icky.
