DeWitt’s ideal man is pedantic about grammar. Love it
Chicks love an English major. And really, there was something so sad about him not knowing why “ironic” was correct. What a lonely woman DeWitt is.
And Ballard’s one tough cookie, mentally as well as physically. In the space of a minute, he goes from 1) getting intimate with a woman he has feelings for; to 2) learning that she doesn’t even exist, which he doesn’t have time to deal with emotionally because she’s giving him information he has to pay attention to; to 3) having to pretend everything’s okay when the artificial personality is back.
No, we don’t know the overall setting for the show. Or the “real” purpose of the Dollhouse. Or exactly how most of the dolls & employees got there. There have been clues & hints & probably some lies. Many mysteries remain.
Is R.U.R. an in-joke? Probably it is…
R.U.R. = Rossum’s Universal Robots - a play from the 20’s or 30’s that first coined the term “Robot”…
ETA: Wiki link to listing for R.U.R. here…
The comments Echo the Spyhunter made to Dr. Saunders also made me wonder how it’s going to wrap back to DeWitt. No life outside the dollhouse making a person vulnerable to explotation sounds like exactly what’s happening to DeWitt.
Why was Roger (Victor) calling DeWitt Catherine?
Was it explained how Echo knew where DeWitt was? She told everyone she was at a conference and broke the GPS on her phone…
I don’t think it was explained. Maybe DeWitt called in for messages?
Probably to build the illusion that he was being imprinted for the older woman whose house he was left at vs. going to visit Adelle.
I thought this week was amazing, I still get chills when I think about November carrying a message to Paul. I cannot imagine how far off the rails I’d go if that happened to me. Good lord.
I do, however, get the sneaking suspicion that next weeks show will be a bit of a throw-away episode “ZOMG SOLVING MY MURDER BRB”
Some of the fights have been pretty good for a TV show, but this one featured a flying spinning kick. Those are like nails on chalkboard for me during fight scenes.
Just occured to me - would Adele (and the audience) understanding why it was ironic, but Victor not having the appropriate information to understand, constitute situational irony? If so, that’s a 7 layer dip of irony there.
I am going to adopt “Maybe there will be cake!” as my default sarcastic response to bad situations. I just love Adele DeWitt even if she is possibly a very bad woman.
Was “Roger” being pedantic about grammar, or saying that nobody gets “being real”/“finding someone real” right? I thought it was more a human condition/relationship commentary than a grammar lesson.
I think “Roger” also demonstrates that DeWitt has some clue about how imprints are made. She couldn’t just tell Topher to program instructions to leave Old Lady LonelyHearts and drive to DeWitt’s beach house, after all.
Still not liking her as the mole, though. She seems to really believe in whatever the Dollhouse mission is. I think she quit with “Roger” because she realized that she was seriously tempted to run away with him, for real, when he suggested it. Aside from derailing her career, she knows Roger is a fantasy – the temptation to cross the line and make the fantasy “real” probably made her fear for her mental health.
Poor Ballard. How dirty is he going to feel continuing to have sex with a woman he knows can’t consent in any meaningful way?
No, he meant that few people properly uses the word “ironic” - and that’s true. Take the song “Ironic” for example - the only thing ironic is that it doesn’t actually contain anything ironic. It’s just a song about stuff that sucks.
It is (to her) ironic that she feels he’s the only real person she knows. But he doesn’t understand why, so to him it looks like she’s butchering the use of “ironic”.
The easiest way for her to do this without using a computer would be to place a fake order. She probably got the Old Lady to order Victor exactly how she likes him. Might have even oversaw Topher while he was programing him and made a few suggestions.
It kind of makes me wonder who the old lady is. She knows that Roger is going to come every so often and (apparently) give her flowers, then drive away to someone else. How exactly does that arrangement work with her and DeWitt?
For that matter, how do you imprint Roger to be deceptive toward his handler, whom he is supposed to trust with his life?
This is actually where I disagree. I think Topher was in on DeWitt’s little pleasure trips or what-have-you, which is how Echo knew where she was. Topher just knew it’d mean more than his job if he ever told anyone (DeWitt can be, after all, quite the scary woman). He programmed the Roger personality to go to the old woman’s house and make small talk with her than take the car to DeWitt’s beach house, meaning the old woman would have to be in on it to some extent or another or she’d report the stolen car.
sorry to double post, this was posted while I was typing.
To respond, though, I think he does trust his handler with his life and isn’t necessarily being deceptive towards her as the trust is initiated with a keyword (“do you know who I am?” “do you trust me?”) and so long as the handler isn’t actively trying to get Victor back his programmed persona isn’t going against the ingrained trust he has for the handler.
But Old Lady didn’t tell Victor to go to the beach house or give him directions to get there. Such instructions would have to be programmed into the imprint, or else he’d forget that Old Lady wasn’t his lover every time they wiped and reprogrammed him. Remember “Roger” is in love with DeWitt, not with Old Lady LonelyHearts, even though as far as the Dollhouse is aware he’s supposed to be in love with the little old lady. That’s some serious imprint tampering.
Maybe, but I didn’t really get the impression that Topher had any idea she wasn’t at HQ like she said she was. I didn’t assume that Echo even needed to find her or call her back – she was only supposed to be gone for a weekend, at most they’ve have to hold Dominick for a day, and they have a giant security team complete with SWAT-level training and equipment. Even if they never reached her on the phone it wouldn’t be that long before she came back on her own.
DeWitt also doesn’t strike me as someone who’d make that kind of threat. Yes, she can be scary, but she’s scary because she’d a cold hard businesswoman, who will do her job even when it’s unpleasant. She’s not a bully. Hell, I don’t think she could handle it if Topher knew how lonely she was, even if he was guaranteed never to tell. She couldn’t stand to appear emotional or vulnerable to any employee.
I know that. As did the person who wrote the message I was replying to.
The Mellie persona does consent. Adelle said she’d fallen in love, although her original mission was probably just keeping an eye on him. He’s never met November–the wiped version of a “real” person whom none of us has met.
And the wrong word could turn Mellie into a psycho killer. When Ballard fought Echo, she was able to hold her own because he didn’t want to hurt her. The fight was just a delaying tactic, anyway. He could probably defeat Killer Mellie–but not without damaging her. Either way, he’s frakked.
Mellie reminds me of The Doctor when he hid from the Family of Blood. Actually, she reminds me of “John Smith”–the false identity assumed to go with his human body. Smith taught at that school for 6 months, happy in his life except for disturbing dreams he recorded in a journal. John Smith lived long enough to fall in love. Then he had to die because The Doctor was needed.