Thoughts on Dollhouse 1x01
Feb. 14th, 2009 04:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyYay, we have yet another brand new Joss canon to play with! Various rambly thoughts on the first Dollhouse episode under the cut. Not proper meta, though I'm sure there'll be some of that in the future too; it looks to be an interesting show.
On a whole, I quite liked it - it's far from perfect yet and if anything it lacked that one "WOW" moment, but it had both action and humour and it's unmistakably a Joss Whedon show.
For instance:
DEWITT: We don't have a client!
LANGTON: We have a mission!
"Hi, my name is Joss Whedon and I don't think morality is something handed to us from a single outside source."
ELLIE!ECHO: You can't hurt me anymore.
Now, doesn't that sound familiar, eh? Like in "Damage", there's tons of ambiguity concerning Echo's role - "active" participant, victim, powerful superbeing (albeit not physically) or helpless puppet. Which is one reason I'm a little miffed that they start off with a scene that seems to clearly show Caroline willingly signing on for five years - though of course that could be something that will turn out to be something completely different as we learn more. One of the things I liked about the original script was that it was left ambiguous whether the dolls signed on willingly or not. But I really like the idea that the personalities they're imprinted with aren't perfect; they get flaws and strengths like everyone else.
There's a lot of mentions of human trafficking and the vulnerable role of women to add some con/subtext - the scene with Ellie!Echo being crowded by the abuser is genuinely creepy. Remember, Joss has said that the seemingly exploitative male fantasy portion of the show is deliberate. That said, I don't hate the dress Eliza's wearing in the first engagement. ;-)
More themes: Everybody wants something more, something better. It's basic Maslow. Where do you draw the line? What's realistic to expect? What the hell does "self-actualisation" mean?
PAUL: Nobody has everything they want. It's a survival pattern: you get what you want, you want something else. If you have everything, you want something else, something more extreme, something more specific. Something perfect.
CAROLINE: I'd like to take my place in the world. Like Mrs Dundee taught us. Global recovery, stop wars... the world is in need of some serious saving. And I wanna travel. Travel around the world as I save it in a private jet that I pilot and design. (...) What can I say? I wanna do everything, is that too much to ask?
We get at least a glimpse of what most characters are about, and so far all of them look like they could become very interesting indeed. Amy Acker's character already has me fascinated, though she does seem to add to the helpless-damsel part of the show. One question that occurs to me about her, and about the others too - the question isn't just what makes someone sign up to be an active, but what makes someone sign up to work with them. Is Topher just a geek with shiny toys? Why is Langton an ex-cop? Does DeWitt actually believe she's helping people? Etc.
ECHO: Does someone take care of you?
All of Joss' series start with a certain measure of failure. Buffy doesn't save Jesse, Angel doesn't save Tina, the Serenity crew have to run from the law with a gutshot mechanic, and Echo botches the money exchange. And when she does save the day, Sierra (what an entrance!) ends up gunning everyone down anyway. "She hurts", indeed.
So who'sTwilight Alpha?
ETA: One thing that struck me about the Case of the week (COTW): it's not exactly the most exciting case, but it works, and it's interesting that it's very similar to the one used in the pilot episode of The Shield, which I always thought of as the lost Mutant Enemy show. The case itself doesn't offer a lot of ethical conundrums; nobody's going to ask if saving a little girl from a child molester is really the right thing to do. But as in The Shield, where it's used to show us just what kind of man Vic Mackey is and what he'll do to solve a case, the morally simple COTW is used to highlight how the people trying to solve the case work. The plot serves the characters, not the other way around.
VIC: Good cop and bad cop left town; I'm a different kind of cop.
On a whole, I quite liked it - it's far from perfect yet and if anything it lacked that one "WOW" moment, but it had both action and humour and it's unmistakably a Joss Whedon show.
For instance:
DEWITT: We don't have a client!
LANGTON: We have a mission!
"Hi, my name is Joss Whedon and I don't think morality is something handed to us from a single outside source."
ELLIE!ECHO: You can't hurt me anymore.
Now, doesn't that sound familiar, eh? Like in "Damage", there's tons of ambiguity concerning Echo's role - "active" participant, victim, powerful superbeing (albeit not physically) or helpless puppet. Which is one reason I'm a little miffed that they start off with a scene that seems to clearly show Caroline willingly signing on for five years - though of course that could be something that will turn out to be something completely different as we learn more. One of the things I liked about the original script was that it was left ambiguous whether the dolls signed on willingly or not. But I really like the idea that the personalities they're imprinted with aren't perfect; they get flaws and strengths like everyone else.
There's a lot of mentions of human trafficking and the vulnerable role of women to add some con/subtext - the scene with Ellie!Echo being crowded by the abuser is genuinely creepy. Remember, Joss has said that the seemingly exploitative male fantasy portion of the show is deliberate. That said, I don't hate the dress Eliza's wearing in the first engagement. ;-)
More themes: Everybody wants something more, something better. It's basic Maslow. Where do you draw the line? What's realistic to expect? What the hell does "self-actualisation" mean?
PAUL: Nobody has everything they want. It's a survival pattern: you get what you want, you want something else. If you have everything, you want something else, something more extreme, something more specific. Something perfect.
CAROLINE: I'd like to take my place in the world. Like Mrs Dundee taught us. Global recovery, stop wars... the world is in need of some serious saving. And I wanna travel. Travel around the world as I save it in a private jet that I pilot and design. (...) What can I say? I wanna do everything, is that too much to ask?
We get at least a glimpse of what most characters are about, and so far all of them look like they could become very interesting indeed. Amy Acker's character already has me fascinated, though she does seem to add to the helpless-damsel part of the show. One question that occurs to me about her, and about the others too - the question isn't just what makes someone sign up to be an active, but what makes someone sign up to work with them. Is Topher just a geek with shiny toys? Why is Langton an ex-cop? Does DeWitt actually believe she's helping people? Etc.
ECHO: Does someone take care of you?
All of Joss' series start with a certain measure of failure. Buffy doesn't save Jesse, Angel doesn't save Tina, the Serenity crew have to run from the law with a gutshot mechanic, and Echo botches the money exchange. And when she does save the day, Sierra (what an entrance!) ends up gunning everyone down anyway. "She hurts", indeed.
So who's
ETA: One thing that struck me about the Case of the week (COTW): it's not exactly the most exciting case, but it works, and it's interesting that it's very similar to the one used in the pilot episode of The Shield, which I always thought of as the lost Mutant Enemy show. The case itself doesn't offer a lot of ethical conundrums; nobody's going to ask if saving a little girl from a child molester is really the right thing to do. But as in The Shield, where it's used to show us just what kind of man Vic Mackey is and what he'll do to solve a case, the morally simple COTW is used to highlight how the people trying to solve the case work. The plot serves the characters, not the other way around.
VIC: Good cop and bad cop left town; I'm a different kind of cop.
