Tv stuff
I'm going to watch Lost but first, I need to write down a few thoughts...Spoilers under the lj-cuts of course!
The tenth episode of Dollhouse, "Haunted" was promising. The concept was fascinating and thought-provoking. One of Adelle's old and wealthy friends, and a usual client of the Dollhouse, suddenly died, so Adelle uses the Dollhouse technology to bring her back through Echo's empty body. It pointed that the Dollhouse technology could give immortality, the person could be saved and downloaded in another body (Joss is a fan of Battlestar Galactica after all!)but it also meant several interesting things:
1. The Dollhouse people somehow keep an imprint of their clients...just in case. Maybe I missed some info about the way they had access to Maragret's memories but could it mean that some clients might have used Topher's chair to become someone else for a while which would have left an imprint of their personality (they need to save it in order to restore it) in the Dollhouse data storage? ETA: Thank you flist for pointing out that I did miss something!!!!
I said it before and I'm saying it again, becoming an Active could be a fantasy too, Total Recall-style. Who said that clients only hired dolls? I already suggested it about Paul Ballard...who, by the way, commented on his own behaviour with Mellie, coming to the bitter conclusion that, since he had sex with her while knowing her doll status, he was a client. "I had found one" he said in the shower (are we feeling dirty Paul or is it just a convenient way to show off your sexy body?).
2. Adelle is again using the Dollhouse for her personal benefit. There's no client here, no payment. The only way Adelle found to deal with her grief was to bring her friend back, and send her to a mission, that was to find her murderer. It revived the theme of the ghost haunting the living one, and the theme of the ghost solving its murder. Besides in a way Echo was possessed by a spirit who knew what it was doing to the body it has invaded. Sci-Fi obviously flirted with fantasy in that episode, and the Adelle/Topher pairing looked like a couple of sorcerers or of shamans. Usually the ghost of a murdered person haunts the living ones until its soul finds peace, and it's usually the truth that releases the soul. Adelle decided that her friend's soul needed to find peace by solving her own murder, but actually it's Adelle hersef who needed to find peace. Echo was nothing but a convenient vessel.
3. Joss gave a new meaning again to the "ghost in the machine" phrase. Margaret was dead, but her ghost was in Topher's machine and could possess any doll any time as long as Topher could work his magic. This idea was nicely echoed in the episode by the scene in which Paul found a second ghost in another machine, when using the FBI ressources and Mellie's DNA, he made out a ghost on a computer screen, the girl November used to be. But the apparition quickly vanished like any spectre must do.
4. At last, the episode explored again the dialectics of identity vs alienation; fantasy vs reality and immortality vs mortality.
Was Margaret still Margaret when in Caroline's body? Isn't the body part of someone's identity? Margaret's son (am I the only one who thought he kinda looked like Nicholad Brendon? Really it was distracting) ended up recognizing his mother -not too soon though, otherwise we would have missed the oedipean scene in which he tried to kiss her. But the ungrateful son turned out to be Margaret's murder, swapping Oedipus' shoes for Orestes! Please don't blame me for liking my Greeks!
We've been told that, unlike Margaret's ghost, Actives' imprint is usually the result of various mental bits Topher's genius gets to combine (we even saw him make his cuisine in on episode). Basically an imprint is a sort of mental version of the Frankenstein's monster! In other words, a constructed persona. So usually imprints don't mind the body they have, because it isn't a new body for them. Their persona never owned another body. It was quite different this time. Margaret's persona was used to another body, yet she seemed to feel at home in Caroline's. I know there was a line about her joy to possess a younger body but I don't think it was enough. I spotted some laziness in the writing there. There were things that Echo said that didn't sound at all like something Margaret would have said, even though they showed her correcting her daughter's language once. And I'm afraid that again the acting was not up to it.
As for me I didn't see Margaret at all, I kept seeing Eliza Dushku as usual, and it bothered me, it prevented me from being sold. Yet, because her son could tell it was her, the episode seems to tell us that Margaret was still herself, would still have bene herself in any body. But in this case it means that the body doesn't matter that much, and the persona lies in the mind, which is always a construct in one way or another(Stephen I'm stealing your words here, but I don't feel guilty for you stole The Bard's by twisting the line from The Merchant of Venice!). So Mellie, while being an imprinted version of November, is a real person. She breathes, she eats, she feels and, above all, she thinks. She is in love with Paul, she has fears, she worries and gets upset. What would happen to Mellie if the personality of the girl November used to be were to be restored? She would disappear...she would die. There's a dilemma in here, and I think we should feel for Paul Ballard who must have sensed it if not really thought it through. On the one hand, he knows that Mellie is a fantasy neighbour whom the Dollhouse made up and sent to keep an eye on him. On the other hand, he sees her feelings, cares about her and doesn't want to hurt her.
So did I like the episode? It works on the intellectual level; I like its depth and I like that it made me think. But the main plot with Echo's scenes didn't work for me. Victor was once again credible, so was Sierra as Topher's buddy, but ED can't play such a difficult part. As for the C-plot, whenTopher's actions echo Adelle's self-gratifications- and there's a double parallel since lonely Topther used Sierra to be his buddy while Adelle as Madam Lonelyheart had used Victor in the previous eppy- it was fun, and worked on a meta level (but one would say thta the whole show is meta-fiction rather than science-fiction). Topher the geek playing Sci-Fi games with a doll seems like a commentary of Joss' own actions as the producer of Dollhouse(and before that of Firefly).
It was a funny coincidence to watch the finale of Heroes just after having seen "Haunted". I almost said out loud "Hey Sylar got dollhoused!"Parkman's power added to the shape-shifting caused the ultimate alienation that Sylar had been struggling against in the previous episode. Sylar became a vessel for a ghost, just like Caroline' s body was for Margaret's spirit. It's really all connected!
Last but not least, I finally saw the second episode of Ashes to ashes.
I am not too hot on the Mason stuff, it seems a bit easy, but perhaps it works given that it's all about symbols and metaphors.
I'm sad for Raymundo whom I've come to love. I want to redeem Ray, and I loved how he turned into a Blade Runner last week, finding the reflection on the photograph (Chris compared him to Harrison Ford in case we hadn't spotted the allusion). Now he seems lost again.
The episode deals with esotericism anyway, with the old Fortune Teller. I noticed that she said to Alex things that could be interpreted in different ways. No doubt that Alex believed she meant that she was about to die, that her life line was fading. But she never said "your", she said "the life line".
As for Gene in front of the Fortune Teller who wnated to read the cards for him, it was priceless. "Read a magazine, I'm busy!" cracked me up.
Also Alex' hallucinations were well done.
I'm intrigued by all the references to Lady Di. Last time it was about The Pont de l'Alma, this time there's Gene's line when seeing the car crash "the death of a princess" and there all are the allusions to Sam. First Hyde, now Tyler...I'm torn between two explanations. The references to Diana are either about Sam or about Mollie (isn't any daughetr her mother's princess?).
Last week I thought that the devil taunting Alex was Super Mac, but it seemed too obvious and now I wonder.
In this second episode, the scene in which she talked to "the devil in uniform", after she witnessed the masonic ceremony, left me suspicious. It could be Gene ..because he "looked and sounded like" Sam, and basically Gene is supposed to be a part of Sam Tyler. That scene is significant, I guess. It's a clue.
Anyway Alex' "I thought I'd lost you" line was adorable. I wonder if it might echo some other loss that Alex deeply feared. Yes I'm still thinking that Mollie might be the one who took a bullet. Anyway the point of the episode seemed to be that Gene is HER hero and could not become Mac's hero, because "her world" would come to nothing if Gene weren't the shining knight in armour she's made out of him. She needs him to be the Gene Genie. She needs him to be the one who saves little girls. He even named a new baby girl!
Gene was the opposite for Sam. He was the dark side, the Hyde part of him, he was a "tumour", the inner demon.
It's an interesting twist.
The tenth episode of Dollhouse, "Haunted" was promising. The concept was fascinating and thought-provoking. One of Adelle's old and wealthy friends, and a usual client of the Dollhouse, suddenly died, so Adelle uses the Dollhouse technology to bring her back through Echo's empty body. It pointed that the Dollhouse technology could give immortality, the person could be saved and downloaded in another body (Joss is a fan of Battlestar Galactica after all!)but it also meant several interesting things:
1. The Dollhouse people somehow keep an imprint of their clients...just in case. Maybe I missed some info about the way they had access to Maragret's memories but could it mean that some clients might have used Topher's chair to become someone else for a while which would have left an imprint of their personality (they need to save it in order to restore it) in the Dollhouse data storage? ETA: Thank you flist for pointing out that I did miss something!!!!
I said it before and I'm saying it again, becoming an Active could be a fantasy too, Total Recall-style. Who said that clients only hired dolls? I already suggested it about Paul Ballard...who, by the way, commented on his own behaviour with Mellie, coming to the bitter conclusion that, since he had sex with her while knowing her doll status, he was a client. "I had found one" he said in the shower (are we feeling dirty Paul or is it just a convenient way to show off your sexy body?).
2. Adelle is again using the Dollhouse for her personal benefit. There's no client here, no payment. The only way Adelle found to deal with her grief was to bring her friend back, and send her to a mission, that was to find her murderer. It revived the theme of the ghost haunting the living one, and the theme of the ghost solving its murder. Besides in a way Echo was possessed by a spirit who knew what it was doing to the body it has invaded. Sci-Fi obviously flirted with fantasy in that episode, and the Adelle/Topher pairing looked like a couple of sorcerers or of shamans. Usually the ghost of a murdered person haunts the living ones until its soul finds peace, and it's usually the truth that releases the soul. Adelle decided that her friend's soul needed to find peace by solving her own murder, but actually it's Adelle hersef who needed to find peace. Echo was nothing but a convenient vessel.
3. Joss gave a new meaning again to the "ghost in the machine" phrase. Margaret was dead, but her ghost was in Topher's machine and could possess any doll any time as long as Topher could work his magic. This idea was nicely echoed in the episode by the scene in which Paul found a second ghost in another machine, when using the FBI ressources and Mellie's DNA, he made out a ghost on a computer screen, the girl November used to be. But the apparition quickly vanished like any spectre must do.
4. At last, the episode explored again the dialectics of identity vs alienation; fantasy vs reality and immortality vs mortality.
Was Margaret still Margaret when in Caroline's body? Isn't the body part of someone's identity? Margaret's son (am I the only one who thought he kinda looked like Nicholad Brendon? Really it was distracting) ended up recognizing his mother -not too soon though, otherwise we would have missed the oedipean scene in which he tried to kiss her. But the ungrateful son turned out to be Margaret's murder, swapping Oedipus' shoes for Orestes! Please don't blame me for liking my Greeks!
We've been told that, unlike Margaret's ghost, Actives' imprint is usually the result of various mental bits Topher's genius gets to combine (we even saw him make his cuisine in on episode). Basically an imprint is a sort of mental version of the Frankenstein's monster! In other words, a constructed persona. So usually imprints don't mind the body they have, because it isn't a new body for them. Their persona never owned another body. It was quite different this time. Margaret's persona was used to another body, yet she seemed to feel at home in Caroline's. I know there was a line about her joy to possess a younger body but I don't think it was enough. I spotted some laziness in the writing there. There were things that Echo said that didn't sound at all like something Margaret would have said, even though they showed her correcting her daughter's language once. And I'm afraid that again the acting was not up to it.
As for me I didn't see Margaret at all, I kept seeing Eliza Dushku as usual, and it bothered me, it prevented me from being sold. Yet, because her son could tell it was her, the episode seems to tell us that Margaret was still herself, would still have bene herself in any body. But in this case it means that the body doesn't matter that much, and the persona lies in the mind, which is always a construct in one way or another(Stephen I'm stealing your words here, but I don't feel guilty for you stole The Bard's by twisting the line from The Merchant of Venice!). So Mellie, while being an imprinted version of November, is a real person. She breathes, she eats, she feels and, above all, she thinks. She is in love with Paul, she has fears, she worries and gets upset. What would happen to Mellie if the personality of the girl November used to be were to be restored? She would disappear...she would die. There's a dilemma in here, and I think we should feel for Paul Ballard who must have sensed it if not really thought it through. On the one hand, he knows that Mellie is a fantasy neighbour whom the Dollhouse made up and sent to keep an eye on him. On the other hand, he sees her feelings, cares about her and doesn't want to hurt her.
So did I like the episode? It works on the intellectual level; I like its depth and I like that it made me think. But the main plot with Echo's scenes didn't work for me. Victor was once again credible, so was Sierra as Topher's buddy, but ED can't play such a difficult part. As for the C-plot, whenTopher's actions echo Adelle's self-gratifications- and there's a double parallel since lonely Topther used Sierra to be his buddy while Adelle as Madam Lonelyheart had used Victor in the previous eppy- it was fun, and worked on a meta level (but one would say thta the whole show is meta-fiction rather than science-fiction). Topher the geek playing Sci-Fi games with a doll seems like a commentary of Joss' own actions as the producer of Dollhouse(and before that of Firefly).
It was a funny coincidence to watch the finale of Heroes just after having seen "Haunted". I almost said out loud "Hey Sylar got dollhoused!"Parkman's power added to the shape-shifting caused the ultimate alienation that Sylar had been struggling against in the previous episode. Sylar became a vessel for a ghost, just like Caroline' s body was for Margaret's spirit. It's really all connected!
Last but not least, I finally saw the second episode of Ashes to ashes.
I am not too hot on the Mason stuff, it seems a bit easy, but perhaps it works given that it's all about symbols and metaphors.
I'm sad for Raymundo whom I've come to love. I want to redeem Ray, and I loved how he turned into a Blade Runner last week, finding the reflection on the photograph (Chris compared him to Harrison Ford in case we hadn't spotted the allusion). Now he seems lost again.
The episode deals with esotericism anyway, with the old Fortune Teller. I noticed that she said to Alex things that could be interpreted in different ways. No doubt that Alex believed she meant that she was about to die, that her life line was fading. But she never said "your", she said "the life line".
As for Gene in front of the Fortune Teller who wnated to read the cards for him, it was priceless. "Read a magazine, I'm busy!" cracked me up.
Also Alex' hallucinations were well done.
I'm intrigued by all the references to Lady Di. Last time it was about The Pont de l'Alma, this time there's Gene's line when seeing the car crash "the death of a princess" and there all are the allusions to Sam. First Hyde, now Tyler...I'm torn between two explanations. The references to Diana are either about Sam or about Mollie (isn't any daughetr her mother's princess?).
Last week I thought that the devil taunting Alex was Super Mac, but it seemed too obvious and now I wonder.
In this second episode, the scene in which she talked to "the devil in uniform", after she witnessed the masonic ceremony, left me suspicious. It could be Gene ..because he "looked and sounded like" Sam, and basically Gene is supposed to be a part of Sam Tyler. That scene is significant, I guess. It's a clue.
Anyway Alex' "I thought I'd lost you" line was adorable. I wonder if it might echo some other loss that Alex deeply feared. Yes I'm still thinking that Mollie might be the one who took a bullet. Anyway the point of the episode seemed to be that Gene is HER hero and could not become Mac's hero, because "her world" would come to nothing if Gene weren't the shining knight in armour she's made out of him. She needs him to be the Gene Genie. She needs him to be the one who saves little girls. He even named a new baby girl!
Gene was the opposite for Sam. He was the dark side, the Hyde part of him, he was a "tumour", the inner demon.
It's an interesting twist.