Dollhouse 2.07 and 2.08: fast-forward on moles, masculinity, and a prediction about Ballard
A lot of these two episodes was rapid fast-forward on the character arcs because now we've only got 5 episodes left, instead of 5 years; the 20 minutes Adelle was under Harding's thumb could have been a dozen episodes of Angel for example, and I was in utter awe of the costume changes on Adelle. Sure enough, dressing as a man (jacket, blouse, etc) signifies vulnerability; she actually strikes Topher, a sure sign of weakness.But that's when she's only just managed to take the house back, and there's an arc that should have taken half a season at least, not half an episode. Once she's back in control, though, she's back in the arrogantly feminine "I can wear clothes that make me look female, because I'm so high-status that you don't DARE to touch me." Masculine jackets and dark colours are armour that she doesn't need.
The back-and-forth seesawing of Topher and Adelle's moral status was fascinating in itself and should again have taken a whole season. Oh well. I feel as if I'm watching the storyboard, not the story.
It is surely clear that Adelle is bluffing. In the world of moral compromise, she remains as committed as she ever was to protecting her dolls. You will note that the plans she gave Harding were in black and white; the ones Topher showed her also had red on them, didn't they? They are somewhat different plans. She could do nothing until she had a lever, and could get back into control of her House. Topher gave her the lever. But that doesn't mean she's given the shop away.
It occurs to me that she is assuming, perhaps correctly, that anyone brilliant enough to come up with those plans will also be brilliant enough to come up with a way to keep it from working. So she can safely give the plans to Harding, knowing that Topher will come up with a counter. And we know there was a way to keep it from working because Sierra and Caroline are resistant., in Epitaph One. And nobody at Safe Haven can be overwritten.
Now about the twu wuv of Paul and whoever. I was fascinated by this; we kept stopping the show to argue about it. Echo is beginning to love Paul (is an acorn a tree?) but Paul still doesn't see her as a person. He has constructed a Caroline as the princess in the high tower that he's still trying to save. he's never met Caroline. The one memory Echo now has of her makes her think that Caroline was maybe not so perfect. Oh no, Paul insists, indignant that his fantasy about his perfectly pure princess is being doubted; that was just what Bennett thought, she's biased. As if he'd know!
Paul Ballard wants to believe that he doesn't want to have sex with Echo because he's her handler, conflict of interest, etc etc. But really, it's very clear that it's because, if he sleeps with Echo, he has to let go of his Princess Caroline fantasy. And he can't do that.
So in his way he is every bit as bad as all the guys who simply had her imprinted with a fake persona. Paul has created his own perfect ideal woman, projected it on Echo, and cannot bear to have her reality contested; and more to the point, can't see the real woman who's right there in front of him. "Are we really alone?" He refuses to admit that she is a real person, and not just a shifting pastiche of a hundred different "I's", a pastiche that is, he believes, incapable of love. He doesn't see Echo so he doesn't recognize her love.
So, okay, he's a drip, a self-deluding moron, and none too bright, and in this he may well be representing pretty ably exactly what Joss thinks of the patriarchal model. So focussed on imagining that they're the perfect ideal white knight for their perfect ideal princess (and, yes, this WAS signalled in the last two episodes, with the senator and his wife, and the call and response is "white knight", "princess" and "forever after", and it is all a dreadful manipulative lie) that they never notice the real woman they're living with, married to. They never notice that they aren't the prince either, or that the real women around them don't want a prince anyway, they want an ally; a friend; a comrade in arms; a companion on the journey. But that princess-in-the-tower masculine fantasy is so bloody powerful that they will see it everywhere it isn't.
Dollhouse shows us over and over again that the pretense of the princess-in-the-tower fantasy is that women benefit by it. But in fact it's men that benefit by it. It is a masculine fantasy. No woman ever gets saved; they don't even get noticed; and insofar as a woman buys into the fantasy, she gives up her own agency in her own life.
As Echo only tries to tell the moron about 20,000 times. When she's not saying, honey? I'm over here! Right here! Right in front of you! Sitting right here with my hand on your sensitive bits! HERE, DAMN IT! That scene in the armoured car (wired-in windows, like a prison transport, why aren't they using the limo? Have I answered my own question here?) where Paul is fantasizing about the two of them running (well then why did he bring her back in? that question wasn't answered, for me) - and Echo says, no, it wouldn't work, because we'd wind up in the same place - that is, (I think) in a Dollhouse-controlled cage, like the car we're in right now - only it would be the Attic. So he's still fantasizing about saving the princess, and she's responding, no, it wouldn't work. That fantasy NEVER works.
But he doesn't get it. He doesn't really see her. Or himself.
And yes, it's bloody irritating. You want to shake him and shout "WAKE UP! JUST WAKE UP ALREADY!"
But I think that's how we're supposed to feel. Ballard is supposed to be irritating because Joss is trying to grab men, trapped in the masculine fantasy, by the throat and shake them. WAKE UP! is what he's saying.
And meanwhile, poor Echo loves him. (And there's another arc that should have been given several months, rather than a 3-minute training montage.) We're watching Vertigo. He's projecting his ideal woman onto her, and the real woman loves him, and he can't see her at all; he wants the fantasy woman to love him.
But now he has been brainwiped, and reduced to a more blank shell than Echo ever was. And you already know what's going to happen. Ballard can only be saved by putting in the Doll hardware and then imprinting him with his own personality. That will restore him to life, but he will be his own doll. Which is, of course, what he was in the first place; he's running his own "white knight" fantasy imprint rather than, you know, being a real boy. Will this make him a real boy?
Well, as Echo says about him in Epitaph One, "Don't know about the "together" part, but he's got my back." A comrade in arms; a companion on the road; and that twu wuv stuff? Maybe we shouldn't be so keen on it, since it comes wrapped in dangerous fantasies.
Here's my prediction incidentally: the people who can be saved from being overwritten, once Topher's tech is put into production, will only be the ones with Doll hardware (architecture) implanted in their brains. So Ballard will be safe, because they're going to have to give him some.
And my other prediction, also based on Epitaph One of course, is that Adelle is a warrior for good. But now that she knows how much power Rossum has, she knows she can only avert disaster, or try to (we know she doesn't succeed) by being a mole.