[Dollhouse Rewatch] Unaired Pilot, "Echo"
I would rather have 26 total episodes of a passionately told, challenging story that really says something than many more seasons of a fun show without so much depth.
-comments on the cancellation of Dollhouse at whedonesque.com
I love Joss Whedon shows. I never saw Buffy, Angel, or Firefly when they were on TV--I was introduced to them by friends in college. But by the time Dollhouse was announced, I had become a serious fan. So I was psyched to actually be able to watch it as it unfolded.
It wasn't quite what I expected. But then, I think that was the point. When Dollhouse premiered, I remember watching "Ghost" (the aired pilot) and thinking "Huh". At that time the only other TV show I was following was Battlestar Galactica, which was in the last half of its final season, and full of emotional charge and unexpected plot twists (ultimately not something that worked well--and NB, Moore and Eick, my idea about Starbuck is still way better than your finale). In comparison, Dollhouse developed slowly, sometimes meditatively, sometimes uncertainly.
I don't think Dollhouse is perfect by any means. I'm not even sure I would say it is excellent. But it is never what we expect. And that is, as Adelle might say, what we need it to be.
I will be doing a review of the aired pilot ("Ghost") next, but I think it's worth it to say here that I think they're both strong episodes. "Echo" is stronger, primarily because it gets into the meat of the characters and issues at stake. The narrative cohesion and flow are also very nice. "Ghost" has its advantages--it's less talky, while leaving plenty to be inferred--but if I had to choose one over the other, I'd go with "Echo" simply because I think it would have provided a stronger lead-in. If all the ideas, characters, and background that "Echo" includes had actually be covered in the first episode, the next few episodes might have had a more consistent tone. But we'll get to that when they come up.
As compared to the "mission of the week" feel of many other Dollhouse episodes, "Echo" has an almost poetic feel, even in the midst of violence. It is a wonderful reflection of the aims and themes of the series. It is very complex, and I certainly won't take on every minute of it here. I'm most interested in how it presents the underlying aims and themes of the series.
Let's get Platonic for a minute. Plato's Cave allegory--one of the most famous bits of classical philosophy and the only one I can ever remember reliably--basically posits that humans are all a bunch of ignorant cave-dwellers clustered underground, with a fire behind them. Some unseen person is playing with finger puppets (or ancient Greek equivalent) near the fire, and the humans are all watching the shadow puppet show on the wall. According to human perception, these shadows are real life. But occasionally somebody gets out of the cave, and after they get over being blinded by the light outside, they realize that everything they've seen projected on that wall was just a poor, pale imitation of what's going on in the real world. However, if this person goes back into the cave, he or she won't be believed, and may be killed.
It's all about perception, and what we choose to do with what we perceive.
This episode riffs constantly on the idea of perception and reality versus interpretation. In doing so, it gives us a level of insight into the characters that ended up taking months to achieve as the series played out on TV. And it is cleverly done. It would be very easy for this type of story to fall into cliches about truth and lies and self-deception, but instead, pretty much everything we see in this episode is both true and false, at the same time.
One of my favorite sequences is Adelle's explanation of the Dollhouse to the prospective client (which, interspersed with scenes from several of Echo's engagements, comprises the first ten minutes of the episode). She tells him, "an Active is the truest soul among us...[who] doesn't judge, doesn't pretend. This will be the purest, most genuine human encounter of your life--and hers." This is all technically true--from inside the context of the inprint and the engagement. And of course, it is all absolutely false. The Active may not be capable of pretending--but the client must not only pretend for himself, but also keep up a facade for the Active. It's bizarre and morally twisted in a way that adds tons of depth to the show's concept. And of course, since the whole conversation is rich in both truth and lies, it gives us a level of insight into Adelle that (again) it took months to gain in the original TV run. The development of her character was one of the strengths of the show, and this gives her moral complexity from the beginning, without taking away her position as the Ice Queen.
If Adelle's conversation with Richard is our window on the Dollhouse from the client's perspective, Echo's intervention with the alcoholic girl is our window on the Actives, far more than anything we see among the wiped Actives. This conversation includes repeated allusions to Echo being a ghost ("a dead woman," as Eddie says, or in Echo's words, "the ghost of Christmas yet to come")--a character whose past is both paramount and disconnected, and who has no discernible future. Furthermore, we get my favorite line of the episode:
There is only one moment in your life. Everything starts from now. Do you want to live? Or do you want another drink?
As with Adelle's conversation above, this is true, especially coming from someone who didn't exist until her personality was downloaded into her brain a couple of hours ago. And of course it is completely meaningless, coming from someone whose future has nothing to do with the choices she'll make today.
The Actives (and by extension, the whole Dollhouse operation) embody this absolute contradiction all the time. They are completely honest and completely false. They are completely present, but that is essentially worthless because they have no future anyway. It is a stunning paradox executed in oppositions and divisions throughout the episode. It's expressed in the hierarchy of the Dollhouse (the absolute control projected by Adelle versus the total ignorance of the Actives), the tense relationships between a number of characters (I'm looking at Topher and Dr. Saunders*), and even visually in the show's titles.** And it is also something that traps every single person in the show. As best I can tell, nobody within the Dollhouse uses the word "Dollhouse" until Topher, near the end of the episode, says:
We live in the Dollhouse. That makes us dolls, and the people playing with us little children. Children break their toys, Boyd.
It soon becomes quite clear that not even Adelle is really in charge; she is as threatened as her employees. And just as the Actives are trapped in their contradictory reality, Adelle is trapped by true belief in a lie, Topher by his buried conscience, and Boyd...well, I have to reserve judgment on Boyd, because I never thought that his ultimate villainy fit the previous development of his character, and I don't know if he's meant to be the same character at all here. At any rate, they each perceive themselves in a way that is far from the reality of their situation.
Everybody talks about Dollhouse being an exploration of prostitution, slavery, human trafficking, and manipulation. That's sort of like saying that Buffy is about the idea that blonde cheerleaders can kick ass, rather than dying to prove the situation is serious, or Firefly is a futuristic interpretation of the South during Reconstruction. And of course those elements are there, structuring each show, providing nuance or humor or background. But I think what Joss is fundamentally interested in, in all these cases, is human identity and where it comes from. How are people changed by fighting a war? Losing one? Chucking all their other principles in favor of one purpose or ideal? Sacrificing everything? Literally having their brains scrambled? Having the weight of the world dumped on their shoulders? Choosing to share the load? I could go on, but I think if you've seen any of the shows, you probably get my drift. And what is more crucial in the Dollhouse than the question of identity?
And then there's the meta-fiction. Joss and company are telling these stories to explain what makes us who we are, and by extension, they are often quite consciously showing us why it is so vital that we tell stories. In this tale of layers upon layers of realities that are simultaneously pretended and true, it's like Adelle says: "This isn't about what you want. It's about what you need." Beyond the fantasies, the capers, and the adventures of the week, each of these characters needs to believe something about themselves that causes them to subconsciously live a constructed tale, be it a self-deception or an artificial "pro bono" personality. In the Actives' cases, according to Dr. Saunders, it makes them better. But what does it do to the other characters? And what does it do to us?
It's not very often that TV produces something that really challenges the mind or the conscience. It's far less common to see something that challenges our perceptions of how we know ourselves. It's true that as it ran, Dollhouse didn't gain so much depth nearly so quickly. So I'll take my 26 imperfect episodes...but I'll wonder what other questions we might have discovered if we had begun here.
*Incidentally: I wondered for a long time why Topher seems to dislike Dr. Saunders so much, especially later in the show... I now think, in light of their conversation during this episode, that Topher is incredibly uncomfortable with Saunders because they are very different people and he programmed her personality (at least to the extent it was modified from the previous Dr. Saunders, and it would have had to be, because the original Saunders was a he). Which means that he programmed her specifically to be very unlike him. He believes she thinks he's a callous monster...but in fact, he made a person who would think that. Conclusion: Topher Brink has a conscience, and he even had one before it got a body and started walking around in a lab coat. As with Adelle, it would have been glorious to really see these intrapersonal (and interpersonal!) conflicts from the beginning of the TV run.
**I could do a whole analysis on the titles. I always thought they were kinda corny--all that "active located" stuff--but once I started getting exegetical I realized they were both incredibly appropriate and beautiful. They are full of the kinds of symbols and ideas I've been discussing here. I particularly love the traffic (first the highway, and then the crosswalks) where we see movement that is both in parallel and in opposition--so perfect. Then there are several different images of Echo dressing or undressing in front of a mirror (putting on or taking off an identity), where the mirror image and the actual Echo (1) do not match, and (2) represent opposites (innocence and experience in the white stockings vs. leather boots, and naked vs. clothed in the kimono shot). And other stuff too--it's really dense--but suffice to say that it is very much about the nature of identity and perception.
-comments on the cancellation of Dollhouse at whedonesque.com
I love Joss Whedon shows. I never saw Buffy, Angel, or Firefly when they were on TV--I was introduced to them by friends in college. But by the time Dollhouse was announced, I had become a serious fan. So I was psyched to actually be able to watch it as it unfolded.
It wasn't quite what I expected. But then, I think that was the point. When Dollhouse premiered, I remember watching "Ghost" (the aired pilot) and thinking "Huh". At that time the only other TV show I was following was Battlestar Galactica, which was in the last half of its final season, and full of emotional charge and unexpected plot twists (ultimately not something that worked well--and NB, Moore and Eick, my idea about Starbuck is still way better than your finale). In comparison, Dollhouse developed slowly, sometimes meditatively, sometimes uncertainly.
I don't think Dollhouse is perfect by any means. I'm not even sure I would say it is excellent. But it is never what we expect. And that is, as Adelle might say, what we need it to be.
I will be doing a review of the aired pilot ("Ghost") next, but I think it's worth it to say here that I think they're both strong episodes. "Echo" is stronger, primarily because it gets into the meat of the characters and issues at stake. The narrative cohesion and flow are also very nice. "Ghost" has its advantages--it's less talky, while leaving plenty to be inferred--but if I had to choose one over the other, I'd go with "Echo" simply because I think it would have provided a stronger lead-in. If all the ideas, characters, and background that "Echo" includes had actually be covered in the first episode, the next few episodes might have had a more consistent tone. But we'll get to that when they come up.
As compared to the "mission of the week" feel of many other Dollhouse episodes, "Echo" has an almost poetic feel, even in the midst of violence. It is a wonderful reflection of the aims and themes of the series. It is very complex, and I certainly won't take on every minute of it here. I'm most interested in how it presents the underlying aims and themes of the series.
Let's get Platonic for a minute. Plato's Cave allegory--one of the most famous bits of classical philosophy and the only one I can ever remember reliably--basically posits that humans are all a bunch of ignorant cave-dwellers clustered underground, with a fire behind them. Some unseen person is playing with finger puppets (or ancient Greek equivalent) near the fire, and the humans are all watching the shadow puppet show on the wall. According to human perception, these shadows are real life. But occasionally somebody gets out of the cave, and after they get over being blinded by the light outside, they realize that everything they've seen projected on that wall was just a poor, pale imitation of what's going on in the real world. However, if this person goes back into the cave, he or she won't be believed, and may be killed.
It's all about perception, and what we choose to do with what we perceive.
This episode riffs constantly on the idea of perception and reality versus interpretation. In doing so, it gives us a level of insight into the characters that ended up taking months to achieve as the series played out on TV. And it is cleverly done. It would be very easy for this type of story to fall into cliches about truth and lies and self-deception, but instead, pretty much everything we see in this episode is both true and false, at the same time.
One of my favorite sequences is Adelle's explanation of the Dollhouse to the prospective client (which, interspersed with scenes from several of Echo's engagements, comprises the first ten minutes of the episode). She tells him, "an Active is the truest soul among us...[who] doesn't judge, doesn't pretend. This will be the purest, most genuine human encounter of your life--and hers." This is all technically true--from inside the context of the inprint and the engagement. And of course, it is all absolutely false. The Active may not be capable of pretending--but the client must not only pretend for himself, but also keep up a facade for the Active. It's bizarre and morally twisted in a way that adds tons of depth to the show's concept. And of course, since the whole conversation is rich in both truth and lies, it gives us a level of insight into Adelle that (again) it took months to gain in the original TV run. The development of her character was one of the strengths of the show, and this gives her moral complexity from the beginning, without taking away her position as the Ice Queen.
If Adelle's conversation with Richard is our window on the Dollhouse from the client's perspective, Echo's intervention with the alcoholic girl is our window on the Actives, far more than anything we see among the wiped Actives. This conversation includes repeated allusions to Echo being a ghost ("a dead woman," as Eddie says, or in Echo's words, "the ghost of Christmas yet to come")--a character whose past is both paramount and disconnected, and who has no discernible future. Furthermore, we get my favorite line of the episode:
There is only one moment in your life. Everything starts from now. Do you want to live? Or do you want another drink?
As with Adelle's conversation above, this is true, especially coming from someone who didn't exist until her personality was downloaded into her brain a couple of hours ago. And of course it is completely meaningless, coming from someone whose future has nothing to do with the choices she'll make today.
The Actives (and by extension, the whole Dollhouse operation) embody this absolute contradiction all the time. They are completely honest and completely false. They are completely present, but that is essentially worthless because they have no future anyway. It is a stunning paradox executed in oppositions and divisions throughout the episode. It's expressed in the hierarchy of the Dollhouse (the absolute control projected by Adelle versus the total ignorance of the Actives), the tense relationships between a number of characters (I'm looking at Topher and Dr. Saunders*), and even visually in the show's titles.** And it is also something that traps every single person in the show. As best I can tell, nobody within the Dollhouse uses the word "Dollhouse" until Topher, near the end of the episode, says:
We live in the Dollhouse. That makes us dolls, and the people playing with us little children. Children break their toys, Boyd.
It soon becomes quite clear that not even Adelle is really in charge; she is as threatened as her employees. And just as the Actives are trapped in their contradictory reality, Adelle is trapped by true belief in a lie, Topher by his buried conscience, and Boyd...well, I have to reserve judgment on Boyd, because I never thought that his ultimate villainy fit the previous development of his character, and I don't know if he's meant to be the same character at all here. At any rate, they each perceive themselves in a way that is far from the reality of their situation.
Everybody talks about Dollhouse being an exploration of prostitution, slavery, human trafficking, and manipulation. That's sort of like saying that Buffy is about the idea that blonde cheerleaders can kick ass, rather than dying to prove the situation is serious, or Firefly is a futuristic interpretation of the South during Reconstruction. And of course those elements are there, structuring each show, providing nuance or humor or background. But I think what Joss is fundamentally interested in, in all these cases, is human identity and where it comes from. How are people changed by fighting a war? Losing one? Chucking all their other principles in favor of one purpose or ideal? Sacrificing everything? Literally having their brains scrambled? Having the weight of the world dumped on their shoulders? Choosing to share the load? I could go on, but I think if you've seen any of the shows, you probably get my drift. And what is more crucial in the Dollhouse than the question of identity?
And then there's the meta-fiction. Joss and company are telling these stories to explain what makes us who we are, and by extension, they are often quite consciously showing us why it is so vital that we tell stories. In this tale of layers upon layers of realities that are simultaneously pretended and true, it's like Adelle says: "This isn't about what you want. It's about what you need." Beyond the fantasies, the capers, and the adventures of the week, each of these characters needs to believe something about themselves that causes them to subconsciously live a constructed tale, be it a self-deception or an artificial "pro bono" personality. In the Actives' cases, according to Dr. Saunders, it makes them better. But what does it do to the other characters? And what does it do to us?
It's not very often that TV produces something that really challenges the mind or the conscience. It's far less common to see something that challenges our perceptions of how we know ourselves. It's true that as it ran, Dollhouse didn't gain so much depth nearly so quickly. So I'll take my 26 imperfect episodes...but I'll wonder what other questions we might have discovered if we had begun here.
*Incidentally: I wondered for a long time why Topher seems to dislike Dr. Saunders so much, especially later in the show... I now think, in light of their conversation during this episode, that Topher is incredibly uncomfortable with Saunders because they are very different people and he programmed her personality (at least to the extent it was modified from the previous Dr. Saunders, and it would have had to be, because the original Saunders was a he). Which means that he programmed her specifically to be very unlike him. He believes she thinks he's a callous monster...but in fact, he made a person who would think that. Conclusion: Topher Brink has a conscience, and he even had one before it got a body and started walking around in a lab coat. As with Adelle, it would have been glorious to really see these intrapersonal (and interpersonal!) conflicts from the beginning of the TV run.
**I could do a whole analysis on the titles. I always thought they were kinda corny--all that "active located" stuff--but once I started getting exegetical I realized they were both incredibly appropriate and beautiful. They are full of the kinds of symbols and ideas I've been discussing here. I particularly love the traffic (first the highway, and then the crosswalks) where we see movement that is both in parallel and in opposition--so perfect. Then there are several different images of Echo dressing or undressing in front of a mirror (putting on or taking off an identity), where the mirror image and the actual Echo (1) do not match, and (2) represent opposites (innocence and experience in the white stockings vs. leather boots, and naked vs. clothed in the kimono shot). And other stuff too--it's really dense--but suffice to say that it is very much about the nature of identity and perception.