Dollhouse:

[cadetdru]

Dear Mr. Whedon and Mr. Whedon's Writers,

We need to talk.

Comments

[ide_cyan]

And make the one black guy the villain, and killing him, to add racefail to genderfail.

Which also included the scene with Echo wearing nothing but bandages, tied to a table where she's going to get a bunch of needles stuck into her back to remove her spinal fluid.

[cadetdru]

You're right. I'm still so blinded by the genderfail, I hadn't even begun to think about the racefail.

And they had the Asian, non-victimized lab tech Ivy leave last week.

Brilliance!

[jacquilynne]

Which could be done with her dead, paralyzed, etc, but not, apparently, with her sedated.

[cadetdru]

Everyone knows you have to writhe around for the Fox audience...I mean, medical science.

[murasaki_plum]

I finally caught up with the last five Dollhouse episodes this weekend (hulu ftw) and I have to say you pointed out exactly what was bothering me as I got through them. The more the plot was moved, the more the female characters seemed to lose their agency. Why not have Topher or Topher 2.0 give Mellie and Sierra super-soldier upgrades like they did Victor and Echo so they could, I don't know, know how to hold a gun and protect themselves? And I think what made the fight between Echo and Claire all the more difficult to watch was that Claire was essentially puppeted by Clyde. The whole "It's okay to beat you because I'm in a woman's body" was even more pathetic.

Adding on the the racefail, the one that stood out to me as more irksome than Boyd turning out to be the big-bad or Ivy getting carted away before having her crowning moment of awesome was the introduction of Arcane, the big scary black man...who turned out to be a scrawy old white guy in an ill-fitting business suit.

[cadetdru]

Technically, Mellie did know how to hold a gun. ...that was fairly terrible. But she did! She's the only female character-- besides Echo-- who actually has fought back against her aggressors. But she's in the way of Echo/Paul, so let's splatter her blood on Paul's face. Instead of, I don't know, sending Madeline or Mellie or Taffy-in-Mellie's-body out into the world because her damned contract is up.

Sierra can't have any soldiering because she's the designated victim! Can't have her take care of herself! And Ivy can't be around because she has a remarkable brain...put to use getting Topher juice boxes, and now probably killed by the Rossum operatives who broke in.

The racefail's been in the show for a while. The bad-- well-intentioned, but still messing everything up-- guy from "Echoes" was the black student.

[murasaki_plum]

I was never a fan of the whole Echo/Paul thing. When Paul (implausibly) lost all of his feelings for Echo, my initial thought after "How contrived of you, Joss." was "Thank you!" Probably not the reaction he was going for though.

Sierra/Priya did get to kill Nolan, but seems they need a woman on hand that they can still traumatize. Made me think of this:

Amanda: I'll be the victim!
Wednesday: All your life.

And just when Topher acknowledged her as more than a glorified secretary he put her on a bus (and is now most likely dead).

I completely forgot about that guy! And then there was that time the imprinted Sierra with a woman who despised Asians and didn't want to get her treatment done from Ivy.

[cadetdru]

I'm not particularly a fan of Paul, in a couple or on his own. I liked him better when he was Mulder, if that makes any sense. But he's stupider, and has worse/less explained motives.

Sierra/Priya killed Nolan, but the knowledge of her act drove her back to being a Doll.

Sierra also wanted Ivy to tie her up and spank her that time. That was a weird time.