Out of the Bunk
Deep Ponder on Dollhouse: 1-6 and T:SCC 2-18
Dollhouse: 1-6, Man on the Street
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me
The lyrics aren't mine; they are from Firefly and they are The Ballad of Serenity. Serenity was the name of the hot rod space ship that roamed the outer reaches of the galaxy or galaxies that made up the Alliance on that show. The Alliance was the political arm of a conglomerate named Blue Sun that ran things in that world.
In the show, when the crew regulars were boozing in the bars, you could always see a TV screen running endless commercials for Blue Sun. One of those commercials triggered some frightening responses in River Tam, a character who had been appropriated by the Alliance and mentally impregnanted with control mechanisms to do their work. Her brother had kidnapped her back from the Alliance (or Blue Sun) and the two were on the outer reaches of the galaxy in Serenity trying to evade the reach of the Alliance/Blue Sun.
Firefly was a Joss Whedon show on Fox and was cancelled after fourteen episodes. There was some bitterness about that on Mr. Whedon's part and some wondered why he was back on Fox with Dollhouse. This episode explains all. Dollhouse is going to be a continuation of Firefly: The Early Years of the Alliance/Blue Sun. Heh! Take that Fox! Mr. Whedon is slyer than a Fox.
I read that Dollhouse would pick up in Episode 6 and that was no lie.
In this episode, we have those cutesy snippets of man/woman on the street interviews (a la Leno of the Tonight Show), where the host asks various passersby about certain subjects. The subject tonight was the existence of the Dollhouse and the men/women of the streets came up with the usual urban myths and non sequiturs about the Dollhouse. One of the men on the streets started talking about mind control and I dismissed him as the usual paranoid looney coming down off his meds. Wrong! That was the clue to the episode.
There is no ONE Dollhouse. There are 20 all around the world. Miss DeWitt runs our Dollhouse and quite well---she roots out dysfunction and administers punishment with the sad impartiality of a foster mom or a Juvenile Court Judge. Our Miss DeWitt is looking to better herself in the Dollhouse Corporation. She is an Up and Comer. Mr. Dominic knows this and has attached his wagon to her powerful yet energy efficient car.
Our paranoid man on the street says: "You think what they want you to think." Our Miss DeWitt states that the business of the Dollhouse is not fulfilling the fantasies of the clients; it is the process. And that process is the mind control that the man in the street fears. The Dollhouse uses its clients' yearnings, so that they will do its bidding. The clients of the Dollhouse are the high and mighty who have control over the rest of us. It is not just the Dollies who are being mind controlled. The Dollhouse is going to make us all Dollies. This is Firefly's Alliance/Blue Sun Corporation in its infancy.
And to make the associations even more unsettling, Mr. Whedon brings on one of his favorite actors (and I like him too), Mark Shepard, who played the Badger in Firefly, to play a nasty FBI guy who helps to kick our FBI guy, Ballard, out of the FBI organization. But Ballard goes gratefully and gracefully because Miss Murphy's Law Echo has told him to go. Miss MLEcho has been programmed to fight Ballard off the Dollhouse by Miss DeWitt, but there is a rogue in the Dollhouse (and a rapist, but he gets his) who programs Miss MLEcho to bring Ballard into the Resistance and help bring down the Dollhouse.
Now we are rolling. The Man Named Jayne is out of his bunk and becoming the man of action. Mr. Whedon is no longer stroking his 'wand' and is now telling a story as he did in Firefly. And hey Fox, it's the Firefly story that you rejected!
OK, I'm in. Let's see how long it takes the Dolts at Fox to figure this out and what they do about it.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, 2-18
The name of the episode is The Last Voyage of Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter is the name of the submarine that Jesse is the EXO of and it is also the name of a failed US president who had the best of intentions and a good ethical base for his actions, but who proved to be a failure in the execution of the politics required to bring those intentions and ethical actions to fruition.
In other words: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." And sad, bitter Jesse has to keep learning this lesson, over and over, because she proves to be as mechanically reductive and unteachable as John Henry and Miss Weaver and Cameron, especially Cameron, the autotrons that she hates.
And John Connor, Present and Future, proves to be the man, the leader, who can play the politics to achieve the results. "What do people think of me?" Present John asks Derek. Derek tells him that they don't all agree or likes him, but they follow him, because he can play the chess game with Skynet and he can keep humanity surviving. And then we see the cost of the political gaming when John Present sobs in his mother's arms with an expressionless Cameron by his side at the end of this episode.
John Henry is still confused by the soul and the eyes of humanity, but his faint, triumphant smile when he persuades Ellison to let him play longer with his models shows that he is learning the basics of human manipulation. John Henry is also picking up on Skynet Manipulation---where are all the people who resigned from the company? He seems to be concerned about them.
And at the end, Derek tells John that he didn't kill Jesse for her manipulation and murder of Riley. He let her go, as John requested. But in the ending montage, we see Jesse and Riley finding each other so that Jesse can begin to work her bitter plan of revenge on Cameron (who is innocent, but Jesse doesn't care, some one is going to pay for Jesse's mistakes). I wonder if Derek did kill her and he lied to John about it. The montage of the Jesse/Riley meeting would make sense as the beginning of the end for those characters.
When Sarah Connor is upset, she fixes things and cleans up the house.
This is a good show. I am going to have a marathon watch of the first season (that I missed).
Dollhouse: 1-6, Man on the Street
Take my love, take my land
Take me where I cannot stand
I don't care, I'm still free
You can't take the sky from me
The lyrics aren't mine; they are from Firefly and they are The Ballad of Serenity. Serenity was the name of the hot rod space ship that roamed the outer reaches of the galaxy or galaxies that made up the Alliance on that show. The Alliance was the political arm of a conglomerate named Blue Sun that ran things in that world.
In the show, when the crew regulars were boozing in the bars, you could always see a TV screen running endless commercials for Blue Sun. One of those commercials triggered some frightening responses in River Tam, a character who had been appropriated by the Alliance and mentally impregnanted with control mechanisms to do their work. Her brother had kidnapped her back from the Alliance (or Blue Sun) and the two were on the outer reaches of the galaxy in Serenity trying to evade the reach of the Alliance/Blue Sun.
Firefly was a Joss Whedon show on Fox and was cancelled after fourteen episodes. There was some bitterness about that on Mr. Whedon's part and some wondered why he was back on Fox with Dollhouse. This episode explains all. Dollhouse is going to be a continuation of Firefly: The Early Years of the Alliance/Blue Sun. Heh! Take that Fox! Mr. Whedon is slyer than a Fox.
I read that Dollhouse would pick up in Episode 6 and that was no lie.
In this episode, we have those cutesy snippets of man/woman on the street interviews (a la Leno of the Tonight Show), where the host asks various passersby about certain subjects. The subject tonight was the existence of the Dollhouse and the men/women of the streets came up with the usual urban myths and non sequiturs about the Dollhouse. One of the men on the streets started talking about mind control and I dismissed him as the usual paranoid looney coming down off his meds. Wrong! That was the clue to the episode.
There is no ONE Dollhouse. There are 20 all around the world. Miss DeWitt runs our Dollhouse and quite well---she roots out dysfunction and administers punishment with the sad impartiality of a foster mom or a Juvenile Court Judge. Our Miss DeWitt is looking to better herself in the Dollhouse Corporation. She is an Up and Comer. Mr. Dominic knows this and has attached his wagon to her powerful yet energy efficient car.
Our paranoid man on the street says: "You think what they want you to think." Our Miss DeWitt states that the business of the Dollhouse is not fulfilling the fantasies of the clients; it is the process. And that process is the mind control that the man in the street fears. The Dollhouse uses its clients' yearnings, so that they will do its bidding. The clients of the Dollhouse are the high and mighty who have control over the rest of us. It is not just the Dollies who are being mind controlled. The Dollhouse is going to make us all Dollies. This is Firefly's Alliance/Blue Sun Corporation in its infancy.
And to make the associations even more unsettling, Mr. Whedon brings on one of his favorite actors (and I like him too), Mark Shepard, who played the Badger in Firefly, to play a nasty FBI guy who helps to kick our FBI guy, Ballard, out of the FBI organization. But Ballard goes gratefully and gracefully because Miss Murphy's Law Echo has told him to go. Miss MLEcho has been programmed to fight Ballard off the Dollhouse by Miss DeWitt, but there is a rogue in the Dollhouse (and a rapist, but he gets his) who programs Miss MLEcho to bring Ballard into the Resistance and help bring down the Dollhouse.
Now we are rolling. The Man Named Jayne is out of his bunk and becoming the man of action. Mr. Whedon is no longer stroking his 'wand' and is now telling a story as he did in Firefly. And hey Fox, it's the Firefly story that you rejected!
OK, I'm in. Let's see how long it takes the Dolts at Fox to figure this out and what they do about it.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, 2-18
The name of the episode is The Last Voyage of Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter is the name of the submarine that Jesse is the EXO of and it is also the name of a failed US president who had the best of intentions and a good ethical base for his actions, but who proved to be a failure in the execution of the politics required to bring those intentions and ethical actions to fruition.
In other words: "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." And sad, bitter Jesse has to keep learning this lesson, over and over, because she proves to be as mechanically reductive and unteachable as John Henry and Miss Weaver and Cameron, especially Cameron, the autotrons that she hates.
And John Connor, Present and Future, proves to be the man, the leader, who can play the politics to achieve the results. "What do people think of me?" Present John asks Derek. Derek tells him that they don't all agree or likes him, but they follow him, because he can play the chess game with Skynet and he can keep humanity surviving. And then we see the cost of the political gaming when John Present sobs in his mother's arms with an expressionless Cameron by his side at the end of this episode.
John Henry is still confused by the soul and the eyes of humanity, but his faint, triumphant smile when he persuades Ellison to let him play longer with his models shows that he is learning the basics of human manipulation. John Henry is also picking up on Skynet Manipulation---where are all the people who resigned from the company? He seems to be concerned about them.
And at the end, Derek tells John that he didn't kill Jesse for her manipulation and murder of Riley. He let her go, as John requested. But in the ending montage, we see Jesse and Riley finding each other so that Jesse can begin to work her bitter plan of revenge on Cameron (who is innocent, but Jesse doesn't care, some one is going to pay for Jesse's mistakes). I wonder if Derek did kill her and he lied to John about it. The montage of the Jesse/Riley meeting would make sense as the beginning of the end for those characters.
When Sarah Connor is upset, she fixes things and cleans up the house.
This is a good show. I am going to have a marathon watch of the first season (that I missed).