Dollhouse 1x04: Gray Hour

[sineala]

I liked this better than last week.

Comments

Art History: You're doing it wrong

[lysimache]

(lysimache also started yelling at the TV that they'd misrepresented the ideas behind cubism, but I have forgotten her specific point.)

They seemed to think that Cubist portraits = ugly and broken, that it was a fractured self in a bad way. (See looking Echo in the mirror at the end, and no, Joss, no points for that.) But Cubism was about trying to represent three-dimensional perception in two-dimensional space, and therefore using multiple perspectives overlapping. It draws our attention to the medium and is certainly not inherently "ugly," and is "broken" only insofar as 2D representations of 3D reality are inherently "broken."

Also? That painting of a mountain (who was that supposed to be by?) was way uglier than the Picasso. IMO.

Re: Art History: You're doing it wrong

[sineala]

Thank you, Jenny. :)

[gelishan]

I understood wanting the perfect negotiator, at least! THAT made sense to me.

[sineala]

I suppose that one makes some kind of sense. But midwife? I mean, I appreciate that it's not a Super Sexy Spy Job, but... why?

[gelishan]

Not even a little idea unless the muscle memory is imprinted too. Which, actually, canonically has to be the case. Alpha has ninja fighting skillz! The show says so.

[sineala]

Well, maybe Alpha used to be a ninja. :P

Okay, so they imprint muscle memory. I still can't figure out why Echo is better than a real midwife, who is probably way cheaper.

[mrdorbin]

The midwife thing throws me too. The one thing the Dollhouse offers that nobody else can is that after the job is over the person disappears. No messy entanglements. So the negotiator, where he's afraid about it being made public? Disappearing midwife? Um, maybe her parents don't approve of the pregnancy so she's hiding it? It just doesn't fit.

I also want to know why only Echo and Sierra seem to get any work. Everyone else just works out and has salad, I guess.

[sineala]

Well, it was a remote snowy cabin in the middle of a mountain, IIRC, so maybe that fits with "hidden pregnancy." I guess.

To be fair, the Dollhouse does seem to be full of nice fitness facilities. And art. I guess no one wants pretty boys with no memory. Maybe they misjudged their market drastically, or something, and they already wiped all the boys before finding out no one wanted them. I dunno.

[tsarina]

I think there are lots of reasons why people could want to keep their pregnancy and/or baby a secret. The midwife or doctor who delivers the baby is one more potential leak, so you'd want to make sure they would shut up or disappear. Be it the bastard child of insanely wealthy man like Rupert Murdoch or Camilla's love child with the Queen's gardener, the parent could be worried about the baby's impact on inheritances, family, politics, media, the potential for kidnapping or blackmail...

In the first episode, didn't we see an operative dressed in a Kimono going out to the van?

[sineala]

Hmm. I guess they could. So far they've just used the NATO alphabet, though.

Thanks for the random comment!

[fiatlouis]

I knew nothing about the Elgin marbles. I guess now I do. And some of us do sink to the bottom of the pool. That is basically why I am a terrible swimmer. And I'm pretty sure that Eliza Dushku has less body fat than me (although also less muscle, perhaps, which is dense and makes one sink).
I am just catching up with this Dollhouse thing, and I am really enjoying reading your commentary. You article things about the episode that I couldn't quite put into words, and sometimes hit things I hadn't thought of. Thanks for posting all these!

[sineala]

And, hey, now you know the Elgin Marbles aren't stolen, except insofar as Lord Elgin stole them from Greece in the first place. And I wouldn't sink to the bottom of the pool, so thank you for reminding me we are not all as buoyant. :P

Thanks for commenting. I think I'm a couple episodes behind, so I've got to catch up a little more...