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Dollhouse

Re: New Joss Whedon show

vacantlook said:
Ok, I need some help.
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KoshFan to the rescue! Friday's ep was pretty standalone. A little filling-in of Topher's character, an Echo plot that could have come anywhere in the season.

However the Ballard/Mellie stuff will definitely be played on in the next few. I could summarize it for you or you could sit it out, your call.
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

What you need to know: Mr. ExFBI got November's fingerprint, and took it to the black woman in records at the FBI. She did a search, and about a dozen different records, under different names, but with November's photo, flashed on the screen and disappeared. FBI woman says she now believes him.

Also, Mr. ExFBI screwed the shit out of November, in a way that said to me he no longer saw her as a person, but a "Doll," to be used. Of course, she dug it.
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

He also felt really bad about it afterwards... a lot of talk that they're taking him the "Wesley" route. Excellent acting on the part of Penikett; he had a look in his eye that made me gulp.
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

I think he just feels that she isn't a real person, because of her multiple fake personalities, yet was angry with her for being used. I could see his feelings changing radically, if he finds her true persona.
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

I've seen it suggested, and I find it a fascinating thought, that the way the Dollhouse has been monitoring and ifluencing Ballard with eavesdropping devices and a sleeper active, that maybe that's how the Dollhouse begins to get some of their handlers. Thinking about Boyd, for example; he was a police officer before working for the Dollhouse, we don't know why he agreed to work for them, but he has expressed ethical problems with what they do in the past. So, it could be an interesting twist if by the end of season one/or in the wake of those events as season two (please, please let us have a season two) begins, Ballard might end up working as a handler for the Dollhouse.

I'm worried that November is going to end up dead by the end of the season, but I really hope not because I think she's my favorite character at this point.

And I'm still thinking that though Dominic was a mole for the NSA that he wasn't the one who's reprogrammed Echo and November to include warnings to Ballard.
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

Sometimes there are things that just stare you in the face, but you can't see them until someone else points it out.

For example, I decided to pop over the Whedonesque and see what new was being talked about there, and I found an entry linking to a Daily Kos blog entry talking about Dollhouse. I read the blog -- which examines the show from the perspective of it being a meta-story about television production itself -- and I was reading the comments, and that's where I found a couple people point out something that I should have realized myself, given that I'm a big word etymology nut.

The parent corporation that began the dollhouses is called Rossum. That is an allusion to an old play called "Rossum's Universal Robots". That play is the origin of the word "robot" in the English language, which can be etymologically traced back to a word meaning "slave".
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

I don't know about another mole in the Dollhouse, exactly; I'm thinking its been done by Alpha hacking into the Dollhouse from outside what with the way he deprogrammed Echo over the phone in that art thieving episode. While Alpha might not be physically in the Dollhouse, he's still from within its operational structure, so he could fit the designation of "man on the inside" from a certain perspective.
 
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Re: New Joss Whedon show

I don't think it is Alpha feeding info to Ballard. I think it is an agent of whoever instigated Ballard's FBI investigation of the Dollhouse. Even if I'm right about that, I agree that Alpha qualifies as a sort of 'remote mole.' :D
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

Tragically I got spoiled and knew Alan was playing Alpha, but the twist at the end I didn't see coming.

Question is, did Alpha and Echo/Caroline really love each other... or did Alpha just build a personality that wanted to be rescued?
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

Here's what I'm thinking at this point. Alpha and Echo sort of had a thing with each other, just more further along developed, like Victor and Sierra started to have in this season. But then, I really need to rewatch the episode to get a better sense of everything that happened there at the end of the episode.

Another thing that was being talked about in the discussion of the episode on Whedonesque was the imprint of Dominic in Victor calling out for Whiskey. There's no way he's referencing liquor since Whiskey would be the name of a Doll since all the Dolls are named after the phonetic alphabet and Whiskey is W. So the question is who is Whiskey; there were a number of people suspecting that it's Amy Acker's character; they were suspecting that when she was scarred by Alpha in his escape way back when, that they decided they couldn't use her for engagements so they programmed her to be a doctor and serve in-house. It would interestingly fit with her having said in a previous episode that she hasn't left the Dollhouse in a long time. It would also fit with Alpha asking her in last night's episode if she had always wanted to be a doctor, and she said yes, and he said she was wrong (or however he phrased it).
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

Pretty disappointing, mainly because the set-up was laughable. Either Ballard is a moron, or the writers think the audience are idiots. So, a guy who believes the dollhouse will kill him follows Ballard into the dollhouse (the key there is follows because Ballard always takes the lead therefore you never get the sense that he is being forced into the dollhouse) because he's afraid Ballard will report his weed farm? So, he chooses possible death over a limited amount of jail time, and we as the audience are supposed to buy this and believe that Ballard bought this as well. Then you have the moments when Alpha was by himself with no one around and he was still acting like the fake character he created for Ballard, unless they make that a trait of Alpha's it was pretty stupid writing.

So yeah, there were moments that could have been great and an episode that could have been great, but because of the laughable set-up the episode ends up predictably mediocre. As sad as it is for me to say this, at this point if Dollhouse returns for a second season I don't know if I'll be along for the ride, it's just not worth it.
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

Cell, every week your whole reaction seems to be in finding what you see as fault in the show. Why bother waiting until a possible second season to stop watching since you don't seem to get any enjoyment out of the show now?

The Dollhouse designer persona that Alpha was using expressed fear that the Dollhouse would have him killed, yes, but he also eventually expressed fear (as fake as it might have been given that he was playing Ballard) that Ballard would kill him too when Ballard pulled out his gun in the apartment of weed. Plus, the persona Alpha was playing was someone who's hyper-anxious; if you've never dealt with a person in real life that uncontrollably experiences hyper-anxiety, then it might seem stupid to you, but it made sense to me, even if scripted a bit for comical effect. Hyper-anxious people can be easily intimidated. Plus, Alpha has a lot of really weird shit floating around in his head thanks to the whole composite event that made him what he is; I wouldn't be surprised if the high-anxiety bit wasn't completely faked but part of one of Alpha's past imprints coming out amongst all the crazy floating around in his head.

Ballard's shown himself to be impulsive plenty before now, so it doesn't seem any different to me now that he's become little more than his obsession for getting Caroline out of the Dollhouse. That obsession easily could be making him not thinking everything though as thoroughly as someone else might would.
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

vacantlook said:
Another thing that was being talked about in the discussion of the episode on Whedonesque was the imprint of Dominic in Victor calling out for Whiskey. There's no way he's referencing liquor since Whiskey would be the name of a Doll since all the Dolls are named after the phonetic alphabet and Whiskey is W. So the question is who is Whiskey; there were a number of people suspecting that it's Amy Acker's character; they were suspecting that when she was scarred by Alpha in his escape way back when, that they decided they couldn't use her for engagements so they programmed her to be a doctor and serve in-house. It would interestingly fit with her having said in a previous episode that she hasn't left the Dollhouse in a long time. It would also fit with Alpha asking her in last night's episode if she had always wanted to be a doctor, and she said yes, and he said she was wrong (or however he phrased it).
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Hah, I caught those tidbits too.



Cell, have you ever wondered if you're in the wrong line of work? You keep watching things you don't like...
 
Re: New Joss Whedon show

Did no one else catch when Ballard more or less said HE was a doll? It was when he saw Victor, who he said he had known his whole life, which struck me as rather strange.

What struck me as odd about Ballard and Alpha-as-enviromental-engineer, was first, that Ballard took him with him, as he was in such a state as he seemed likely to give them away. Second, when Alpha dove in to his work on the computer, to disable things, with such zeal, it seemed out of character for the reluctant enviromental designer, so it was then I figured he was really Alpha. Of course, when he said he was shutting off the oxygen, that left no doubt.
 
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