Re: "Dollhouse" = Duh-house

On Feb 21, 1:16 pm, Horace LaBadie <hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article
<2710d21d-8b90-40cd-9bf7-e0136f085...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,





 WQ <WQi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 21, 12:37 pm, Horace LaBadie
<hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<5cb5bde6-6ce5-4d5a-8c35-58a5b87e9...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

 WQ <WQi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 21, 8:25 am, Horace LaBadie <hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
In article
<6dac6815-6083-4f05-978f-c7d0a8d48...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

 WQ <WQi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 21, 12:46 am, Horace LaBadie
<hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<71637ced-8c61-4a21-abf3-a45307179...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

 WQ <WQi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 21, 12:04 am, Horace LaBadie
<hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<0129cce0-eda7-4a21-b629-4fbcb032d...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
om>,

 WQ <WQi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm 2/3 of the way through this week's episode and I just
have to
ask
one simple question:

Does this show make any sense at all?  Seriously.

Yes. Evidently, their Alpha test subject was buggy and went
seriously
off reservation. He ripped through the Dollhouse, sparing Echo
because
he thought that she was special. He sent "Richard" to test her,
and
she
passed the test.

Looks like parts of the Initiative mixed up with the Blue Hands
people
who created River. Adam has gone off, and is looking for his
Bride
of.

Not all that confusing.

--- Yeah, but it was so unnecessarily un-linear in the telling of
it.

It's Whedon's show. The non-linear storytelling works for me. Part
of
the fun of a show is being surprised by the way things are done. In
this
case, we have a fragmented personality being built up from
non-linear
experiences, so the method of storytelling is a parallel to the
emergence of Echo as a character.

--- But again, that's the problem with the non-linear telling of the
story in this case.  It would be one thing if Echo already had a
sense
of something about herself that she was struggling with while being
an
implantable doll and from there structuring her evolution in non-
linear fashion because this would give an anchor to the viewer about
Echo while she freefloats around, allowing the viewer to freefloat
with her in some relatable or identifiable way.  It's a completely
different story when Echo is vacant and directionless as a character
just as the structure of the premise is disjointed and aimless in its
approach - that's where the journey is not worth taking when you
don't
know who you're taking it with.

It's clear from the images shown us in the wipes and in this episode's
hallucinations -- apparently induced by Alpha specifically to elicit
the
buried memories of Caroline, that there is real person in there. Just
because the people in the show say that there is nothing left of the
original personality doesn't make it so. They obviously have a
bug-ridden process, which produces unpredictable results, and the
wipes,
including that of the base personality, are not complete. She is not
vacant.

--- She is vacant, right now, in the first 2 episodes so far.  We
still see or know nothing of what she's really suposed to be like.
Until we do, then all we really seeing of her is nothing, except for
whatever implanted personality she's given, which isn't her at all.
Again, give me some kind of hook to her that I can follow of her real
self so I can at least try to relate or identify with her situation on
some level.  But she gives nothing, so there's no tease for me to
really want to know where it's going and how it gets resolved, making
all the plot meanderings look that much more convoluted.

No, she is not vacant. Her real memories keep floating up to the top.
They have taken pains to illustrate that, especially in this episode
with the hallucinations of her past self. They were the same as the
video yearbook of her shown in the epilogue of the previous episode.

--- So why didn't I care?  Maybe because what glimpses are being shown
themselves describe not a very interesting character?  For a concept
like Dollhouse, you really need to have a strong central character
with a background that stands out.  It's like The Prisoner.  No. 6 was
in a way like Echo and the Dollhouse was in a way like The Village.
Both 6 and Echo are trapped in their environment.  There are a lot of
questions surrounding the exact nature of both characters and what
their respective environments are all about.  But unlike Dollhouse,
The Prisoner had a strong central character that even if the audience
didn't have all the answers to all the questions of what was going on,
they could still identify with his predicament and go along for the
ride with him as he tried to resolve it, because they had a "hook" to
his character.  Dollhouse delivers no inherent "hook" to Echo, just
extraneous glimpses of her past, which is further compounded by her
having to adopt all these other identities which even in the latest
example she couldn't even stick to.  She's a bubbly perfect girlfriend
who turns scared little runaway in the first half of the episode, then
she does a 180 and becomes Rambette?  It was like seeing 2 separate
characters in that implanted one - talk about adding more confusion to
the mix.

How am I supposed to know why you don't care? It's clear that
Echo/Caroline is capable of adapting to her engagements, and that some
of that must be due to her underlying strength of personality. The
comparison to The Prisoner is inane. The whole point of TP was the
assertion of identity from the beginning. Here, the premise is the
search for identity. Echo/Caroline is finding out who she is.

--- I used The Prisoner as an example of how a strong character is
needed to convey a seris' point or rationale across. Yes, The
Prisoner was about assertion of identity, but Echo, too, is about
assertion of identity in a different way. She has none, yet she's
getting glimpses of having had one and is going through some sort of
process of trying to reclaim it. I think the problem with Echo's
character as a doll is that she just comes across too much as a vacant
doll. What Whedon has done is start the character from scratch as an
empty shell that needs to be filled. But that's a no-no if he expects
to have any kind of success with the premise he's playing with. I
again state that the least Echo should have had at the start was some
shock to her system that sees her reclaim loose fragments of her true
personality, enough of them to define a character that viewers can
relate to and engage with, and that Echo herself can recognize,
embrace and work with, as she goes through her evolution. Whedon
chose to give us, what, a video scrapbook at the end of the pilot? I
mean, talk about being as removed from Echo herself as one can get
while trying to clue people in but still leaving them without any real
anchor for her character insofar as where she presently is with
herself. It doesn't matter anyway, the show took a dive in the
ratings last night, and that's with repeats opposite it, so that's not
a good sign for it at all.

.

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