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Date Posted: 11:41:49 02/22/09 Sun
Author: OnM
Subject: Re: Dollhouse 1.2: The Target - Off target(Spoilers)
In reply to: Cactus Watcher 's message, "Dollhouse 1.2: The Target - Off target(Spoilers)" on 07:21:59 02/21/09 Sat

and most importantly it failed to generate any sympathy from me toward Echo

You return to essentially this same statement a few more times in your post, so clearly it's a significant issue for you, but my own reaction has been very different in that my concern or involvement isn't really with Echo herself at all, at least not yet, but with the personalities she has been injected with.

By this I mean that in each of the first two episodes, one of the most emotional moments for me as a viewer has been feeling a profound sense of loss when, nearing the end of the story, Echo is brainwiped, and the memories of the imprinted personality have been removed.

Perhaps it's because I am presuming that the imprinted personalities are not purely created in the sense of a writer writing fiction, but have been removed-- we don't yet know how-- from actual living (or now dead) persons. The fact that the personalities could be blended with others does not reduce the fact that humans are what they think and act, and that when Echo is acting as their physical carrier, she is for all practical purposes those actual persons. When the wipe takes place, you are 1) killing that person-- and 2) worse, destroying their memory, which after all, when someone dies, what elese is really left of them? Ultimately, we only ever exist as others remember us.

By putting off telling us more about Caroline, it's tough to care about Echo at all. I found myself rooting for Faith last night.

I found myself working to not think of her as Faith, and I would recommend other BtVS fans attempt to do the same, because it isn't fair to Eliza or the work she's trying to do in this series. It isn't her fault that she has a distinctive and memorable physical appearance, and that that physical appearance has been melded in the minds of many to her previously most memorable character. It's not a lot different than the trouble the very capable Leonard Nimoy had with the Trek Spock character. While I'm not sure Dushku needs to write a book titled "I Am Not Faith", it behooves all of us who like the actor to do our best to focus on the characterizations she is bringing us now, and not whatever she has done in the past.

For me, I find it helpful in pushing myself out of the head space where I go "ooo, there's Faith!" and realize that every time Dollhouse airs, tens of thousands of new viewers are thinking, "So who's this Eliza Dushku chick? Never heard of her."


But after she jumps on the guy, beats on him pretty good and he still keeps fighting, it's clear Echo is no Faith. At that point Faith disappeared from the story for me, but I don't have the slightest idea who is left.

Who is left is a very brave woman, the outgoing, outdoorsy, adventurous type who after an understandable period of giving in to fear and trying desperately and quite reasonably to save her own life, not only manages to confront and defeat her psychotic attacker but also help save the life of a man who was supposed to be her protector. I would admire such a brave and resourseful person, and be happy to meet someone like her in real life. (Until she's killed anyway by the mindwipe that removes her, and more importantly the memory of her from her host's body.)

Last night we almost, but not quite learned something about Echo's handler. All we know is that he was a little put off by the idea of dealing with her too closely. So by all rights we should have been shown how he gets closer to her and how Echo will depend on him from now on.

Not sure that won't become interdependence, rather than being just a one way street. We shall see, but that's what I got out of this episode.

She could have found a gun in the Park Ranger's office and he could have died without reaching her, and there would be no reason for the audience to care.

But that's not this story-- that's an entirely different one.

Why show us a menacing faceless figure, unless you are going for cheap thrills? (...) Didn't Joss learn anything from the boredom people had with the bogeyman Adam?

I liked the Adam character, YMMV. As to "cheap thrills", it is a standard trope, and whether is it being overused here to me depends on the way it develops in future episodes.

Where would (Alpha) find the funds to completely fool the super wealthy Dollhouse with fake documents?

Uhhm, Dick Cheney's Swiss Bank portfolio? Seriously, though, does that matter? It's another convention. Maybe he stole them from the Dollhouse's Senior Partners.

If this is turning into a another comic book series like Heroes, the weeks which I will continue to watch are running out quickly.

I don't think that even a Joss on mescaline could make a show turn as ineptly, profoundly near-pointless as Heroes became. Now FOX, on the other hand...

[/contrariness]

-- OnM

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