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Post by Queen E on Feb 13, 2009 12:23:56 GMT -5
Here's the place!
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Post by Sue on Feb 13, 2009 14:34:37 GMT -5
hyperventilating at just the thought of seeing Joss ideas again |
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Post by Rachael on Feb 13, 2009 19:14:31 GMT -5
Hey! Read this! Okeley dokeley...as there have been no major objections and several positive reactions, we're going to revive the old S3 tradition of the Joss Night Main Thread Party. Okay, we never really called it that. But we should have. As y'all know, Dollhouse premieres tonight at 9:00 EST. Back in the day, when Angel and Buffy were airing every week, we had the tradition of starting a new part in the Main Thread and discussing the episode in real time. This tends to make for livelier discussion and potentially a greater chance of attracting n'ubies. Tonight we're reviving that tradition - anyone is free to post in the Dollhouse thread, of course, but the main action will likely be here (actually, in the new part I'll start in an hour or so). The Dollhouse threads themselves will also be used to discuss the reviews of episodes and feedback for the reviewers. The official S3 spoiler rule has always been: once it's aired on the East Coast, it's not a spoiler. HOWEVER, we suggest that, as a courtesy to people on the West Coast who haven't seen it yet, that you do the following: 1) Put "On the Spot Dollhouse Thoughts" as the subject line for your post and 2) Use the spoiler button to hide what you post from those who don't want to see it just yet. Once the episode has aired everywhere, you can stop using spoiler tags, or keep doing so just to be nice...we won't hold it against you either way. |
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 12:06:20 GMT -5
Teaser
Hey, It's Hey It's That Girl.
So, Echo was an activist who's facing a prison sentence unless she agrees to work in the Dollhouse?
Motorcycling without a helmet. Living on the edge.
Wow, that is one short dress.
That is one fake looking China town.
Where is this set? Some where in Florida or SoCal, or is it supposed be set nowhere in particular?
Had to get into her carriage before it turned into a pumpkin. Hmm.
I think I found something real.
So what happened to the necklace, I wonder?
Ah, there it is.
And the guy didn't pick it up, so it's going to be A Clue to be found later.
We gave two people the perfect weekend together. We're great humanitarians.
O RLY?
She's living the dream.
Whose dream?
Who's next?
I like this little girl.
So of course she has to be nabbed.
What kind of mask is that?
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 12:16:27 GMT -5
Part I
Ah, this guy becomes a client.
So the Dollhouse is part brothel, part PI agency.
This is a gorgeous set.
Does Echo not know what she signed up for, or is she did she just forget that she forgot?
Wandering, wandering, wandering somewhere were she's not supposed to be.
What the hell is going on?
Echoes got some serious infantile regression going on.
Ohh, they wipe the dolls old memories while they're in the dollhouse. Do they really get them back when their time is up? And what kind of compensation do they get for this, other than room and board and being pampered and not remembering anything?
Tahmoh!!
How did he first hear about the dollhouse, I wonder?
Does the Dollhouse have a connection to powerful people or just taking advantage of society's willingness to look the other way?
Red shirt, blue shirt.
Echo gets a new mission.
Blond guy looks familiar.
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 12:27:50 GMT -5
Part II
I'm good with people; I put them at their ease. Heh.
Client doubts that, as do I though for different reasons.
EJO shout out. Heh.
About the mind-body connection.
The personalities come from real people and the tech can make alamgams of them. Kind of like in Dark City.
I wonder if those personalities come from the dolls themselves when they are wiped.
Eleanor Penn.
Client guy is about to spill the beans.
How does this guy know about the Dollhouse if it's so clandestine?
Flashes of memory. Interesting.
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 12:32:36 GMT -5
Part III
Ah, they're in California.
Penn recognizes this hitman?
Hostage exchange rapidly unravels.
You can't fight a ghost.
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 12:38:45 GMT -5
Part IV
Wow, blaming Echo for what happened? Jeez, way to pass the buck there, lady.
Personality needs flaws in order to draw insight from them.
No client, but a mission.
I'm guessing that pursing the kidnappers is going to run them smack into Tahmoh.
Engagements, not missions. Potato, potatah.
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 12:48:56 GMT -5
Coda
OK, so the personalities don't come from the doll's previous lives. They come from (willing or unwilling) donors.
Penn vs the Kidnappers, take two.
Ah, the other girl is also a doll.
Yearbook vid.
Who is this guy watching? I thought it was Tahmoh, that that's not his hair and I don't think he would be sitting around with all those dead bodies.
What can I say, I want to do everything.
So, 5 dolls total.
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 12:56:41 GMT -5
Very interesting stuff here.
I'm thinking that the big three questions of the series are: 1) why do the dolls agree to become dolls, 2) why do the other people who work in the dollhouse agree to do what they do, and 3) why do the clients request what they do from the dollhouse.
I am wondering whether these glitches have been going on for long (and how long the Dollhouse itself have been operating) or if they just recently started, then why now. It doesn't seem to me that any organization (other than a bureaucracy, that is) that sloppy could last for long.
ETA:
Another big question would how the Dollhouse got tapes of personalities from their original owners.
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 13:20:07 GMT -5
I'm also thinking that this show can have interesting things to say about disconnection and disassociation in contemporary life. At least in my own life (which I'd say is like that of many young American middle class suburban/urbanites?) lives are often as segmented into a series of "engagements" where we put on a different facet of our personality. For instance, most people would act differently at work than they do with their families and than they do with their friends. You'd act differently when interacting with people of a different socioeconomic class, or with superiors as opposed to colleagues or subordinates. Or maybe you're part of a counter culture or subculture, so you have a persona when interacting in this subculture than when you are interacting with people in the mainstream. When interacting with people you don't know, most likely you will "put your best foot forward" and try to come off as brighter, happier, and more perfect that you actually are. And with moving around frequently, you are constantly constantly repeating this pattern over and over again in new situation and almost every connection you make is transient. It seems like the concept of the Dollhouse just takes this to a more extreme and metaphory level (the way sci-fi does)
I was thinking about the first client and what kind of person would want to spend a romantic weekend with someone they hadn't seen before and might not see again and it occurs to me that that kind of situation would only exist in a society like ours where we already so used to people slipping into our lives, making supposedly deep connections with us, and then slipping out again.
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Post by KMInfinity on Feb 14, 2009 16:34:17 GMT -5
Sub/related questions -Yes, the scene ended before Echo/Caroline? let us in on that. Money? The chance to forget horror? -Who was the person watching the Pre-Echo video? -Can the "original" be re-imprinted when the 5 year contract is over? -How much is the Dollhouse lying to the recruits before they become dolls? hmmmmm, besides big money and the chance to work with a cutting edge tech/business/science -How are clients found? How do they know to come to the Dollhouse? 4. What are the parameters of the doll experience - besides the obvious one of memory. The whole issue of the near-sighted, asthmatic imprint. I'm also thinking that this show can have interesting things to say about disconnection and disassociation in contemporary life. At least in my own life (which I'd say is like that of many young American middle class suburban/urbanites?) lives are often as segmented into a series of "engagements" where we put on a different facet of our personality. For instance, most people would act differently at work than they do with their families and than they do with their friends. You'd act differently when interacting with people of a different socioeconomic class, or with superiors as opposed to colleagues or subordinates. Or maybe you're part of a counter culture or subculture, so you have a persona when interacting in this subculture than when you are interacting with people in the mainstream. When interacting with people you don't know, most likely you will "put your best foot forward" and try to come off as brighter, happier, and more perfect that you actually are. And with moving around frequently, you are constantly constantly repeating this pattern over and over again in new situation and almost every connection you make is transient. It seems like the concept of the Dollhouse just takes this to a more extreme and metaphory level (the way sci-fi does) I was thinking about the first client and what kind of person would want to spend a romantic weekend with someone they hadn't seen before and might not see again and it occurs to me that that kind of situation would only exist in a society like ours where we already so used to people slipping into our lives, making supposedly deep connections with us, and then slipping out again. The whole idea of being able to "compartmentalize" and what if those compartments start to come in conflict? I remember reading an article about how Bill Clinton's greatest strength and biggest weakness was his ability to compartmentalize. |
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Post by Spaced Out Looney on Feb 14, 2009 21:40:40 GMT -5
More thoughts brought over from the main thread:
About ED's acting:
I would really like to see ED stretch her acting chops too. I really like her, but I was really disappointed in Tru Calling, so I'm hoping to see what she can do in this show.
About how the Dollhouse got the personalities that they imprint:
My thinking about the brain scans is that they collected them under the guise of science experiments.
About why the Dolls have a generic infantile personality rather than their own when they're not Active:
My guess is that it's to make them more docile. So they can't back out of their contract or whatever. I'm wondering about where the original personality is too. And who's to stop the Dollhouse from keeping these folks beyond their contracted period.
About Penn's personality getting justice on her kidnapper after death:
Right. What was it she said, you can't run from a ghost?
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Post by beccaelizabeth on Feb 15, 2009 17:23:18 GMT -5
Definitely seems like explore more than exploit. Camera angles help. There's moments on Supernatural that creep me out because the camera gives the audience a monsters eye view of a woman who's about to get attacked, and she might be naked or she might be wearing one of those stringy tops and either way it's connecting up pretty=victim and making the audience watch the pretty and the mess. So does Dollhouse do something similar? Well you see the Dolls in the shower but you don't see them naked, you see quite a lot of E in that top-as-dress but it was doing interesting things with her saying she thinks she's found someone so right away you get the sense of *loss* when she gets wiped again... exploring complicated stuff, from the start.
And this when Joss reckons they got the hang of things in episode 6.
And then when ... Sierra? The new doll, we saw the most of, while getting wiped. Seeing her body stretched out and *altered*, with the metal bits and the obvious pain... it's... well, again, complicated. It's *not* 'see pretty girls be hurt!'
But it foregrounds that it could be.
This is a show to watch with your brain on, methinks.
Also I kept thinking that this is what actors get asked to do all the time, but without being asked to lose themselves... mostly...
Okay, so, then there was plot. We got action, we got strong military woman at the end, but mostly we got negotiator woman, different kind of strong.
The bit that *fascinates* me though is the mix of uses of 'you can't fight a ghost'. Echo was ... there isn't vocabulary for it really. She wasn't possessed in the classic sense. But she was giving a dead person a voice and a body and letting them work out their unfinished business. That makes the imprint personalities *at least* as interesting as the Dolls or the clients. You have to wonder, how do they get these personas? Do they volunteer? How long was it before recording that woman and when she killed herself? Did she do that on purpose?
We have a really sideways and screwed up sort of immortality, potentially.
But it's like the difference between Greek and Roman sculpture. Greeks made an idealised form by averaging lots of people, Romans were trying to make vessels for ancestors and wanted sculpture to be precise and life like. Er, if I'm remembering art history from 7 years ago anyways. So. The Dollhouse tried to make an averaged out person, an idealised form, but one part of that was strong enough it took over, suggesting... what? About the nature of personality.
JW is playing with the *serious* toys here, identity and nature vs nurture and if there's an underlying self that is somehow independent of specific memory or if some specific memories can by themselves define a self.
What I found very, very interesting also - we didn't see if Echo was 'treated'. She got in the chair, she wanted it done fast, her handler argued to let her remember... and then he ran, and then she sat up and for a moment we could think it was too late... and then she remembered. So I want to ask - was she treated? Did it just not take, when she had such an urgent thing still to do? That possibility is left in there by the editing. I love it.
The people who live in the Dollhouse probably with their original minds in place - and once you've got the potential for 'actives' then you have to wonder about *everyone* - they've got interesting going on too. Only threads to follow up on, but already they're clearly different from each other. I'm not sure about putting scars on an actress who don't got them. It gets close to disability issues, perceptions of, but isn't precisely there yet. But she's arguably one of the bad guys, and she's got facial scars, and if it wasn't a JW show I'd be *facepalm* about that because sometimes writers just do that cause they've put an = in there, bad=scars. But JW is probably doing something else. The who didn't protect her thing.
The 'arguably bad guys' part... so they're doing something illegal, but like to think they're helping people. The actives volunteered, sort of, signed up for it anyway. They get their lives back after 5 years, they get the best possible treatment between times, do they get really rich too? And the idea of a clean slate... And then there's the police type guys explicitly calling it human trafficking, exploitation, hunting it down even after he's been called off.
I loved that sequence with the boxing. The words and the pictures combine to tell a story neither would alone. TV theoretically does this all the time.
It seems like so far everyone involved in the Dollhouse thinks they're the good guys, or at least has reasons to do this that are plausible and solid. I like that. There's waaaaaay too much of the other sort of storytelling, where it's obvious who are the bad guys and they're a bit 2D about it.
The show has a clear set of ongoing threads - the police investigation, Echo starting to remember, the audience finding out what the Dollhouse is about and how it works - and a clear set of weekly stories, not-missions-engagements. And the difference between mission and engagement is a fun split to work too.
And then the last images... I seem to be the only one so far who read that as a clear set of images. She asks how they're going to contain / cover up this, she hands over a folder marked Alpha, which in Dollhouse terms with an active called Echo and one called Sierra probably means a personnel file for the first Active, and then we cut to images of an unknown person surrounded by dead people sending out pictures of Echo. So, to me, that says Alpha the 'active' has gone rogue and done killing and decided to uncover the Dollhouse.
But now nobody else saw that so I'm not sure.
I liked the last words: "I want to do everything! Is that too much to ask?"
We have a motivation for Echo, and we have a tie to debates in feminism, and it's just... interesting from all sorts of angles.
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Post by Pixi on Feb 16, 2009 9:00:26 GMT -5
Here's my lj post about Dollhouse:
So I was kind of dreading watching this because all the reviews were bad and the concept sounded stupid and so on and so on. And I have to say, it wasn't as bad as I expected. I ended up being pleasantly surprised. Yea, it was a bit bland and the thing I miss the most is the snark. Where oh where is the snark? I need the snark Joss. Can the Asian doll be snarky? Cause I loved her.
As for ED's performance - eh. It was okay. She's no Jennifer Garner and I still saw Faith every time I saw her. Note to costuming department - that dress she was dancing in was a wee bit short. I kept worrying that we were going to get a full frontal there.
I am curious about the ending which was awesome so points for leaving the viewer wanting more. Amy Acker felt pointless to me and the scars were very distracting. The head guys were very one note. I did like Echo's handler and I think I'll like Helo/FBI dude (you can see how well the names sunk in - hee!) Anyway, I'll be back.
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