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Post by Queen E on Mar 6, 2009 19:38:29 GMT -5
Here's the place...
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Post by Lola m on Mar 6, 2009 21:12:00 GMT -5
Midwife? Interesting thing for a client to have requested an imprintable person to be. Because they wanted to have no record of the birth, maybe?
And of course we get a connection with - "I want to forget." But also there is another subtler analogy, with her wiped state like becoming a new baby again, perhaps?
It is really interesting (and creepy) to see them in their wiped state.
"They're a little bit bison." Ha! Funny, yet creepy. And true, in a way.
Questioning if they are really "volunteers". As we wonder too!
Huh. She actually looks different. Like . . . a more prominant upper jaw/lip?
She's not a hooker, is she? She's there to sneak in somehow and do something else, yes? Yeppers.
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Post by Lola m on Mar 6, 2009 21:25:00 GMT -5
I like this thief character she's been imprinted with. She's snarky and witty and violent.  "That's six seconds I won't get back." Ha! She doesn't want to be famous, she wants to be the best and not be noticed. I think that is an excellent goal, frankly. "When this is over, feel free to forget I even exist." Nice.  Stolen art is the best stuff to steal, yes? Since the folks who had it won't tell the authorities? Stealing the Parthenon?! "Inn't that kinda big?"  Poor poort pretty FBI guy. Hmmmm. And they're playing a very deep game to send the same guy to see him. "Russian Georgia, not Sweet Home Georgia." Heee! And this country is confusing.  Ooopsie. Old guy trapped them? This is not good!  Oh noes. This is very very very not good. With the personality wiped, there's no getting out, is there? |
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Post by Lola m on Mar 6, 2009 21:32:40 GMT -5
Topher has a student? Damn. She's just a lost kid. And these guys are not happy. Oooooh. Remote wipes are "untested" and this was done by someone. I'm thinking, Alpha, yes? Oh oh oh!! And he's making the analogy overt! That they make the transition at the house all "comfy" but out there it's all "foreceps and bright lights". Birth!! Oh my. They just put the same personality into Sierra. And they'll send her in. Which means the guys will see something . . . odd. Will they be allowed to survive this job? |
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Post by Lola m on Mar 6, 2009 21:40:28 GMT -5
Ooooh, conversation about the art and being "broken". Echo is "not some girl, you and she are cut from the same cloth". Well, yes, because you're exactly the same person! Heh! Not a lone gunman, a giant multi-pronged conspiracy. ;D I love how everyone keeps repeating how they thought remote wipes "weren't possible". Ooooooooooooooooooooooooh! Looking at the mountain and "when I'm there, my name is something else"!!! Remembering more personalities!! "What's prison?" "A place with no sky." |
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Post by Lola m on Mar 6, 2009 21:48:51 GMT -5
Oh, that's classic. Only one guy knows how to break their computer security and he's dead. You know that's never true! Well. And in this world, dead might just mean he could be imprinted into someone, yes? Heh! Echo is the perfect person to work with like this, isn't she? She's extremely happy to be given something to do and she follows instructions exactly. And when you say "don't think", well, she really doesn't.  Only it still goes sideways.  And the head of operations is starting to realize that Echo's handler isn't exactly objective about her. Point it at the bad guys and pull the trigger. Aren't we the bad guys? And now she has conflicting things she's been told to do - hands up or shoot. Does she even have the ability to make a choice? |
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Post by Lola m on Mar 6, 2009 22:06:34 GMT -5
Wow! She remembered the drug and put together a plan on how to use it. Also? I find it very interesting that the guy who appeared to be all hostile and unhelpful was the guy who was really more thoughtful and came through in the end. And the guy who was all surface friendly was the "get mean in a crisis" guy. "He's broken. Can we fix him?" "We'll try." "I'm not broken." "No. You're not." Damn!!! Oh, FBI guy - interesing! "I don't want you to die, but if you do, there's a lot to learn from a dead body." Harsh, dude. Are you just working this guy? "You will care. That's your problem." Well, he's right. Would the House actually kill this active to give the FBI guy the right "story"? And how ironic that FBI guy is trying to threaten and manipulate this guy because he wants to help someone who is being used by the House, and yet this guy is in the same boat. "She's fresh as morning dew. No pesky 'human evolution' bits lingering around." I can't tell if Topher (is that his name?) is cynical, or hyst doesn't see anything other than the technology, or does know how messed up this is but won't acknowledge it, or what. Maybe all of the above? Ha! He thinks it was Alpha, too! Also ha! Not fired, she's "upping his security clearance". And you should be scared, dude! Drawing the "broken" face on the mirror. I really liked the storyline of her "wiped" persona having to deal with this situation she was thrown into. Really fascinating and revealing. Also? Made me realize that my concern of "how will we get to know Echo if she's not really anyone" was a false concern. I was thinking of her . . . well, frankly, I was thinking of her like they do in the Dollhouse. And that was a mistake. |
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Post by Karen on Mar 6, 2009 23:25:00 GMT -5
Herd instinct. Huh.
'Manfriend'..hehe
'Blue skies.'
Oh, a sting. Very nice.
'Taffy standard time.'
Oops. Reboot.
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Post by Sue on Mar 6, 2009 23:40:25 GMT -5
Good episode. Very twisty and layered. Like the "good thief." More tomorrow. Have to see the end of a b-ball game to tell who VU plays tomorrow in SEC tournament semi-final. |
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Post by Shan on Mar 7, 2009 10:09:05 GMT -5
Okay, the woman who takes the assignments for the actives really needs to vet the clients better. I mean, seriously. Straight up tells the guy that they won't know what the assignment is, but the "computers" have flagged it as a heightened risk for the active and all she does is ask for more money? Does anybody care to join me in a resounding "duh" here? Especially after they suspect Alpha set up "Target"? They allow Alpha to breach them yet again and go after Echo? Which, BTW, I think he's doing in order to break her back to some version of reality. I don't necessarily agree with his objective, but the methods are sucking rather badly. Of course, that's understandable if he is, in fact, psychotic.
Oh, and won't it just be very Jossian if the murdering psychopath turns into a good guy?
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Post by KMInfinity on Mar 7, 2009 12:29:02 GMT -5
I very much liked this episode. I like the layers and the different viewpoints.
I agree Shan, the comment from DeWitt about not knowing the Active's engagement is so disingenuous - except I'm sure it's a lie. We've seen Topher "download" (upload, save, um???) the Active's personality during a wipe, so I assume it's not just the personality but also the Active's memories of the engagement. I'm wondering if the Dollhouse has a sideline in blackmail.
I'm also wondering about the assumption that Alpha is behind all of Echo's engagement interferences. Okay, maybe the goal is to snap her out of the programming but surely the risk he's subjecting her to is unacceptable. Yeah, okay, psycho-dude...but he's demonstrating a lot of rationality and planning and strategy and tech knowledge to be making choices so flawed that his main objective of "waking Caroline up" is in conflict with her survival.
Unless his real goal is to destroy her, and the increasing self awareness is a byproduct of his failures. Except, there would be easier ways to merely destroy her, right?
I was worried that the lack of continuity in personalities from Echo's engagements would hinder bonding with her characters...and that it would be hard for me (and others) to connect with wiped-Echo in the Dollhouse. But not true. Anyone agree they feel an Echo-essence that exists in that tabula rasa state?
"Did I fall asleep?" The tagline is getting ominously creepy and tragic. It's reminding me of Donna's fate in the Doctor Who finale.
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Post by Matthew on Mar 7, 2009 16:01:45 GMT -5
There's a piece of English doggerel that goes:
Taffy was a Welshman,
Taffy was a thief;
Taffy came to my house
And stole a piece of beef.
I went to Taffy's house,
Taffy was not home;
Taffy came to my house
And stole a marrowbone.
I went to Taffy's house,
Taffy was not in;
Taffy came to my house
And stole a silver pin.
I went to Taffy's house,
Taffy was in bed;
I took up a poker
And threw it at his head.
Not offering it up as anything much except that when she said her name, I thought of it: I think it was behind her naming. You could go deeper if you wanted to, about the marrowbone and the "throwing the poker at (her) head" but I think it's more just why/how the character was named.
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Post by Sharky on Mar 7, 2009 17:32:54 GMT -5
There's a piece of English doggerel that goes: Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief; Taffy came to my house And stole a piece of beef. I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was not home; Taffy came to my house And stole a marrowbone. I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was not in; Taffy came to my house And stole a silver pin. I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed; I took up a poker And threw it at his head. Not offering it up as anything much except that when she said her name, I thought of it: I think it was behind her naming. You could go deeper if you wanted to, about the marrowbone and the "throwing the poker at (her) head" but I think it's more just why/how the character was named. Nice. And Joss does have his ties to the British. |
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Post by Shan on Mar 7, 2009 19:45:33 GMT -5
There's a piece of English doggerel that goes: Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief; Taffy came to my house And stole a piece of beef. I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was not home; Taffy came to my house And stole a marrowbone. I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was not in; Taffy came to my house And stole a silver pin. I went to Taffy's house, Taffy was in bed; I took up a poker And threw it at his head. Not offering it up as anything much except that when she said her name, I thought of it: I think it was behind her naming. You could go deeper if you wanted to, about the marrowbone and the "throwing the poker at (her) head" but I think it's more just why/how the character was named. If you think in Jossian, who lived in England, it might be more enlightening to understand that the Welsh and the English have been at cultural "war" for several hundreds of years. How that might fit into the show, may be....a certain town called Chester (where I spent a lot of time back in the day) went back and forth between the English and the Welsh over the centuries (and the Romans before that). I'm not sure how that would correlate to the show, though. Is Echo the original Welsh, or does she represent the Roman? Of anything, I would say that the Dollhouse memories would be the English, the newest, on top of whatever she already has. I don't know what historical bias the writers have but me, I would put the Roman "blank slate" over the original "Welsh" personality and then top it off with the "English" assignments. But that's just my own bias. |
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Post by Anne, Old S'cubie Cat on Mar 9, 2009 8:14:27 GMT -5
Finally caught up. A few thoughts (please forgive the incoherence, it's way too early in the morning): Thing 1: Somebody comes to me, says "I want the world's best midwife so I can give birth in a mountain chalet in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a snowstorm"? I'm going to tell them they're out of their freakin' minds. What if something went wrong? Thing 2: I know the show's setup, I don't need to be hit over the head with it at the beginning of Every Single Episode. Thing 3: Is it, perhaps, in Eliza's contract that she must appear in her bra at least once an episode? Thing 4: I also don't need to be hit over the head with the message of the show of the week. Echo=newborn baby. I get it. Thing 5: Somebody tell Fox and Hulu that those ads with Eliza as a brain-sucking alien, while cutesy, shouldn't be run during Eliza's show, as they tend to break the thread of our suspension of disbelief... Aside from that, there were aspects of this episode I thought were pretty good - in particular, Echo being "broken", and proving to herself that she isn't that broken after all. I get the feeling she's starting to retain bits of her installed personalities, and she's maybe finding something of her real self. I'll hang in there a bit longer. Although it's hard to make/find time to watch something this dark and depressing; it still feels like work. Was I the only one reminded of Leverage? I think Echo was channeling Parker, with a good dollop of Faith thrown in for good measure. I wonder if anybody's written the crossover fanfic yet - Faith is captured by the C.O.W. and turned over to the Dollhouse as punishment for her crimes, mindwiped and renamed Echo... I'm not sure what the rules are about trailers aired at the end of the episode - are they considered spoilers? So, just to be on the safe side: Next week, Waco? That's going to be very dark and depressing. Do you think Alpha, who apparently was given a whole boatload of special abilities, is one of the founders of the Dollhouse? It occurred to me that perhaps he knows how to do all these things because he helped develop them. Perhaps he grew a conscience and had to be "gotten rid of". Or perhaps he's the secret government Initiative super-soldier experiment gone horribly awry. I'm probably wrong, pay me no mind.  |
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"That's six seconds I won't get back." Ha! She doesn't want to be famous, she wants to be the best and not be noticed. I think that is an excellent goal, frankly.
