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Post by Lola m on May 1, 2009 21:51:40 GMT -5
Dude, Ballard is dumber than a bag of hammers. Seriously. I'm trying to cut him some slack due to the "he's gone a bit nutty over all this" thing, but still. Snap out of it, dude! ;D I was spoiled long ago, and yet I still got sucked into the story! I was thinking maybe there was another copy of this same guy. Or that he was the engineer guy and then became Alpha and then they wiped him and re-made the engineer guy, etc. etc.
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Post by Lola m on May 1, 2009 21:55:43 GMT -5
I'm sorry, but the actors who play Victor and Sierra are acting circles around Eliza Dushku and Alan Tudyk is blowing everyone else out of the water. I was really hoping to be really wowed by ED. On the plus side, Alan Tudyk! ED is not reaching their levels most of the time, yes. But I will be happy for all the amazing we're getting from everyone else. Because, damn! I mean, damn!!
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Post by Lola m on May 1, 2009 21:57:07 GMT -5
Yikes! That's about as coherent as I can get. Yikes! Poor, poor, Viktor. Oh, Viktor!! Poor poor poor Victor. All lost and "they were fighting on me" and then just attacked and hurt like that . . . Yikes!
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Post by Lola m on May 1, 2009 21:58:33 GMT -5
Ballard's the prince, or Boyd's the prince, or Alpha's the prince. Or Echo's the prince. It's a fine game of musical princes all around, isn't it? When the music stops, who'll be in the chair? **shivers**
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Post by spacecat1974 on May 1, 2009 23:49:45 GMT -5
With all our sleeping actives, my first thought when I saw the episode title was Sleeping Beauty also. I found online that the fairy tale is actual Brier Rose but close enough. I'm going to read up on all the different variants of this tale: www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0410.html#grimmleftylady That is one of my favorite websites!
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Post by spacecat1974 on May 2, 2009 0:09:08 GMT -5
Yeesh! Only took me how many months!?!?
And I did do that waaay back when I joined. One of my friends turned me on to this place but life's been busy. I've been staying away from the main section since as it turns around way too fast for me to keep up.
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Post by Anne, Old S'cubie Cat on May 2, 2009 9:20:19 GMT -5
One thought, or two sort of related ones: Last week, Topher built himself a friend. Judging by the end of this episode, Alpha had the same idea. Briar-Rose/Caroline is still sleeping. I'm still not sure what the protocols are on trailers for next week (are they spoilers, since they aired with the program?), so I'm going to hide this remark: Looks like Echo and Alpha are going Bonnie and Clyde on us. Beyond that, I thought this episode was rather badly paced (long drawn-out fights) and heavy-handed - how many times do you have to show illustrations from the kids' book? We get it, we get it - Echo is Sleeping Beauty, the Dollhouse is the castle surrounded by barbed wire rosebushes, Ballard is the prince (although not a very competent one)... We understand the subtle allusion. Mr Whedon didn't raise no stupid fans. Sheesh. Anne, left with the urge to reread Spindle's End, again. Now that's a reinterpretation. Oh, and the little girl needs a blade to "feel safe". I wonder why Alpha is obsessed with blades, and cutting, and who did what to make him that way?
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Post by artemis on May 2, 2009 15:48:27 GMT -5
Oh, and the little girl needs a blade to "feel safe". I wonder why Alpha is obsessed with blades, and cutting, and who did what to make him that way? especially interesting given that in alpha's rendering of the designer persona, he kept repeating that he didn't like being around people/didn't do well around people/etc.
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Post by artemis on May 2, 2009 15:55:40 GMT -5
Horrible compound fracture as I hang there with one leg stuck thru is my icky imagined outcome. me too! i guess a lot of people don't like risers me, too! i really can't get over how stupid ballard seemed to be in this episode. he didn't connect victor's dots; he didn't realize caroline was no longer caroline; he focused in on a single active; and throughout the episode, i kept thinking the same thing that adelle expressed - did he REALLY think he could just walk in, take an active with him, leave and never have any problems ever? i mean - does he honestly think he's the first person ever in history to try to go up against the dollhouse? it seemed to me in this episode like he really did - like he believes the only reason it hasn't been brought down is because nobody else has tried. (which ties in, in a way, to the girl mentioning the hubris of the prince) i'm also curious and somewhat perplexed as to why he's fixated on caroline in particular, and as to why he didn't think of the possibility that if mellie had been imprinted with a "kill switch" maybe other actives had been too.
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Post by artemis on May 2, 2009 16:03:36 GMT -5
Oh, Dominic was in contact with Alpha? You know, in all the excitement, I kinda forgot that extremely odd and interesting fact. he claimed it was the first time. of course, who knows if that's true? well, for one thing, he seems quite find of mind games and, well, other games - manipulation in general. indeed. and this reminds me of something i puzzled over during the episode: how did alpha know which sleeping pod section was theirs? are we to assume that they've been in the same pods since he left? or that he has been monitoring the dollhouse through hacking into their systems from outside or something like that? i suppose the reason he wanted echo woken up was because *he* wanted to take her with him, and ballard was a means to an end - a way to get her up and keep security distracted while finishing up shutting down their systems. but how did he know about ballard at all, much less that ballard would decide to use that particular guy to get into the dollhouse? he killed the actual designer guy before ballard did any of these steps, yes? in a sense, ballard was both the prince and the anti-prince: he achieved his stated goal (getting her out of the dollhouse) even though he didn't leave it himself, and yet at the same time, led her right into the hands of an apparent homicidal manaic. it reminds me of "be careful what you wish for; you just might get it."
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Post by Sue on May 2, 2009 18:12:15 GMT -5
Some random thoughts:
Doesn't matter whether Alpha was really in contact with Dominic previously or not. He only sent the device so that they would break into it and get mis-directed to Tucson. Although why did he direct them to the body at all? Did he want them to discover that he had offed the architect, just to freak them out or to prove his superiority?
This doesn't answer who inside the DH has been programming Mellie and Echo to give hints and information to Ballard, does it? I don't see how Alpha could be remotely embedding the override of their other programming, even though we did see that he could remotely wipe them.
So Alpha is nuts. What else do we know about him? I can't recall. Something about downloading a lot of personalities at once? Or was he just breaking through and recalling all the imprints he'd had?
Obviously now, though, Ballard and the DH have a common enemy and a common purpose, so Boyd and Ballard have reason to work together to get Echo back from the clutches of Alpha. He is a major bogeyman because it's clear he is using Caroline's body just as a carrier for his girlfriend's mind and that's yucky.
I'm still not totally clear on the thing with the little girl. I know Topher claims he did it totally altruistically--but how did he even know about her? I kept wondering if Alpha somehow manipulated that and had some connection to the girl because of the knife motif.
Alpha is a bad bad person to randomly murder people and to cut up Victor's face for no reason. At least he had a "reason" to attack Dr. Sanders because he sees her as complicent in what was done to him. Did he not sign on voluntarily? Their personality testing protocols apparently didn't realize he was nuts.
Ballard's "stupidity" -- well, I'm mostly annoyed at how he is willfully disregarding the pleas to find out what the Dollhouse's real purpose is. I get that Alpha is the "Big Bad" for this season but I don't think he is connected to the over-arching plot of who really controls the Dollhouse and for what reasons. I'm still wondering if Adelle is the person trying to get Ballard to investigate further but sending him hints via the dolls.
And finally, Alan Tudyk. Even knowing about make-up, etc I couldn't help thinking how awful he looked when he was crazy-environmentalist guy -- pasty, hefty, etc. So it wasn't just the costume but inhabiting the costume and the character. Still his right jaw (left side if you are looking at him face on) seemed swollen to me.
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Post by artemis on May 2, 2009 18:37:52 GMT -5
Some random thoughts: Doesn't matter whether Alpha was really in contact with Dominic previously or not. well, not for purposes of this week's episode, but possibly in the larger scheme of things. mostly, i was just curious. ;D i wonder why he sent it to dominic specifically. i mean, he didn't have to send it to a certain person... or maybe all of the above? not as far as i can see, no. the staff at the dollhouse assumed it was him; i don't think anyone PROVED it was him, though. someone (i don't remember who for sure, but i think it might've been topher) said that the dollhouse had once tried to imprint one of the actives with "ninja skills" in their wiped state, and implied (but didn't really outright state) that alpha's breakdown was the result. of course, again, just because they said that, it doesn't mean it's true. though ironically exactly the same thing some of the dollhouse's clients do... i don't know. i also don't know if topher meant to imply that he was the one who had actually paid for the job, and even if he did mean to do that, whether he really did pay for it. i don't know if it's that or if we're just supposed to draw parallels between the two situations like anne did. since alpha was holding a knife to the doctor, i don't know whether what she said about him being totally sane and healthy and so on when he came in is actually true or not. since we saw supposedly wiped echo remembering things from various assignments in this episode, i think it's plausible that someone could get so messed up from the jumble of memories that they could just snap inside their head. i don't know if that's part of what happened to alpha, though! yes, it seems like no matter how many times they plead for him to do so, he just totally ignores them. it seems that all he cares about is being the prince of the story, not about anything beyond that. i feel like his ignoring that is part of his larger pattern of blindness or tunnel vision. though he could be a clue in it. the way(s) the dollhouse screwed up with alpha (if they did) might help lead to what rossum (and/or whomever) is doing... it's an interesting idea. well, whomever it is, they said they weren't going to be sending any more messages for a while, yes?
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Post by KMInfinity on May 2, 2009 18:51:28 GMT -5
This episode finally made it clear how difficult it is to root for anyone on the show. There's been debates on Dollhouse sites and Whedonesque about how this story style has Joss shooting himself in the foot because there's no "scoobie style family" or characters to root for. I've kept an open mind, but I'm starting to agree. I'm finding the show to be very intriguing on an intellectual level, but with little emotional resonance...
Maybe I'm starting to feel exasperation with too much plot driven material. And maybe there's just too much moral ambiguity for me. I realized partway through this episode I had no investment in anyone when Victor got slashed, Boyd and Ballard kicked each other's asses, Ballard got caught, and Alpha turned out to be no princely hero but an evil, violent nutcase....and none of it made me care about them as characters.
Right now, my biggest question is just how much of this is a huge mistake on Joss' part, or if he really does have an awesome long term plan that includes making me care about some of these characters.
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Post by Anne, Old S'cubie Cat on May 2, 2009 19:03:38 GMT -5
This episode finally made it clear how difficult it is to root for anyone on the show. A world of Yes, I think you've nailed my problem with the show, or at least one of them. I hope he has a short-term plan for making us want to come back next season, or there might not be one. The Husband said, and I am inclined to agree, that this would have done better as a film, or maybe two made-for-TV movies. It drags a bit, in my humble opinion. It just occurred to me that a parallel could be drawn between the dolls and Chuck - the difference being that even if the Intersect was forced upon Chuck the first time, he's still Chuck, just plus extras. Chuck has always had free will, something the dolls don't, even if they chose the Dollhouse voluntarily. Which I, for one, doubt - it looks to me like the DH recruiters go after people who are out of all other options, and don't tell them the whole truth about how their bodies will be used. One more thing - Chuck is more like Buffy than Echo; he can't escape the Intersect any more than Buffy could escape being a Slayer. But like Buffy, he also has the support of his family and friends, even if he can't tell them about his secret second job. And given the choice, he uploads the Intersect and takes on that duty again, because that's what being a superhero is all about.
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Post by KMInfinity on May 2, 2009 19:33:27 GMT -5
One more thing - Chuck is more like Buffy than Echo; he can't escape the Intersect any more than Buffy could escape being a Slayer. But like Buffy, he also has the support of his family and friends, even if he can't tell them about his secret second job. And given the choice, he uploads the Intersect and takes on that duty again, because that's what being a superhero is all about. Big agree! It feels so traitorous, but if it came to a choice at this point I'd rather Chuck and TSCC were renewed instead of Dollhouse. I DO want to see more Dollhouse....just finding it hard to root for it with my heart. I did think about the Briar Rose story being a comment from Joss that heroes are.... not all they're cracked up to be... not really deserving of the title... too complex to be portrayed.... and not available to rescue the actives. The comments by the young girl on the fairy tale seems to imply the actives must (someday will?) need to rescue themselves. I'm flashing on a science fiction story I read looong ago with the explicit theme that slaves can never be freed, they must free themselves. I can't remember...
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