In her review of the second season premiere of “Dollhouse,” Maia wrote “the scene that owned this episode was Fran Kranz and Amy Acker in a room,” but didn’t end up saying that much about the scene. (Which is fine, what Maia wrote about the rest of the episode was great).
PetPluto, in contrast, spent about half of her review discussing The Scene. I especially liked this observation:
SAUNDERS: Let’s stop playing games.
TOPHER: Okay, huh – how does this qualify as not playing games?
SAUNDERS: Because this is the endgame. This is where it all leads. You design someone to hate you so you can convince them to love you.
TOPHER: Hey, I could whip up a love slave any day I wanted to.
SAUNDERS: But that wouldn’t be a challenge, would it? Slaves are just slaves. But winning over your enemy – the one person guaranteed to reject everything you are – that’s real love. More real than anything up in the world.
[…] I also find it so very cool that the premise Saunders presents, the challenge of getting someone who hates you to love you, is practically the basis for a whole huge swath of romantic comedies, ranging from When Harry Met Sally to 27 Dresses to The Ugly Truth to 2 Weeks Notice. And it is presented here as a sad notion. Which, even though I liked the two non-Heigl films above, was kind of refreshing.
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An unrelated Dollhouse note: There are a zillion problems with the engagement-of-the-week nature of the show, but one of them is that most of the time, Echo and company are shown doing good. Echo tries to get back the kidnap victim, or helps council an abuse victim, or finds a murderer, or breaks up some kind of horribly unrealistic mob activity, or helps destroy a cult, and so on.
We’ve all seen this show structure before — it’s Kung Fu, or Highway to Heaven, or Quantum Leap, or for that matter, Tru Calling.
It’s an old story structure — Do-gooder encounters a new batch of evildoers and/or sympathetic people in need of help each episode; Do-gooder makes it right. The problem is, the Dollhouse isn’t — or shouldn’t be – a do-gooder. The Dollhouse is a commercial enterprise, which serves the needs of clients loaded with money but lacking ethics. Why don’t we see Echo being hired to convince a bunch of stubborn tenants to move out so the building can be knocked down to make way for a mall?
Why don’t we see Echo being hired to convince a bunch of stubborn tenants to move out so the building can be knocked down to make way for a mall?
Do you think people would watch it?
*shrug*
People aren’t watching it now.
—Myca
Too expensive. More relevantly:
Adelle doesn’t see it that way. She thinks (or at least argues) that she’s some sort of entrepreneurial philanthropist, the whole “giving people what they need” line isn’t just a sales pitch, it’s a rationalization. The people using the Dollhouse (including the people trying to take down the Dollhouse use similar “ends justify the means” rationalizations. If Adelle was routinely hiring out dolls to serve as mafia hitmen or whatever, it would seem like more of a contrast: Whose “ends justify the means arguments” are justified? But I think the intention of the writers of this story is to paint everyone with the same brush: Basically all of the main characters (save for the dolls) are well-intentioned extremists (or at least leaning in that direction).
Not every engagement is a do-gooder one. (one where Echo is engaged to go kayaking and camping with the guy who turns out to be a crazed killer, and then one episode echo helping people rob an art gallery. (that was the one where alpha erased her imprint over the phone) Or the one where she’s supposed to be some guy’s date and then she leaves him tied up and goes to back to her old college. (never really explaining what made her go off her imprint)
But when they do show the actives being do gooders and their pro-bono work it’s never really explained how they decide who is going to be helped. Since this is a secret organization mostly known only by the rich and powerful, how is it they just happen to know about some sexually abused foster kid who needs council? (or more importantly, why that particular girl and not some other girl?)
Most of the engagements are straightforward, the Dollhouse is just making “more believable hookers”, which Adelle rationalizes with the usual.
The camping trip doesn’t fit because Adelle didn’t know the client’s intentions. The art heist does fit, rationalized as recovering a stolen national treasure for its rightful owners.
I don’t remember what the case was with that particular episode, but it seemed to me that those assignments were personal favors to Adelle’s friends, Adelle’s pet projects, or ways of indirectly repaying someone who did the Dollhouse a favor (but didn’t want more direct payment for whatever reason).
I’m pretty sure the abused girl was explicitly one of Topher’s pet projects. Remember how smug he was about that engagement? (Okay, admittedly “Topher is smug” isn’t precisely an unusual event…)
The Dollhouse is bad because it’s exploitative, obviously, but those in charge wouldn’t be able to work there have managed to delude themselves into thinking it’s okay – because the dolls signed a contract, because technology exists to be used, because the Dollhouse helps people. They need to choose at least some benign engagements to maintain that self-deception. We’re not meant to buy it – Adelle and the rest are.