ON last week’s episode of Dollhouse, Topher enhanced an imprint in order to trigger lactation. This is used in an engagement where Echo is imprinted to be a man’s dead wife because he blames his baby for his wife’s death. The husband had considered adoption, but decided to try the DH first. Echo, convinced he is trying to kill her, attempts to leave but is thwarted by the Dollhouse. They bring her back and wipe her, but it doesn’t work, so she fakes a successful wipe and goes after the child armed with a knife. Within the Dollhouse, we meet with post-DH Madeleine, who tells Paul about the reason she entered the Dollhouse and how she’s been feeling since.
I really did have a visceral response to the engagement itself. Making someone artificially bond with a baby seems so awful to me – even though people bond beautifully with children that aren’t biologically theirs, and even though we know the DH deals in created love, somehow faking parental love skeeves me out.
You know, it’s really a shame about the sexist and essentialist “breast feeding makes the ladiez all loopy” last ten minutes, because in the first half hour, we’re looking at one of the best metaphors for the feminine mystique I’ve ever seen in popular culture. Echo is nobody as far as the client is concerned, a blank head on a hot body, he rents her out, and manipulates her body and brain to make her a happy wife and mommy. He creates a scenario where she’s dependent emotionally and psychologically on him. Her friend has been through the same thing, and her font of wisdom is to tell her to suck it up and smile. And when she gets terrified and bails, with every reason to do so, she’s only important until there’s even a hint that the baby is in danger, in which case her husband’s word becomes sacrosanct and she becomes stigmatized as delusional.
As ever, it’s interesting to wonder how much of Echo’s experience here is the effect of the experimentation, how much of it is Caroline, and how much of it is the composite event. Because any one of those could be causing this. It’s possible that Sierra or Tango could have had this particular imprint and not had the maternal instinct awakened – it seems perfectly calibrated to Caroline’s zeal for protecting the helpless. You’d think after Alpha-Kroft they wouldn’t stray too close to original personalities, bu this almost seems like Topher trying to prove to himself that the original personality doesn’t matter and he can do whatever he wants.
Interesting to see Adele with Madeleine – of course she always has an agenda, and it’s fun to see Madeleine call her out, but I think her interest is the same as the one she told us about last week- research. Topher is relatively new to the DH, she’s probably one of the first to be let go with his new processes, or the first sleeper to be let go. Or the first let go at all b/c of ballard, could still be that the rest of them are all languishing in the attic.
This could be interesting if they’re really going to stay faithful to this character. madeleine is really different than the madeleine we saw in Needs. back in 1.08, amnesiac Madeleine panics unashamedly, and frankly calls what she’s doing a “defense mechanism,” suggesting psych training. that means that not only is she an educated person with prospects, but she, probably better than any of the other actives, had some idea of what she was signing up for. Now that she’s awake, if something does go wrong, she’ll know exactly what it is and not be able to do anything about it. Chilling. she’s the one of the reawakened Actives to smirk and unabashedly get into the unisex showers. doesn’t really square with the woman we see here. her taste is expensive, which is maybe to be expected now that she has money to spare, but her diction is impressive, she sounds thoughtful and though not upper class, very well educated (which she didn’t back in Needs, IIRC, she just sounded standard american then), and she’s still forthright, but calm enough to face down and decipher Adelle, which is no joke. none of the other actives, that we know of, are demonstrably different from themselves – Victor doesn’t know what happened in the military, but he acts like a soldier; Priya doesn’t know she was sold but she has an instinct to run; Caroline doesn’t remember her boyfriend or rossum but is instinctively terrified of losing her self. granted, the shock and utter weirdness of the siuation in Needs surely explains some of it, but not enough for my satisfaction. and really not enough to explain the CHANGE IN WARDROBE, OMG, SO MUCH BETTER. (the woman who chose that awful floral smock is not the same as the classy, neutral color, figure flattering lady we see in front of us. we saw this person being able to choose anything she wanted twice, and it was two totally different things.) “You’re happy?”/”I’m not sad.” There isn’t the agony over her daughter, but there isn’t the unselfconscious sense of mischief we got from November in Needs.
i go to sleep for five years, i wake up without pain…that is not how grief works, she should have woken up still freaked. Especially since Madeleine told us at the end of Omega that it didn’t feel like any time had passed. After all that happened to November, she wouldn’t wake up feeling like she’d even had a good night’s sleep, she would wake up, get her bearings in the chair, and have to remember what happened to Katie, those awful couple of minutes every morning of grief. She should not be okay. Not by a long shot.
It took reading meloukhia’s excellent review (hey you guys! read Meloukhia’s reviews! Also her blog, which is smart and fun) to remind me of the intentional contrast of Echo, the imprinted mother, with Madeleine, the wiped mother. But I’m going to go in a different direction from her take on it (that the writers dropped the ball, and in an insulting way no less) and say that I think this is another huge goddamn red flag that something is up with Madeleine-November. I mean, what did we gain from her showing up, besides lots of squealing that Miracle is back? Paul offered Echo the choice of a clean wipe, and, uh….in case we forgot, Adelle got a haircut? I don’t buy it. We certainly didn’t get closure for Paul on the Mellie issue, and they certainly didn’t need to bring back a former Active just to say “look, a normal person!” They didn’t need Madeleine to bring us back to drama in the DH to break up the meh-ness of the assignment – there’s always something going wrong in the DH. We have “some things can’t be erased! Like parenthood!” happening within minutes of “la la la, my kid died HORRIBLY and to me it feels like five minutes ago, but hey handsome feller, check out my NEW BLAZER!” That would only be oversight on a fundamentally shallow show, and I don’t think there are a lot of us who really think taht DH is that. The show is quite loudly telling us that Something Is Wrong with Madeleine.
The rest of the Dollhouse were pretty interesting tonight, too. Not enough Adelle, but interestingly, this i the second time in a row we’ve seen her get personally invested in someone’s relationship, in this case, the client’ with the son. Unlinke the Mellie confrontation during Vows – hm, is that why Adelle involved herself personally in getting Mellie back? Maybe when she was masking her Sekrit Plan to Paul in episode one, she was telling us her plan for him – she wants to find out if genuine love can exist between an active with the real personality and a past client. NOW WHY WOULD SHE WANT TO KNOW THAT. I like it.
The Ballard/Topher dynamic is much more enjoyable than the Boyd/Topher dynamic. Ballard is learning how Topher thinks and what he can do, and since he’s committed and tweaked his moral compass a bit (protect the girl right now, rather than save her forever) he can go with it. The absence of Boyd is, as far as I am concerned, a serious plus for this episode, about as much as the further development of Ballard.
however, in his quest for knowledge, we see paul making a huge mistake – he forgets that you can’t trust the DH. it seems like he wants so badly for Madeleine not to have been victimized – because then of course he’s not a predator – that he totally overlooks the possibility that she’s not okay, that there’s been some alteration to Madeleine, that she could start glitching any day now.
Since when is “finding us” the same as “bringing down the dollhouse”? Hey, Paul, it’s not! Even when he’s trying to be selfless – and yes, he’s being foolish and not considering all possibilities, but he’s listening and learning and not making decisions for her, which for Paul is an improvement even though I devoutly hope it’s not the end of the road – he’s still being selfish and reflecting his own desires onto her. She could just want to get herself and her friends the hell out of there and not care what happened to them, but he assumes his goals are the same as hers. He’s correct in this instance, but it’s still a huge unwarranted presumption, and he can’t afford to operate without making that distinction.
“You’re not real.” I would be a little more tactful to the lady with the KNIFE and my BABY. As in, I would lie. But it’s a nice bookend to Lars’ “you’re not real” back in Omega. As is Echo, having escaped from the chair and holding a knife. It is really, really a shame about the f-ed up metaphor. Because this is really creepy, intriguing framing, with the Echo-Alpha parallels continuing even after she’s tried to throw him out of her head.
I enjoy Paul (as a character, he is still a creeper) better in this episode than I have…probably ever, but definitely since the first few episodes. He’s treating the chair like he treated the Dollhouse and the leads about Caroline – with this horrified fascination that’s going to bring him down. You can see from the moment the camera hits him that he wants to get in himself “just to understand.” He’s trying to learn. He wants to understand. his conversation with Madeleine is respectful – he wants to learn about her, and he listens, and he processes that to try as best he can to give echo a choice. he sits in the chair. he talks to topher. explain it to me. This man I can buy as not just an investigator, but a good one, the one that almost got to the Dollhouse and had to be stopped by Dominic.
It’s not a coincidence that we see him talking to topher at the beginning. And how much fun to see Topher and Ballard talk shop. Less fun that “shop” is Echo, is a girl to be saved to ballard, and a lab rat to topher – she’s all they have in common and they’re treating her like clients, celebrating that which isn’t uniquely her. topher’s just learned that too much knowledge can be dangerous, and now paul, seeking knowledge goes further down the rabbit hole. saunders-whiskey and november-madeleine are crossing each other on one set of paths, and topher and ballard are crossing each other on another.
The comparisons between the episode in and out of the Dollhouse of course make great sense, but there’s also a lot to be learned when comparing to last week’s episode, where Whiskey chose to be her programmed self (at least for now) and we think Madeleine, through Ballard’s choice, seems to be herself, but we have good reason to doubt her.
i know it’s the most obvious route, but i’m just dying for the blank Alpha-style package for Perrin to be from Saunders. It would be a nice echo (HAHA GEDDIT?) of Alpha’s impact on her life to have her behaving like him, though obviously sans violent sociopathy, and would really bring the soft psychology of the show home. This wouldn’t be some prgramming error, this would be a person cracking under the weight of an identity nightmare – or OMG, choosing a side and creating alliances not with the dollhouse - which is far more interesting. As for the senator himself, this is a revenge thing, I trust this senator way more than I ever trusted Ballard. It’s not all idealism with him. Ballard wanted to Show that Might Makes Right. The Senator wants to bring someone down, and I like that. I know we’re supposed to think the source at the NSA was Dom, but that’s exactly the opposite of what he was supposed to be doing.
so, okay. i enjoyed most of the episode while i was watching it – i am not crazy about contrived suspense, even if done well, like it was here – t’s too obvious and uncomfortable wht’s going on in the engagement. i don’t like it and i don’t like watching it. it’s well done enough to know that we’re feeling her fear even though we know it’s futile. I have to say, I loved Emily’s reaction to the creepy black man and the huge man following her. Because those things are scary. It’s something that a normal active shouldn’t have ever picked up on.But reflecting on it, the section in the DH was telling us a lot and setting up some interesting relationships. This episode isn’t filler, by a long shot, like 4 and 10, it’s more a layer that will give us some interesting things to chew on in the next few episodes.
Deep Thoughts
- It says something nice about Topher’s chairside manner that he speaks to Madeleine in pretty much the same way as he speaks to the Dolls and the personalities he’s created. Something nice, or it’s another hint.
- Dear Topher: I am practically lactating looking at that baby. It can’t have been that hard.
- Feelings on how there hasn’t been any “prviously on DH?” It looks like the writers got a little more dependent on those extra seven minutes than they said they did, because these episodes are pretty layered and based on things that came before, they’re going to have to start giving up those couple of minutes soon.
- One more time, folks, they learned how to dress Miracle! It’s a….wonderful and surprising event we never expected! Here’s to having size 6’s and 8’s on the teevee…um…for body diversity!
- “Instinct” does not take one from thinking cars are voice controlled to knowing how to drive.
- Professor Brink, I have a question. Aren’t glands controlled by the brain? In which case, you just did what you always do? I kind of think making Echo visually impaired or blind is more of what they’re boasting about now. But seriously folks, anyone who can explain that to me gets a cookie.
- Neat call-back to Stage Fright, with Sierra in the field as her second.
