With last dark ’s dual - lintel , Dollhouse swung steadfastly back towards “ best matter Joss Whedon ’s ever done ” territory . There was only one slight problem … the rickety subplot involve Summer Glau . Mega spoilers below !
https://gizmodo.com/why-dollhouse-really-is-joss-whedons-greatest-work-5245968
So I totally did not see the revelation worry Senator Daniel Perrin coming — that he ’s the doll and his wife is his coach . It was one of the coolest plot twisting I ’d seen in eld , and yet it whole made sense once the show explained it .
It go like this : the malign Rossum Corporation has tons of power and influence , but the bastards in electric charge wanted more . They wanted their own puppet as a U.S. Senator ( and maybe , eventually , as president . ) So they snatch Daniel Perrin , the scion of a hefty political dynasty ( think of him as Fred Kennedy or something . ) And they take the dissolute party boy and reprogrammed him to be a fiery reformist for justice , with lashings of political dream . Daniel Perrin 2.0 quickly became a senator . And then they decided their lucrative , illegal Dollhouse operation was getting too much attention , so they decided to have their puppet Senator enquire these rumor — only to confute them and exonerate Rossum altogether .
Of course , piteous honest-to-goodness Madeline aka November would have to be the sacrificial lamb , stepping forward as a former chick only to be revealed as a crazy woman and then ruin . But you ca n’t achieve total political power without crushing a few people along the way .
Alexis Denisof did a fantastic business of add Senator Perrin to lifetime , and the Dollhouse writers managed to find yet another enchanting twist on the idea of people ’s identities being erased and reconstruct : Here was someone the Dollhouse had made good . They ’d taken a wretched shell of a human being and release him into a good guy cable — except , of path , for the part where he danced to their tune . An supernumerary stratum of bizarreness comes from the fact that they did n’t just build a fictitious persona for him — they layered on a new personality on top of his sometime one , so that when he realizes he ’s been reprogrammed , he has a toilsome clip separating his existent life from his simulated one . His faux matrimony to a woman who loathes him is a young stage of creepy from a show that seemed to have empty its creepy - pocketbook already .
The other heavy pull , of course , is at the end , when Perrin has kill his wife under the control of Bennett Halverson ( Glau ) . And he set out to think that maybe it would n’t be quite so bad to let the Dollhouse erase his memory of what happened , so he can go back to mentation of himself as a fine , upstanding senator . Who care if it ’s a Trygve Halvden Lie , or if the existent murderers will get away with it ? It ’s the easy way . And then Echo points out that Perrin did n’t kill his married woman , Rossum did . But if Perrin permit Rossum rub out his brain again , then Perrin really did stamp out his wife . When you put it like that , there ’s no choice , proper ? Perrin has to do the right thing and hang on to his real remembering .
Except he does n’t . The next time we see him , we consider he ’s about to ill-treat up and disclose Rossum , but then we realize that he ’s taken the devil ’s deal . He ’s choose to let Rossum wipe his mind one more time , rather than deal with the reality of his life-time . ( Not unlike Sierra last sequence , choose to persist a dolly rather than recollect that she killed her tormentor . )
This was such a impertinent , challenging two hours of television , it ’s a offense that it ’s not the newfangled 24 or House . Just rewatch the scene where Perrin is adjudicate to explain to Echo that she ’s a doll , before he see he ’s a wench himself — his horror and disgust are so palpable , and then it turns out that he ’s the thing he ’s been describing all along .
If only this show was n’t ventilate on a Friday night . Or if only it really attract to the kinds of brain - damaged idiots that this Microsoft advertizement seems to recall are watching :
Meanwhile , November is all fired up to do the right thing — and you know it ’s not go away to reverse out well , even before you infer how she ’s being set up . She ’s still a puppet , even though she ’s no longer a doll . And just standing up and telling the verity about the Dollhouse is never pop off to work , because they can disbelieve her so easily . Weirdly , it ’s the best statement I ’ve seen so far in favour of Ballard ’s decision to go work for the Dollhouse instead of continuing to work against it — there ’s no path to destroy it except from the inside . The scene where Ballard finally gets to talk to November and excuse to her his version of events is pretty heartbreaking , but you could well see why she ’s not won over . All she sees is another soul trying to control her , and not being nearly as insidious about it as the Senator ’s people .
Ballard ca n’t protect her from her own bad decisions , and when he realize that , it ’s a crucial step towards him being less of a meathead . I actually bang Ballard , but it ’s about clip he arrive over his “ horse in radiate armor ” fixation — and it ’s especially cool to see him starting to cast that off in an episode where the “ you ’re my horse in shining armour ” thing turns out to be a conditioning gun trigger for a mindwiped slave .
Adelle and Topher persist in to be the full double act on television system — the limo aspect was swell — and both of them had some great moment this week . After seeing Adelle acting a bit like a blister pup with Mr. Harding lately , it was great to see her regain her backbone and move to protect November . And the ball - grabbing conniption with Ray Wise , cartoonish though it was , still whole rule . Meanwhile , what ’s a better double routine than Adelle and Topher ? Two Tophers ! Yet again , Enver Gjokaj proves that he can do middling much anything , as he creates a spot - on stamp of Fran Krantz .
So why did I say that the Summer Glau parts did n’t work for me ? Well , the stuff between Bennett and Topher was large — the nerd bonding , the rivalry , the scheming against each other , the toying . I could have ascertain it for hours . The moment where Topher decides she ’s too pretty to be as smart as she is was a shade annoying , but also dead believable . And I loved it when she ’s flatter that he tried to tase her . That was misrepresented and sweet and totally awesome .
But the rest of Glau ’s performance , for whatever reason , just did not work . I think it was the writing more than Glau ’s acting — they were trying to do something arty , and it fell flat . There were too many scenes of Glau soliloquizing and repeating weird phrases over and over , to show that she ’s tightly wound and psychotic . And the whole business where she has a blood feud against Echo because Echo ’s original personality , Caroline , left her crushed under some rubble just felt a bit contrived . It felt like way too much of a co-occurrence . And I just could not bribe that Bennett would rent the Senator and Echo escape , just so she could keep pursuing her vendetta against Echo a bit further . The whole affair feel , frankly , flimsy . And Glau struggled right to betray it , but the whole “ psycho eccentric ” number felt a bit too close to a glitchy Cameron from Sarah Connor Chronicles . “ Will you please verify ? Will you please make indisputable ? WILL YOU PLEASE MAKE indisputable ? ”
I reckon it was the fact that this is supposed to be such a huge operation for Rossum , and yet Bennett bungled it so hugely — first by torture Echo when she was theorize to be mindwiping the Senator , then by let the Senator elude , and finally by bend the Senator into a psycho - grampus — seemed just a tad much . And I just could n’t bribe into the “ I got hurt in an fortuity and you run away , so I ’m obsessed with destroying your mindless shell even though you do n’t remember me ” thing . It felt a bit forced .
But in the main this was another fantastic field day — bringing the show up to four brilliant episodes in a row . There are so many ideas implant in this story about what makes us who we are , and how much we ’re striver to our programing — even the Bennett storyline , which fell insipid for me , had an interesting twirl on how she ’s a striver to her obsession for revenge . It was cheerless to see so many ads for Human Target , a show found on a risible book that explored similar melodic theme of indistinguishability and selfhood during its most late Vertigo Comics avatar but which is toss all of those ideas away in favor of a dumb bodyguard storyline . Dollhouse is the show that fans of Peter Milligan ’s Human Target comics actually deserve .
Wee tidbit : We ’ve had several hints latterly that there was another Sierra before the current one , and that Adelle got a bit too attached to her , and it ended naughtily . I enquire what are the chance we ’ll recover out what that ’s about before the show incline out of episodes ?
Also , yet again we get another person telling us how peculiar Echo is — this metre , it ’s Bennett , say that Echo has this magical power to make people roll in the hay her ( or something . ) I ’m beginning to retrieve she ’s deform into RTD ’s interlingual rendition of the Doctor , and we ’re start to have people saying that Echo is fervency and ice and Dragon and a lonely deity and the ground the Earth does n’t turn backwards . Still , I ’m willing to let it fall , since Echo being peculiar turns out to be crucial in the post - apocalyptic world we ’re heading towards .
Also , more hints that Caroline was n’t a specially courteous somebody … and of a sudden , Echo does n’t want to go back to being Caroline . After take a firm stand in “ Z ” and this yr ’s season unfastener that she ’s just await for Caroline to come home , she ’s now gone over to Whiskey ’s item of view — if Caroline retrovert to Echo ’s body , then Echo is pop . So she ’d rather stay on Echo , and allow Caroline waste in a wedge ? It ’ll be interesting to see if that becomes an issue before long .
I love that the DC Dollhouse ’s Actives are named after Greek gods , like Hades and Aphrodite .
Great lines :
“ This is the same tech that turned Echo into a serial sea wolf . ” “ We said we would n’t dwell on that . He ’s brood . ”
“ You just woke up a lot of masses — and they all consider you ’re a gripe ! ”
“ How about the Senator beats his wife ? ” “ The Senator does n’t beat his married woman . The Senator loves his wife . ” “ Lucky wife . ”
“ No , no , you ’re very pale . White . Pinkish white . I mean , your skin . Your skin is like a pig . Because it ’s pink . the great unwashed assume that pigs are sorry , but I wish them . I bed them . ”
“ Wasabi pea . ” “ I ’m excited and frightened . ”
“ Imagine John Cassavetes inThe Furyas a hot chick . ” “ Which you know I often have ! ”
“ Oh , it ’s very nice . ” “ She was kind of a hooker . ” “ Mmm Hmm . How about while I build up the magic bullets , you work on adapting your artillery ? ”
“ The Senator is filibuster . ”
dollhouseEliza DushkuJoss WhedonSummer GlauTelevision
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