Dollhouse, Season 2
Feb. 7th, 2011 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI really enjoyed Dollhouse, and think the fact that they knew, pretty much at the beginning of season 2 that there wasn't going to be a season 3 freed them up to make a really fantastic 13 episodes. Pretty much everything that gets started gets wrapped up in a fairly satisfactory way, and everything pretty much holds together.
I write a bunch of ramblings about Season 1 back when I watched it (note that link contains spoilers for season 1 only).
Remember after I watched season 1 and I rambled about how it was all about the meat? I feel totally justified in that. There are subtle hints to it: Topher-in-Victor (which was incredibly awesome, let me just say) wasn't Topher, and was willing to be self-sacrificing where Topher wouldn't be. Caroline-in-Tiny Messiah wasn't Caroline-in-Echo, despite the places where they spoke or reacted the same way.
But more so, the ending wouldn't make sense if wipes actualled "wiped" everything away. Apparently Echo was extra-special because even before the composite event, she was developing a resistance to being wiped, putting entire people's worth of memories "somewhere" that the wiping process couldn't reach them. This apparently meant Rossum could make an anti-wiping vaccine from her spinal fluid. Thing is, though they weren't "evolving" as quickly, Victor and Sierra were also glitching and also retaining memories after wipes. And Topher was the only person watching this all happen who was smart enough to realize what it meant: It meant that if he could overwrite the "wiped" area with information from this previously-unknown backup, he could build a fix-everything bomb.
On the same subject, intelligence seemed to be limited by the meat. Otherwise, why would Rossum need actuals like Topher or Bennett? Why not program super-smart, super-loyal, non-ambitious actives to do the R&D work? Build a Topher 2.0 who never has moral quandries and doesn't waste time playing laser tag. The answer being: They can't. Topher-in-Victor will never be capable of everything actual Topher is, and no matter how many rocket scientists you put into Echo, she'll always be limited to what Caroline's brain can handle. (Which is just another reason it sucks to be Clyde 2.0. But then, it was obvious that later-generation Clyde had altered himself beyond recognition and beyond sanity, and Boyd was apparently a totally batshit loco magnificent bastard of only moderate scientific genius to begin with.)
I found it interesting that The Attic was revealed to be the original plan for the Matrix, that the brains were being used for processing power. The speed at which Echo broke out makes perfect sense, because she's resistant to wipes, and the fear-loop only works if they wipe you after each iteration. Everyone else needed an outside influence (like Clyde/Arcane) to break their loop. (And yes, Clyde probably broke his own loop, but he had 17 years to do it.)
In retrospect, I liked having Epitaph 1 placed where it was--it meant you spent the second season in suspense of whether it was the actual future or only a possible one, and then watched the pieces fall into place. There were still gaps, of course. Why did they spend so long on the road with Tiny Messiah if she knew exactly where they were going, and it only took a couple of days to get back? It had to be months, because Whisky apparently vacated the Dollhouse and Alpha moved in and fixed it up. I'll admit, I also wanted to see what happened to Alpha and why he wanted to risk becoming his original serial-killer self at the end. (I'd expected the Paul-imprint in Alpha to return in that last bit, I'll admit.) And I began thinking about the intelligence-imprint issue because of Topher's self-sacrifice: What happens in 10 years when the Chinese government decides to use a wipe-bomb again? Did he leave the plans for the unwipe-bomb somewhere? Did he back himself up with them in his head? Or is humanity getting a brief reprieve because Topher isn't good at long-term consequences?
In the special features, Joss mentions trying to make everything heartwarming creepy, and everything disturbing also cute, and that's a lot of what made this show really work, and what made it get terrible ratings. Nothing is emotionally simple, everything has an undercurrent, usually of horror. It's a show about people, mostly amoral, who use other people in terrible ways. But we accept them as protagonists and root for them because everything they do is fundamentally human, and no matter how bad they get we know that there are people doing far, far worse.
And I'm kinda glad there wasn't a third season. This setup forced the second season to be tightly written and not drag things out. Joss mentions in the special features that he'd wanted to do an "Adelle's Angels" bit for the third season, but I don't think that would have actually worked well and would have needed to be a fundamentally different show regardless.
I write a bunch of ramblings about Season 1 back when I watched it (note that link contains spoilers for season 1 only).
Remember after I watched season 1 and I rambled about how it was all about the meat? I feel totally justified in that. There are subtle hints to it: Topher-in-Victor (which was incredibly awesome, let me just say) wasn't Topher, and was willing to be self-sacrificing where Topher wouldn't be. Caroline-in-Tiny Messiah wasn't Caroline-in-Echo, despite the places where they spoke or reacted the same way.
But more so, the ending wouldn't make sense if wipes actualled "wiped" everything away. Apparently Echo was extra-special because even before the composite event, she was developing a resistance to being wiped, putting entire people's worth of memories "somewhere" that the wiping process couldn't reach them. This apparently meant Rossum could make an anti-wiping vaccine from her spinal fluid. Thing is, though they weren't "evolving" as quickly, Victor and Sierra were also glitching and also retaining memories after wipes. And Topher was the only person watching this all happen who was smart enough to realize what it meant: It meant that if he could overwrite the "wiped" area with information from this previously-unknown backup, he could build a fix-everything bomb.
On the same subject, intelligence seemed to be limited by the meat. Otherwise, why would Rossum need actuals like Topher or Bennett? Why not program super-smart, super-loyal, non-ambitious actives to do the R&D work? Build a Topher 2.0 who never has moral quandries and doesn't waste time playing laser tag. The answer being: They can't. Topher-in-Victor will never be capable of everything actual Topher is, and no matter how many rocket scientists you put into Echo, she'll always be limited to what Caroline's brain can handle. (Which is just another reason it sucks to be Clyde 2.0. But then, it was obvious that later-generation Clyde had altered himself beyond recognition and beyond sanity, and Boyd was apparently a totally batshit loco magnificent bastard of only moderate scientific genius to begin with.)
I found it interesting that The Attic was revealed to be the original plan for the Matrix, that the brains were being used for processing power. The speed at which Echo broke out makes perfect sense, because she's resistant to wipes, and the fear-loop only works if they wipe you after each iteration. Everyone else needed an outside influence (like Clyde/Arcane) to break their loop. (And yes, Clyde probably broke his own loop, but he had 17 years to do it.)
In retrospect, I liked having Epitaph 1 placed where it was--it meant you spent the second season in suspense of whether it was the actual future or only a possible one, and then watched the pieces fall into place. There were still gaps, of course. Why did they spend so long on the road with Tiny Messiah if she knew exactly where they were going, and it only took a couple of days to get back? It had to be months, because Whisky apparently vacated the Dollhouse and Alpha moved in and fixed it up. I'll admit, I also wanted to see what happened to Alpha and why he wanted to risk becoming his original serial-killer self at the end. (I'd expected the Paul-imprint in Alpha to return in that last bit, I'll admit.) And I began thinking about the intelligence-imprint issue because of Topher's self-sacrifice: What happens in 10 years when the Chinese government decides to use a wipe-bomb again? Did he leave the plans for the unwipe-bomb somewhere? Did he back himself up with them in his head? Or is humanity getting a brief reprieve because Topher isn't good at long-term consequences?
In the special features, Joss mentions trying to make everything heartwarming creepy, and everything disturbing also cute, and that's a lot of what made this show really work, and what made it get terrible ratings. Nothing is emotionally simple, everything has an undercurrent, usually of horror. It's a show about people, mostly amoral, who use other people in terrible ways. But we accept them as protagonists and root for them because everything they do is fundamentally human, and no matter how bad they get we know that there are people doing far, far worse.
And I'm kinda glad there wasn't a third season. This setup forced the second season to be tightly written and not drag things out. Joss mentions in the special features that he'd wanted to do an "Adelle's Angels" bit for the third season, but I don't think that would have actually worked well and would have needed to be a fundamentally different show regardless.
