Why did Boss Lady send the rapist to be killed by Neighbor Girl? I feel like I missed that.
Maybe to make sure the neighbor stayed his confidante? If he had nobody to talk to about his discoveries, then he simply wouldn't talk about them while under their surveillance and they wouldn't know as much about what he'd uncovered.
I def. thought it was better than meh. Not great, but good and on its way to better possibly. Basically I think boss lady sent the rapist to sleeper girl because it gives the Dollhouse almost complete deniability. As of now, sleeper neighbor girl has no Dollhouse connection and killing him this way keeps the murder away from any possible conection to them. It's just a robbery gone bad. And as to why boss lady maybe let the beating go on longer than necessary is that it does possibly push FBI guy further away from investigating because he has to have some idea of a link between the two.
I also think the "rapey icky" factor was both dialed up and dialed down in this episode. It was def. amped up with the actual raping of the doll by the handler and when FBI guy interviewd not-porn guy, they got into detail about the "fantasy." But in a way, I also think that interview kinda pulled back from the rape just a little too because while sex is a part of most of the dolls' missions, it might not be the motivating factor. It doesn't change the rape factor to any degree, but at least we're finding out that they aren't just being used for that main purpose either.
MTA: I do think its hilarious that we've all watched this show for 6 weeks and still can't remember any of the "human" characters names. It's all boss lady, FBI guy, rapist, Echo's handler, doctor who used to be on Angel, nerd guy, etc. But we do know Echo, Sierra, Victor, and even having never seen him Alpha.
Why did Boss Lady send the rapist to be killed by Neighbor Girl? I feel like I missed that.
Maybe to make sure the neighbor stayed his confidante? If he had nobody to talk to about his discoveries, then he simply wouldn't talk about them while under their surveillance and they wouldn't know as much about what he'd uncovered.
If anything wouldn't it discourage him for keeping her as his confidante? He was happy to discuss the case about dangerous killers and rapists over pillow talk. But now that he knows they're targeting her because of that pillow talk wouldn't his natural reaction be to stop putting her in danger? It seems like a bad plan.
Basically I think boss lady sent the rapist to sleeper girl because it gives the Dollhouse almost complete deniability. As of now, sleeper neighbor girl has no Dollhouse connection and killing him this way keeps the murder away from any possible conection to them. It's just a robbery gone bad.
Does that really make sense though? I mean, she's a doll so that end she can be connected to the Dollhouse. If another doll kills him then where's the difference? Somewhere along the line Neighbor Girl has to come in for tune ups or something. Or the Dollhouse has to dispose of her. You know, the Boss Lady left a message of her own voice on answering machine (two actually). It just doesn't strike me as very clean at all. And it seems like a multinational super secret government connected company filled with assassins would have ways of killing someone without handing the body over to cops. I mean, "the Attic." Because right now I'm assuming the next episode will have FBI Guy looking at the mysterious employment records of the dead guy and conclude that him falling off the map and then HAPPENING to invade that apartment is connected to his investigation into the Dollhouse. Even if Echo hadn't warned him already.
But meh. 2 explanations seems to suggest I didn't miss anything, they just didn't explain it. I was just trying to figure out if I missed something when they were talking about what a brilliant plan it was and I had no idea why they did it. Didn't know if it was lip service or a plot point I missed.
I also think the "rapey icky" factor was both dialed up and dialed down in this episode. It was def. amped up with the actual raping of the doll by the handler and when FBI guy interviewd not-porn guy, they got into detail about the "fantasy." But in a way, I also think that interview kinda pulled back from the rape just a little too because while sex is a part of most of the dolls' missions, it might not be the motivating factor. It doesn't change the rape factor to any degree, but at least we're finding out that they aren't just being used for that main purpose either.
I get your point but personally it doesn't really change it for me. I mean, we've already been sold that bill of goods. People don't just want whores, the want people who can keep up with them physically, or who love them truly, or they can have a great time with. Patton Oswalt wanted to imagine his wife's happiness. They still all rape the girl. And the rapist's argument was a perfectly valid one. Sure, he's a scummy rapist but so are most of their clients so the moralizing is a little hypocritical. Bodyguard dude can get all indigent about it as he escorts Echo to her next paid raping. Nerd guy better fix Sierra so she can get back to sanctioned rapes.
Its just very icky and I hope they never intend to make ANY of these people good guys. Bodyguard guy included. I don't see myself ever getting behind him considering how complicit he is in this horror show.
MTA: I do think its hilarious that we've all watched this show for 6 weeks and still can't remember any of the "human" characters names. It's all boss lady, FBI guy, rapist, Echo's handler, doctor who used to be on Angel, nerd guy, etc. But we do know Echo, Sierra, Victor, and even having never seen him Alpha.[/quote]
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Maybe to make sure the neighbor stayed his confidante? If he had nobody to talk to about his discoveries, then he simply wouldn't talk about them while under their surveillance and they wouldn't know as much about what he'd uncovered.
If anything wouldn't it discourage him for keeping her as his confidante? He was happy to discuss the case about dangerous killers and rapists over pillow talk. But now that he knows they're targeting her because of that pillow talk wouldn't his natural reaction be to stop putting her in danger? It seems like a bad plan.
Or he could conclude that's she already a target anyway, and the only way to keep her safe is to keep her near where he can personally protect her.
Well I'll grant you that he's sort of been shown to be the sort of guy who WOULD think that seeing as how he was already telling her all about the scary conspiracy. But it kind of seems like a crapshoot, doesn't it? And was there any reason for them to not believe he'd keep telling her stuff considering she had just agreed to show her ALL of his files? I mean, until the big reveal that was basically the motivator of the story.
"This young woman is learning too much about us. She has to be eliminated."
So staging an attack so that she DOES learn as much as possible seems... weird. FBI Guy seemed to already be on the path to showing her all his cards. He might STILL do that now but it seems like you could have just left them alone. This seems to risk him clamming up on the hopes that he does something he was going to do anyway as soon as he got back from the store.
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Lucky, out of curiosity, where/when did your almost-obsessive overanalysis of media begin? What was the very first show you tore apart with your overcritical analysis?
Note: I'm not saying I disagree with any of your analysis of this show, I actually think you're spot on with your logical reasoning, but I do think it can sometimes take a little bit of the enjoyment away from the shows.
There's always a chance that 1) the whole "Secret Message" via Echo is just the Dollhouse fucking with the guy again, to convince him to quit the FBI and stop publically investigating them, so they can get rid of him more quietly 2) Boss Lady is the one sending the message (though I'd personally bet more on scarred Doctor Lady/NotFred)
Whenever I got smart enough to notice something that didn't seem to make sense, I suppose. I don't know, it just seems natural. I mean, there's stuff I could and sometimes do bitch about that is nitpicking. Its not REALLY part of the story so it might be a stretch to analyze it. But when the major moment of the show is a plan that doesn't seem to make any real sense to me despite them actually going out of their way to say what a great idea it was... Its tough to look past that.
Plus I kind of expect a little more from Whedon but that was the 2nd or 3rd time I ended an episode and said... "Wait, how did ______ happen?" Part of that is probably that I watch the show pretty passively but it feels like Whedon's playing pretty fast and loose with these story elements in order to tell his story. From a writer's perspective the Boss Lady sent the Rapist after Neighbor Girl so that we the viewers could be clued into the twist that she's a doll. But I'm not sure Whedon wrote in a reason for the Boss Lady to play along with the writer when there seemed to be much easier and cleaner ways to get things done. But they wouldn't have accomplished the writer's goal of revealing the doll.
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And I certainly don't want to kill anyone's enjoyment of the show with my analysis. Tell me to shut up and I'll leave the thread. I've done that with other shows and I won't be offended. But for me its just natural. I'm watching the show and if someone does something that doesn't seem to make sense I'm going to think that. If its entertaining enough I can over look that. A show like Burn Notice probably leads me to overlook a LOT of questionable things because I'm having too much fun to be bothered by them. Dollhouse just didn't pull that off on this one.
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Boss Lady could have also gotten the guy killed that way because she was really offended by what he did. She asked him Sierra not resisting made it better for him, and he said no, it made it easier, so she possibly wanted to let him think he was getting off the hook and getting his sadistic jollies before they turned the tables on him.
Re: Nitpicking. I nitpick myself, but even I have to let some things slide. Though I can't let it go when an actor who's been referenced on a show in some way guest stars as a character. Like in Heroes, Hiro was derisively called "Sulu", then later George Takai shows up as Hiro's dad. That's my madness.
Eh, that doesn't bother me. Takai played a character. He wasn't playing "Takai" or "Sulu." Its a little meta-humor and that may annoy me when it gets too cutesy but it doesn't big me from any storytelling or continuity sense. Its easy enough to accept that George Takai and Star Trek exist in the Heroes world but that guy was someone different.
Its storytelling stuff that bugs me. A character behaving out of character to advance the story. A convenient turn that resolves the story because they have something better to do. Moves that only seem motivated by the writer's desire to advance the plot or reveal a story element. When the show then goes through the trouble of TELLING us that the Boss Lady had a great plan then I can't help but be struck that none of us even know what the fuck her plan was and we're sitting here trying to rationalize why it made sense.
Could she have done it as some sort of poetic justice? I guess. But that sure does seem like a lot of hassle when they could have just programmed Sierra to beat him to death or something. I mean, you throw his body in the hands of the FBI. You risk the FBI Guy walking in before Neighbor Girl is set back off her killer state. You risk him questioning how she fought off this big guy. You risk him listening to the answering machine messages. Hell, you risk the Rapist SUCCESSFULLY killing her before you make the change in which case you have a FBI Guy with a vendetta, a Rapist you still have to kill, and you lost a doll that was keeping tabs on the Fed. I mean, sometimes I accidently hit the button on my machine that turns it off. Sometimes my breaker pops and the phone goes out. I just got done with not having phone service for a few days. What happened if the Rapist unplugged the phone as a simple way to keep her from calling for help or if they pulled out the plug in the middle of their struggle?
Like I said, seems like a LOT of unnecessary risk for whatever the hell Boss Lady was trying to accomplish. Which I could buy that she's just incompetent because she's sort of come off that way, but when Angry Dude goes out of his way to compliment her on a great plan I'm left wondering what the fuck happened. Because he seems like the last guy who would say "I loved the poetic justice of him being killed by a woman he thought was harmless." He's been pushing to clean things up and avoid unnecessary risks. Seems like "Lets just do this easy and not work out a complicated plan that could go wrong" would have been a more appropriate line.
I mean, its not like a bunch of shit has gone wrong for the Dollhouse of late, is it? You think that the guy who's been pushing for less risk wouldn't be glowing about the seemingly unnecessary risk.
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Boss Lady could have also gotten the guy killed that way because she was really offended by what he did. She asked him Sierra not resisting made it better for him, and he said no, it made it easier, so she possibly wanted to let him think he was getting off the hook and getting his sadistic jollies before they turned the tables on him.
This was the sense I got from the episode. I got that Boss Lady wanted to send Hearn (HA! I REMEMBERED A NAME!) to Mellie (another one, so there!) so that she could take him out in an ironic twist. I even found myself saying 'NICE' out loud last night, because I thought it was a fitting punishment for the crime.
Lucky, here's the one issue I have with some of your analyzing of things even when I agree with the specifics of said analyzing; it's a TV show. I know we want it to make sense to us, but in a lot of these cases what makes the most sense is also what makes a really boring TV show. The easiest thing to do with the rapist would have been to just put a bullet in his brain. But then, that's it. That plot is done and over with. What they did here was show that sleeper dolls can be activated remotely (even though I'm now realizing they said this was impossible 3 episodes ago during the bank robbery and Alpha did it to Echo), they showed that they've had someone working with the FBI guy and keeping tabs on him remotely, and they've shown that a doll in a non-active state can fall in love (even though they were shocked Sierra did).
Okay, on second thought...WHAT THE FUCK?
Everything that boss lady, angry dude, and nerd guy had been having issues with in the last few episodes all showed to be a part of this episode.
You're certainly right, Dev. The easiest solution often kills the drama a TV show or movie needs. But in a GREAT story the writer finds a way to eliminate the "easy" solution and make the course he needs for the story the most logical one for the characters.
A good story hopefully at least finds a way not to make it seem like characters behaving out of character or reckless emotional decisions being hailed as brilliant ones. SOME sort of plot device entering in to at least kinda explain how we got from Point A to Point C. Dollhouse just seems to be cutting corners a lot and making a habit of writing the reveals and twists without really bothering to make them fit the story. That's the same sort of problem a lot of us were having with Heroes or with Smallville. That they wanted X to happen so they just made it happen. They didn't really care about character motivation or story development. "Why did Peter do ______ instead of ______?" Because the writer wanted him to.
If you're enjoying some other part of it enough than you can overlook the compromises the writers are making to the story and characters. Because you can accept that the end justifies the means. But sometimes it doesn't and the lazy writing weakens the story enough to take you out of the fantasy.
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I stopped commenting because I figured everyone else was done with it. I'm loving the show these days, and it's specifically BECAUSE it gets creepier every episode.
HA! I watched the 3 weeks of episodes I skipped and came in here to see what I missed... and no one commented on anything!
Hey. I commented on the Rossum thing! But generally, because as established elsewhere, you're such a hate-filled person, I didn't want to set you up with anything to have a tirade against.
I can't hate Dollhouse. That would mean caring about it and that's kind of the problem with the show.
At this stage the only thing I do care about is the hilarious Whedon fanbase that is already starting the "Fuck Fox for probably canceling the show because its ratings aren't up to par! Even if I don't even REALLY like it that much and the best I can really say about it is that its "solid" or might be "coming around." I totally think they should carry a poorly rated show for 2 seasons in the hopes it becomes a good show. Its Fox's fault for not advertising the show that makes even me think its mediocre!"
This shit is hilarious. I'm reading threads where people don't even seem to like the show but they still think Fox owed Whedon 2 years to it regardless of ratings. I'm a HUGE Firefly fan and that sounds insane to me.
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Well I liked this episode a bit more than usual. Dewitt being a client was a nice twist and explains why she thinks they do good work, and the inside agent reveal was good, though does that mean he was the one who was leaking info to Ballard? "Neighbour Girl" told Ballard that they're spy had been captured, but if it was referring to him, I don't get how getting Ballard to investigate helps the NSA's agenda. I was also a bit annoyed the Sierra segment (which was a fun spy sequence) got cut off like we were going to come back to see how it ended, but we just learned she got rescued off-screen later.
I assume that when boss chick says she believes in the work she's referring to some secret work. I thought they were making clear allusions to the Dollhouse actually just being the financing for something else. If she really does think that this is somehow altruistic than she's really just fucked up beyond belief. I mean, the only reason she needs a secret perfect boyfriend is because she's an evil bitch whoring out mindless slaves and executing people.
I mean, if anything the last few episodes really confirmed that this is the Rape Show. These aren't people who volounteered for a job knowing full well what they were getting into. These are people who were blackmailed or manipulated into a horrible existence. Echo was put there because she exposed the evil work of the company. Sierra was put there because some dude had a personal desire to rape her in every way imaginable. So really... if boss lady "believes in" the Dollhouse solely for the Dollhouse? Well that's just a horrible evil lunatic.
Which, I mean she IS a horrible evil person. Everyone including the black bodyguard are (except apparently for the guy who seemed evilest because he was actually the only person besides the fed trying to help the dolls). But I've been assuming that the big reveal is some deep dark secret world that the Dollhouse if financing with "important work" that they believe is worth the horrible things they do in the Dollhouse.
And for the record I DO think the show got better from Ep6 on. It just didn't get beyond "mediocre" for me. And the creepiness that was turning me off has just been constantly increased at a much higher rate than the quality of the show has.
EDIT: Oh yeah... I couldn't help but laugh at the boss lady being shot and toughing it out. That was just hilariously silly.
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Ok, I lied. I'm not done. There's 3 or 4 episodes left so I should finish it out. I COMPLETELY forgot that some guy named "Alpha" mattered and I like the actor. And I just read spoilers on what the 13th episode is that Fox might scrap and I NEED to watch for that. Its just so... I don't know.
I actually kind of think Dollhouse is Joss Whedon playing an elaborate prank on Fox.
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I wasn't saying she was a good person, I was saying I could understand her thinking the apparent purpose of the Dollhouse does good for people. Considering she's been saying that to several of the staff (including those that supposedly don't know the true purpose of the Dollhouse) I figure the fact she got to have some solace from her own Doll is part of that.
Echo's handler's name I keep forgetting, and the tech guy (who's becoming more and more the comic relief to my chagrin). Dewitt was easy to remember when she actually say "Do it" at one point. Do it/Dewitt?
I assume that when boss chick says she believes in the work she's referring to some secret work. I thought they were making clear allusions to the Dollhouse actually just being the financing for something else. If she really does think that this is somehow altruistic than she's really just fucked up beyond belief. I mean, the only reason she needs a secret perfect boyfriend is because she's an evil bitch whoring out mindless slaves and executing people.
I got the impression that Victor had been implanted with someone Dewitt knew, what with the english accent and such.
I mean, if anything the last few episodes really confirmed that this is the Rape Show.
Yeah, I think we all get that by now, Lucky, so let's draw a line under it and have it go without saying from now on. That and the fact it's creepy.
EDIT: Oh yeah... I couldn't help but laugh at the boss lady being shot and toughing it out. That was just hilariously silly.
I know... I harp on the "Rape Show" thing. But, I mean... three of the big moments of the last few episodes were what? One of the dolls is only in this world because some horrible piece of shit was offended she wouldn't sleep with him so he found a way to make her unwilling to say no so he could get off on her begging him to have sex with her as many times as he wants? One of the more horrible circumstances for rape one could imagine since its not just the physical raping of a woman or the incidental raping of a woman to fill some need but rather a deliberate and malicious act against a woman to get back at her for rejecting him. Or the woman who understands what these dolls are and blackmails them into their roles who recently executed a man for raping one of them is off... well... raping one of them. And then the good guy who wants to keep these poor dolls from being raped finds out that his girlfriend is one... and realizes that it means he's basically raped some poor woman he doesn't even know... and then goes and rapes her again because its the only way to maintain the ruse so that he can maybe stop all these dolls from being raped over and over. The raping of the many outweighs the raping of the few?
So yeah... I harp on that except... its a HUGE part of the show that actually got WAY WORSE in the last few episodes. So I mean, I'd like to stop talking about all the rape but... its the freaking story. Half of the plot is driven by rape and the horrifying nature of those get psychotic joy from it, those who delude themselves about it, and one poor fuck who is most certainly disgusted by it.
Its just so... ugh. Its weird because it seems like if you want to talk about the show you have 4 things to talk about.
1) Its gradual climb to mediocrity. 2) The horrifying realization that a HUGE part of the plot is driven by more rape than provided on Law & Order: SVU. 3) Mocking some really cliche and poor TV elements, many uncharacteristic for Whedon but very true of Fox. 4) Getting wrapped up in a very under developed mystery and espionage story that has given the audience very little information to actually do anything with.
Its weird because for the most part looking around the web I'm seeing the spy/mystery stuff discussed intently and spun with all kinds of crazy theories because the show really has established next to nothing about it... and almost zero discussion of the VERY important rape and moral elements of the story. Which, I mean... if you really want to like this show I understand why you'd want to ignore the rape and focus on the mystery. But damn, people must be handling it a lot better than me because every 10 minutes I can't help but notice that someone is being raped, going off to be raped, or thinking about being raped/raping someone.
But at least Sierra made it through that episode without being raped. Good day for her.
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