Briar Rose
May. 3rd, 2009 10:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaI'm a little drunk, so perhaps I shouldn't be posting right now. These are some rambling, rambling thoughts on Briar Rose.
Can someone tell me why everyone is assuming that when Victor!Dominic calls for Whiskey, he's referring to Doctor Saunders? I'm kind of confused about whether that's true - has there been word from Joss or the production team to say that she definitely is a Doll? I'm rewatching: is it just because Dominic looks at Doctor Saunders while he says it? If so, then Doctor Saunders mustn't realise what he means - she jumps to the most obvious conclusion about the statement. Then later, Alpha says "Did you always want to be a doctor?" And when Claire answers that she did, he says "No, that's a lie." Is he giving her a hint that her past is false? In any case, if Claire is a Active, I think it's an awesome, gruesome thing to do with a Doll who has been rendered unusable. I wonder what they're going to do with Victor, now that he's marked in the same way. And using Actives as staff lends truth to my theory that Ivy is Topher's own personal doll, or that Adelle is a doll that paid out her contract and now works for the organisation. (These are crazy, drunk theories, though.)
Agent Loomis wins at everything, btw. Aisha Hinds is popping up all over the place, and I think I love her very much.
Alan Tudyk is a great actor, so I like what we've seen of his Alpha so far. I wish there had been less knife-wielding maniac, and more of the inhuman kind of character who can coolly manipulate Agent Ballard into admitting him into the Dollhouse. I think we're going to find out that he's worn Topher's BFF imprint, so that's why he knows how to use the chair. Did he know where the building was, or did he need Paul Ballard to show him? Was Paul just an attractive diversion? And, for a while,lilacsigil and I have had a theory that Alpha was a rogue imprint traveling from Active to Active - but the way that Alpha hid his face from Topher kind of indicates that his face is recognisable to Dollhouse staff. I do think that he lit up November's pod first as a test of Paul's character, though I don't know what his judgement would be based on. I also don't know how I feel about Alpha/Echo as a couple - I have to wonder why, if he's so keen to rescue Echo, that he set up that uncomfortable episode with Man Who Likes to Hunt Women.
It was deeply, deeply weird to see Paul in the Dollhouse. Finally. That worked really well for me, despite my doubts about the character right now.
They're kind of confusing me with Paul - I'm kind of finding it hard not to hate him for sleeping with Mellie in the last episode. I can think of plenty of believable reasons to not sleep with the person he knows is enslaved by the Dollhouse. "I'm not good for you right now, while I'm obsessed with the Dollhouse. I don't trust myself, let's just wind it back a few notches." I really hate the distress he's putting the Mellie personality through. I don't like that he would have sex with Mellie, then leave her behind - surely the same risks are entailed in rescuing Caroline as they would be for November? I feel very uncertain of Paul Ballard's motivations, and just like with Topher, I don't trust the story they're telling us. Paul can't be a hero any more than Topher can be a goofy tech-dude with no friends. I understand that they're going for moral ambiguity, but the only character they're pulling that off with is with Boyd.
Boyd shines all the way through this episode - he's trying to do his job, he's trying to protect Echo, he knows what he's doing is wrong, and when Paul calls him on it, he has no answers. There's clearly a back story - he's adamant that it's bad to take Echo out of the Dollhouse, and I don't know why. He's outraged at the assault on Sierra, but he takes Echo out to all her assignments, and brings her back with no more than a wry smile. Then, he has all sorts of consent issues when Adelle suggests that they put Ballard in the chair. I want to know more about Boyd's situation, and yet, I'm deeply distrustful of Paul's.
The client of the week story is confusing and creepy, and makes me wish the writers would consolidate their information on just how an imprint is obtained - sometimes it seems like Topher creates them with a pinch of this and a pinch of that, but in "Haunted", the deceased character had been in for a series of uncomfortable scans to record her brain waves. Did they bring a traumatised eleven year old Susan in for the same kind of scans, so that Topher could create an adult version of Susan's brain? That kind of defeats the purpose of the therapy, surely? And this in no way redeems Topher in my mind - he is still a creepy little fuck who played laser-tag over the sleeping bodies of his own little clutch of experimental guinea pigs-slash-prostitutes. And that imprint, his BFF-imprint? That's his own personality; the only person who could stand Topher is Topher himself.
In conclusion, red wine doesn't make the consent issues in Dollhouse any easier to deal with.
Can someone tell me why everyone is assuming that when Victor!Dominic calls for Whiskey, he's referring to Doctor Saunders? I'm kind of confused about whether that's true - has there been word from Joss or the production team to say that she definitely is a Doll? I'm rewatching: is it just because Dominic looks at Doctor Saunders while he says it? If so, then Doctor Saunders mustn't realise what he means - she jumps to the most obvious conclusion about the statement. Then later, Alpha says "Did you always want to be a doctor?" And when Claire answers that she did, he says "No, that's a lie." Is he giving her a hint that her past is false? In any case, if Claire is a Active, I think it's an awesome, gruesome thing to do with a Doll who has been rendered unusable. I wonder what they're going to do with Victor, now that he's marked in the same way. And using Actives as staff lends truth to my theory that Ivy is Topher's own personal doll, or that Adelle is a doll that paid out her contract and now works for the organisation. (These are crazy, drunk theories, though.)
Agent Loomis wins at everything, btw. Aisha Hinds is popping up all over the place, and I think I love her very much.
Alan Tudyk is a great actor, so I like what we've seen of his Alpha so far. I wish there had been less knife-wielding maniac, and more of the inhuman kind of character who can coolly manipulate Agent Ballard into admitting him into the Dollhouse. I think we're going to find out that he's worn Topher's BFF imprint, so that's why he knows how to use the chair. Did he know where the building was, or did he need Paul Ballard to show him? Was Paul just an attractive diversion? And, for a while,
lilacsigil and I have had a theory that Alpha was a rogue imprint traveling from Active to Active - but the way that Alpha hid his face from Topher kind of indicates that his face is recognisable to Dollhouse staff. I do think that he lit up November's pod first as a test of Paul's character, though I don't know what his judgement would be based on. I also don't know how I feel about Alpha/Echo as a couple - I have to wonder why, if he's so keen to rescue Echo, that he set up that uncomfortable episode with Man Who Likes to Hunt Women. It was deeply, deeply weird to see Paul in the Dollhouse. Finally. That worked really well for me, despite my doubts about the character right now.
They're kind of confusing me with Paul - I'm kind of finding it hard not to hate him for sleeping with Mellie in the last episode. I can think of plenty of believable reasons to not sleep with the person he knows is enslaved by the Dollhouse. "I'm not good for you right now, while I'm obsessed with the Dollhouse. I don't trust myself, let's just wind it back a few notches." I really hate the distress he's putting the Mellie personality through. I don't like that he would have sex with Mellie, then leave her behind - surely the same risks are entailed in rescuing Caroline as they would be for November? I feel very uncertain of Paul Ballard's motivations, and just like with Topher, I don't trust the story they're telling us. Paul can't be a hero any more than Topher can be a goofy tech-dude with no friends. I understand that they're going for moral ambiguity, but the only character they're pulling that off with is with Boyd.
Boyd shines all the way through this episode - he's trying to do his job, he's trying to protect Echo, he knows what he's doing is wrong, and when Paul calls him on it, he has no answers. There's clearly a back story - he's adamant that it's bad to take Echo out of the Dollhouse, and I don't know why. He's outraged at the assault on Sierra, but he takes Echo out to all her assignments, and brings her back with no more than a wry smile. Then, he has all sorts of consent issues when Adelle suggests that they put Ballard in the chair. I want to know more about Boyd's situation, and yet, I'm deeply distrustful of Paul's.
The client of the week story is confusing and creepy, and makes me wish the writers would consolidate their information on just how an imprint is obtained - sometimes it seems like Topher creates them with a pinch of this and a pinch of that, but in "Haunted", the deceased character had been in for a series of uncomfortable scans to record her brain waves. Did they bring a traumatised eleven year old Susan in for the same kind of scans, so that Topher could create an adult version of Susan's brain? That kind of defeats the purpose of the therapy, surely? And this in no way redeems Topher in my mind - he is still a creepy little fuck who played laser-tag over the sleeping bodies of his own little clutch of experimental guinea pigs-slash-prostitutes. And that imprint, his BFF-imprint? That's his own personality; the only person who could stand Topher is Topher himself.
In conclusion, red wine doesn't make the consent issues in Dollhouse any easier to deal with.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-03 05:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-03 10:00 pm (UTC)