Cubing: Dollhouse
By Duy Tano
The last piece I wrote for Hasslein was about Faith the Vampire Slayer, and in it I mentioned that Eliza Dushku tends to have a
limited range, partly due to talent and mostly because anyone who watches
things she headlines, myself included, generally just wants her to play Faith,
or someone close to Faith, so what's really the incentive for her to try new
roles?
Spoilers
for Dollhouse
follow. If you want to go in cold, you
can skip the piece.
A few years ago, Dollhouse,
co-produced by Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku and starring Dushku, premiered and
I watched a couple of episodes. The basic concept was that the Dollhouse was a
place where volunteers signed up for five years to have their brains wiped and
imprinted, at will, with other personalities, all to service the clients of the
Dollhouse. Dushku's character, Echo, in the first few episodes, played a
motorcycle-riding ideal girlfriend, a hostage negotiator, and a master thief,
among others. When not in their Doll state, these "Actives" are close
to mindless, unable to think for themselves.
I stopped watching Dollhouse when it was airing after three episodes. I just found it
boring.
A few weeks ago, I started playing Dollhouse because I was reminded, after
watching Agents of SHIELD, that
Whedon's shows really need some time to get going. The first few episodes were
still kinda boring, so I just played the show in the background for a bit as I
worked.
Right around the sixth episode, when Echo started to
develop glitches, remembering her various imprints and mixing up memories, it
got really interesting. Apparently a unique type of Doll, Echo eventually had
the ability to control her imprints and access their various abilities at will.
As a result, Eliza ended up essentially playing a badass, take-no-prisoners
girl capable of kicking any amount of ass. In other words, she became a
character that was flat out in Eliza's wheelhouse, and if that were all the
show became, it would have instantly been captivating.
But there was more. Echo wasn't the only one showing
a sign of evolution, as the Actives Victor and Sierra, played by Enver Gjokaj
and Dichen Lachman, begin to fall in love despite their mindwipes. Adelle
DeWitt, the boss of the dollhouse, played by Olivia Williams, began to question
the ethics of what they were doing. Topher Brink, the mad scientist played by
Fran Kranz responsible for mindwipes, slowly develops a conscience and a moral
compass. Various characters are revealed to be Dolls, or re-imprinted with Doll
Architecture. There are twists and turns that not only kept me on the edge of
my seat, but made sure that I finished the second season in all of three
nights.
Dollhouse
was an intriguing show. It asked controversial questions and was, frankly,
really disturbing. The protagonists of the show wiped minds and sold the bodies
of their Actives like property, while we rooted against Paul Ballard, the agent
trying to take down the Dollhouse. Why do we do it? Does it say anything about
the power of perspective in fiction? Or does it say anything about us, as
people? What does that say, if anything? Is the Dollhouse a slave trade, or is
it negated by the fact that the Dolls are volunteers? "Our" Dollhouse
ends up getting into ethical arguments with the other Dollhouses, who don't
care for their Actives anywhere near as much. Where is the line crossed? Who
are we to say?
There are a few things in Dollhouse that I feel deserve special mention. Gjokaj, as Victor,
is incredible with accents, able to go back and forth between many at will. At
one point, he plays Topher Brink, alongside the real Topher Brink, and if you
closed your eyes, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The love story
between Victor and Sierra was genuinely moving, legitimately touching and
hope-filling, which is a rare thing for a Joss Whedon show where you, you know,
expect everyone to die. Despite mindwipe after mindwipe, they manage to find
each other, and, you know, that's beautiful, man.
But for me, the most beautiful thing in the show is
the final scene. Taking place in the future where the Dollhouse tech went out
of control and minds are being wiped left and right, Echo leads a movement to
take back humanity. But in the process, they lose someone who means a lot to
her. At the end of it, she imprints that particularly personality into her, and
because she could control the imprints in her mind, that person lives on in her
and with her.
Typing that paragraph alone brings back to the
forefront all the questions that Dollhouse
raises. Is that person "really" that person, in Echo? What about
souls? How much are these people accountable for what their imprints do? Does
it matter? And if it doesn't, then what does?
But it was beautifully done, and provided closure to
a show that had to pack five seasons' worth of plot into two. That's not an
easy feat, and that's made less easy by the fact that it's a tricky concept to
start with.
It's been five days since I finished watching the
show, and I'm still ruminating over Dollhouse,
unable to get started on much of anything new. I can't say the show is an
all-time great, but it was ambitious and moving. And some parts were just
beautiful to watch.
And maybe, in the larger scheme of things, that's
really all that matters — that no matter how thorny life gets, no matter how complicated
the issues are or how difficult the questions are to answer — we find and hold
on to beauty where we can, figuring out the various things in the world that
can give us some resonance. A reflection of our own desires. An echo of our own
dreams.
Duy Tano is a popular Internet blogger and
comic book expert. Check out his blog, The Comics Cube!, at www.comicscube.com,
which tackles all sorts of different topics for all sorts of different forms of
sequential art. Superhero comics, indie comix, komiks, manga, BD—you
name it, it's a valid topic for discussion.
Labels: Cubing, Dollhouse, Duy Tano, Eliza Dushku, Faith the Vampire Slayer, Guest Blog, Joss Whedon
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