Dollhouse 2x4 Belonging Grade-Discuss-Commentary **SPOILERS**

[DarthPipes]

Dennis wrote:

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Yeah, it's amazing how much these people are like...uh, people.

I like Topher, BTW. Hell, I like everyone on the damned show.

Part of the subtext of this series that makes it so creepy is recognizing that the "morality" of the Dollhouse is a pretty accurate reflection of how the world actually works. Most everyone is far more morally compromised than they'll admit to themselves, and that's the price of participation in our society. If one wants to be moral in the uncomplicated way that "good" characters in most popular fiction are one has to opt out of, for example, the consumer economy; filling up the gas tank makes a person complicit in heinous crimes that are taking place very day.

Oh, except that there are a whole bunch of good reasons that none of us are culpable for that and it's not really true anyway and, you know, you can't put a price on human life and all that reassuring sentimental stuff.

Very good point. I thought the Rossum guy's speech summed it up nicely. He knew exactly what the group was and how they were all compromised. His line about "taking something home with us from the office" was really telling.

[firehawk12]

I think there's a bigger line between a dude buying computer parts with coltan in them that were mined in a war torn country than prostitution.

My problem is, they whore these people out every day and turn them into fetish objects for wealthy people. That's fine, because we do that now and have always done that since the dawn of time. I don't really have a problem with that. My only problem is that these people suddenly feeling bad for what they do. It's just ludicrous... and maybe I have the weird sense of morality, but I don't see the shades of gray in this at all.

[Mr. Adventure]

^^ Maybe there's not and they just haven't fully accepted that. Maybe there's no difference in using Coltan and actually sending checks to the Congo military factions. Maybe there's no difference between their everyday prostitution and the calculated forcing of Sierra to personal sex slave. But now they have a face to it which makes it harder to swallow and live with. They have been building up in this series that there's a slow and gradual acceptance that what they are doing is wrong and this is part of it.

[IndyJones]

This was probably the 2nd episode of the show (Epitaph One being the other) that I truely liked.

And what a great stable of guest stars this show is developing! Too bad we'll never get to see them used.

[Trent Roman]

This is absolutely the most I have ever enjoyed having my psyche brutalized. Genius. This show has a lot of filler in it, but it's episodes like these that make it all worthwhile, and more. I echo (heh) what others have said: I'm gonna miss this mind-trip when it's gone. This is some of, if not the, most hardcore stuff I've seen on television--nuBSG wishes it had been this devastating. Phillip K. Dick in pastels, damn.

I can't believe nobody's mentioned the scratchings on the inside of Echo's coffin. That fucked me up. Simultaneous flashbacks to half-a-dozen Poe stories all at once, only worse because it keeps happening again and again...

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

[firehawk12]

Mr. Adventure wrote:

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^^ Maybe there's not and they just haven't fully accepted that. Maybe there's no difference in using Coltan and actually sending checks to the Congo military factions. Maybe there's no difference between their everyday prostitution and the calculated forcing of Sierra to personal sex slave. But now they have a face to it which makes it harder to swallow and live with. They have been building up in this series that there's a slow and gradual acceptance that what they are doing is wrong and this is part of it.

I suppose right from the get go I sided with "Helo" (Ballard?) when it came to this whole thing in that I didn't identify with anything the Dollhouse was doing, so I find it hard to be at all sympathetic with these characters and their moral dilemmas.

It's like a cheezy war movie where a Nazi soldier gets a conscience when he shoots a Jewish girl or something and then realizes that maybe anti-Semitism isn't such a good idea. It's great that the Nazi comes to that revelation, but it doesn't excuse the fact that the dude is still a Nazi.

[Yoda]

Good episode. Went with above average because a couple of plot things didn't click with me. What's her faces confrontation didn't make a ton of sense with the way she left him get the upper hand. Also, why was she so willing to go back to the Dollhouse? In the end I guess they implied that she wanted the recent memories erased... but I think most people would make a break for it.

But, for the most part, it worked. There wasn't much for Eliza this week, which as others have mentioned helps the acting immensely. Also no Helo making stupid Helo grimaces and saying stupid Helo things. There's some decent acting in this show. I'm kind of curious if it would ever develop into something consistently good, but it won't hit me too hard if the likely cancellation does indeed happen.

[Warp Coil]

Mr Light wrote:

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Overnights are in: Dollhouse (Viewers: #4, 2.15 million; A18-49: #4, 0.9/ 3) So Dollhouse this year has been 2.56 > 2.09 > 2.25 > 2.15.

Taking a week off last week sucked. I suspect that sitting out November sweeps will only make things worse (if that's even possible).

[Awesome Possum]

Trent Roman wrote:

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I can't believe nobody's mentioned the scratchings on the inside of Echo's coffin. That fucked me up. Simultaneous flashbacks to half-a-dozen Poe stories all at once, only worse because it keeps happening again and again...

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

They aren't scratchings, she's writing what happens to her. From what I could see she had listed every engagement she's been one.

[Chaos Descending]

^^^ Yeah, I paused the HD-DVD to read them. They said things like "Victor loves Sierra", and "I was killed by my son", and so forth.

[Trent Roman]

Awesome Poltergeist wrote:

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They aren't scratchings, she's writing what happens to her. From what I could see she had listed every engagement she's been one.

Scratched into the glass, is what I was meant (you'll have to forgive me, I get lyrical when I'm tired). I saw that she had written 'cues' to herself ("The Attic is Bad", etc.), I just found it very eerie, bringing to mind stories of premature burial. Of course, one has to assume she actually has some bit of metal in her 'stash' in there, because that looks like hard glass and she's not coming out with raw and bleeding fingernails everytime, so it's not quite a Madeline Usher situation, but the image of her working the last, clinging bits of memory into the 'lid' of this narrow space evoked all those fears nonetheless.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

[Serial thread killer]

I think this has to be one of the best eps of both series.
I do think think Eliza acting is not has good has rest of the cast.

[Mr. Adventure]

Serial thread killer wrote:

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I do think think Eliza acting is not has good has rest of the cast.

Put the bottle down!

[David cgc]

dru wrote:

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Well directed by Jonathan Frakes.

I thought the cinematography and lighting this week was remarkably beautiful. I especially liked the just-barely-blown-out quality of DeWitt and Topher's scene in her office.

[Admiral Buzzkill]

firehawk12 wrote:

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I think there's a bigger line between a dude buying computer parts with coltan in them that were mined in a war torn country than prostitution.

As a single carefully selected, relatively trivial example standing on its own, there may well be. But you know full well that there's much, much more to it than that.

Don't think about it.

And it's not about "shades of gray" at all. It's about the terrible inconvenience of black-and-white.