Sorry, I thought you meant it didn't seem like that to you. I kinda agree with you on that point.
Yeah I agree. I would not have given a flip about this - I didn't care about all that "eclipse" hooey on Heroes that they premiered with - but the fatal problem is that Dollhouse wasn't otherwise compelling enough to keep my mind from wandering off to Nitpicky Land.
1. Why does the Memory Doohickey need to wipe out memories in order to insert new ones? People insert new memories themselves - learning a new skill - all the time without interfering with old memories. The only reason for this contrivance is that there would be no show, or not this show, if people were simply adding new skill sets via technology.
2. The Memory Doohickey tech, plus keeping a dormitory for the Dolls with services on par with a four star hotel, looks like a massively pricey operation. Yet Echo's abilities as a dream date didn't seem incredibly out of the ordinary, and her abilities as a hostage negotiator left a lot to be desired. Sierra's butt-kicking abilities would require a lot of physical training but that's not what the Memory Doohickey provides. Jack Bauer does the same on a slow day, and he gets paid a government wage.
I'm not buying the economics of this - that any of the Dolls would have abiltiies so far out of the bounds of what you could obtain through well paid employees with specialized skills that they could support the cost of this outlandish business. The show is going to have to demonstrate people having truly superhuman abilities as a dream date, hostage negotiator, etc - I doubt that Whedon can pull that off without going the Heroes route and giving these people literal superpowers (which are physical so that still wouldn't make sense).
3. Why is this illegal? These are grownups who decide to have their memories wiped. Delete the prostitution part of the business, and it could operate in the open. What business does the FBI have in interfering? But of course it's because the Dolls sexy young females and we're supposed to see them as poor pathetic victims, despite being over the age of 21. Ugh. Nice way to treat adults as if they are children, just because they are female. Replace Echo, Sierra, et al with a bunch of beefy guys who look like the Steelers' defensive line - now do you feel sorry for the poor, innocent, exploited lambkins?
What bullshit. Joss Whedon has some kind of hard-on for victimized females and I'm sorry, I'm not interested in exploring his boring and faintly revolting psychological hangups.
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Well, because simply adding memories and knowledge isn't enough. It would still be the same person that would react to things in her own way. To get a person that reacts exactly the way a client wants, or perfectly to solve a problem, you can't simply add knowledge or memories, you need an ENTIRELY different person and thus personality.
In fact, the episode rather touched on that. Miss Penn was nearsighted, had asthma and was a kidnap victim herself, why? Because this drove her to become the best hostage negotiator to get any other child kidnapped freed safely. So EchoPenn had the same things. Without these things, she would not be Miss Penn, and would not be react the way Miss Penn would. If Miss Penn's knowledge were simply dumped into Caroline or Echo, you wouldn't get Miss Penn, you'd get Caroline/Echo attempting to emulate Miss Pen, trying to second guess how Miss Penn would react.
In order to get Miss Penn, you need Miss Penn, so the other personality and knowledge has to be gone.
Were we watching the same episode? If one of the kidnappers weren't the man that kindapped and abused Miss Penn, the hostage exchange would have gone off without a hitch.
The dream date seemed pretty impressive as well I have to add. How many escort girls out there are race motor riders?
3. Why is this illegal? These are grownups who decide to have their memories wiped. Delete the prostitution part of the business, and it could operate in the open. What business does the FBI have in interfering? But of course it's because the Dolls sexy young females and we're supposed to see them as poor pathetic victims, despite being over the age of 21. Ugh. Nice way to treat adults as if they are children, just because they are female. Replace Echo, Sierra, et al with a bunch of beefy guys who look like the Steelers' defensive line - now do you feel sorry for the poor, innocent, exploited lambkins?
What bullshit. Joss Whedon has some kind of hard-on for victimized females and I'm sorry, I'm not interested in exploring his boring and faintly revolting psychological hangups.
Uh... again, were we watching the same show?
1. There WERE hunky beefy male dolls. They weren't featured in this episode, but they were there getting showers with the female dolls. And yes, I felt they are as much victims as the women.
2. They don't get their memories wiped, they get their personalities wiped; they are essentially being reduced to programmable zombies. The original person is basically dead; you don't think they would be telling the prospective doll that one, do you?
3. They are blackmailed into it. They aren't there of their own free will with all the facts on the table.
4. A chunk of them, were smuggled women from overseas, kidnapped women that would be forced into prostitution, but are forced into becoming dolls instead - getting killed in the process.
That's a stupid idea - basing someone's skills on psychological abuse opens you up to unknown factors. Even if the kidnapper had not been her abuser, anything else could have triggered a melt-down. In hostage negotiation, you want to limit the unknown factors, not magnify them by adding memories of psychologically damaged people to your negotiator. And what does being nearsighted and having asthma have to do with anything?
Then why add a memory of an abused person at all? It's a weakness in any circumstance. I thought the point was to create a "perfect person." Nerd boy wasn't doing his job. As you said, they knew she had been abused - why include a potential land mind like that?
The best hostage negotiator (in fact, the best person for a huge range of scenarios) is someone who is not psychologically damaged in any way - and that raises one legitimate reason for wiping memories, which is to delete psychological damage that any human being would have, gained simply by living, even if nothing traumatic had ever happened to that person.
To create someone with absolutely no baggage whatsoever, who can handle negotiations unemotionally, like a robot, who is therefore unlike any human being who has ever lived. Now that might make for an interesting story - what would a person be like who had absolutely no baggage whatsoever? Would that person even be superior? Would they lack the wisdom and balance that only "living life" can offer? But clearly that wasn't the case here.
Oh please, I'm sure a millionaire could find a sexy girl who races motorcycles to invite to his party. Probably could find one on craigslist. I wasn't impressed in the least.
Interesting how none of them are the focus of the show, tho.
And I doubt Whedon would have made the show with a male lead. Considering the exploitive way the female dolls were presented (particularly in the ads between segments), Whedon's agenda is crystal clear.I saw no evidence that anybody lied to Echo (or whatever her name was before). It would be easy to envision people whose pasts are so wretched that they would voluntarily offer to become Dolls, just to wipe out their painful memories. In which case, they have no claim on our sympathies.
And whether a person's personality is contained wholly in their memories is debatable, but it looks like that's the assumption of this show. How do you wipe out a person's "personality" via their brain unless it's via their memories?
I saw no evidence of blackmail in this episode.
I don't recall this being established in this episode. Helo was investigating a Russian prostitution ring, sure. But I didn't see anyone being killed at the Dollhouse. You're not letting spoilers for future episodes go uncoded are you?
And what's the value of mind-wiping hookers? Sadly there is no end to the number of impoverished women who can be lured into this business. Rather than expensively wipe their minds, better to cheaply murder them and find replacements. Once again, the economics don't work simply because there are few professions where skills are so highly valued that it would be worthwhile to do this, and prostitution isn't one of them.
There's an interesting show in here somewhere, but this isn't it. I'd prefer a show that 1) does not make some mawkish claim on our sympathies by depicting the "dolls" as victims (ugh), 2) has a male lead character (just to reinforce point 1), 3) gives the dolls a rationale for having their minds wiped, in order to erase ugly and intolerable memories (which appears to be the case with this show anyway - that was Echo's implied motive for agreeing to the procedure) and 4) pays strict attention to what professions would and would not make sense for this very expensive procedure - it's gotta be something the doll can make lots of money from, that a non-mind-wiped person couldn't do a reasonably closely good job of, thus wiping out the economic advantage of the Dollhouse concept.
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I know I'm repeating what others have said, but what's a message board if not a place to say, "Me too!"
I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. I'll watch again next week to see what comes next.
Here's to hoping more Eliza.. and more dancing!!!
To think Ripper was cancelled for this Dollhouse stuff
Where are you getting that? Ripper was never in production, BBC wanted to go ahead with it but nothing's come of it yet.
There was an interview with Tony Head the middle of last year where he said that Joss Whedon was talking with Julie Gardner about Ripper. After that FOX picks up Dollhouse and Ripper is never mentioned again. It may not have been canceled, but it was put on hold.
http://www.digitalspy.com/cult/a94672/anthony-head-the-invisibles.html
^At the end of last year Tony Head's own site reported that the script has been commissioned, so it's still potentially happening.
Jericho and Pushing Daisies were iTunes darlings, too. Didn't save em from the axe. iTunes doesn't pull anywhere near enough revenue yet to matter in such calculations.
I didn't say it would did I? I just happened to read that in Entertainment Weekly.
If you don't even like the show why do you post in this thread so often?
I just read this thread and I am wondering about some of the earlier posts that seem to suggest that Fox does not want this series to succeed. Or any scripted series for that matter. I have to ask... why? What would they get out of it when they agree to have a series made and then hope for its demise before it's even started? Wouldn't it make more sense then to not order the series at all?
1) They aren't doing that. Langdon doesn't like what they're doing and he protective towards Echo.
2) Of course you would prefer a male lead. This is Joss and this show with a male lead would not have made it to air. Well, it would have made it to air on the CW but then the lead's shirt would fall off every three minutes and he'd have trouble getting anything done with all the girls beating him up.
3) There was clearly a reason why Echo signed up.
4) I agree with you on that.
1. I like the theme music. 
2. The "Jossverse" clips on Hulu are pretty fun.
Still watching. Haven't found any of the magic of Whedon's previous projects yet, but neither have I been turned off enough to bail. You know what bothers me most? Aside from Echo and Alpha, I can't remember any character names. The geeky guy strikes me as a poor imitation of Wash. The handler gives a vibe that is a cross between Book and The Operative. And I like seeing Amy Acker. Those are my only real impressions so far. I'm not dissecting the show, which is not a good sign, because it means I don't really care.
2. The "Jossverse" clips on Hulu are pretty fun.
Still watching. Haven't found any of the magic of Whedon's previous projects yet, but neither have I been turned off enough to bail. You know what bothers me most? Aside from Echo and Alpha, I can't remember any character names. The geeky guy strikes me as a poor imitation of Wash. The handler gives a vibe that is a cross between Book and The Operative. And I like seeing Amy Acker. Those are my only real impressions so far. I'm not dissecting the show, which is not a good sign, because it means I don't really care.
^I knew it started with a "t" but couldn't get Tamoh out of my head after watching this Jossverse clip on Hulu.
I don't know if that's what bothers me most, but I have the same problem. I think it's indicative of the characters up to now being quite bland and not very likeable. And cliche as well. There's the concerned father figure, the obsessed cop, the emotionless business person and her somewhat more ruthless sidekick business person, the geeky scientist, and the hot doctor with her face slashed up (okay, that last one, perhaps not so cliche).
It also doesn't help that Dushku reminded me too much of Faith in the first episode. The first scene of the series had a bit the Faith offering her services to the Major vibe and the dance scene in her first on screen mission was just a copy of Faith dancing. Well, at least she got some other roles in the rest of the episodes. Amy Acker is back being the scientist though. Haven't we seen her a lot in a white coat during Angel season 5, or I am making that up now?
episode 3 still sucks,
Joss can do great but Dollhouse ain't no Firefly
This one is doomed and I think I'm done with it
Joss can do great but Dollhouse ain't no Firefly
This one is doomed and I think I'm done with it