Dollhouse: "Man on the Street" (episode 6)
- Thread starter tharpdevenport
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It's not a flaw, the premise of the show relies on the suspension of disbelief that a skinny little girl with no muscle mass could ever beat up a big strapping martial arts expert guy like that. She couldn't do it, super downloaded training or not.
It's fantasy, just like all the other impossible things they do.
I have no problem with it in Heroes because it's well established that people with superpowers in the show can do things that ordinary humans can't.
I have no problem with Echo receiving skills via these downloads. That's effectively all Monica received herself - skills.
The one and only time Monica used her ability in a fight, she caught the guy off guard and hit him with what Mysterio calls the 619, knocking him through a window in the process.
She was not able to fight the group of men who caught her when she tried to retrieve Micah's comic books.
And I'll point it out then as well. I've previously pointed out how daft it is that Lana in Smallville, with a few kickboxing lessons, is a match for superheroes like the Green Arrow or someone like Tess Mercer.
Or how Starbuck managed to not be killed in the infamous Battlestar Galactica boxing matches.
A good example of how to avoid this is Alias - sure, Sydney Bristow beat up guys she shouldn't have been able to - but they were very careful to have her do it in improvisational, clever ways, using whatever objects were available to her to help her. She'd grab anything lying around and hit her opponent with it rather than using her hands. She also always tried to disable her opponent as quickly as possible. Specifically, she specialised in Krav Maga which emphasizes doing as much damage as possible in order to disable an opponent and neutralise the threat they pose quickly.
The fight scenes were more believable as a result, and thus more enjoyable.
In this episode, however, Echo wasn't doing anything of the sort. She was throwing Ballard around like, quite frankly, Faith would.
Pingfah - if they use fight techniques that a real woman her size could realistically use to defeat a guy Ballard's size, then my belief would not need to be suspended.
Ballard took out 4 big, tough, armed thugs after he had been shot, in seconds. A couple of weeks later, while he was still bleeding through the bandage after any physical exertion, he takes out multiple (I lost count) trained security guards after having been Tasered.
Ballard's physical performance is absolutely insane. We haven't seen him so much as do a pushup since the show started, and he certainly hasn't had a workout since being shot.
So you watch this and then conclude that Echo's fighting prowess is unrealistic compared to the standard of the rest of the show?
As far as the science fiction premise of the show, if you download someone's muscle memory of a thousand fights, it wouldn't work because your body proportions are at least slightly different than theirs. You'd go to pick your nose and you'd poke yourself in the eye. It would take weeks of constant training to just compensate for your "new" body.
The reason you stagger when you are drunk is because your blood vessels have expanded, stretching the nerves running along side them, and your arms and legs feel like they are the wrong length. Dolls would go through the same thing.
But who cares? The show asks us to believe in the premise for the sake of telling us a story, so I'm there. That's why it's science fiction.
Ballard's physical performance is absolutely insane. We haven't seen him so much as do a pushup since the show started, and he certainly hasn't had a workout since being shot.
So you watch this and then conclude that Echo's fighting prowess is unrealistic compared to the standard of the rest of the show?
As far as the science fiction premise of the show, if you download someone's muscle memory of a thousand fights, it wouldn't work because your body proportions are at least slightly different than theirs. You'd go to pick your nose and you'd poke yourself in the eye. It would take weeks of constant training to just compensate for your "new" body.
The reason you stagger when you are drunk is because your blood vessels have expanded, stretching the nerves running along side them, and your arms and legs feel like they are the wrong length. Dolls would go through the same thing.
But who cares? The show asks us to believe in the premise for the sake of telling us a story, so I'm there. That's why it's science fiction.
I said my piece on the subject on Saturday, other people answered it, I answered them back. That's called discussion.
If you want a board where one person gets to say what they think and nobody else gets to respond, I suggest you start a blog.
Let me try to explain my objection. It's like when I play fetch with my family's two black labs. They love the game, chasing down tennis balls with abandon.
But one of them, once she gets the ball, refuses to give it back. It's still a game to her----keep the ball away from the human----but it's less fun for everyone else.
I'm just saying, knowing when you've made your point is important. Too much and people just stop listening.
I agree that this was the best episode yet, it was one of the first that made me give a shit about any of the characters and it had me on the edge of my seat on several occasions.
Contrivances aside, this was an example of Joss Whedon doing what he does best, empathising with the audience, and creating very effective dramatic tension.
Contrivances aside, this was an example of Joss Whedon doing what he does best, empathising with the audience, and creating very effective dramatic tension.
To use your analogy, I got the ball on Saturday, I gave it back but people keep throwing it back my way when I'd already stopped playing.
There may not be a poll in this week's thread, but I'm still allowed to say what I think of an episode. I did not think this episode was as good as others are making it out to be. I'm sorry for having a contrary opinion and for making everything "less fun" for everyone else. I won't bother involving myself in the discussion of this show again.
Agreed, it was much more like I'd expected from the show in the first place.
I agreed with your comment about the pilot too, as I was watching this I was thinking what a great episode it would be to introduce people to the show. It tells you everything you need to know, I got the impression that JW was trying to give that "this is where it really starts" feeling to it. It explained much more than it needed to, given what has already come before.
Well obviously they have a button that just remaps whatever muscle memory is being downloaded to the doll's body map. See, it's easy!
The reason why I see that is that you can have Bruce Lee's memories but if your body isn't flexible enough or has the strength, endurance etc.. It don't matter. A 400 lbs fat dude that knows kung fun isn't going to scare me as much as a 220 lbs dude. The whole exercising preps the dolls up incase they need to do anything crazy physical.
Self destruct?
Wow, much better. I finally saw it off my TiVo recording.
It certainly is excellent compared to the previous offerings. So it might not be a fully objective grade.
The "porn!" stuff was funny.
And I suspected the neighbor being a doll since the first time we saw her. And a nice plan by the Dollhouse - it both got rid of a problem guy, *and* sent a message to Ballard at the same time.
It certainly is excellent compared to the previous offerings. So it might not be a fully objective grade.
The "porn!" stuff was funny.
And I suspected the neighbor being a doll since the first time we saw her. And a nice plan by the Dollhouse - it both got rid of a problem guy, *and* sent a message to Ballard at the same time.
Now there's a martial art I need to look into!
"Hey! Hey! Hey! I'm your sensei!"
I can't believe it's only been five days since that ep - it seems much longer (though BSG's finale may figure into that). I can't wait to see where Dollhouse goes next.
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