Dollhouse: "Man on the Street" (episode 6)

[Plain Simple]

I loved the fight. Very reminiscent of Buffy.

During the alley fight I was half expecting Echo to stake Ballard and have him poof out of existence.

 

[Lumen]

LaxScrutiny's post about the protagonist of the show and this episode gets at what still has me scratching my head.

Every episode so far has been very Echo-centric, very engagement-driven, with Ballard a background character, depicted as an annoyance for DeWitt and Dominic. This episode felt different -- Dewitt felt genuinely wrong in this episode, unlike before, where we weren't given many cues about her, other than "really stern". Echo's engagement didn't drive the story, at least, not in the same way -- it was no longer about Echo being in personal jeopardy, or the engagement endangering her life. And Ballard wasn't a side-show, but the hero of the story.

If we've got protagonists in the Actives, then it has to be the Actives in their wiped state. There's nothing to root for when they're imprinted, which has been the big problem with the previous, Echo-engagement-driven episodes. It was really hard to care about the sense of jeopardy they tried to introduce. The only thing I cared about were the little remnants of her engagements that stayed with Echo.

But I think it's a problem if the show doesn't develop a clear protagonist, or at least a clear conflict soon. The problem with the previous episodes is that, taken completely episodically, there really was nothing to care about. Boyd was the emotional focal point of each episode prior to this, but that only really worked in "Target". They made it work in this episode only by reducing Echo to a supporting character, which doesn't seem like something they're going to continue doing.

So that's my only "complaint" that's still around. As for the whole tiny-women-fighting-big-men, I don't really care. There are things I demand from my shows, and adherence to human anatomy or the laws of physics are not among them.

 

[Arrqh]

She saved the little girl, she protected the singer, she escaped from the hunter, she got the people out of the cult compound and she escaped from the police with the art she was sent to steal. It's not heroism if you can't possibly lose.

Except Echo didn't do any of those things. The personalities programmed into Echo did... essentially they were different characters. Echo seems to have a sort of meta-personality... something that transcends whatever she happens to be programmed with at the time. That's the real character but that's different from the set of skills and personality that she's been programmed with. She can't possibly be a Mary Sue because having a skillset that's perfectly attuned to the task at hand is the point of the show... and those tasks aren't what the show is about, as was pretty clearly shown in this ep.

As others have said, if Echo is a protagonist, it's not programmed-Echo but instead wiped Echo. Or perhaps more likely, meta-Echo. Meta-Echo is, really, the only clear development that I really saw coming out of the first episodes and what I think fundamentally the show may be about: Echo developing a personality that transcends all of her "states." And isn't that what happened to Alpha?

 

[TheInsideMan]

Much, much better.

"My husband does porn!" , yep, its a Joss Whedon show.

That Echo vs Ballard fight was great, got some serious Buffyverse flashbacks watching that. The only thing missing was a stake and better music.

The cute neighbour being a doll was predictable, but it certainly wasn't when she was being attacked, up until the phone call. Very well played.

I'm curious to see what happens next.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

It's curious where they are going with Ballard. Dewitt sent Echo after him, presumably to discredit him. So he's fired. They're keeping his doll in place. So assuming the "message" from the "insider" is legitimate, Ballard is being manipulated by 2 sides, each having an unknown agenda. Ballard's own agenda is kind of irrelevant, but he is probably going to have pick a side eventually.

So I'm seeing Ballard as the probable character to have a crisis point sometime, along with Boyd. These two characters essentially have the same personal agenda, protecting Echo, they are coming from different directions and will eventually have to clash because they each see "protecting Echo" as something totally different. They are the ones who will have to decide which path to take, and this is a lot of what the story has to play out.

Echo herself has no choices available... so far. But as she evolves, she may eventually have a choice, and it's only then that she could become the protagonist.

As I think about this, it reminds me of a Raymond Chandler novel. The story is narrated by the supposed protagonist, but the story isn't really about the narrator at all. Although he eventually experiences some change as a result of his involvement, he's primarily the observer. So I could see Echo playing this role throughout the series, involved, affected, but as much the observer of what is going on around her.

 

[Tomato]

It was better. I enjoyed it. and didn't have to fast forward as many parts.

 

[Sakrysta]

I enjoyed this one much more than previous offerings. I got tickled at Eliza in the beginning and thought she did a delightful job in her software-mogul's-wife persona.

I admit, it kinda hurt a little bit seeing Boone be such an evil creature.

But yeah, this episode finally got my attention. I'm intrigued now, where before I was watching to fill an hour and see if the show survived. Now I'm actually interested in the mystery behind the premise.

 

[RAMA]

Wow this episode turned my head. Up until now its been a passable effort, but this one really knocked it out of the park. Finally, this is a Whedon show I may actually like.

RAMA

 

[witchie]

Porn!

So funny. Eliza was very funny in those scenes.

 

[Snaploud]

Question regarding the "client": did the dollhouse download his dead wife's personality? They seem to go back and forth between these personality downloads being real people and creative designs.

 

[Venardhi]

I gather most of them are composites of real people. I'm not sure how easily they can download a personality from a dead person though. I assume for this case it was a composite based on things like home videos and other information on her personality to produce an optimized facsimile.

 

[YLu]

You can put some of this down to training, but Helo has clearly demonstrated that he's exceptionally skilled in hand-to-hand combat.

Er, just because he's exceptionally skilled doesn't mean she can't be even more exceptionally skilled.

 

[Hermiod]

You can put some of this down to training, but Helo has clearly demonstrated that he's exceptionally skilled in hand-to-hand combat.

Er, just because he's exceptionally skilled doesn't mean she can't be even more exceptionally skilled.

You can't download years of extensive exercise in to someone's body. Forget her "programming". No amount of training is going to change the fact that Echo is half his size.

Tahmoh Penikett is a very big guy, and he adds to that by being particularly muscular - as is almost a requirement for actors his age these days. You do not look like he does by accident, he's the product of many, many hours in the gym and doubtless his character is too.

Television and film massively underestimates the importance of physical strength and overemphasises the importance of showy, flashy moves that will more likely get you seriously hurt than the other guy.

 

[Roshi]

Until now, it was pretty much Dullhouse. But with Friday's episode, there's finally a cohesive element driving the plot. It took six episodes!!!

 

[YLu]

You can't download years of extensive exercise in to someone's body. Forget her "programming". No amount of training is going to change the fact that Echo is half his size.

Tahmoh Penikett is a very big guy, and he adds to that by being particularly muscular - as is almost a requirement for actors his age these days. You do not look like he does by accident, he's the product of many, many hours in the gym and doubtless his character is too.

Television and film massively underestimates the importance of physical strength and overemphasises the importance of showy, flashy moves that will more likely get you seriously hurt than the other guy.

Keep in mind how Alpha was described in the flashback about his break-out. They said that it'd be impossible for a regular human to make cuts that precise at that speed. A properly programmed Active isn't just exceptionally skilled, s/he's pretty much superhumanly skilled. Echo's not Bruce Lee; she's Batman.

 

[Hermiod]

Keep in mind how Alpha was described in the flashback about his break-out. They said that it'd be impossible for a regular human to make cuts that precise at that speed. A properly programmed Active isn't just exceptionally skilled, s/he's pretty much superhumanly skilled. Echo's not Bruce Lee; she's Batman.

Have you ever read a Batman comic ? Have you seen the work he puts himself through ? The whole point of the character is that he doesn't have any superpowers yet people who do have powers are still scared of him.

If you took all of Batman's training and expertise and downloaded it in to Echo, she'd still be a small, skinny girl with Batman's training and expertise. She'll be infinitely more dangerous than she would be without that training, but she'll still break her hand trying to punch someone Ballard's size.

 

[Pingfah]

You're actually arguing about the logisitics of fantasy action scenes

You know you can't smash somebody's head into a concrete wall and have them get up and carry on fighting either as happens all the time in these shows, it's not supposed to be realistic. If it was realistic, the fights would be over in a matter of seconds given some of the blows they land on each other and one or the other of them would be dead.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Your actually arguing about the logisitics of fantasy action scenes

You know you can't smash somebody's head into a concrete wall and have them get up and carry on fighting either as happens all the time in these shows, it's not supposed to be realistic. If it was realisitic, the fights would be over in a matter of seconds given some of the blows they land on each other and one or the other of them would be dead.

And even if they survived they'd both be beaten to hell. Broken bones in their hand, from bone on bone hits, concussion or worse from head shots, certainly no way either of them could get up and run off at the end of it.

 

[Hermiod]

Your actually arguing about the logisitics of fantasy action scenes

Look up the page - this is TrekBBS. We argue about how many photon torpedo launchers non-canon Starships have. Once we've done that, we can argue about anything.

You know you can't smash somebody's head into a concrete wall and have them get up and carry on fighting either as happens all the time in these shows, it's not supposed to be realistic. If it was realisitic, the fights would be over in a matter of seconds given some of the blows they land on each other and one or the other of them would be dead.

It's a flaw in the premise of the show. Echo is supposed to be able to receive skills, experience, memories etc through Topher's process, not physical alterations.

If they can make her someone capable of fighting Ballard and come out of it without a scratch then next they will be saying they can make her breasts larger or her bum firmer through the same means for less violent encounters.

I keep thinking of Monica Dawson in Heroes here. She had the ability to perfectly replicate any action she saw - which included things like fighting techniques copied from Rey Mysterio and Bruce Lee and parkour skills copied from a video given to her. What she wasn't able to do was copy actions beyond her own physical means as a fairly fit and healthy, young woman.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

^So you have no problem with someone with no training, being able to pull off wrestling and martial arts moves, plus run and jump, climb up the outside of a house, hold her self up on a ceiling, simply from seeing these things done, but you have a problem with someone having skills programmed in to them and being able to hold their own in a fight?
Again this is a fantasy show, how is it a flaw in the premise that these people can pull these things off, when they're programmed to do so, it's fantasy, I'm sure people do things way beyond believability in plenty of fantasy shows/stories.