I just got done with watching the season finale of Dollhouse.
I welcome thoughts, below. Spoilers abound, so do not look if you do not want to know.
Did I say: SPOILERS BELOW!
I am a drunk on white Zin, and munching Thai food (pad see ewe--yaay!). But perhaps that is the ideal state to meditate, and expound upon, this show. The comments below will only make sense to people who have watched the show. I have warned you.
The show took a quantum leap. I wouldn't necessarily say it's a leap forward. But it is a leap.
I must confess that I'm not sure I like the show. It's hard to attach oneself to a show where the protagonist is literally a zombie whose brain gets uploaded with a new personality literally every week.
Helo becomes a doll. So much the better, I never cottoned much to the character anyhow. May he be far more interesting as a doll than he was as an actual person. To his credit, he chose to free his ersatz girlfriend, rather than to free Caroline/Echo/whoever the fuck she is now. Chose reality fantasy girlfriend, over fantasy fantasy girlfriend. I suppose that is the better of two shitty choices.
Frankly I thought he was going to become Echo's new handler.
The idea of Caroline confronting herself-as-Echo/Omega was not nearly as mind-blowing as Joss Whedon would want you to believe it was. Really it wasn't. I was able mostly to keep track of it. Even though I was drunk on white Zin. Yeah, Caroline, in a body that wasn't hers, was talking to a being that inhabited the body that she used to belong to.
We get it Joss. Anyone who smoked pot in college and debated the nature of the soul with his roommates while high, fucking gets it.
And WTF was the point? She's imprinted with 38 personalities at once, only to have them all wiped at the end (maybe--the show wants to leave its options open). Talk about deus ex machina. And talk about lack of consequences. Thought the whole show was about the idea that we can't just wipe away the past like it was nothing.
Don't talk to me about that little titillation--where she mutters her name at the end. We all know that that will be forgotten next season, if the writers find that convenient. And then it will resurface in the last couple episodes of the next season once the writers find that convenient. If there is a next season.
And of course, Alpha left free, to menace them. Typical audience-bait. Although Alan Tudyk is fucking awesome. It's hard trying to act a role which is really 48 personalities in one. I've got to give the man credit.
What are they going to do with Victor anyhow? It's not like they have another doctor to upload into his brain anyhow. And he's scarred. For life! No more Miss Lonelyhearts engagements for him!
Boyd. They didn't do enough with him in this last episode. Rather passive and a foil; I prefer him proactive. If he is the man I think he is he will bring down the Dollhouse. He's the honorable man, in a shitty situation.
Whiskey. Topher's totally into her. Feels pity and affection, emotions I thought he wasn't capable of. Will he allow her to continue in her current state? Aware that she's not real? And Christ, how the hell did he wipe the original Dr. Saunders? What did they do to him? The real him, although I guess the point of the show is to throw doubt on the idea of a "real him".
Which was your favorite episode? Let me know. Mine was the penultimate episode, Briar Rose.
Forgive me if I sound like my mind wasn't blown. Because it wasn't, and because I felt this episode was rushed and its ideas underbaked. And after all that insistence that there was going to be a payoff, there wasn't one.
I'm sorry. That's just the way I feel.
Your thoughts below.
UPDATE: Oh yeah. That cameo by the guy who played that pyrokinetic guy on X-Files. Was that really necessary? Seriously. It just must have been because of his contract or something. Because the story would have been fine without it.
UPDATE #2: Someone pointed out that the original Saunders was murdered by Alpha. I must have been too drunk to realize that.