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Hey, did anyone else think the episode last night was.... good?

full disclosure before starting - my shift key is not working, which means no caps, no parenthesis, and no exclamation points. i hope i can survive this.

Hey, did anyone else think the episode last night was.... good?

um....not really?
considering this was the episode to end all episodes, that was supposed to be when the show actually 'got good'.... yeah, no.
i will give it that it -finally- laid the foundation for a bigger story arc --although i had figured that there were multiple dollhouses, i assumed that would be revealed later in the series-- and it's kinda cool that there is a mole inside the dollhouse who will -i assume- continue to use the dolls/echo to help fbi guy bring the dollhouse/s down...but despite that coolness..... i just can't get into it.
none of the characters are really likable. topher being the absolute worst. everything he does irritates me. and his supposed 'jokes' fall flat.
for that matter, all the 'witty banter' was...off. 'throw the kindle at you'??? really? and eliza's 'porn' tirade when she was the wife was also not amusing - alhtough i suspect it was meant to be.
plus, it irritated that the majority of the 'people on the street' interviews that found the idea of the dollhouse not skeevy.... were women. and the ending of the episode was total crap. the tinkling piano music and the slow-mo while echo went back to patton oswalt to 'play wife' again was meant to make us think, 'okay, maybe there is some good reasons for dolls to exist.' but no. the concept is icky, all -?- the characters are icky, the show is just...not all that good.
of course, mileage may vary.

Yes, yes I did.

I generally find patton oswalt to be fun, even if he was creepy and ordering a doll. The fact that most of the dolls are sex toys I still find objectionable, but we aren't supposed to like the dollhouse because they are the bad guys. That in of itself is something I like about the show, its mostly from the perspective of the bad guys with small parts of white hat put in (kind of like what I imagine watching angel from Wolfram and Hart's perspective might have been. Small amounts of Angel with the majority of it following Lindsay or Lilah and seeing all the evil stuff they do.)

Until now I had no concept of how the show would continue on. I mean, it seemed like they had a possible idea, but it wouldn't have lasted even a full season. Now I can understand how it will go longer, and I think it has potential.

That being said, I still can't stand skeezy brain altering guy, and the scene with him putting parts of the brain together, as if the different brain structures made up this concept of person pissed me off.

I thought it was good too. I actually laughed a few times. I think I may have actually cared about what happened to the characters. I was suprised, happily, that Helo (um, I can't think of his name in this show) got with that one girl. I liked her and they made me smile. So, I was pretty sure she was going to die. Then she didn't, so I was happily surprised again!

I liked the little people on the street interviews. I liked the one with the professor, because, it was like "Oh my, this show might have a theme!" that has been completely glossed over because all I have been able to see is sex, sex, sex. Speaking of not liking the show because it's objectifying to women, did you see Helo without a shirt? Very nice. I may have possibly no idea what happened in that scene.

All in all, it seemed like the show actually had a plot, not just a premise. I feel like the episodes before were just pounding a (slightly icky) premise into our heads. Which, could really have been done within the first 15 minutes of the first show.

In conclusion, if I never have to watch the first five episodes ever again, I might start liking the show.

I liked this ep A REAL LOT. I'm all in.

I liked it. I've been very happy that I like it more every week since I did have some reservations in the beginning. And oddly enough, I'm actually starting like Topher, who kind of reminded me of Warren in the beginning.

For an episode of Dollhouse, it was pretty good; as the sine qua non of episodes of Dollhouse, it disappointed me.

I think a lot of my skepticism about the show is caused by the mediocre acting (Dushku, the actress who plays the neighbor). But it's more than that. In the Patton Oswalt part of the episode, for example, I was really distracted by the question of how the Dollhouse was able to imprint Echo with his dead wife. I mean, I'm assuming that it costs a pretty penny to have one's personality copied, and Rebecca (was that her name?) died just when he started to become successful, so it's unlikely he could have afforded to send her along for a scan on some pretext. Maybe he just described his dead wife to the Dollhouse and Topher patched together a cheap simulacrum?

Also, too, as Sarah Palin would say, I was very annoyed that Helo's neighbor turned out to be an active. And what was up with the overly complicated method of using her to dispose of Sierra's abusive handler? Pretty inefficient, it seemed to me, and how is neighbor girl going to explain the beaten-up corpse in her living room to the already suspicious Helo?

I didn't buy the "mole in the Dollhouse" schtick, either, though it might have been Dushku's crap acting that made the notion implausible to me. I honestly wasn't sure whether Echo was reciting a truth or a fancy lie intended to placate Helo.

Perhaps most sad for me is that when Whedon's wit peeps through, it feels forced, exaggerated, and out of place. The banter between Topher and his lab assistant is painful and silly in a bad way.

I will keep watching, but with ever-diminishing hope.

No, but then I may have been distracted by my own vomiting.

The Dollhouse is a stupid concept that doesn't make any sense. All the episodes I've seen, including this one, have spent at least half their time trying to convince the audience otherwise, probably because Joss Whedon desperately wants you to think this is a cool idea. This episode was seemingly stronger, because it made that appeal on a boldly emotional level. It failed, though, because there was nothing emotionally resonant about what was happening - it was all deeply, visceral creepy.

If this is what the best is supposed to be, well, I'm out. Can't say I didn't give it a shot.

JupiterAmy wrote:No, but then I may have been distracted by my own vomiting.

The Dollhouse is a stupid concept that doesn't make any sense. All the episodes I've seen, including this one, have spent at least half their time trying to convince the audience otherwise, probably because Joss Whedon desperately wants you to think this is a cool idea. This episode was seemingly stronger, because it made that appeal on a boldly emotional level. It failed, though, because there was nothing emotionally resonant about what was happening - it was all deeply, visceral creepy.

If this is what the best is supposed to be, well, I'm out. Can't say I didn't give it a shot.

WORD.

We both were convinced that Mollie? Millie? (whatever) was going to die. Christine was also convinced she was an active, though. In some ways it's nice to be right - but it's nicer when the show can surprise you.

Guest wrote:

JupiterAmy wrote:No, but then I may have been distracted by my own vomiting.

The Dollhouse is a stupid concept that doesn't make any sense. All the episodes I've seen, including this one, have spent at least half their time trying to convince the audience otherwise, probably because Joss Whedon desperately wants you to think this is a cool idea. This episode was seemingly stronger, because it made that appeal on a boldly emotional level. It failed, though, because there was nothing emotionally resonant about what was happening - it was all deeply, visceral creepy.

If this is what the best is supposed to be, well, I'm out. Can't say I didn't give it a shot.

WORD.

We both were convinced that Mollie? Millie? (whatever) was going to die. Christine was also convinced she was an active, though. In some ways it's nice to be right - but it's nicer when the show can surprise you.

Also, WUT? I was totally logged in when I posted that! Or, er, not.