Monsters of Television

“You’re here because you’re my family. I love you guys.”

Watching Dollhouse the last couple of weeks has been like watching a show in fast forward. It’s both frustrating and exciting to see a show that (supposedly) had a plan for this season and then have to rush it to provide narrative resolution in light of cancellation. Whedon and his crew have done a yeoman’s job of balancing the need to hit all the necessary beats but still make the show feel like it’s heading toward a season finale and not a series one.

And I say that it feels like a season finale because even though I know that some characters end up okay (well, not okay in the sense that they’re sane or even happy, but okay in the sense that they’re alive), and because I still feel like there are a number of ways the show could continue to go from here to reach its narrative conclusion.  The show’s narrative ending, so present during some portions of the show (mainly whenever they talk about the tech), eludes me when I’m thinking about a character’s fate, showing just how invested I’ve come in their stories.

Talking about the plot almost seems beside the point now. The episode opens back when Caroline tried to blow up Rossum. Boyd is explaining how she is special at a microscopic level. The episode never really makes her specialness explicit, but I’m guessing it has something to do with being able to maintain and cycle through multiple imprints (I bet Alpha and Whiskey were special, too, when they were recruited). Why exactly Boyd wanted Echo’s spinal fluid is also left up in the air (or maybe I just missed it apparently it’s a cure for the wipes). Do her cells somehow make her immune to the imprint guns? Is that why Boyd wants her so? I suppose I’m just getting caught up in the details that probably won’t matter in the short run, but for a world-building show like this (as are most Joss Whedon shows), the little details matter.

What does really matter is that Boyd Evil!Boyd successfully pulls off a pretty impressive round of Xanatos Roulette, and the writers owe Harry Lennix a Coke for being able to sell it. Evil!Boyd, upon capturing everyone at Rossum, reveals that this was all part of some master plan of his. Topher and Adelle, like Caroline, were selected to play their part in whatever it is Evil!Boyd has planned, which seems to be the enslavement of the human race (just guessing). Like with any Xanatos Roulette, the believability of it all hinges on the writing as much as on the acting (see: Michael Emerson as Benjamin Linus on Lost), and Lennix swings between dangerous, smiley, Good!Boyd, and sheer lunatic evil without missing a beat. More importantly though is that even when he’s off the deep end, you still feel like Good!Boyd is somewhere in there, waiting to come back, and it’s thanks to Lennix’s performance that it works.

And Evil!Boyd’s desire to have the L.A. house staff stay with him and survive the upcoming Thoughtpocalypse (infintely superior to Brainpocalypse) is where you half expect Good!Boyd to be hiding. It adds a tinge of sadness to the character. He’s come to love these people, in a totally deranged way (except Paul, who I’ve never really gotten why people liked so much either), but I suspect that everyone else has come to love one another in the same fashion (except for Priya and Anthony, who love each other in a healthy way), creating this terrific family dynamic that seems to be at the core of Whedon’s programs. It’s this dynamic that makes Doll!Boyd being used to blow up the Rossum building, I think, incredibly sad (again, Lennix as a doll was another great, seamless shift in acting). Even though Echo and her crew realized that they had been played all along, there’s regret in Echo’s face as she become the handler to the doll.

Each of Whedon’s television shows have been about building (and maintaining) a family under extraordinary circumstances, and while I think that Dollhouse would’ve driven this point home if given more time (though Fox was incredibly generous to even give them a second season, let alone time to do a proper ending), to see it start to peek out from behind the much larger  ideas about identity, the use of female stars (I think this might be Whedon’s Vertigo), and the role technology plays in all of it, was rewarding.

Yes, a great deal of narrative story has been compacted to fit, basically, three episodes, but the show does a fine job (even if I felt that the Paul/Millie and Anthony/Priya threads were uninteresting and there to tie up loose ends) combining what was going to be multiple seasons worth of ideas to make the necessary connections to the post-Thoughtpocalyptic world. It will, hopefully, be quite the last hurrah.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Totally unrelated to the show, but I had no idea that Fox had pushed back the episode to 9:00 to make way for a Bones rerun at 8:00. Needless to say, I really wish I lived in Canada. (But don’t we all?)
• I know that last week I mentioned the over-fetishization of Summer Glau, but I’m afraid a “YOWZA!” is necessary for a scarred Amy Acker in a full suit. I’ll be in my bunk.
• Echo sweeps the leg!
• Despite my disinterest in the Anthony/Priya stuff, I enjoy see Enver Gjoka providing his take on Topher again (still funny). Seriously, when is Gjoka going on Burn Notice to out-chameleon Jeffrey Donovan? For that matter, when do I get my Olivia Williams (who manages to speak volumes as Adelle with just the look of anger on her face at being played by Evil!Boyd the entire time) and Fran Kranz sitcom?