In a position that is bound to make me unpopular with the legions of Dollhouse fans, I have to say that I found Friday evening's season finale of Dollhouse ("Omega"), written and directed by Tim Minear, an illogical and messy affair.Following a first season that was fraught with behind-the-scenes complications and showcased an often disjointed approach to serialized storytelling, the finale failed to pay off some of the more intriguing story threads that had been slowly weaving together throughout the eleven or so preceding episodes and offered an Alpha (Alan Tudyk) that seemed bizarrely at odds with how he had been previously presented within the series.
"Omega" also suffered from an odd emphasis on telling rather than showing some important beats (meet Adelle: exposition dump) and potentially wrapped the series with a nonsensical ending that didn't in any way feel earned. (Not helping matters: the last scene was in fact culled from the final scene of Joss Whedon's original Dollhouse pilot.)
Confession: I've known about the Claire/Whiskey twist since last May and had been eagerly awaiting this reveal, though after several Joss Whedon interviews indicated that the series likely wouldn't be dealing with the possibility of any of the Dollhouse staff being dolls themselves until the second season, I gave up all hope of seeing this storyline play out. Still, I thought that if they were going to go down this road with Claire/Whiskey, it could have been handled a hell of a lot better. I thought that the reveal that it was Whiskey and not Echo dancing in the distance was fantastic and spoke to the beautiful visuals that Minear constructed throughout the direction of this episode.
But Alpha and Whiskey's Mickey-and-Mallory rip-off engagement was just odd to me. Why would a client book an engagement with a psycho couple? I could see Lars perhaps hiring Whiskey to be his Mallory on a crime spree but what was Lars' role meant to be here? Third wheel? It seemed more a means to an end for Minear to create a stunning visual of Whiskey and Alpha going at it while they torture this poor guy in a deserted club while the handlers try and track down their errant dolls.
Sadly, I thought that the handling of Whiskey's backstory was clunky and made little sense, given her scars and her apparent agoraphobia, neither of which was dealt with satisfactorily. It was interesting to learn that there was a previous Dr. Saunders and that Whiskey was given his personality as an imprint, leading to some continuity for the Actives as they continue to be treated on-site by a Dr. Saunders. (I did love that Whiskey accepted who she was at the end and picked up the jar of lollipops and that her hatred towards Topher was unrelated to her programming.)
But the reveal didn't quite ring true when you consider Whiskey's scars. Hell, I'd have much rather learned that the scars were repaired and Whiskey kept recutting her own face, making it impossible for the Dollhouse to fix their most valued Active and that it was self-inflicted, indicating that some things can't be erased no matter how many times you imprint. As it is, it doesn't really make much sense why Whiskey still has the scars that Alpha inflicted on her. Why would the Dollhouse let their best Active remained scarred and locked up? Surely they would have forced her to have them fixed, given she was under contract. And why was she an agoraphobic in this imprint? It made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
Additionally, Alpha's characterization here was diametrically opposed to the week before, where he was presented as a genius whereas here he was a garden-variety psycho with a fixation on Echo. Not that we know why he was quite so fixated on her or what his master plan actually was... which seemed to have nothing to do with taking down the Dollhouse at all and more to do with giving himself a multiple-personality psycho bride and killing Caroline's personality and making Echo watch. What happened to the Olympian-sized intellect? The genius skills? The feeling that Alpha was a larger-than-life ghoul instead of an average psychopath?
Was his endgame really so small? To allow Echo to "ascend" the same way he did via his accidental compositing and achieve something that wasn't quite self-awareness but an ability to embody a host of imprints at once? To infect someone else with the same madness he suffered from? If so, why did he give Echo an imprint of a Southern floozy rather than, say, Whiskey's Mallory imprint? Just why did he fixate so much on Echo in the first place? You've got me. And then without any real answers, Alpha climbs up the stairs of the power plant never to be seen again. Just how did he escape? No idea.
Even more frustrating to me was that several storylines--especially Paul Ballard's--went nowhere. I've never been a fan of Ballard as a character. Throughout the season, he's been portrayed as icy and unsympathetic and this week's episode made him seem weak-willed and vapid as well. After doggedly pursuing the Dollhouse (resulting in the end of his career) and proclaiming the wrongness of what they're doing, he just sits back and takes a job for the very organization he was looking to take down? Why? To be closer to Caroline? To free November/Mellie, whom I never bought his feelings for in the first place, from her contract rather than, say, Caroline? To take it down from the inside? (A rather far leap of logic, given that this is not indicated anywhere on screen.)
Meanwhile, November and Sierra vanished after being imprinted with the personalities of two bounty hunters and tasked with tracking down Alpha. I understand that a scene with the two of them at the power plant was cut from the finished episode but the result made them look like the two worst bounty hunters in the entire world, who apparently failed to find their quarry at all. Why bother showing the scene of them being imprinted as bounty hunters if it wasn't followed up on at all? (If anything comes from Dollhouse, it's that I hope that the superb Dichen Lachman gets a lot of work as a result. She's proven herself versatile, talented, and memorable even when stuck with a largely thankless role, as has the supremely talented Enver Gjokaj.)
We're told repeatedly that the Dollhouse is impenetrable and infallible yet it was anything but and the last two episodes proved this once again. Apparently, to get in, you need only break through two flimsy grates. And to get out, Alpha just took the elevator. Additionally, the fact that no one--not Topher, not Adelle--thought it was prudent to look at Alpha's file and investigate (A) who he was before he came to the Dollhouse or (B) what crimes he had committed after slicing up members of their staff, tormenting them, and breaking in was absolutely ludicrous. Surely, they'd want to to know everything about their target, even if it meant delving into his past before his initial imprinting. And, given that Alpha smashed his wedge on his way out the first time, shouldn't Topher have taken a look at the primary and backup wedges first thing after Alpha's latest attack? Sloppy.
As for Echo herself, I don't really think that after her experiences with Alpha, she would just gladly go back to the Dollhouse and have her mind erased. Yet we weren't given any inkling into what this Super-Echo believed or thought about her situation. I never for a moment thought there was any danger for Echo from Alpha at the end and he literally runs up the stairs into the ether while Echo climbs out onto a catwalk to retrieve the wedge with her original Caroline personality on it. Was Alpha really going to kill her? Hell no. And even when he has multiple opportunities to do so, even when Echo is distracted from chasing him by the precipitous position of said wedge, he doesn't even bother to fire at her. I thought the ending--with Echo whispering the name Caroline as the pod closes on her--was completely unearned and at odds with the Super-Echo we just saw in the previous scene, given how the season as a whole seemed to point the way towards Echo's growing self-awareness. After finally achieving self-awareness, would she really throw it away to be put back into a box?
Dollhouse dealt with some intriguing concepts of identity, individuality, memory, and free will but the execution of the individual episodes often paled in comparison with the ideas that they sought to explore. I'm all for the discussion of these fascinating moral and metaphysical questions--such as whether it's right to experiment on prisoners, whether our identities are more than just electrical responses--but I couldn't shake the feeling that the questions themselves were more interesting than the answers that the series was offering and that the series itself had the haphazard feeling of a rudderless boat.
All in all, I have to say that I'm disappointed. For a series so rife with potential, it failed to achieve it on a regular basis and remained, in the end, a frustrating exercise in the push and pull of concept and execution. Whether FOX will renew Dollhouse in spite of its shortcomings (and its dwindling ratings) remains to be seen. But I'm definitely ready for the cast and crew to move on to other, hopefully less creatively uneven, endeavors.
What did you think of Dollhouse's finale and, should Friday's episode be the series' finale, of Dollhouse as a whole? Were you disappointed by the final product or did you revel in the concepts of identity, memory, and individuality that the series brought up? Discuss.
Comments
I also had problems with the finale, though not necessarily the same ones. We don't know that Whiskey's scars can be fixed, so that didn't bother me, for example.
I thought it was cheap though that Alpha was not really someone who had composited naturally - instead it was more of an industrial accident, so why were people worried about that happening to Echo?
I also didn't like Ballard catching 'Caroline' - it would've been braver for the data to be destroyed and to see whether Echo could eventually remember Caroline anyway.
The highlights of the show for me were Enver Gjokaj as Victor - who I thought was the best at becoming different personalities each week, and I'd watch anything else he was in - and Dichen Lachman, who surprised me because I wasn't a fan when she was in Neighbours.
As far as the finale goes, I'd love to have seen the first person perspective of what it is like to have all of the voices in your heard. I would have thought that could have been pretty cool to get perspecitve. Almost along the lines of the collective from the borg.
I thought it was mentioned in one of the first episodes that they could have fixed her scars but she wouldn't let them because she wanted to remember what Alpha had done to her.
Not crazy about the finale or the series overall. Lots of promise and potential but, ultimately, there were too many plot holes and storyline/character contradictions for me to ever believe in the Dollhouse world.
And while I fully understand the Whedon-worship and share it too--BtVS and Firefly are as close to perfect as TV shows--it's OK to admit the master can fail.
The group consensus that the show started to cohere with "Man on the Street" never made sense to me. Because the mythology of the show we'd been waiting for was for the most part completely convoluted and incoherent. (Oh and, speaking of MotS, those talking head interviews in that episode were the worst acting I've seen on any network show in forever.)
The finale was another mess. Tudyk was obviousy having fun but the logic of the character never made a lick of sense to me. Jace has covered all the plot failings quite thoroughly. But ultimately there wasn't a single character I care about. And if I don't care, I'm bored. I've been re-watching the far-from-perfect 6th season Of BUFFY and good god, heartstrings!
I'm praying this is the end. For me, the ultimate Fox-inflicted atrocity would be to renew this show and keep Whedon & Co. laboring on this barren rock.
My main issue was that they didn't explain why Alpha fixated on Echo. What was it about her that made him obsessed? Alpha sees some chick wander in some day and fixates on her? I don't get it. If they'd shown Caroline offering Alpha some kindness, even picking up a dropped pencil for him, it would've made more sense.
I didn't get the bounty hunter scene either. What a waste of two great characters.
And what about Mellie going into the Dollhouse because she's grief-stricken? She "wakes up" and everything's fine now. No grief? Huh?
I didn't get the point of destroying the original imprints. Self-hatred? Alpha didn't want to be restored? Didn't want Caroline brought back by anyone but him? They could've put any imprint in the bodies, so who cares if the original's gone.
No off-site backups? Topher's a rotten IT guy.
I agree that it would've been better to see Super-Echo escape and next season could've started with her in the real world (doing good deeds?) and eventually being tracked down (by Ballard? Ha!) and returned to the Dollhouse.
I think Dollhouse has enough potential to be worth a second season. I'd like to think the writers (Whedon?) can hit their stride and polish the rough edges.
I think the ending fell really flat with Echo whisperiong Caroline, which was pulled out of Joss's original pilot script. It just seemed so lame for so late in the game.
It was going to end with Echo comforting Topher, which would have been a little better. But defintiely not the wow factor we usually get from the Whedon finales.
I agree that Lars' fantasy seemed a little less likely than some of the others that had gone before, but you seem to be neglecting the possibility that Lars swings both ways, and fancied having a night of passion with Bonnie and Clyde.
As for Alpha, I agree he was a little too out of control considering his fiendish deception of Ballard in the previous episode, but there's a lot of ways to explain that away - he gets like that when he's excited, for example (which explains why Echo wasn't going as crazy).
His 'endgame' wasn't so small, and is clearly still the destruction of the Dollhouse, but he wanted to do it with the help of the girl he thought he loved, and when she spurned him, the crazed aspect of his personality wanted to make her pay, which was sidetracking him from his main goal. I think it's safe to say he'll be back fighting the dollhouse - on his own - next season.
I agree Ballard's been pretty weak ("douchebag" springs to mind) throughout the season, but I think his decisions in the final episode also make more sense than you're giving credit for - he let 'Mellie'/November/Madeline go because he feels guilt for his relationship with her, and he's clearly only siding with the Dollhouse to bide some time, get Boyd on board and take them down from the inside (I would guess).
I spose they left in the scene where they imprinted November and Sierra because cutting it would beg the question 'why didn't they imprint some dolls!?', especially considering that's been an effective tactic in previous episodes. It's pretty odd though that Boyd and Ballard's detective skills could exceed those of Tofer's best bounty hunting imprints.
Again, good points about security at the Dollhouse - Tofer failing to check out the backups seems a huge clanger, but I guess the heat of the moment got to him...
Alpha's disappearance was bizarre, and Echo certainly didn't seem at any risk from him, but her primary concern was for the Caroline imprint, which explains her climbing out on to the ledge... Why Alpha didn't just shoot them both, I dunno - perhaps one or more of his personalities just couldn't kill her?
Another conundrum you rightly point to is Echo returning to the Dollhouse. I can only assume that because her imprints were all trusting (while we learned that Alpha's fugitive personality was "prone to paranoia", not to mention his original personality being borderline psychotic) she willingly went with Boyd. Perhaps she also somehow knew she (as Echo) would retain self-awareness?
Overall, I enjoyed the season. The first few episodes were hard work to get into, but towards the end I was enjoying the interplay between characters. The philosophical side of the plot certainly seemed tragically watered down and oversimplified (could've been so much better) but I guess that's a drawback of being on Fox! I'm not surprised to hear that the final scene was the original ending to the pilot, since the whole season has felt like a very, very long pilot. I'd have liked for them to get Echo's self-awareness out of the way more - for Tofer and Dewitt to accept that Echo knew she was a Doll but didn't mind, and keep her active all the same - I suspect that's the way the second season (if it emerges) will head, with Echo, Boyd and Ballard working together to hunt down Alpha. I just wish they'd gotten all that out of the way in the first three episodes.
Whedon was open about all the rewrites that went on, and it's not surprising that after all the years he's spent working on the idea, the show's lost it's direction on occasion. But hopefully (and I mean that - I really want a second season) a fresh start, with the exposition finally out of the way, will get things back on track. Sorry to ramble on - lots of good points I wanted to address!
PS - Surprised you didn't mention Madeline's grief for her dead child, or Tofer's failure to keep the second backups off site, both of which I thought were howlers, as mentioned by SKST above!
What on earth are you talking about? Those scars could be fixed by any plastic surgeon. It's not like she was cut up by a glass smashing in her face or burned by fire. They were surgical precision-grade cuts from a SCALPEL and could have been fixed very easily by any qualified plastic surgeon. It was made clear that they offered her the choice to have them fixed and this imprint refused.
Was so frustrated by this finale that I wanted to throw my T.V. out the window.
"I thought it was mentioned in one of the first episodes that they could have fixed her scars but she wouldn't let them because she wanted to remember what Alpha had done to her."
That makes sense if she's Claire Saunders, real person. It doesn't make sense if she's Whiskey the doll. Why not fix her scars if she's your most popular?
"They were surgical precision-grade cuts from a SCALPEL and could have been fixed very easily by any qualified plastic surgeon."
Wrong - it may be that there was a goof in the script which suggested that a scalpel was used EARLIER in the season (I can't remember), but in the finale we SAW the attack in flashback - Alpha used the bonsai scissors, which means they were hardly 'precision-grade'.
Thinking back, I seem to remember Clare telling Boyd that Alpha had used a scalpel on her, but that could easily be false memories added to her imprint.
@ Eric
All shows have plot holes, and shows which spell everything out to the audience aren't worth watching if you ask me. I was just offering some plausible explanations to the questions the review raised - 'fanwanking' seems a tad harsh, since I was hardly singing the show's praises.
The attack is supposed to have taken place only a few months before the start of the show, so there may be plastic surgery sceduled for Whiskey further down the line.
She'd need time off to fully recuperate from that.
If Whiskeys five years of duty is approaching its end, then the best logistical solution may be to let her be Saunders for a couple more months to get the most work-hours out of her and do the reconstructive surgery shortly before she is released back into the world.
Of course, Saunders wouldnt be informed about any of that.
(1) I think we're looking for the plot to "click" more because it's that supposed to be type of plot. Shows like Firefly could get away with just tucking the mysteries away in the background while you followed the characters you liked through fairly generic situations. This promised a puzzle palace, but what we got was the typical loosely constructed Whedon mess.
(2) The puzzles that do exist in the series seem to be thrown in for the fans and don't come across to the casual viewer. How many people noticed or cared that some of the characters weren't in the "drug that only works on non-actives" episode?
(3) Whedon always, always, always overpromises his villains and then turns them into humor in the end. There's this fairy tale thing he goes for, where the villain turns out to basically just be an ugly clown, then the little girl is no longer scared and beats him up until he disappears. This works well in Buffy, but it's discordant in a show about, you know, adult stuff.
(4) The ensemble works more, I think, than people actually give it credit. Eliza does her thing, and her thing is to be the Whedon heroine at the core of it. As such, she *can't* depart from plain old Eliza much - she has to be consistent, bless her. Sierra and November play off the contrast between vulnerable and tough that is the emotional message of the show (and is likely to be a big part of subsequent seasons, if they continue it), each in interestingly different ways - Sierra is vulnerable in person, seldom as a Doll, whereas November is the opposite. And what's his name is just a boy for the girls to play with.
(5) I can't for the life of me understand why people on the fan forums don't "get" Topher. He's by far the most well-realized and believable character in the show.
I thought Dr. Saunders (Whiskey) had asked Topher why he had imprinted her to hate him so much? It wasn't a natural hatred; it was programmed. I also got the impression from Topher that perhaps he had known her or is related to her, thus feeling guilt over what had happened to her (the scars) and that's why he programmed her to hate him.
I also assumed that they assigned Whiskey to be agoraphobic so that she would always be in the building to doctor the dolls. They would have 24 hour service that way.
On the whole, I thought the episode as well as the series was a mess. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one. After the achievements of Battlestar Galactica and Lost, a scifi series has to cross the very raised bar and this show was just way too far underneath it. Eliza Dushku could not handle a show this big and the two that could (the actors playing Sierra and specifically Victor) were pushed too far to the side. Tahmoh Penikett was a real find on BSG, but his character here just didn't work. Nothing about this show ever really did.
Must say, though, Alan Tudyk is a damn fine actor. I was completely impressed.
"Viewers like you who keep fanwanking to satisfy those plot holes are just falling into traps that the writers created in the first place."
And viewers like you who keep belittling others for daring to suggest that they actually liked the show are clearly just overcompensating for some inadequacy in the real world. Get a grip dude, some people don't mind a bit of ambiguity and suspension of disbelief.
I'm not sure I agree with Laurence's reading of Whedon's "genius", but he makes a good point - so what if things don't add up? Given his control over space and time, Hiro ought to have rendered the Heroes plot completely irrelevant, and don't get me started on Lost. Good shows succeed in telling good stories, despite the goofs. You didn't like the show, and that's fair enough, but please stop calling 'fanwanking' every time someone says something you disagree with - it's a fairly lame approach to discussion.
1. the introductory music 'la la la la la, la la la la la la...snooze' (honestly, who came up with that?)
2. The introduction to the show, focuses exclusively on Eliza Duschku, despite the fact that the show has a stellar cast of actors with great scifi credentials. And, surely given the heat generated by Battlestar Galactica, Tamoah Peneket (sp?) Helo, is really the selling point for the show, not an actress we last saw six years ago as a recurring character in Angel.
3. Topher is supposedly some kind of boy genius who as a PhD student was light years ahead of his professors. The main problem with this, is that some actors can convincingly play the part of a genius, for example James Callis as Balatar (BSG) and some who really can't (fuzzy wuzzy as Topher). Fuzzy wuzzy, or whatever his real name is, sucks at playing a genius. Moreover, if he invented the dollhouse tech, then why is he working at that particular facility, and not their headquarters?
4. Storing people's personalities on a bog standard pc hard drive just looked so laughably cheap lol
5. It doesn't matter how much money the Rossum Institute could make in the private sector, the US Government would pay double just to have that kind of technology.
6. Every time Eliza Dushku wobbles her head ever so slightly after having her memory wiped, I guess because it makes her look doll-like, I just wanted to puke with laughter
7. I think the show would have been much more interesting if the technology wasn't so zen looking...it would have been much better if it was a barbaric, dehumanizing technology, like a medieval torture chamber. And, what if they'd introduced cloning into the mix, and had multiple copies of Echo running around? Like BSG when there was Boomer on the Galactica and Athena on Caprica. To me, that seems to have been the inspiration behind Dollhouse...if you read my blog on scifi uk.com, I do have positive things to say about Dollhouse. I think I'm just venting because I am a fan of Joss Whedon, and I believe Dollhouse has potential, but its a potential that may never really get off the ground.
The only two impressive actors were the two that played Sierra and especially Victor. Had the show focused on them instead of Dushku and Penikett, it might have actually worked. They were the only two really sympathetic characters of the entire show, except maybe Miracle's Mellie.
But the concept, while intriguing, just didn't work in execution. How are we supposed to care about a character who is a self-professed zombie? And Ballard's want to help her seemed much more like illogical obsession--much like Alpha's really--and it made me not want him to find her.
Whereas BSG and Lost work mostly because they are character-driven dramas with really cool mythologies, this show was plot-driven with a confusing mythology that never came together enough for anyone to care. I'd much rather this show get cancelled to make way for Target Man (which sounds promising) and Penikett's Riverworld.