Dollhouse 2.01

[lotesse]

So I hate Paul Ballard so much that my heart wants to crawl up my throat and choke me. I hate Paul Ballard so much that I feel sick with utter loathing. He's twisted in the most literal sense. He looks fair and feels foul. I trust him least when he's trying to be good.

He orchestrated the rape of the girl he claims to care about, and then as per Adelle totally got off on listening to the sounds of her violation.

I am incandescent with rage that he's been made her handler, that he got so near to Echo as to have her touch him. I want to fling him as far away from her as possible. Snake in the woodshed. And I'm kind of not sure I can keep watching under the burden of this much anger.

But apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln? This is so much better. Amy Acker is a goddess among actresses - her beautiful madwoman-in-the-attic Whiskey is riveting and breathtaking and just so good. She's coming apart at the seams, and it's kind of magnificent. Joss has gone and made her into a Dru. And lord knows I adore Dru.

The show figured out what to do with Adelle, gave her more bite, more perception, less genteel weakness. The new clarity in her stance gives her power.

As for rapeyess - well, there was definitely unnecessary nudity/emporning going on, but I did feel like the acknowledgment of its wrongness was closer to the surface. I don't know. Sierra's imprint was so obviously a weird little inhuman twisty porno fantasy, and Boyd came straight out and called Echo's assignment sick. But I just don't know.

I don't see why fucking Paul Ballard has to be in this story. I'd much rather ditch him and let Echo's rape be about Echo, not about him.

Comments

[anthimeria]

Yeah, I'm REALLY NOT SURE what to think about Ballard. I was onboard with him when he released November in the finale, and then there was this left-field assignment where Echo's somehow his partner and pretending to marry a crime lord and . . . it was twisty and weird and I didn't like it.

On the note of Ballard as her handler--have you seen Epitaph One? I got it from Netflix this weekend and it HURT MY BRAIN (not in a bad way . . . mostly). It's like really good fanfic. There's a lot in there about where the whole Echo/Caroline-Ballard relationship might be going.

Whiskey is definitely Dollhouse's madwoman in the attic. Also, she got the best line in the episode (Topher=sociopath in a sweatervest!). I like that they seem to be toying with the idea that the dolls might actually be new people, created when a person is mindwiped.

Though I liked Whiskey's role in that better than Echo's . . . Echo suddenly having a definite personality was weird. I mean, she was developing it toward the end of last season, but it felt too fast.

Also, I love Boyd. Not sure where the Boyd/Whiskey thing is going, but I trust his morality WAY more than Ballard's.

[lotesse]

inorite? Where's the Boyd?!

I haven't seen Epitaph One - I've kind of got this snobby thing going on with it where I'm tired of Joss resting on the laurels of the shiny show that HE DIDN'T MAKE, and not getting called on the kind of skeeze one that he did. Wanna tell me about the Ballard thing so that I don't have to watch it?

I just want him to go away, Lauren, srsly. He is a bundle of badbadbad.