laceblade | TV Meta Posts! You know you want them!

Thus begins the Epic Day of Blog-Posting, and closing all my Firefox tabs. Because Spring cleaning is not limited solely to wiping down my kitchen counter and throwing out expired food from my refrigerator!

Terminator! Is the best show on TV! Please watch it!

coffeeandink's summation is accurate!

It is so hard to write about SCC. I love it so much, and it is so good, and everything I want to say has a thousand hooks or tentacles linking into something else, it is all so complicated and interrelated and I'm still not sure where it's going. I love "Samson and Delilah" and "Allison from Palmdale" and I like other episodes from the first half of Season Two, but I feel like from 2x12 "Alpine Fields" on it's just been completely brilliant. This is one of my favorite seasons of television ever, up there with Buffy Seasons 2 and 3 and Angel Season 4 and the late, lamented Profit. So good! Don't die, Show!

It astounds me how well-written this show is. OMF SO GOOD.

Entil, over here!

In fact, John’s confrontation with Jesse nearly overshadowed every other aspect of the episode. I was so amazed by his demonstration of resolve, how well he had been keeping his cards so close to vest, that I was practically ready to download the entire second season and rewatch everything right then and there. John was so specific about his reasons for recognizing who Riley had to be that it should be easy enough to find those moments from those earlier episodes.

veritykindle writes about it in this post here!

Over the course of the series, John has increasingly been isolated from humanity, mostly interacting only with Cameron and two traumatized, exhausted, and emotionally stunted warriors who do everything they can to hide and deny their human emotions. The only actual direct subordinate John has had so far has been Cameron, who is a machine, not a human. John has been training himself so hard to ignore his own emotions and focus only on what needs to be done that he has forgotten about the fact that the people he will be leading will be humans, not machines, and that there is a difference between leading humans, and getting machines like Cameron to work with him.

And that is why, while I obviously completely disagree with Jesse's methods, I think that she was actually right about John needing a reminder about the difference between humans and machines. She was just wrong about why that reminder was so important. Jesse thinks that just because she didn't get John to reject Cameron, that means that she failed in teaching John anything. But she's wrong about that. She did teach John something, and it was something he needed to learn, and provided that he remembers this lesson, it actually might help prevent the tragedy aboard the Jimmy Carter from happening, in a way that getting John to reject Cameron in the present probably wouldn't have. (Not that this makes Riley's death worth it, in any way, of course, and Jesse was wrong to think that it would.)

I think I'm the only one who liked Dollhouse 1.6 as much as I did, BUT I will gladly link to what other people had to say!

Entil's post is here.

The presence of a traitor within the Dollhouse helps to explain why the supposed genius Topher has been unable to prevent so many of the glitches taking place. If someone on the inside is carefully sabotaging the mindwipe process, allowing the Dolls more self-awareness than they should have, that opens up some interesting possibilities. Topher’s assistant is an obvious guess.

Without a doubt, this was the strongest episode of the series, and one that opens up the scope of the series enough to overcome many of the earlier objections. No one watching this episode could possibly think that Joss or anyone else involved with the show considers the Dollhouse and its technology to be a good thing. The “man on the street” segments make it very clear that they’ve anticipated most, if not all, of the audience reactions to the apparent premise. Knowing that, it’s a fair guess that Joss has something a lot more interesting up his sleeve. And now that the serialized elements of the series are taking center stage, it shouldn’t be long before we find out what that is.

meganbmoore's post is located here, and while she lists what she likes about the episode, she also makes very good points about what not to like.

The rape plot. There is something to be said about the show dealing with the dangers of a setup like that, but it’s the same problem that’s there with the clients of the week: the fact that the show realizes it’s skeevy and is regularly having its protagonists raped doesn’t change the fact that it is skeevy and regularly has rape that the characters are-usually-programmed to enjoy. Self-awareness is great, but you really have to do something with it.

As always, the discussions taking place in her comments are also quite thought-provoking.

ktempest's post was succinct, and the comments continue on to point out problems in the premise over here.

coffeeandink mentioned it here.

The dolls are substitutes and stand-ins, symbols empty except for the meaning people place in them. Echo becomes Rebecca, the ritual of a memory of a dead woman; Caroline becomes a princess for rescue to Ballard; Mellie becomes a stand-in for Caroline. But I wonder about further reflections. Boyd, like Ballard, looks for a princess to rescue: he "rescues" Sierra, as he "rescues" Echo from encounters gone wrong, addressing the situation but not the system; he can quiet his conscience without having to address his own complicity. Or Adele DeWitt can quiet his conscience: because I do wonder how much of the setup she set up, Sierra's untrustworthy handler with rape fantasies (a history? convictions?), Boyd the ex-cop, the handler made into a doll without programming, another puppet in the play that's convincing Ballard, Mellie the instrument of Adele DeWitt's desire or even her unpassioned plan. It's such a neat episode. It solves so many of DeWitt's problems. It works all the better because so many of the people involved don't even need to be programmed to do the expected.

So yes, I'm continuing to watch Dollhouse for the time being, but Terminator is currently my show of choice (and also How I Met Your Mother, but it's a very different sort of show!).