I felt much the same way. The writers of this episode by the way are the female writing team that wrote, created and produced the tv show "Reaper" for two years. They were huge Buffy and Angel fans and that inspired their writing. Apparently Joss got wind of this and hired them after Reaper was cancelled?
On your last point - it hit me that Echo is not Caroline anymore. Caroline wanted to hide from pain. To go to sleep and not feel. Echo is the opposite. She wants to feel, even if it is painful. Caroline put herself to sleep when her boyfriend got killed as the result of something she orchestrated - breaking in Rossum lab to see what they were up to. Here, what happens is to a degree far more difficult to deal with - she has to lose a child. She loses a family. One she felt love for.
In Omega - Echo and Caroline confront each other - Alpha forces them to come face to face, thinking Echo will want Caroline dead. Blame Caroline for who she is. But Caroline's reasons where different than Alpha's. So it doesn't quite work. Echo point-blank asks Caroline why she did it? Why go to sleep? And Caroline says she couldn't handle the guilt and pain, she didn't want to feel. I think Echo, who is an echo of Caroline, and everyone else that has been imprinted upon her, is learning becoming someone new.
What Whedon seems to be talking about here, just as he did in Buffy and Angel is not so much souls, but those without the soul or "essence" of the original person. Echo does not have the "soul of Caroline" but she has an echo of how Caroline felt about things. Her body retains those memories. She says as much - no it is not mental memories not pictures not words but feelings, how her body felt, how I feel. The emotions. Sort of like Illyria and Fred - Illyria does not have Fred's "word" memories so much as her "physical" ones or the memories of the body. It's emotional scars. Just as Spike and Angelus retained the emotional scars of their human bodies. They change when the essence or the mental/moral structure of the previous host returns, but they do not revert to who they were before either. They can't. Their bodies retain the memory of who they were without that essence. If that makes sense.
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On your last point - it hit me that Echo is not Caroline anymore. Caroline wanted to hide from pain.
To go to sleep and not feel. Echo is the opposite.
She wants to feel, even if it is painful. Caroline put herself to sleep when her boyfriend got killed as the result of something she orchestrated - breaking in Rossum lab to see what they were up to. Here, what happens is to a degree far more difficult to deal with - she has to lose a child. She loses a family.
One she felt love for.
In Omega - Echo and Caroline confront each other - Alpha forces them to come face to face, thinking Echo will want Caroline dead. Blame Caroline for who she is. But Caroline's reasons where different than Alpha's. So it doesn't quite work. Echo point-blank asks Caroline why she did it? Why go to sleep? And Caroline says she couldn't handle the guilt and pain, she didn't want to feel. I think Echo, who is an echo of Caroline, and everyone else that has been imprinted upon her, is learning becoming someone new.
What Whedon seems to be talking about here, just as he did in Buffy and Angel is not so much souls, but those without the soul or "essence" of the original person.
Echo does not have the "soul of Caroline" but she has an echo of how Caroline felt about things. Her body retains those memories. She says as much - no it is not mental memories not pictures not words but feelings, how her body felt, how I feel. The emotions.
Sort of like Illyria and Fred - Illyria does not have Fred's "word" memories so much as her "physical" ones or the memories of the body. It's emotional scars. Just as Spike and Angelus retained the emotional scars of their human bodies. They change when the essence or the mental/moral structure of the previous host returns, but they do not revert to who they were before either. They can't. Their bodies retain the memory of who they were without that essence. If that makes sense.