Basic Instinct
Oct. 3rd, 2009 03:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chaniI've just watched "Instinct", an episode I was ready not to like, given that it was Echo-centric, but actually I enjoyed it.
Looks like that after all those years of letting us pondering the soul issue, Joss has finally given an answer: the soul lies in the milk !!!!
I enjoyed the episode even though it looked like a "Echo'sengagement of the week" type of episode, because, unlike the first episodes of last season, it was daring and deeper. It twisted clichés(playing with the codes of the thriller involving a crazy nanny, a knife, a dark house, a storm) in the Jossian fashion, and it revisited an earlier type of engagement (the one from "Man in the Street
") in which a wealthy widower hires a doll, and Echo takes the place of the dead wife except that this time it wasn't about romance and fantasy at all.
I loved the idea of Topher changing the body on a glandular level and triggering lactating, and the fact that the Dollhouse clients are a sort of new aristocracy, hiring a wet nurse to take care of their children. Wet nurses didn't only feed the children with the milk in their breasts, they usually cared for the kids too, often loving them more than their biological parents.
In other words, Topher's super advanced technology allowed old ways to be followed again.
I also liked the conversation at the police station between Emilie and the female police officer, and how things were deliciously twisted when she said that she couldn't recognise her husband, that it was like he was a stranger who took the place of her husband!
Miracle Laurie was gorgeous and I think that Madeline wouldn't mind coming back to the Dollhouse again if she kept running into that tall dark haired hunk. Basic instinct again?
Also besides the obvious parallels between oblivious Madeline and awakening Echo(the loss of a child, the distress and its apparent cure), I saw a very interesting parallel between Echo and Adelle. When Mrs DeWitt pays a visit to the former doll seh has released, she clearly says that the bond between them isn't cut off, even though Madeline's contract is complete. Adelle still cares about her, just as Echo still cared about baby Jack even after her treatment. Echo's assignment actually echoed Adelle's situation. She's the "Mère Maquerelle" of the Dollhouse but she also has maternal instinct when it comes to her Actives; she must think that she wasn't enough of a mother for Alpha hence his becoming a sociopath! He was her first born and she couldn't love him, he lacked that feeling of being love that must be "imprinted" in infants!
There was also a parallel between the widower and Paul Ballard, and it isn't the first time that Paul's situation echoes a client's. Both thought that the goal justified the means, but in the end they felt guilty and responsible for putting Echo through Hell, they made amends. Paul said he could deal with the situation alone, and we can reckon that the father will deal with his infant on his own from now on.
In the end Echo states that she doesn't want to go to sleep again, and that feeling pain is better than not feeling anything at all. It echoed Claire Saunders' choice (keeping her scars, her pain, her life). Looks like that Echo may be following a similar journey, not wanting to lose herself into oblivion. Is it Caroline bleeding out or Echo turning into a new person (not a doll, not Omega but someone else)? By the way I couldn't help noticing that Paul called her Echo and not Caroline, in the end, in a way that sounded like he was aware that Echo might be becoming a person.
Afterall, anyone can happen.
Looks like that after all those years of letting us pondering the soul issue, Joss has finally given an answer: the soul lies in the milk !!!!
I enjoyed the episode even though it looked like a "Echo'sengagement of the week" type of episode, because, unlike the first episodes of last season, it was daring and deeper. It twisted clichés(playing with the codes of the thriller involving a crazy nanny, a knife, a dark house, a storm) in the Jossian fashion, and it revisited an earlier type of engagement (the one from "Man in the Street
") in which a wealthy widower hires a doll, and Echo takes the place of the dead wife except that this time it wasn't about romance and fantasy at all.
I loved the idea of Topher changing the body on a glandular level and triggering lactating, and the fact that the Dollhouse clients are a sort of new aristocracy, hiring a wet nurse to take care of their children. Wet nurses didn't only feed the children with the milk in their breasts, they usually cared for the kids too, often loving them more than their biological parents.
In other words, Topher's super advanced technology allowed old ways to be followed again.
I also liked the conversation at the police station between Emilie and the female police officer, and how things were deliciously twisted when she said that she couldn't recognise her husband, that it was like he was a stranger who took the place of her husband!
Miracle Laurie was gorgeous and I think that Madeline wouldn't mind coming back to the Dollhouse again if she kept running into that tall dark haired hunk. Basic instinct again?
Also besides the obvious parallels between oblivious Madeline and awakening Echo(the loss of a child, the distress and its apparent cure), I saw a very interesting parallel between Echo and Adelle. When Mrs DeWitt pays a visit to the former doll seh has released, she clearly says that the bond between them isn't cut off, even though Madeline's contract is complete. Adelle still cares about her, just as Echo still cared about baby Jack even after her treatment. Echo's assignment actually echoed Adelle's situation. She's the "Mère Maquerelle" of the Dollhouse but she also has maternal instinct when it comes to her Actives; she must think that she wasn't enough of a mother for Alpha hence his becoming a sociopath! He was her first born and she couldn't love him, he lacked that feeling of being love that must be "imprinted" in infants!
There was also a parallel between the widower and Paul Ballard, and it isn't the first time that Paul's situation echoes a client's. Both thought that the goal justified the means, but in the end they felt guilty and responsible for putting Echo through Hell, they made amends. Paul said he could deal with the situation alone, and we can reckon that the father will deal with his infant on his own from now on.
In the end Echo states that she doesn't want to go to sleep again, and that feeling pain is better than not feeling anything at all. It echoed Claire Saunders' choice (keeping her scars, her pain, her life). Looks like that Echo may be following a similar journey, not wanting to lose herself into oblivion. Is it Caroline bleeding out or Echo turning into a new person (not a doll, not Omega but someone else)? By the way I couldn't help noticing that Paul called her Echo and not Caroline, in the end, in a way that sounded like he was aware that Echo might be becoming a person.
Afterall, anyone can happen.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 06:43 pm (UTC)I didn't think of the Echo Maker but now that you said it, it's true and there's the echo connection too...:- )
I found Madeline creepy too. And I agree, I too would be sad to see the show cancelled. It's good to have something different that tries different from the successful tv narrative formula.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-06 07:07 pm (UTC)I'm not sure what Instinct says about motherhood - on the surface you can read it as portraying motherhood in a stereotyped/glamourising way and there's already been criticism (http://fan-static.blogspot.com/2009/10/open-letter-to-joss-whedon.html) of this: The ep is described as having Ridiculous Hand-That-Rocks-The-Cradle storylines that make mothers out to be somehow better and worse than all other women, but definitely some kind of crazy lactating love mutant.
Yes, the mothering instinct is played up, but for me it works as a plot device and I can buy it on the level that Topher overdid the programming. And I didn't see Emily as a "a shrill, demanding wife who doesn't think twice about breaking into her husband's office as soon as he leaves for work", but bought that sleep-deprivation/hormones caused her paranoia about her husband having an affair. And she was right that something was off in the relationship - her feelings, though programmed, were genuine, while the husband had to fake his feelings for her.
I also liked how a physical change triggers awareness in Echo, that the body informs the mind.