DOLLHOUSE #2:Instinct/Season 2/2009

[Truth Seeker]

Instinct

When Echo is imprinted as a new mother, her reactions are more intense than anyone predicted. Senator Perrin steps up his investigation, and Adelle pays November a visit.
​

 

[RangerWickett]

Well this episode kinda sucked.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Ok, I've thought it over, and here's my big problem with the whole "engagement of the week" premise, and why they have to find a way to leave it definitively behind: Nobody would pay the kind of money these people are paying for the kind of services the dollhouse provides them.

In some cases, it makes a modicum of sense ("We need a master thief with a particular skill set for this heist!"), but in other cases (midwife, really?) it's just stupid. Not to mention highly illegal, putting you at risk of years of jail time, and for what? So that your kid can have a surrogate mommy?

Either they need to rethink what it is that someone would reasonably hire the dollhouse for, or they need to dump the engagements as a plot point. At their best, they serve as a way to spin out the premise in interesting new directions, but mostly they come across as just dumb.

 

[Crothian]

After this past episode it makes me think that people aren't finding and hiring the Dollhouse as much as the Dollhouse is finding people at their weakest and taking advantage of that.

 

[Remus Lupin]

Well, the most benign reason someone would wish to hire the dollhouse is for prostitution services. Other things that strike me as reasonable are assassin, master thief, computer hacker, or anything else that requires a very specialized skill set plus the ability to make the agent disappear in one way or another.

I can also see the dollhouse's business model including the "make me immortal" contingent, as we saw last season, and we've seen beginning to be further developed this season. And I'm even willing to accept the idea of a very wealthy and pathological computer genius hiring a doll to live out his unrealized fantasy of showing his dead wife how successful he's become.

Things that I don't buy: Hostage negotiator, midwife, surrogate mom, backup singer, or pretty much any of the other senseless reasons that Echo was hired last season.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Backup Singer was actually Bodyguard in disguise, I can live with that.

Hostage Negotiator made sense to me, too. Creating the optimal person to conduct negotiatons.

Midwife... No, do not really get it. Surrogate Mother - well, if you really don't trust adoption parents...

 

[Mistwell]

WARNING

Dollhouse is likely about to be canceled. Its ratings are in freefall.

"Dollhouse" had a 1.4/2 for this last episode, averaging just under 2.1 million viewers and a 0.8 rating, the lowest in series history (the second lowest being the episode before it, with the season premiere being pretty bad as well, pulling in less than a Cops rerun).

There is no way the show can survive at those ratings, unless it were on a cable station (and even then, it's not good ratings).

 

[Krug]

Why does it not surprise me? The premise and stories are rather blah. They really need to ramp it up a few notches.

 

[shilsen]

Ye gods, that was a dumb episode! Maternal instinct overrides mental programming which (according to the show) is strong enough to make a Doll think she's just about anyone? Really? Come on, Joss - you can do so much better!

 

[Fast Learner]

Really? I think that was the most plausible thing in the episode, and probably one of the most plausible things in the entire show.

Maternal instinct is some seriously low-level reptile brain stuff. You insert some stuff there and it wouldn't surprise me that it would take hold in a way that other programming would not.