Epitaph One – Why we all should be happy Dollhouse was renewed

Dollhouse finally gave the world the final episode of season one last week, at the San Diego Comic-Con…. OK, so it really gave the rest of us the episode this week, with the DVD and Blu-ray release, but who’s splitting hairs? Brett talked about it last week, but now that everyone is getting a chance to see it, I wanted to chime in with my thoughts.

The same spoiler warnings apply if you still haven’t seen it, but if you haven’t, what the hell? Stop what you’re doing, drive to your local Best Buy (or DVD retailer of your choice), and then come back and talk to me. (And yes, I know the torrent has been available for a week or two now, but follow the guest star of the episode’s advice, and buy the DVD, or you can win a copy from us).

“Epitaph One” represents a great “what if?” for the viewer, and in my eyes, a great “See, don’t screw with the show and this is what you get” to FOX. It seemingly sets up the endgame of the story that the next seasons (multiple, because I have faith; no, that pun was not on purpose) will work themselves to.

Throughout the first season, Joss Whedon slowly poked at us, forcing us to think, by setting up interesting moral questions without directly answering them. “Epitaph” does so definitively: The continued path down the slippery slope that was the use of this technology, caused society to devolve.

When I first read World War Z (and if you’re enough of a Sci-Fi fan to be watching Dollhouse, give that book a chance), I was taken by the idea of an apocalyptic-style war with an enemy that immediately turned your armies against you when overtaken. In Dollhouse‘s future, however, they aren’t brainless, unthinking zombies, but people that can have any technical skill, personality, or experience plugged into them just by walking past a radio. A society where the only way you can survive is to keep your head down, and learn to not only live without the advantages of “tech,” as they would call it, but to also have to avoid it at all costs.

Through our characters, we got to see how those who found themselves responsible would react. The burdens that these people carry, and how that weight affects them, is interesting to see played out. Topher’s fall was the greatest, because I think, in many ways, he was both the most innocent of the team, and the most responsible. How the savvy, commanding DeWitt was now nursemaid to the post-breakdown genius, speaks to how they know that the world ended with their whimper, and no proverbial bang.

Earlier, I used the word “seemingly,” to describe the twists and turns of the episode, and I did so because of something that Joss mentioned at the Dollhouse Q&A after the screening at SDCC. He said that we should take the memories seen with a “grain of salt.” What I get from that is the events that happened in Dollhouse, with Mag and Iris and the gang, really happened, but the memories they pulled from the data banks, and the “flashbacks: we saw, may have been tampered with somewhere along the way.

On the one hand, it gives the writers some leeway in adjusting history, (can you call it history when it hasn’t happened yet?) as the needs of the evolving story might dictate. On the other hand, it allows for the concept that, while we think we know where the story is going, things might not be as straightforward as they seem.

“Epitaph One” is an interesting title. It evokes the idea that, while something (society as we know it) came to an end, something (potentially worthy of a second epitaph) will come behind it. How we get there, and who plays a part in writing that history, remains to be seen. I think that it will be an interesting, and hopefully thought-provoking story, that will make us examine the moral questions posed when a society doesn’t evolve as quickly as the technology it created.

Clacked by Ivey West
on Jul 28, 2009 @ 16:00 EST5EDT