We Always Return to the Dollhouse

So upon finishing the series I felt differently about a lot of characters. i think a lot of that comes from the interesting relationship these characters have with control; control of bodies, minds, corporations and groups. First of all, Echo gets to keep Caroline’s body, which seems to me to be a little against the entirety of what the group had been fighting for. I understand Echo had become her own personality and did not want to risk losing that, but how can that be fair to the indentity that previously inhabited that body? This portion of the series made me unsure of what idea we were actually supposed to take away from it. Afterall, Alpha returned to the world and relinquished the personality that he had formed, which by the end seemed a lot safer for the world than his original personality. Echo could not give it up, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be glad for her (and i suppose the personality of her love who gets to hunker down in her head too) and at least Caroline is somewhere inside Echo too theoretically, but Echo never gives up control, which gives me this feeling of hypocrisy i can’t shake.

DeWitt spent so much time making me hate/respect her choices in season 2 I think I confused myself. She is no doubt clever in her execution of an overarching plan, but do the ends justify the means? When exactly did she decide to be a “good guy,” she was not always, otherwise she wouldn’t have experienced the inner conflict that read her to some serious drinking. She ironically turns into an actual mother figure instead of deluding herself into believing she was one. She is another character that can’t seem to relinquish control, even in the end she chooses to usher her flock of lost ex-dolls into the world.

Boyd is the character that made me crankiest, he helped plan the downfall of his company, in order to try and thwart it, showing a huge sense of confidence and egotism in his capability to maintain control. He could have easily found a way to go through corporate means in order to get a hold of the evolved echo, he was just too twisted in his power to trust the job to anyone but himself personally. He needed to control the outcome up until the very last second he has a personality left. 

Then there’s Topher. I’ve done a little bit of hating on Topher and i sort of feel bad, I think he might have evolved more than Echo through this season. He realized a conscience which pulled him out of the Dollhouse and on a crusade to bring down the evil corporation that had been funding all of his toys for years. He protects Echo because he feels he should and ends up losing his sanity for the most part in order to make things right. Even in his confused state, he insists on sacrificing himself and only himself in order to save the world. In a moment of clarity, he tells Adelle that she needs to stay to fix the world, he must die alone. A scary proposition. It could be argued that in a way, Topher refuses to lose control of the situation and that pushes him toward his mental break, he caused this so he felt he had to fix it. Up to the end he is still the genius that saves everything. I still felt that he was admirable in the end.

Whiskey still throws me off. We just lose her at the end of epitaph 1, chronologically that is the last time we meet her and we never know how she got back into Whiskey-state in the first place. She is Clyde and then who knows? Child-body-Caroline suggested she came back to the dollhouse at some point and that she is Dr. Saunders the last time Caroline saw her, but we don’t know. It seems she had chosen to relinquish all control, but something was still left, pushing her toward saving survivors. I wish we knew more about that situation, but I guess when a show is cancelled they wrap up what they can, whiskey just fell through the cracks, I guess it’s good that Dr. Saunders never found out her lover was the founder of Rossum, but still!!!