Dollhouse: Instinct

By Sonia Aurora

Seeing as I was away and then sick the past few days, I decided to take a different approach to watching Dollhouse’s most recent episode, “Instinct.” Typically, I will sit at my computer and dissect, pausing the episode multiple times while I type out ideas, quotes, anything that I think will enhance the experience. But, in many ways, I don’t always enjoy the show for it being just that – a vessel of entertainment. So this week, I decided – from my bed – to just watch, enjoy, and then review afterwards.

I didn’t, however, expect to pick the wrong episode to do that with.

“Instinct” is one of the weaker Dollhouse episodes, I’m sad to report. Outside of more Alexis Denisof and DeWitt having a little more screen time than usual, this was not a strong outing. There were huge character inconsistencies that made the entire episode harder to swallow, and when I did I had that proverbial feeling that the pill was still lodged in my throat. I can’t help but agree with what this critic has to say; essentially, he thinks Dollhouse is on deathwatch because of its low ratings. I don’t much care for ratings, since they’ve often robbed me of some of my favorite shows. But I can agree that overall, there is a great concept that gets lost in the “story of the week” installments. I’ve made this comparison before, but it tries to emulate the X-files whose mystery-of-the-week eps actually made the show stronger by really honing in on who the characters were, and how they meant to each other. In the Dollhouse, you get glitching dolls and even glitching non-dolls, and it’s frustrating. I don’t get the same giddy sensation every Friday that I got every Tuesday for Buffy, or Wednesday for Pushing Daisies – that anticipation I would be let in one something otherworldly and great.

In a nutshell, what happens is this – Topher equips Echo to be a mother, lactating breasts and all. He thinks he’s a genius for being able to manipulate the body this way, through the brain, even supposing he could trick the body out of cancer. Ballard’s either mildly annoyed or bored by this notion. Meanwhile, Echo as mommy is nutso. She’s psychotically protective, to the point that she’s paranoid on a level that. if her faux husband were smart enough, he should have hidden the steak knives in his house. Turns out, she’s a replacement for his wife that died in childbirth. Ever since his son Jack was born he blames him for the wife’s death and can’t get close to him. When he decides to call the whole thing off to Adele (all angry and superior), she reminds him he’s the one that didn’t want a nanny or babysitter – he wanted a mother (another great example of “be careful what you wish for”). Meanwhile, Echo is kidnapping the kid, having overheard Hubby saying he wanted to get rid of her and the baby, and believing she and the baby are targets for murder, she goes to the police. Hubby and Ballard show up, and she’s even more crazy now, not responding to the trigger word “treatment”, the whole shebang. Her best part of the ep is how she freaks out at being separated from the child she believes is hers, as she screams and flails, being carted away by the men in black.

I also realized in the episode that Eliza Dushku is too limiting and dirty pretty (in the way Megan Fox is) to be taken seriously. Give her persona as Tough Girl, Wounded Girl, BadAss Girl, she nails it. But have her try on the outfit of Conflicted Girl and her acting abilities –and lack thereof – start to strain. She isn’t a bad actress, but it’s important to note that not everyone can be convincing in everything. It’s like when comedians try on the drama cape. People still smart at the idea of Jim Carey being serious, but he did convince me in films like The Truman Show and (my personal favorite movie of all time) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It goes to the material that matters. But in a show where you’re supposed to showcase different skins week to week, you are hard pressed to believe all of them when you are only an adequate actress in some of the those skins. I could not buy Eliza-Echo as a mother. It just did not ring true – and from the episode’s first note I had a hard time listening to anything else but the out-of-tune gong every time she came on-screen as Momma Emily.

So it turns out Topher’s so good that even though he wipes Echo of the assignment (which includes the Mommy gene he implanted), she still goes bad ass after her treatment and tries to break out to save the baby. This is Huge Inconsistency #1 – where kewpie doll Echo punches out Topher all bad ass, but then meekly sits in the passenger seat of a car and tells it to “Go Now.” Then, she’s bad ass-y again in the father’s house, confronting him with baby cradled in one arm, knife griped in other hand.

Then comes Huge Inconsistency #2 – Hubby, up until this point has been angry and bitchy, calling Echo a “zombie”, being a complete, though justifiably upset, tool. But in this confrontation he all of a sudden becomes soothing, explaining his situation and that it’s not her baby even though she feels the need to protect him as her baby. He had started a mild turn around like this when he’d decided to get rid of Echo, but it’s a turn around that makes no sense. You didn’t think compassion was a part of him up until then, and even though it was convincing, it was still not in the buildup of what we had seen of his character. As a writer and as someone who dabbled in acting, it just thudded loudly how wrong this was. Echo comes to her senses (as much as she can), hands over the baby, has a heart o heart talk with Ballard where she says she remembers all these feelings. He assures her that Topher can get rid of them, but she still wants him. We’re gonged over the head about how “special” Echo is, and all is well for this week. (As an aside – any Active could have responded this way – and I wouldn’t have minded seeing how Sierra/ Dichen Lachmen would’ve handled the Mommy Gene implant).

Meanwhile, 2 other major-ish things happened:

November/Mellie/Madeline returns to the Dollhouse! Yes, sleeper active Mellie is begged to come in for her diagnostic by DeWitt. She’s rich, poised, polished and, truth be told, a little uppity for my taste. Miracle Laurie is a great actress and it was nice to see her, but was she a Kennedy before she was an Active? That left a bad taste in my mouth. Her exchange with Ballard was nice, who was stunned to see her, but it seemed to close the chapter on that character.

Senator Pellin (Alexis Denisof) digs more into Rossum’s medical stuff. It sounds like he knows at least in theory about the Dollhouse, as he infers that he was approached by something the likes of it when his mother developed Alzheimer’s. I did wonder how the Dollhouse gets to be tossed around to be talked about by the right, discreet people in the right circles. It was also refreshing to see how into his wife he seems to be, and how encouraging she is. It was a nice dynamic to see on TV for a man in political power to not be (at least yet) a philanderer.

All in all, I was disappointed as a viewer, which allows me to voice it as a reviewer. I’m not sure what guidance I have to offer for it, as I’m sure the nuances are there for a reason in the Whedonverse, but also, Eliza isn’t getting replaced on the show (it’s good to be the king, er, producer) and while she does show range, it’s in episodes like this where they forget about her incapabilities instead of channeling her capabilities. And especially painful when she’s surrounded by more capable actors. At least next week it seems to be a Victor-centric show, as he gets imbibed with the mind of a serial killer.

About Sonia Aurora: Aspiring screenwriter and seamstress, Sonia’s dream is to write life-changing films while product-placing her own line of handbags. In 1999, she wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the short film Dr. Lovestrange, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug, a satirical homage to Stanley Kubrick set amidst the panic of Y2K (Featured on ifilm.com & Coming Soon to YouTube!). While Sonia waits patiently for the Studios to call, she continues her selfless, humanitarian efforts (think Mother Teresa) through her scripts, short stories and sewing (a true triple-threat!), knowing all the while that someday her efforts will indeed save (or at least mildly tweak) the world. She still struggles with which picture to kiss before bedtime: her boyfriend’s or Bruce Campbell’s. And, in the interest of time, she’d like to start thanking the Academy now.

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