In Dollhouse, there’s a recurring question as to whether the people looking out for the dolls are really interested in their welfare. Boyd is hired to be Echo’s handler, and is often reminded that he’s supposed to look out for her to the extent that it’s his job. When Echo rescues Boyd in the woods, two things happen:

1. Boyd has permission to honestly care about Echo, because she’s proven that they’re closer to partners (a relationship Boyd would understand, as an ex-cop).

2. Boyd no longer needs to feel guilty about being paid to look out for Echo, because Echo and Boyd share a mutual admiration. He can convince himself that he would do his job even if he weren’t being paid, which allows him to continue to accept his salary.

It’s a similar situation in Firefly. Book is definitely no bureaucratic religious pencil-pusher. He really loves people. But does he love people because he’s religious, or does he love people because he has a personal interest in their safety? When Alara convinces him that he can reconcile his beliefs with his relationship to the crew, Book finally accepts his role as an non-intervening overseer without feeling guilty about the crimes the crew commit.

These characters enact the conflict Joss feels about caring for characters that are supposed to be his professional responsibility. The message: you can care about the people who work for you, AND do your job well.

Joss’ mother and father, as well as two brothers, are all professional writers, so it makes sense that Joss would have pretty sophisticated anxieties about the relationship between money and writing. He understands that writing is just a job, but he clearly cares enough to do extraordinary work.

In this view, the “pretend emancipation” episode expresses the futility of Joss’ guilt. The dolls, like all his characters, may (over time) seem to point themselves toward a destiny independent of their creator’s wishes, but ultimately, the creator does have complete control over every aspect of the dolls’ futures. The one exception is, oddly, cancellation; that is, death. Each doll, like each of Joss’ characters, follows orders (“How can I do my best?”) until death from some outside interloper (Alpha, or the network) cuts the mission short.

The guilt-of-the-TV-creator metaphor might explain why the show is set in LA. The last time Joss set a show in LA was Angel, which ended with a demon-run law firm sending the entire city to Hell. If that’s not the anger of a frustrated industry veteran, it’s darn close.

Sadly, they burned a great storyline on the doll who gets a dead person’s personality. That’s like a half-season “big bad” storyline right there.

ANYHOO, my point is if it’s fantasy, the ideal is what would be portrayed. It’s not just meant to be fantasy and wish-fulfillment for the world within the show, but for the viewers as well. Since the viewers come from a world where people like the dolls in the show are “ideal,” it follows the dolls would look they way they do.

I’m curious about the thirteenth episode, the one that will be on the DVD. I thought this “last” one had a nice wrapped-up feeling to it. Of course, there were lots of ambiguities, but they were done in such a way as not to feel too drastic and necessarily *beg* for more episodes. I don’t see how another episode would do anything but disrupt the sense of closure/peace I got from Friday’s, unless it was nothing but origin story, i.e. Caroline’s last few days before signing her contract or something like that. I have my own theories to answer some of the questions raised in the last few minutes (I wouldn’t feign the creativity needed to come up with all of those unexplained backstories, though), but I’m okay with keeping them in my head and never knowing if I’m “right” or not. It’s kind of like the fandom mentioned by Mlwaski in her origins stories post (I think that’s where I saw it, anyway…), I guess- I kind of like my idea and may get disappointed if I don’t think what the writers come up with is better.

For some reason, the show itself often makes me think of the mind-clearing stuff the Psy-Core did in B5 to replace the death penalty. Probably because of the whole erase-the-previous-personality-and-replace-it-with-a-manufactured-one thing. And there are some parallels in terms of latent memories resurfacing. There are some huge, gaping differences, naturally, but a core conundrum linking the two is: What is the real essence of a person? Is it their brainwaves, is it something more? And then you can dive into stuff like whether science and spirituality are, ultimately, at their deepest foundations, mutually exclusive? I don’t think either series answered any of these questions, and I rather like it that way.