Active Engagement: "Epitaph One"
Einer der besten Lesehappen zu "Epitaph One":
And the scene's masterstroke is that Ambrose isn't there. His body is not in the L.A. Dollhouse, and his mind is not confined to one Wipeable, shootable, smashable brain. If you criticized the not-quite-panopticon design of the Dollhouse a ways back, how's this one?: Ambrose exerts power over his captive employees while not being anywhere. Adelle and Topher (and elsewhere Saunders and Langton) look pretty helpless here. How do you reconfigure the game when you can't see or touch or get at the pieces ("We've always been above the law... only now we're also writing it"... who needs both?!)? How do you punch through thin air? You can't fight a ghost. We might actually look back to Episode One, "Ghost", for a parallel, as Eleanor-Echo faced a similar quandary and found a similar solution. You fight a ghost by being a ghost. And a Caroline ends "Epitaph One" in the place where Ambrose starts all this trouble: they're disembodied and many-embodied. Indestructible like biologically immortal hydrozoans. It isn't underlined like a Twilight Zone zapper, but the irony is that the very ab/use of the Tech that Ambrose demands is the same technique that allows the resistance fighter Caroline to survive.
There's also a poignant catch to the Hydra Imprint scheme, and it isn't much mentioned until the end of the episode (though it formed some of "Haunted" and "Gray Hour"). None of the copies of yourself are in synch with one another. "I hope we find me alive": Caroline still wants, instinctually, bone-deep, for there to be A Real Caroline. The Ambrose-Victor who ate that crab may go back to DH Central and be debriefed. Maybe he gets Wiped. Maybe Ambrose Prime "had" the experience of eating the crab, maybe not, but it can't mean as much as it does to those with of us with the brief lives Ambrose mocks and dismisses.
So yes, there is an inevitability to "Epitaph One", and at the same time, in a neat writer's trick, the whole thing dissolves into thin air. It's a series finale and and it's not. It's a season finale and it's not. It's a glimpse of the narrative timeline's future, and it's not. Whedon has hinted in interviews that since the flashback scenes are memories, they may be imperfect. But something far more clever is built into "Epitaph": the flashbacks are all blessed with ambiguous entry and exit points (did Adelle "reclaim" Victor from Ambrose? Does Caroline shoot Adelle? No and no, but you see what I mean), and furthermore, they are "memories" in a story about constructing false memories. Nothing in "Epitaph One"'s flashbacks has to be written into the official history of the Dollhouse, but everything could be.
Link
And the scene's masterstroke is that Ambrose isn't there. His body is not in the L.A. Dollhouse, and his mind is not confined to one Wipeable, shootable, smashable brain. If you criticized the not-quite-panopticon design of the Dollhouse a ways back, how's this one?: Ambrose exerts power over his captive employees while not being anywhere. Adelle and Topher (and elsewhere Saunders and Langton) look pretty helpless here. How do you reconfigure the game when you can't see or touch or get at the pieces ("We've always been above the law... only now we're also writing it"... who needs both?!)? How do you punch through thin air? You can't fight a ghost. We might actually look back to Episode One, "Ghost", for a parallel, as Eleanor-Echo faced a similar quandary and found a similar solution. You fight a ghost by being a ghost. And a Caroline ends "Epitaph One" in the place where Ambrose starts all this trouble: they're disembodied and many-embodied. Indestructible like biologically immortal hydrozoans. It isn't underlined like a Twilight Zone zapper, but the irony is that the very ab/use of the Tech that Ambrose demands is the same technique that allows the resistance fighter Caroline to survive.
There's also a poignant catch to the Hydra Imprint scheme, and it isn't much mentioned until the end of the episode (though it formed some of "Haunted" and "Gray Hour"). None of the copies of yourself are in synch with one another. "I hope we find me alive": Caroline still wants, instinctually, bone-deep, for there to be A Real Caroline. The Ambrose-Victor who ate that crab may go back to DH Central and be debriefed. Maybe he gets Wiped. Maybe Ambrose Prime "had" the experience of eating the crab, maybe not, but it can't mean as much as it does to those with of us with the brief lives Ambrose mocks and dismisses.
So yes, there is an inevitability to "Epitaph One", and at the same time, in a neat writer's trick, the whole thing dissolves into thin air. It's a series finale and and it's not. It's a season finale and it's not. It's a glimpse of the narrative timeline's future, and it's not. Whedon has hinted in interviews that since the flashback scenes are memories, they may be imperfect. But something far more clever is built into "Epitaph": the flashbacks are all blessed with ambiguous entry and exit points (did Adelle "reclaim" Victor from Ambrose? Does Caroline shoot Adelle? No and no, but you see what I mean), and furthermore, they are "memories" in a story about constructing false memories. Nothing in "Epitaph One"'s flashbacks has to be written into the official history of the Dollhouse, but everything could be.
Link
wiesengrund - 30. September, 23:12
