So. I'm currently watching the first episode of Joss Whedon's new TV series, Dollhouse. And yes, if you're wondering, I got it from the Pirate Bay, which means that it was distributed free to us eyepatch-wearing evildoers out here in cyberspace before it was ever shown on American television. This is the world you live in. Love it or leave it.
So, in the first few moments of this new series, the statement of fact proposed to Echo to get her to join the Dollhouse, have her memories wiped clean and "start over" with a "clean slate," is that she has no other choice. "Actions have consequences," Adelle Dewitt says to girl-who-did-something-bad Echo. Later in the same scene, Echo echoes her statement of fact back to Adelle, "Actions have consequences." "What if they didn't? says Adelle. Is this my kinda series, or what? Is this the same conversation I tried to initiate with enlightened_dawn11 today, or what? What is the *appeal* of "having no past and no future," and living completely in the present? Well, duh. It's the "having no responsibility" thang: "What if your actions had no consequences?" Echo is being offered Some People's Idea Of Enlightenment. She is being given an opportunity to wipe the past away, to "start over" with a "clean slate," and ignore Anything That Went Before. The question for spiritual seekers who believe that this is an accurate description of enlightenment and for potential viewers of the TV series Dollhouse is, "Can you erase the past? Can you erase the imprints that the past has made on your soul? Can you effectively erase your soul's past by living completely in the present? Can you erase memory, and the echoes of the past? Echo is the name of the main character in this series. I somehow do not think that this is an accident. I am going to "swim against the stream" of reviewer opinion on this series, and say that I think it's just smokin'. Hot as hell. Spiritual three-alarm chili. Dollhouse rocks. It's got the potential for great philosophical television. Whether it has the story line and the characterization to make it salable philosophical television is yet to be seen. The whole series rides on the shoulders of Eliza Dushku, and she is not everyone's C-cuppa tea. But because he has displayed "seeing" before in casting with Morena Baccarin and with Summer Glau, I'm going to trust in Joss Whedon here, and think as he does that she has the range to pull it off. At the end of the first episode, I'm left with a memory of two of Echo's handlers in the Dollhouse looking down at her as she walks, *completely* free of past and future, in the no-less-binding atrium of a false present. One of the handlers says, "Look at Echo. Not a care in the world. She's living the dream." The other one, the more thoughtful one, says, "Whose dream?" Good question.
