One New York Life

With Season Two of Dollhouse having started, I needed to finally finish writing this column. As the title suggests, it’s about Dollhouse’s Topher character. Topher, played by Fran Kranz, is the genius neurologist who created the imprint/download process that makes the entire Dollhouse premise possible. Topher rubbed people the wrong way all last season. Without Googling for examples, I’ll let Low Resolution Joe sum it up:

I F*cking HATE Topher: I’m not sure I’m even supposed to like him, but boy don’t I. It’s not just that his character does evil deeds — so does DeWitt and I love her. It’s that he manages to be completely obnoxious in a way I think I’m supposed to find cute or charming. I hated Xander Harris enough when he was painstakingly heroic. That’s the other thing — I get that Joss has a house style, but a Xander/Andrew hybrid just does NOT work in the Dollhouse universe. It’s a clash of styles that made it hard to completely dig Alan Tudyk’s character — at least early on.

Joe’s take on Topher is representative of the general opinion, I think, though I’d argue he’s more a moderately less evil version of Warren. To be honest, I was surprised by the Topher backlash because I found the character (and the actor’s portrayal of the character) to be a spot-on take of a genius doing morally unattractive research. For me, his portrayal of the grating genius is perfect.

Anecdotally, I went to a rather well-respected tech school to get my MS. The grad programs are generally reserved for people on RPI’s rather selective PhD tracks. These are smart people… really smart people. I’m a pretty smart person. I was offered to skip grades (my parents wouldn’t allow it), got to take classes at the aforementioned Institute as a senior in high school, took sophomore math courses in middle school; I’m not trying to toot my own horn… I’m trying to establish that I’m not intimidated around smart people. I was intimidated around these people. Geniuses are not fun people to be around. Generally, they tend to be condescending, socially-awkward asses. Sometimes they’re self-aware asses, like Topher. Sometimes they’re clueless to the fact they’re asses, like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. It’s a combination of being social outcasts in school (because who cares about the smart people when there are SPORTZ to be watched) and understanding concepts that regular people just can’t grasp. You know the song you absolutely love and don’t understand anyone disliking? It’s sort of that but with things like string theory or asking someone with perfect pitch to describe how they know something is in tune.

Fran Kranz encompasses this “genius who knows he’s better than you” vibe in an almost-but-not-quite-cool way. He drifts between mildly condescending and rudely condescending depending on who he’s speaking to. He’s less condescending to people who can hurt him (DeWitt professionally, Dominic physically) and people he likes (Langton, who Topher gives a chance to escape when he thinks he’s discovered Langton as a spy in the Dollhouse), more condescending to people he’s less afraid of (his intern, the dolls), and extremely condescending to people outside the Dollhouse (Ballard). He occasionally forgets himself when someone says something that he finds incredibly stupid. He’s also incredibly protective of his intellect. In the spy episode, Echo’s investigator persona suggests Topher’s either “dangerously incompetent or trying to throw me off your trail.” He’s being investigated for Dollhouse treason yet it’s this offhand comment about incompetence he can’t get past. Much later in the inquiry, she asks him why he’s at the Dollhouse. He responds it’s “kind of a no brainer. I’m in neuro-plastic heaven. I’m doing work my grad school professors haven’t even dreamed of yet. I don’t want to brag, but I’m kind of a genius. Do you really think I’m incompetent or are you just saying that?” He can’t stand the thought of someone finding him incompetent. It’s another nice touch — every genius, no matter how smart, retains a solid lack of self-confidence because of the high-school social structure. Topher’s overconfident bragging about his intelligence is part of this, as is the power he feels (real or imagined) by knowing things other people don’t grasp.

The important thing to remember about Topher, and geniuses in general, is that they exist in a world where people simply don’t understand the world on their level. Topher is smart enough such that he developed a process in which a human brain can be downloaded in to a hard drive and uploaded in to another human being. Try to imagine understanding the world on that level and interacting with other people. It’s telling that, when he has the opportunity to use a doll for a single night, he imprints Sierra with what is essentially a female version of himself. No one at the Dollhouse understands him, he can’t talk about his work with anyone who has a chance at understanding him, so he gets one single night a year and creates someone to understand him. It’s a sad life when you think about it.

And I think there is some part of him that’s a little bothered by what he does. In the finale, it’s revealed that Dr. Saunders is, herself, a Doll containing the knowledge of the Dollhouse’s former doctor. We know that Topher can create the personality of a Doll — it’s revealed in the penultimate episode Briar Rose that he was able to take the personality of a young girl who’d been abused and advance it to well-adjusted adulthood. We also know that he imprinted Dr. Saunders in to Whiskey and that the original, real Dr. Saunders didn’t hate Topher. So why would he program the new Dr. Saunders personality to hate him? Guilt that his process caused Alpha to glitch and resulted in Saunders’s death and Whiskey’s scars? Or self-loathing?

Which brings us to the question of whether or not he’s evil. With no well-defined bad guy before Alpha, people assigned DeWitt and Topher the “bad guy” title. But, really, they’re not that evil. Topher is downloading a person’s brain, using the volunteered body for a bit, and restoring the memory when the time is up. When Caroline’s consciousness is installed in to a different body in the season finale, she has no idea how much time has passed. She asks if it’s already been five years. It’s instantaneous for the person whose body is being borrowed. If Topher’s theory is truth — that there’s no such thing as a soul and a person is nothing more then the collection of their memories — then he’s not really doing anything evil. Topher has the following exchange with Ballard regarding Alpha’s personality profile:

Topher: Of course it doesn’t tell you anything it doesn’t tell me anything and I’m smarter than everyone in this room.
Paul Ballard (played by Tamoh Penikett — who’s gone from being the moral compass of Battlestar Galactica to the moral compass of the Dollhouse): I know you’re very invested in your vaunted technology and it is very impressive but I still don’t believe you can wipe away a person’s soul
Topher (sneering, condescendingly): Their what?
Ballard: Their soul. who they are at their very core. I don’t think that goes away.
Topher: You’d be wrong about that.

Topher doesn’t believe in a soul or, by extension, any sort of God. He finds the idea insulting. When Ballard says the imprint room is “where you steal their souls”; Topher responds with “Yes, then we put them in a glass jar with our fireflies. Why is there a tall morally judgmental man in my imprint room besides [Langton]?” This makes sense — if God and souls don’t exist, they were created by humans to explain the unexplainable. Topher feels he’s now explained that piece of the unexplainable. People who still cling to that incorrect metaphysical explanation are telling him he’s wrong. He leaves the room angry, knowing he’s correct, and tells Ballard and Langton: “[I have to figure out what Alpha did to Caroline]. Good luck with the whole “God” thing.”

This is the core of why Topher isn’t evil. We consider him evil because we all, on some level, kind of believe in a soul. Even if we don’t believe in God, we believe in the essence of what makes us us. If there is no soul, and the essence of us is just hard-wired instinct and a collection of our memories, then what he’s doing isn’t evil. It’s groundbreaking. It’s the human race conquering death. He believes he’s helping people with zero cost. In the aforementioned Briar Rose he creates a perfect counselor to help girls who spent their formative years being abused and says the feeling he gets from helping them is “not unlike pride.” He creates a perfect negotiator to get a child back from kidnappers. To help pay for all this, he has no issue being a corporate pimp because, really, if God and sin aren’t issues and neither party is diseased, then there’s really no cogent argument against prostitution. Prostitution is illegal because the church declared it immoral however many hundred years ago. Without the moral objection sex, or paying for sex, isn’t immoral. It’s a lucrative biological imperative that funds his research.

Topher Brink is one of most well-done, layered characters on television at the moment. He’s an excellently written genius and the nexus of humanity’s next stage in evolution. His research has redefined humanity, death, and how we pass down knowledge. And the enabler of all this? Topher Brink. That’s why you should find him fascinating.

Dollhouse renewed for a half-season! Shock — Michael Ausiello doesn’t understand the Topher character either.

On the other hand:

Sarah Connor Chronicles and The Unusuals canceled: I’m not really surprised on Sarah Connor Chronicles — though I thought it might get a breath of life after the movie. Unfortunately it went a little too 90210 in the first season and had the horrible three-dot storyline in the middle of this season. Besides that, I’m still not quite sure how much of this season actually happened as it was never really clear what was real and what was part of Sarah’s dream. Sadly, we don’t get to track the fantastic adventures of Shirley Manson and John Connor in to next year.

I’m a little more suprised on The Unusuals since the terrible Castle and Southland got picked up. And, well, it’s a cop show and I thought they just all got picked up by default.

Also, sadly, it’s not looking good for Reaper. Ratings are tanking amidst the show hitting home runs week after week. It’s really one of the best, funniest shows that no one’s watching. Maybe throwing it out to get slaughtered by American Idol wasn’t the best programming decision? When reaper went up against the Obama press conference, it got a 2.5. When it went up against Idol, it got a 1.0. Excellent formula — put it up against a ratings juggernaut and fault it for not getting ratings. I hate the television business.

Should the Dollhouse finale that aired last week turn out to be of the series rather than the season, Joss Whedon will be able to, again, lay the blame squarely at FOX’s feet. There was a distinct and obvious difference between the two halves of the short season. The first five episodes — monster-of-the-week format, slow to nil character development, and way too much reliance on Eliza Dushku playing someone other than Faith to carry the show. Whedon said he had more influence on the show from the sixth episode on. Not surprisingly, this was where the series turned a very obvious corner. Monster-of-the-week went away, Dushku faded in to part of the ensemble rather than the main focus, the other Dolls were developed, the Dollhouse’s employees were developed, character dropped more in to Whedonesque shades of gray, and the show just got better and more intense.

A couple of points:

Spirituality: Twelve episodes of this show was enough to fill the curriculum of a sophomore philosophy class. Maybe it’s just me, but I dig that. It would be PHIL201 and it would be called “The Essence Of You — Spirituality In Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse”. It goes hand-and-hand with the entire concept in Fringe concept where Massive Dynamics is able to download things out of people’s brains after they die. I mean, it’s got to be possible, right? Someday we’ll figure out what things to probe, what wires to hook up, what to do to download the data out of people’s brains. The whole Dollhouse concept really just takes that to the next level. If you could take the entire imprint out of someone’s head and put it somewhere else. And the whole concept of “would that be you” vs. “the immortal soul”. I mean, what are you if not the collection of your memories and experiences. Would it be you? Would it just be something that thinks it’s you? Would you seamlessly see what it sees? What if they made a copy of you while you were alive? What about after you were dead? It’s like the Star Trek conundrum made in to a show. Dr. McCoy stopped using the transporter because he believed that disassembling yourself at the molecular level effectively killed you and what was reconstructed was just a copy of you with your memories.

Topher: I’m one of the few people who absolutely adored Fran Kranz’s Topher. I thought his portrayal of “genius who just knows he’s better than you” was brilliant. Topher’s a guy who walks around a world with people in it who can’t possibly understand things like he does. He jumps between mildly and rudely condescending depending on how much of a waste of time he feels the current conversation is and the amount of hope he has that you’ll understand what he’s saying. He’s a self-aware version of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. Sheldon’s hopelessly asshole-y and condescending. So is Topher — but Topher KNOWS he’s doing it and simply doesn’t care. The character was encapsulated perfectly in two parts of this season. In the finale — Ballard, Langton, and DeWitt are talking about Alpha stealing the hard drives containing Caroline’s original imprint (the one that will restore her after her five years). One of them says something about “what about the soul?” Topher gives them a withering, disdainful look, says “I’m going back to work. Let me know how the whole ‘God’ thing turns out?”, and leaves. The disgust was perfect. He understands the human brain. He understands what makes us us. To him, people who hold on to any other ideas are no different than people who thought rain was magic. Second, in one of the episodes, it’s revealed that he is allowed to imprint a doll for “personal use” one night a year. The imprint he creates is essentially a female version of himself. He has to create a person to relate to. Geniuses generally aren’t fun people to hang around and this particular genius does work that nearly all of his peers would find immoral and creepy. I think Topher’s one of the most interesting characters on the show. This is a summary of something I posted over on Movie Joe’s blog. I will carry this torch until the end.

Victor: Enver Gjokaj’s was far and away the breakout actor on the show. He’s the only one of dolls who brought new and different personality quirks to each imprint. It’s like he’s the only one who got the memo that each personality imprint was supposed to be unique.

DeWitt: The lady that runs the Dollhouse. Before the show turned, Adelle DeWitt was relegated to creepy British lady who made decisions and was a compliant madame to this cathouse. After episode six, when she started to develop, we got a lot more depth to her character. A woman who loved and lost (so deeply that she imprinted Victor with her missing lover’s personality and carried on a secret affair with a doll). A woman willing to break the rules for friendship — an entire episode revolved around her taking an imprint of her friend with the instructions to download it in to a doll in the event of her murder so she could solve it. And, as an aside, that is a TREMENDOUS storyline should this show somehow make it. Ms. Dewitt’s friend willingly came back to the Dollhouse to essentially be killed all over again. Well — what if she didn’t? Isn’t that like a half-season storyline? Especially considering the resources someone with enough money would have to do this?

Alpha: As Big Bads go, Alpha turned out to be a bit disappointing. I understand the concept of the crazy doll with all his personalities overlaid with one another. But really, we’ve been down this road before. Joss loves him some bad guys with multiple personalities. The actor pulled off crazy relatively well but I just wasn’t in to the character.

Ballard: One minor complaint was Ballard’s sudden decision to work for the Dollhouse. He hunts them for all this time and they ruin his life and he suddenly volunteers to work for them? I get him wanting to be the Dollhouse’s Moral Compass and all but I had a hard time buying that he suddenly gave up the whole idea of bringing them down to join up. I guess maybe he wants to see Caroline’s five-year bid through.

The show is smart. Really smart. When Whedon’s fingerprints started appearing, the show got markedly better. The cast is really good and there is a huge story to tell. I honestly thought it would be difficult to make this show consistently interesting. I was wrong. It’s fantastic and it really deserves a full season to explore the philosophical mind-f*cks.

It’s original, creative, and maybe we can give something that’s not a procedural crime drama a shot? Maybe?

It’s weird how second episodes are almost strictly better than pilots. The second Dollhouse episode had more of everything I wanted — more fighting, more character development, more establishment of the universe’s rules, and more Whedon dialog. Some examples:

“I’ve been [looking at brain waves] long enough to discern the diff between excitement and sweet mother I”m gonna die.”

“You’re in the middle of ‘why would anyone want to be there’ — what’d you expect, HBO.”

“We’re still working out some of the, you know, kinks.”
“Like the blood, screaming, and dying?”

There is one scene at the end of the episode, where Laurence Dominic (played by Reed Diamond, who seems to always be behind douchey characters) spends about 15-seconds speaking to Echo and it does more to establish who he is and what he’s like then some shows would give you in an entire feature episode. Harry Lennix gets the same treatment — except his 15-seconds features tying a guy up and calmly shooting him in the both thighs to get information. We still don’t have a ton of his background, but we have a pretty solid bead on his character.

I’d also say — it’s quite a refreshing change to get an answer to Amy Acker’s facial scars so quickly. After dealing with shows like Lost and BSG who enjoy doling out answers slowly, I was almost shocked when we got a flashback detailing both how Alpha escaped and how Acker’s face got cut. One episode answers? In my shows?

The only thing that kind of sucks is with the appearance of Tahmoh Penikett and now Mark Sheppard, people who are decidedly NOT on Battlestar Galactica at the moment, are spoiling it for me.

Great episode. I’m on board now.

The plot is simply this: Company X (my name, not theirs — I don’t think we got a company name in the pilot) has a process which can download personalities, memories, and knowledge in to a person’s brain. The person’s original personality, memories, and knowledge is removed. Company X has clients which need stuff done. The proper personality is downloaded in to the most convenient or helpful body (in the pilot, the personality of a professional hostage negotiator is downloaded in to an unthreatening, female body). The “active” is given the “engagement” at which point they return to Company X and the personality is wiped. The “actives” don’t remember anything about the “engagement” or anything about their lives previous to becoming a Doll.

The Good

• I like the concept a lot. I mean, it’s a good question — what makes you YOU? When we finally figure out how the brain encodes information will we actually be able delete and create memories? It’s pretty crazy… and why not explore it in a sci-fi setting?
• They fortunately got the “how often are these people just used as hookers?” question addressed early. Just open with the question and get it out of the way. The first scene with Echo after she agrees to this process is her out with a guy for a “fantasy weekend” before she leaves to go back to Company X. Address it and kill the insipid jokes before they start.
• The only other Whedon Alum who appeared on the pilot was Amy Acker, sporting a full facial scar as Dr. Claire Saunders — some kind of staff doctor for the Dolls. With a nod to the fanboys, they showed “someone” examining Echo before doing the slow pan up to her face up to the big reveal of who she was. One of two fan-boy nods including a shout-out to Edward James Olmos.
• Whedon’s style is all over this. The cold-open with the mysterious thing going on. The dramatic cut to the opening theme. The quick shot before cutting to commercial. It will feel comfortable to Whedon fans and probably pretty comfortable to JJ Abrams fans, too. Including the last scene with someone looking at a picture of Echo while watching a DVD of her in a room with two people who have very obviously been murdered recently.
• I was satisfied with lead-scientist Topher Brink’s explanation of why they can’t create perfect personality. That every strength a person has must be balanced with a flaw. Otherwise, it would be far too easy create an army of Captain Americas. Because the Actives are based on amalgamations of real people, the flaws in their personality can’t be eliminated. It doesn’t feel like a forced explanation for why the Dollhouse can’t just create perfect people.
• Confirmed Doll names are Alpha, Echo, and Sierra. IMDB also lists a November and a Victor. Shall I assume that Echo is the fifth doll? From what we know from the first episode, Alpha has gone rogue and apparently has offed Echo’s parents and is feeding information to the FBI. So we have the FBI and a rogue Doll chasing after the Dollhouse. Good enough start.

The Bad

• The FBI storyline seems like a bad idea. Is Ballard going to be chasing down this company for the entire run of the series while not getting anywhere? If the series catches on, is he going to be following them around for the entire five years making no progress? I don’t get it.
• I don’t know how I feel about the Monster Of The Week format for this show. I get that it’s supposed to be a vehicle for Eliza Dushku to be different characters every week… but how long does that stay interesting? I feel like there has to be a heavy dose of FBI vs. Company X plot progression to keep the show interesting. I think I’d get bored with “this week she’s a hostage negotiator, next week she’s a helicopter pilot” episodes.
• The Actives (or Dolls, if you prefer) walking around Company X and talking like confused 3-year-olds all the time seems like a gratingly bad idea. It also didn’t feel quite right that blank-personality Echo had the ability to just wander in to a room where they were scanning Sierra for her — uh — Dollification. I’m pretty sure it would be in the semi-shady company’s best interest to keep the confused 3-year-olds away from the more complicated, probably really expensive, instruments.
• There’s nothing I actively disliked about this pilot, but at the end I wasn’t in love. I went in wanting to to be in love. As an aside, if the fanboys on Whedonesque aren’t fawning all over it, it’s probably not a good sign.

The Rest

Whether the homage to Wolfram & Hart is intentional or not, Company X is Wolfram & Hart. The set is nearly the same and the shady intentions are nearly the same. The only difference is that Company X seems to believe it’s helping people — with the “by any means necessary” caveat. The company with questionable ethics who help their clients at any cost sounds familiar… minus the demons. The use of the Wolfram & Hart set also leads me to believe there will fun moments when people get tossed over the balcony and through the randomly placed glass walls. Always a good time.

As for the time-slot — at first I read it as “holy crap, Fox is dumping on Friday night amongst death-row shows.” Its first season is going to be spent being led-in by shows circling the drain. Terminator is airing out probably its final episodes and will be replaced by Prison Break’s final run. After watching the pilot, Friday might be the best spot for it. Whedon’s shows start notoriously slow and maybe the somewhat uncompetitive Friday-night slot might give it a chance to find its audience. If they threw it in to the fire on Wednesday or Thursday nights, a slow-start would have scheduled the show for an early execution. Friday might give it some breathing room. That said, Fox could do worse than marketing a “hey geeks, check out our hot-chick Friday Night Sci-Fi block”. They need to drop the 30-second spots of Eliza Dushku and Summer Glau saying “hey, come check out Friday Nights” right in the middle of American Idol… maybe, like, during songs.

It lacks the fun, quirky dialog of Buffy, going more with the dark theme of Angel — but half of the fun of Whedon’s shows are the interactions between the strong characters. I’m mildly worried that by having characters with literally no personality will make the show suffer, but I’m willing to see where he goes with it.

The Verdict

I like it, but to be fair it would have to be abysmally bad for me to dislike it. I’m probably the only person on Earth whose DVR is over-packed on Friday Night television. Between Ghost Whisperer, Dollhouse, Terminator, and Smackdown!, my Saturday morning is packed full.