I’m not just talking about the way they handle technology the “V-world” version of the internet, the house robots that are also home security systems or the way their society functions with no real issue as to whether a person is with a man, a woman, or in a group marriage all of that is just gravy.

My real fascination is the way they’re handling the concept of identity and what makes a person. One of the main characters “Zoe” is actually an avatar made purely of code based on digital imprints that Zoe Graystone left behind. She created the virtual Zoe as an experiment in extending her life and now that she is dead this Zoe continues on, reacting the way that she did, with her memories and her attitude.

It’s an interesting study in what makes a person real, what constitutes soul and living. I’m finding it very intriguing.

It makes me wonder if they could trace similar ways for me, would they get the distinct patterns of the different alters, would we be able to build our own individual avatars the way that we can build our own individual Sims and be separate; but then how would that work? By many psychiatric musings we are not people in our own right despite what we think, we’re viewed as cardboard cut-outs, constructs, stereotypes, less than a full person. We are purported to be merely functions designed to perform one or two specific tasks, and despite the fact that many of us have varied likes, dislikes, preferences and persuasions, we are not people by ourselves. We are merely fractions and fragments of a person. It’d be interesting to participate in something like that just to see.

I think I actually tweeted “that’s what all the fuss was about?” at one point while watching, because seriously?

This berating of the alters that everyone was talking about? Kate (the daughter) calls Alice a female dog. Wow. That’s it? I can understand though why she might have less than fond memories of the alter who washed her mouth out with soap in the first season, especially as this is a teenage girl who is very mouthy to say the least.

That was, however, the only insult. I’m not saying insults are permissible to anyone let alone insiders. I’m just…given the outcry I was expecting more. I was expecting the whole family jeering and chanting over the charity bin they were throwing the clothes in to with cat calls of “So LONG!” and “GOOD RIDDANCE!” instead the majority of the family, Tara included, looked a little lost and forlorn.

They also never mentioned the ‘i’ word that I can recall. They ask if they’re gone? and three months is mentioned. Pills are also mentioned but they never specifically say that the pills are the reason that the alters are gone. It’s mentioned at one point although Tara might have been winding up the bartender when she said it that she takes “anti-psychotics”.

However within five or ten minutes of that scene it’s clear that the alters are neither integrated nor gone given Buck is abroad and roaming around, and within the next episode it’s clear that Buck is extremely angry and displeased with Tara for a variety of reasons and that her happy little ideal of being “better” is crumbling around her.

I look forward to the next few episodes with the hope that they will build her back up again in the sense of learning to work with her alters rather than just trying to get them gone, to restore the idea that they can all work cooperatively and learn to accept each other “warts and all” as many of the rest of us DID ‘sufferers’ (and I will clarify I mean that very sarcastically) do.

I wish I still had the pin “I don’t suffer from insanity I enjoy every minute of it.” There are moments which aren’t entirely fun but overall we do try to roll with the punches and poke fun at ourselves wherever we can. Several of us often say that if we can’t joke about ourselves we’re in a bad way.

To understand Dollhouse I must first explain the way the dolls work. The idea behind the actives or dolls is that they are blank slates enable to be loaded up with different personalities to perform certain functions, granted most of those functions involve romantic engagements. Som one wants a goofy, perky, adventurous party girl to go out on the town with, there you go. Someone wants someone who acts like their late wife, there you go. A dominatrix to punish them, there you go; but there are different means also.

In the first episode we’re introduced to Echo, who has been implanted with a personality which will enable her to be a hostage negotiator so that she can help rescue a kidnapped girl. Other actives later in the show are imprinted with the knowledge to be SWAT team members so they can sweep in and rescue Echo and the girl. Initially when I saw the show it made me think of our past lives.

During the course of the first few episodes you see Echo the hostage negotiator, the adventurous hiking, archery capable survivalist, the blind girl infiltrating a cult, the romantic, the hedonist. All these things and the way they’re implanted and taken away and the sort of tabula rasa state that the dolls exist in when they’re not in service reminded me of reincarnation. The idea of the between life space as the calm, peaceful, cleansing, relaxing and purely joyful time where there are no demands on you and you just exist. Then when you’re ready or needed depending on the belief structure you are ‘downloaded’ into an existence once more, for many this means picking a template out and deciding which lessons to learn for others there might be a necessity to learn something or to be somewhere to do something specific, and thus we become “active” we are born and we grow and when everything is done we come back home to wait in calming peacefulness until we’re used again.

However as the series went on a different parallel became apparent because Echo was retaining memories and personas of her different active lifetimes in her mind even within the “doll state”. She could occasionally flash to different skills that she shouldn’t necessarily have, which would help her out and protect her. Later on you’re introduced to Alpha who escaped because he was retaining different memories from his various different life times and the belief is that it drove him mad. He became obsessed with Echo and wanted this same transcendence from her. As interaction with him progressed he reacted and acted very much like a multiple might, having internal and external conversations with himself, forcing switches where he could to be able to complete different tasks. His interference with Echo enabled her to more fully realize the different personalities, despite multiple attempts to “wipe” her, she was apparently still able to experience the different identities that the Dollhouse had given her over time and became able to switch to them at will, through practice and exercises.

I found more and more parallels between her and the way we are striving to be. We do not wish to integrate for many of us have been around so long and existed this way as long as we can remember that the idea of not being this way seems more detrimental than being so. Instead we seek co-consciousness, the ability to communicate between us and decide which of us is best at a particular task and therefore which of us should do it; the ability to share information back and forth so that there is no ‘down time’ and no ‘loss of data’ and thus Echo became an ideal for us just as she was in the television show.

In the show also there was a lot of talk of “Caroline” which was who Echo was before she became a doll, and the idea of restoring Caroline to Echo was a source of much debate, because Echo was developing as a person in her own right and many were afraid that the restoration of Caroline would prove a detriment or too much for her to handle, that Caroline might not wish to exist as part of the group and throw things into absolute chaos and un-make Echo’s whole existence. This echoes, ah, I crack us up, issues that many multiples feel when it comes to integration. Many see it as killing off the alters, and thus avoid it at all costs, for my part I see it as more of an evolution, you don’t have to lose anything when doing it but instead can gain a lot, that’s not to say it’s without issue, considering the problems I have had with coming to terms with my own existence. Still, it is not a choice that everyone wishes to engage in, and that I understand, especially as I believe we have done all the integrating that we’re going to.

As a side note we began calling ourselves the Echoes based on a poem that we wrote several years before the show came out. It was just further kismet that Echo was called Echo.

I maintain that the main reason Avatar is as good as it is because of the experience. You get completely drawn into the environment and wonder of Pandora the way that Jake in the story is because it becomes so real to you. I don’t think it would have nearly that emotional impact without. It reminded me of the fact my husband said there’s supposed to be a new TV coming out that will be able to do 3D properly in your own home. I’m figuring that he read is the world really ready to upgrade? and got all excited. He was talking about saving up for one; but really if we wind up being able to save nine grand then I want a working car, not a 3D television.

I can see elements of Johnny Quest, and the Fantastic Four; as well as almost every superhero show ever. It’s hilarious. I can’t believer some of the things they do in the show, the episode we just watched they crashlanded their superjet into a grave yard trying to get to a funeral on time, and the previous one they were doing a yard sale of all their weird inventions and things. There’s special kudos because their chief bodyguard is voiced by the man who played “The Tick: Live-Action Series”.

It’s doubly bizarre, like atro phex reviews in comparison to a regular show, but at the same time extremely addictive to watch. Especially when they do flashbacks.

Today my husband discovered the “Funimation” category of our “On Demand” and with it the anime “Baccano”, which is…just strange. I’m not sure if it’s because what is currently on “On Demand” starts mid-way into the first season so a good chunk of plot is missed starting at the sixth episode or if the anime is just that sort of “crack” from what I’ve gathered so far there are immortals running around in the early portion of the 20th century trying to suck each other into their hands to gain their information and there are some “master thieves” running around who seem to be akin to the “Three Stooges” (but there are only two of them) and used for comic relief, oh, and also there’s mafia.

We do still have a Netflix account for the time being so I’m going to see if we can’t track down the first portion of the series so that it might? make more sense. I admit despite the crack-ness of the show i does intrigue me.

Why not expand your line up with QUALITY programming instead of spending all this money to “re-brand”?

I really hope that someone comes up with a legitimate geeky channel to take their place and pushes them off the air. This is just ridiculous!

I’m trying to refresh myself on certain things which have come up, people I know I should know who they are and what they mean to things but it’s been so long that I don’t remember. I love the interconnectedness of everything, that’s always been one of my favorite aspects of the show. JJ Abrams has such an interesting way of writing things that I find it compelling and yet that also confuses me because I can’t get into “Fringe” in the same way.