Echo Alert [AAC]: Episode 32 - "The Hollow Men"

As the series winds down, the trio are finally together to discuss "The Hollow Men" and announce some exciting plans for the coming week. Remember! The series finale "Epitaph Two: Return" airs this Friday, January 29 at 8/7c. We'll begin a trivia game at 9 ET on our Twitter account (@echoalert), immediately followed by our LIVE finale party show at 10 ET over at live.echoalertcast.com! Join the fun! And email in your questions for our upcoming interview with Miracle Laurie!



[AAC]/[Length: 1:10:29]

Echo Alert [MP3]: Episode 32 - "The Hollow Men"

As the series winds down, the trio are finally together to discuss "The Hollow Men" and announce some exciting plans for the coming week. Remember! The series finale "Epitaph Two: Return" airs this Friday, January 29 at 8/7c. We'll begin a trivia game at 9 ET on our Twitter account (@echoalert), immediately followed by our LIVE finale party show at 10 ET over at live.echoalertcast.com! Join the fun! And email in your questions for our upcoming interview with Miracle Laurie!


[MP3]/[Length: 1:10:29]

Announcing the Echo Alert iPhone App!

How would you like to have Echo Alert available at your fingertips? Well starting today, the Echo Alert app is available in the iTunes App store! The app includes:

• the news feed from our site to keep you updated on new episodes & headlines
• the Echo Alert Twitter feed
• the ability to download any Echo Alert episode to your iPhone or iPod Touch directly from the app

You can get the app by clicking here or searching for Echo Alert in iTunes.

We have been looking forward to this for a long time now, and we really hope you enjoy it! We'd like to extend our thanks to Richard Jordan and his team at AppWhirl for developing the app for us.

EA Special Report: Cancellation

By now maybe you've heard, but Dollhouse is officially cancelled. We're here to give you the details, our reactions, and a look at the future of Dollhouse as well as Echo Alert.

[MP3]/[Length: 15:14]


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Season Premiere "Vows" Airs Tonight!

It's here! It's finally here! After months of waiting, season 2 is here! And after all, a new season deserve a new look for our site! We'd like to thank Dane Davenport (who you voted for in our Art Contest) for his lending his incredible artistic talents to revamping the site. We love what Dane has done and we hope you do too!

Episode 2.01 "Vows" airs tonight! Afterward, send us your comments via email , voicemail (206-202-0837), Twitter, and the forums. We'd love to hear what you liked about the episode, what you didn't like, and your speculation. And remember, if you can't watch the episode live tonight, be sure to record it or catch it on Hulu, FOX on Demand, Amazon, or iTunes. Click here to see the trailer!

Remember to watch our live show tonight at 12:00 Eastern Time! live.echoalertcast.com


Official FOX Episode Description:

ECHO WEDS A MYSTERIOUS STRANGER AND ADELLE MAKES A DEAL WITH AGENT BALLARD ON THE SEASON PREMIERE OF “DOLLHOUSE” FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, ON FOX

Episode Written and Directed by Series Creator Joss Whedon

Jamie Bamber (“Battlestar Galactica”) Guest-Stars

Picking up a few months after the first season finale, Echo, who now sporadically remembers past “imprints” due to Alpha’s machinations, weds a wealthy and charismatic British businessmen tied to one of Agent Ballard’s open FBI cases. Dr. Saunders struggles with being an Active and makes Topher the target of her aggression, and Boyd mixes business with pleasure in a risky venture. Meanwhile, Adelle makes Ballard an offer he can’t refuse in “Vows,” the season premiere episode of DOLLHOUSE airing Friday, Sept. 25 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (DOL-201) (TV-14 D, L, S, V)

And the winner is.....

The poll has ended, and after spending time looking over the results, we have decided that Dane, from the Between the Panels podcast, will take the position of staff artist! Congratulations!
Thank you all very much for participating, both by sending in submissions, and by voting in the polls. Dane will be adding his artistic touch to Echo Alert as the premiere of Season 2 quickly approaches. Keep an eye out for a fun new look!

Art Contest Phase 2: You Decide!

It's time to vote! Again! After an error on our part and some concerns about the fairness of the poll, we shut it down, but now we've brought it back in what will hopefully be a more reliable and fair fashion for all involved. So feel free to vote again! Click "Read More" to choose your favorite artist and vote for him or her as the official Echo Alert Staff Artist!


As with the original poll, we will choose the winner from among the top vote-getters (Yes, that's a word. We decided.) in one week's time. Vote away! You have until the end of Friday, August 14, 2009!

The finalists, in no particular order:
(Click to enlarge)

Finalist #1 - Allan             Finalist #2 - Allison
        

Finalist #3 - Alex            Finalist #4 - Ben
        

Finalist #5 - Dustin            Finalist #6 - Dane
        

Welcome, Michelle!

For some time now, we've thought it would be neat to have someone to write reviews of new Dollhouse episodes as they air, starting with Season 2. Well when our listener Michelle emailed us an essay she had written about Season 1, we knew we had found just the woman for the job. We're proud to welcome Michelle to the staff and we look forward to reading her Season 2 reviews come September! Once the new season begins, check back here for Michelle's new reviews every week. To read Michelle's Season 1 essay, click "Read More."


A House Divided: Loneliness In 'Dollhouse'
The Dollhouse fashions itself (in a large part, anyway) as the ultimate cure for the loneliness of its clients. An active serving in a romantic or companion-like role (probably a majority of their assignments) is created to fill exactly the needs of his or her client-- in other words, to completely and seamlessly fill the yawning loneliness in their lives. Of course, the Dollhouse does this by completely isolating the actives from any real human connection, including any link to their real selves; this places the actives in the ultimate state of loneliness. In addition, from what we have seen, I would guess that the Dollhouse uses loneliness itself to seduce or motivate someone into becoming an active. Mellie, for example, probably submitted herself to escape the terrible grief, one form of loneliness, of loosing her daughter. On the other hand, Echo and Sam (from "Echoes") appear vulnerable to the lure of Dollhouse contracts at least in part due to their lawbreaking, which has isolated them from others and therefore the aid and options offered by allies.

The physical structure of the Dollhouse also plays into the motif of isolation and loneliness. Even aside from the clear metaphor of the actives sealed into their coffin-like sleeping pods, Alpha brings up an important point in mentioning that the Dollhouse is almost completely self-contained and self-reliant; it is independent of the city structure and provides for its own needs. This independence is vital for the secrecy of the Dollhouse, of course, but it also serves the purpose of severely limiting the actions and thoughts of those inside. (Which makes an ironic contrast with the imprint chair, supposedly representing limitless possibilities.) The Dollhouse cuts off all who are inside it--actives, employees, FBI agents-- from the world outside. Even those who leave are bound by its secrecy (another strong isolating factor) and therefore more or less permanently tied to the source of their loneliness.

As such, the Dollhouse also seems to attract lonely employees, or perhaps the above-mentioned environment of the Dollhouse fosters loneliness in the people who work there. The primary examples of this would clearly be Adele and Topher. Both characters make their livelihood through exploiting lonely clients and the lonely-by-design actives, but they both in turn experience such an intense loneliness that they turn to actives for relief. And while it's possible (particularly in Topher's case) that they were both solitary people before their involvement, it would seem that both their roles in the exploitation of the lonely and the inherently isolationist nature of the Dollhouse has severely compounded the loneliness which they seem unable to combat in any meaningful way. Even Adele's revealed friendship with Margaret in "Haunted" is distorted and then snuffed out by the very technology that enabled Margaret to live again.

Moreover, even internal connections of cooperative or codependence are disapproved of or outright cut off. The bonds between a handler and his or her active, specifically, which would seem natural and even neccisary, are disallowed; handlers are directly instructed not even to view their charges as human, but instead as a pet. Aside from speaking volumes of the Dollhouse's view of its actives in their wiped state, this instruction serves, once again, to isolate any given handler from his or her active by severing the basic human connection between them. Echo's own handler Boyd seems unable to take this step, and is, tellingly, soon removed by circumstance from his position of Echo's guardian to become Head of Security-- an assignment superficially appearing connected to every individual in the Dollhouse, but which instead necessarily cuts off any meaningful association with anyone. (Interestingly, despite this, Boyd seems to be one of a very few who are able to largely avoid the loneliness which plagues everyone else; he is determined to value and maintain his connection and responsibility to Echo, regardless of consequence, and therefore does not fall as deeply as the rest into the black hole of the Dollhouse.)

Other employees fare less well. Claire/Whiskey seems to embody an interesting (and tragic) combination of the engineered loneliness of the actives and the situational loneliness of Dollhouse employees. Though she suffers as an active would if they were somehow self-aware (surrounded by people and yet unable to connect), she experiences her forced isolation similarly to the way Adele and Topher do; as if it is her own choice. Whereas Adele and Topher could in theory, if they were strong or determined enough, break the bonds of their loneliness, Dr. Saunders is by design incapable of this-- but she is made to live with the fantasy that she could, and perhaps should, escape the loneliness she experiences in the Dollhouse. (This duality plays out further in "Epitaph One", where the apparently wiped Whisky appears to have chosen the ultimate isolation of the abandoned Dollhouse in order to help others connect to the mythic-seeming "safe haven.")

Paul Ballard represents yet another facet of the loneliness that surrounds the Dollhouse and engulfs those who approach it. Throughout season one, he walks farther and farther down the road toward near-total isolation. Not only does he alienate those around him (his colleagues and Mellie) due to his obsession with the Dollhouse, but most of the time he is 'alone' in his mind with Caroline and what he believes to be her captors. Ironically, although Ballard does not seem to perceive himself as lonely, he isolates himself in pursuit of an essentially imaginary companionship with the ever-elusive Caroline. Even Ballard's only real attempt to break out of this path, his deepening relationship with Mellie, pushes him further toward isolation. Mellie's revelation as an active (and therefore one of the mechanically lonely) illustrates to Ballard just how isolated he in fact is; the only truly real person in his life is not real at all. But by this point, Ballard has progressed too far down the lonely road paved by the Dollhouse, and is forced by circumstance to continue his isolating investigation; even if he chose to, he could not break free without risking dire consequences.

It is also worth noting that the villain of season one, Alpha, appears ultimately to be driven in a large part by a lust or need for companionship with Echo. Although it's difficult to say whether Alpha's entire motivation is rooted in a true desire to escape loneliness through Echo, or if this was a shallower cover for his sadistic tendencies, Alpha both acts on and represents a clear rejection of loneliness and isolation. Not only do his plans focus on acquiring Echo as a companion but Alpha's "composite event" have also endowed him with a perverse immunity to solitude-- by combining 48 personalities within himself, he can never, in theory, be lonely and therefore tips to the opposite extreme than intended by the Dollhouse. This composite existence is in itself isolating though, and in Echo-as-Omega, Alpha intends to relieve his paradoxical isolation. As the heroine, Echo rejects the composite existence and returns to the middle-ground of a single occupant of a single mind-- though still retaining the ability to connect to others so snuffed out by the Dollhouse.

Ironically, in fact, the only ones in the Dollhouse who seem to have transcended the crippling loneliness experienced by most of its inhabitants are actives-- Echo, Sierra and Victor have created a bond between them that survives wipes and seems to reach the level of instinct. As such, their loneliest and most isolated moments could be seen as not the time they spend wiped, but rather the time they spend on assignments, their brains loaded with false connections to real or even imaginary individuals. The connection between Echo, Sierra and Victor prevents them from fully embodying the manufactured loneliness presumed as the norm for wiped actives. In a way, these three experience the only real connection presented on "Dollhouse"; the untainted, unprogrammed bond between them is the genuine article so yearned for by Adele, Topher, Ballard and even to some extent, Whisky, and it is all the more powerful as it is achieved by those who are intended to be incapable of it.

Finally, "Epitaph One" takes this motif of loneliness to a wide-scale extreme; the entire human race has been isolated from its very self. "Actuals" now a shrinking group cut off by violent circumstance from most meaningful connections other than survival. The fabled "Safe Haven" where no one can be wiped (aka, permanently cut off from one's self) represents not only physical safety, but a place where the loneliness of an "actual" existence in a world drowning in the isolating Dollhouse technology can be relieved by genuine human contact.

We've Been Dot Commed!

Well, it finally happened. We are now officially www.echoalertcast.com! We thought we'd wait for Dollhouse's renewal before going ahead with the idea. The echoalert.tk address will still function, but our primary address will be www.echoalertcast.com going forward.

This is just the first of a number of changes we have planned for the summer. Stay tuned. We have a feeling you're going to like what you see!

Echo Alert LIVE!

Join us after "Omega" airs on Friday night for a special live webcast! You'll be able to watch right here on the site, as well as echoalertlive.tk.

At 11pm Eastern (8pm Pacific) we'll do a brief wrap-up of the episode, giving our initial reactions. Then, at 1am Eastern (10pm Pacific), we'll be recording our full finale podcast episode live on the air! Please join us for both shows! There will be a chat room so we can interact with you, and we'll also be reading your tweets and emails!

Echo Alert Downloads

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Announcing the Echo Alert Forums

Where's the best place on the internet to discuss Dollhouse? Why, at the Echo Alert Forums, of course! The new Echo Alert Forums have opened! They are embedded in the Crossroads Podcast forums at www.crossroadsforums.tk. Look under "Friends of the Crossroads." Thanks to our friend Tim, the host of Crossroads, for making this all possible. Check out Tim at www.crossroadscast.tk

Echo Alert on JossPod.com!

We are proud to announce that as of this morning, Echo Alert is now listed on JossPod.com, the premier fan site for all things Whedon! Please check out JossPod if you haven't already. It's the perfect place to get all your Whedon news and other content, especially podcasts. We would like to extend our very sincere thanks to Tabz for making this possible!