Whedonism

It’s a whip-smart ensemble comedy. It’s an honest examination of the growing pains of adolescence. It’s a thankfully unpredictable discombobulation of gender roles and sexual identity. It’s an unblinking consideration of mortality. It revels in the relationships of one of television’s most compelling surrogate families.

Because then, there’s Topher, the programmer, who is responsible for constructing the artificial personalities and implanting them in the dolls, who is a dorky blonde guy just like Whedon and who speaks in distinctly Whedonian cadences and lines, and who we are encouraged to dislike more than almost anyone else in the series. What you hear, when you hear Topher speaking about how difficult it is to construct a believable personality, how all of his creations have to be full and nuanced and have reasons for how they behave, how achievement is fueled by lack and he gave her asthma because that made her a more complete person and blah blah blah, is noted feminist auteur Joss Whedon reflecting, very consciously and very obviously, on his life’s work - hiring gorgeous women and making them into who he wants them to be - and saying that sometimes, he feels kind of icky about it. It’s a beautiful thing: brave, and self-questioning, and radical…in a way I trust more than I’m used to trusting my entertainment, and in a way that I’ve come to expect from the show as a whole.