Overheard on TV: Fox’s Dollhouse Gives Knowing Wink With Inclusion of Beck Song

Scene from "Omega" episode of Dollhouse on Fox

Last Friday night’s (May 8th) episode of  Dollhouse titled “Omega” was the season finale for the show– and, of course with all things Fox and Sci-Fi and Whedon the show’s future is in doubt.

The episode does a fairly decent job of providing some plot resolution in the event of not renewing the series. It also opens some new plot possibilities in the event they do renew the series.

In the final scene of the episode the producers of the show use Beck’s version of the Korgis hit song “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime” from their 1980 album Dumb Waiters.

Beck’s version of “Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime”– a collaboration with Jon Brion– was recorded for Michael Gondry’s 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A connection, frankly, I had never made before!

The inclusion of this song has to be a knowing wink by the producers since “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” was also a story about mind erasure. Similarly, the characters in both stories are never truly “erased.”

The song’s melancholy tone and lyrics– although very few (it’s a verse and chorus repeated) fit the mood of the scene and the “change your heart, look around you” seems to fit what’s going on with the characters based on recent story developments. Of course, this is why the song fits in “Eternal Sunshine” as well.