Can't Get Away From Bad Feelings Any Which Way

I thought it was interesting Green Arrow had a story about people trying to cope with the hard times so soon after Angel & Faith looked at the same topic. The take different approaches to it, though.

With Green Arrow, the people seem desperate to escape their lives entirely. It doesn't seem likely each person had all the skills Dr. Cognate was claiming before they reached him. So they've been programmed with the ability to play music flawlessly, or cook in a style you prefer. That's different from the people who came to Drusilla, at least in theory. Her followers seem like they came looking to rid themselves of a particular trauma they felt was keeping them from living their lives. The idea being once that pain wasn't holding them back, they could move forward. I don't think Faith intended to give up being a Slayer, she just wanted to stop being vulnerable to father figures.

Drusilla's method is to remove a particular painful moment, while Cognate's was to make them incapable of having what he deemed negative emotions. Which, if the process worked, would presumably be a long-term fix, whereas there was nothing to stop Dru's followers from walking right into another emotional disaster on down the line.

The trick is, neither of them seem to work entirely. Some of the people Drusilla helped lost control and began killing people. I'm not sure if the others did go back to their lives, or if they lived around Dru all the time. For all Cognate's claims he removed a lot of suffering from people's lives, they didn't seem terribly happy. Pauline was trying to kill herself, and most of the others in his workshop seem lost. Stumbling about, scratching at itches he says they shouldn't have, pulling their wires. It reminds me of the second Matrix film, the part about the first Matrix being a perfect world, and thus being roundly rejected. People recongize something's wrong if there's never any stress.

There is the complicating factor that some of Cognate's patients may not have been strictly organic to begin with, but it isn't clear how much of a difference that makes. They still seem to feel dissaffected by their lives, confused and listless. That could be because Cognate didn't realize they were mechanical, and so his treatment doesn't work, or if it's an unexpected side effect, that they're more human than was intended.

It is kind of interesting that both processes involved surrendering free will, whether that was the plan or not for Dru's folks, and yet neither one is really effective. The ineffectiveness seems to suggest running away from pain - or supressing it - isn't going to accomplish much. Which leaves facing it, accepting it, but somehow not letting it wreck their lives. How is the attempt to abandon free will connected? It could be that by surrendering all control of their lives, they leave themselves at the mercy of whoever they've relinquished control to. Meaning those people can destroy them, whether they mean to or not. Dru isn't likely to be the best choice for guiding other troubled people, and Cognate was clearly being worn down from the demands placed on him. He may have started out frustrated that he couldn't help people (while also wanting to make some cash), but he clearly hadn't considered how much responsibility that entailed. It shows in how he treats them, comparing them to toasters, calling them spoiled, needy children. He's stopped seeing them as people who deserve respect, and they've largely lost the will to do anything about it, because they gave up those decision-making powers to him when they signed up. They basically set themselves up for it.