Oh em gee. Dollhouse was amazing. I don't know what else to say. Just...wow. No other show delves so deep into philosophical questions about what it means to be a person. I'm still amazed we've got another season of something so unlike anything else that's ever been on. And the actors -- so good. Can't wait for more.

Damn. Mind blown.

So focused on outside world that I've been ignoring my self-imposed duties here. Will recap last two Dollhouse episodes soon, I hope. Last one was legen...dary!

Back to RW and work and selling my car and all that jazz.

I've got my recap for 10 mostly written, just not typed. Spring is kicking my ass this year and usually not able to focus on much until Thursday. Blech. Anyway, will type it up soon.

Have a dentist appointment today, then need to get ready to fly to my parents' place and claim their former car as my own. Then have to sell my car. I think I finally have everything organized to do that; just have to post on craigslist.

Hopefully writing all this down will help me keep it in what passes for my mind. This is your brain; this is your brain on histamine. Any ques -- what was I saying?

Dollhouse 1x09 A Spy in the House of Love

Written by Andrew Chambliss

Directed by David Solomon

"Sometimes it is about the pain."

We start out with something bad happening. People are carrying someone to the Frankenstein chair, jostling around. Blue light is flashing as Topher prepares to put someone in the chair. Echo and Sierra are walking down below and look up at the light. What's happening? Echo says, "She made a mistake; now she's sad." I first thought she said dead instead of sad and was trying to fit that in when we know how it ends. Sad works much better. Then blood splatters the glass wall of the room. Creepy.

We cut to 12 hours earlier. This episode is structured really interestingly, playing with chronology and with viewpoint. We're in a DH van with the only part of the episode Fox cares about, Echo as a dominatrix. She's talking to Boyd, and as always on this show, the dialogue is relevant to not only the whole Caroline in the Dollhouse sitch, but also the themes of the the episode as a whole, especially relating to Adele DeWitt.

"It's not about the pain; it's about trust. Handing yourself over fully and completely." Boyd's not so much into that idea. I really want his backstory. "In my experience, that kind of trust always leads to pain."

They pull into the garage and talk for a moment with Victor, who is in Roger (Moore) mode for Miss Lonelyhearts (Katherine), and his handler, Ramirez (Valerie Cruz!). They have a quick but fun little conversation about love and pirates, with Ramirez getting a touch of Echo's whip for dissing love, before heading into the DH. Echo: Sometimes it is about the pain. This episode is about the pain.

Echo wakes from the chair to the post-wipe protocol given by Ivy. Topher's busy trying to get his equipment back in order from last week when Echo shot it up, but not too busy to criticize Ivy's technique. This conversation of theirs is the first of many that Echo will spend the next bit of time watching and listening to, in a visual overture of the episode to come. It's very neat.

Mr.D comes in, harassing Topher about being behind schedule. He's stressing about things running smoothly, presumably because Adele's leaving him in charge for a couple of days. He hustles Echo out of the chair so the next Doll can come in, then meets up with Adele. They exposit about her being called in by Rossum to get yelled at. Echo is always in the background, hearing parts and watching others carefully.

Then Echo passes November, greeting her just before she's pulled to take her treatment.

Saunders gives Echo her post-engagement checkup. Boyd comes in to make sure it's all okay, not liking the roughness of the S&M scenario. They talk about dark sexual needs. "Having a desire you're afraid or ashamed of expressing can be terribly debilitating." There's still fallout here from Saunders' plan last week, both in the theme of their conversation and in Boyd's no longer trusting her intentions. Saunders says, "I believe the system is flawed, maybe irreparably, but maybe not for the same reasons you do." That particularly catches Echo's attention, but Saunders sends her off with Boyd.

As they walk out, Topher comes running down the stairs, giving Boyd his version of an oblique warning. He's found a bug in his chair that means someone could have been altering Active imprints without his knowledge, creating unknown parameters like we've seen before. Aww, he thought it was Boyd and gave him advance warning. They really are manfriends. With Echo watching them look over the bug, Boyd thanks Topher but denies being the Spy in the House.

Topher's all stressed out and paranoid, knowing Mr.D will give him hell over this, and he hilariously freaks out when Echo waves to November. "Now Echo's drawing attention to us!" Echo notices November doesn't wave back and wonders about it as November's handler comes to take her off on her next assignment. We hear in the background, "Where do I know her from?"

Boyd tells Echo to go do some art and Topher to go tell DeWitt. As Echo clips at a bonsai, she watches Topher hang up and get Mr.D's attention. They talk animatedly behind the ever-so-useful DH window walls. Then Mr.D calls his men, locks down the DH, and grabs Sierra for a treatment. Echo follows to see Sierra in the chair while Mr.D and Topher continue freaking out at each other about security and access, etc. Then Echo watches Mr.D and Sierra pass, with Sierra talking about how she'd "kill him," and Echo realizing it's not Sierra anymore. Thus endeth the overture.

Then Echo goes in to see Topher, who's so freaked by this point that he unloads his frustrations on her, even though he knows she doesn't understand him. So he thinks. Echo says she can help. Topher asks why she would want to, probably remembering her waving a gun in his face not long ago. Echo asks, "Why wouldn't I?" And Topher realizes he's not handling the situation well, since a Doll is making more sense than he is, and he visibly calms himself down. That doesn't last long because Echo drops a bombshell on him. "You make people different. You can make me help," she concludes, sitting in the chair and laying back. Topher and I, our minds are blown. Way to take over the play, Rosencrantz.

Credits. 

We come back on part one of the actual episode. I can't figure out the structure of this. It's not 4-act though, and thinking back I wonder if any of them have been. They're so densely packed it would take more work than I'm willing to do to try and plot out the rises and falls. But this almost acts like a five or six act piece in that we get some mini adventures with the Actives that are longish set pieces.

Here we're with November, as she's being imprinted right before Topher finds and pulls the bug out of his equipment. They're making her Mellie again to go back to Ballard. She wakes to Ivy and her handler, thinking she's just flown back into town from her mother's. As they check her imprint to make sure it took, Mellie wanders out onto the balcony. This is where she looks down and sees Echo, who waves at her, and asks where she knows her from. Uh, your putative boyfriend is obsessed with her maybe. Her handler takes her to the "airport shuttle."

The DH van drops her off at home and she heads to her apartment. A not very stable looking Ballard comes out of his place with a gun aimed at her. He pulls her into his apartment where it's safe(?). Ballard has his Fox-Mulder-at-his-low-point crazy on. He has four locks on his door, is carrying his gun with him in his own apartment, and has the serial killer wall of weird going on. He seems highly caffeinated and jittery. He spills his crazy thoughts all over Mellie, she being the only person he ever could talk to about all this. He finally calms and really notices and talks to her, warning her off, saying he can't sleep. No duh.

Mellie accepts it all calmly, having chilled out at mom's place and been reminded that there's worse living situations than being with Ballard. Or maybe November's closure is underpinning Mellie's new calm as well. She offers to keep him grounded with some earthy sex. Maybe he can give some control over to another person and relax. Poor Paul. It's about to get so much worse.

As they start to make out, Mellie suddenly pulls a US of Tara freeze. Paul asks her what's wrong. "Do I smell that bad?" HA! Then the inside man of the DH speaks to him, telling him her name is November, Mellie was created just to spy on him, she's a sleeper, and their inside man might be caught soon, which would mean no more communication via imprint tampering. 

It takes him a second to accept the truth of this, and you'd think he'd be happier at having his paranoia immediately confirmed, but surprisingly, he's not. November tells him he needs to investigate why the DH exists. "The Dollhouse deals in fantasy, but that is not their purpose." He can't tell Mellie any of this, but has to maintain the illusion and also stop telling her ever detail of his investigation please. Then Mellie's back and Paul has to pretend everything's okay. He must have had some undercover training because he manages to play it pretty well, poor guy.

We come next to Sierra's imprint, as she's being made into Sydney Bristow. Mr.D can't get a hold of Adele and is freaking out and having the argument with Topher that Echo watched before. Then he leaves with Sierra and shows her the bug, saying it's NSA tech and she needs to break in and find out who planted it. He gives her a code he says Topher got off the bug so she can access the right file. Then Sierra costumes up and, as electrcspacegrl tweeted, we go into a mini Alias episode.

Sierra and her zip up heels take a seat on a train next to another woman. Sierra is dressed just like her and wearing a wig to make her look like a very plausible stand-in. She knocks the woman out, steals her I.D. and takes a photo of her retina. She gets into the NSA building and walks into an elevator as something strange happens. One of the men getting out of the elevator is on the phone saying something's taken care of. He gives her a look that makes me wonder if he's realized she's a spy, but nothing ever comes of it. But on second viewing, you realize who he's talking to and why. Nice.

Sierra's shoes walk down a hall, and her retinal picture has turned into a contact lens that she uses to get into a secure area. Then she's in the file room, stealing a piece of acetate after peeling a tag off of it. But it turns out the NSA is more paranoid than the Mossad, and it's double tagged. No problem. She just takes out the file room guard and hastens her timetable.

Sierra accesses the file in her alias's office, seeing the name of the spy apparently, even though we don't see it clearly. Very cool tech with the acetate having a digital board on it that hooks to a computer and makes it legible. No idea if anything like that is possible, but it seems cool. Then she's rushed out because the NSA know of the breach and are having a security sweep. She runs for it, calling Dixon--I mean, her handler for an extraction, almost is caught, runs the other way into a locked door. We leave her there on the phone, saying she has the name but they better get her quickly.

Victor's story. We're back to the 12 hours ago beginning, as Victor is imprinted as Roger (Moore) for Miss Lonelyhearts. He has a slight British accent. Ivy is just coming in for the day, and Topher immediately starts in on her, asking if she's messing with the equipment. Roger tells him to chill out because Ivy likes him. Topher's all wha...? 

We get a short version of Roger and Ramirez crossing paths with Echo and Boyd, then we see Roger and a bouquet of roses get dropped off for the weekend. He goes up to the house, gives the older lady who answers the flowers and kisses her hands, walks through the house to the back, gets in a crazy looking Bond car (don't ask me; I don't know cars), and takes off without his handler noticing. Hmmm.

Roger enters another beautiful house near the ocean, going to the back deck and calling for his Katherine. And ADELE turns around as he comes up and they kiss!! So wrong but so hot. OMFG, this just got really surreal. This is the moment when Topher calls about the bug, having been delayed from doing so because of his warning to Boyd. Roger, with Adele's permission, drops her phone into the ocean. She's sure it's a bad idea, but can't seem to make herself care, and Roger knows her job must really be getting to her. Roger is her Mellie, the only person she can talk to about the Dollhouse.

They end up fencing, because why not? And it goes from English to rough and tumble pretty quickly, echoing back to the dominatrix scenario that got rough because that's the point. Of course, it leads to sex, because why not? So wrong.

Roger and Adele have an amazing conversation where Roger alludes to the DH, saying, "If I could make a woman, I'd make you." And Adele's mind gets a little blown when she tries to imagine Victor's Roger imprint being a client. "I think the universe might collapse under that one." HA! Roger says he wants the real Katherine. And Adele replies in kind, which is absolutely true, but very sad. She thinks it's ironic that he's the most real person she's ever met. And Roger lectures her, "That's not irony. No one gets that right." Superbad HA! That's possibly a shoutout. I am sure I've heard at least one TWoP recapper bitch tiredly about how much the word irony is misused on TV. I can't remember for sure where I read it though. I would argue that this can also be a meta commentary on this episode because it does get irony right many times over.

Anyway, as Roger and Adele talk on about relationships, about running away together, Adele starts to leave the fantasy behind in her sadness. He's not keeping away the loneliness this time. She almost tells Roger he's not real, but does say he exactly what she needs. Roger says, "I trust you completely." Which is what every Doll says to his/her handler, and is the key Hearn exploited to abuse Sierra. It's the scariest phrase in the DH handbook.

After time has passed, Adele puts her business clothes back on and then breaks down, crying in Roger's arms as she decides to never do this again.

Echo. We're back in the traditional timeline now. Topher does as she asks and makes her a spy hunter. She wakes and takes over. They walk into Adele's office to find Mr.D hanging up his phone. Oh. He's not happy about Echo's imprint since he's taking care of things with Sierra and his plan, but he goes with it when Echo stands by him and starts harassing Topher, which is his favorite thing to do. She's a crafty one.

We go through a series of interviews. Topher brags about his genius, but shows his insecurity in asking Echo if she really thinks he's incompetent. Ivy bitches about Topher bossing her around like a secretary, saying she knows enough about the equipment to totally rebuild it without Topher knowing. Oops. Boyd calls the DH people pimps and killers, "but in a philanthropic way." Did I mention I want to know his backstory? Echo's imprint, of course, trusts him. Saunders has rarely if ever left the DH since Alpha carved her up. She has no outside life. All of them but Topher seem credible suspects to be the spy.

Mr.D interrupts with the news that Sierra made it out and has the name. And soon after, he and Topher drag Ivy out of the elevator and into the office, protesting her innocence all the way. Mr.D gets in her face and threatens her with torture and the Attic. Topher says the Attic is "a mental suck. You know the feeling you get when a name is on the tip of your tongue, but you can't say it? It's like that, but with every thought you never had." Brr. Topher looks a little sick. Be interesting to see his relationship to Ivy after this is over.

Echo watches and finally interrupts, asking Mr.D how long he thinks he can keep this up. Dun! Damn! She calls him out on being the NSA spy and explains how she figured it out, how he planted the file, calling man from elevator at NSA to do it from the only phone in the DH still working. Ivy believes it right away, knowing she didn't do it. Topher is convinced too.  Mr.D goes ballistic, literally, pulling his gun and firing at Echo. They have a fight with shards of glass after she disarms him, while Topher and Ivy hide behind a couch. Mr.D has a kickass roundhouse kick (or whatever it's called). That had to be in realtime, it was so fast.

Think about what's happening here and getting irony right. This is the part of the story where the hero (Echo) finds the villain (Dominic) who has been infiltrating the good guys' organization (Dollhouse) and defeats him. But it's not. The Dollhouse is the evil organization that the heroes (Caroline once, Ballard, Dominic and the NSA) are trying to infiltrate for various reasons, some of them being to rescue the victims (Echo, Sierra and the other Dolls) who are helping the other side in various guises without knowing it. We still don't know what Alpha's game is, the NSA seems to be not so good guys in this, and Dominic has been bad guy even within the DH before turning to possible good guy infiltrating the DH but for bad reasons...so confusing and awesome and oy, with the irony some more.

As they fight, Echo glitches on Mr.D trying to kill her in the temple and calls him on it. Remember him apologizing for that under the influence of drugs? "Who does that?" "It's so heavy." He tells her she's a Doll, which she seems to accept. But she won't accept she's a broken doll. She wins.

We end the main story at Adele's house. Some of the locations this week have been apparently chosen just because they're cool, not because they make a lot of sense, but I don't care much about that. She confronts Mr.D. He says he wasn't sent to bring the DH down, but to keep her from letting it go down. His story is the NSA is concerned about the DH finally being exposed and the ramifications of their tech being more in the public eye. She's calling him out on wanting an unsupervised institution in charge of it instead, sounding like Caroline. But again, what government oversight does DH have now? She's not making a lot of sense, but she's having a crappy month. 

Mr.D says he never lied to her about his methods or priorities. "You lied to me about your intentions." This echoes November telling Paul about the differences in the DH's actions and purpose, I think. The NSA and the DH are at odds over how best to control the DH, which touches on that theme from our S&M Barbie. Adele falls apart a bit, then pulls herself together, and for a second I thought she might Laertes his ass instead of sending him to the Attic. But she takes back her control and takes away from him the gift of her caring what happens to him. He worked for her for 3 years.

In the van on the way back, Mr.D tells Echo that she's going to Alpha all over them and the thought makes him happy. "Sooner or later, everybody gets theirs."

Now we're back at the start, with the scary Frankenstein scene. Mr.D fights as hard as he can to stay out of the chair. Topher and Ivy prep, security straps him in, and Adele watches with Boyd. Mr.D gets a gun and tries to kill himself, but his arm is knocked away and he shoots Adele instead. Her blood is on the window. A flesh wound. She pushes Boyd away and continues to oversee this. Sometimes it is about the pain. She's sad about her mistake.

Adele walks out and talks with Topher about filing Mr.D away. He tells her that Echo was the one who chose to do the deed, and she immediately thinks that Echo knew it was Mr.D from the start, knew he was a threat to her, and did all this to take him out and protect herself. True? We don't really know yet but (shivers). Topher agrees that she hasn't got her closure from Saunders' experiment like they thought. She's still evolving. Adele tells Topher not to wipe Echo, just watch her. She saved the DH and might be of some use to them they can't predict. Oh, also, shelve the Roger imprint. Miss Lonelyhearts realized that the indiscretion was unwise. Dark needs will go unmet now, I guess.

Adele goes to Saunders to get stitched up, not taking pain medication so she remembers this and stays strong and focused. She tells the doctor she hasn't lost anything valuable.

Boyd meets with her, saying he's finished the security sweeps and background checks and it looks like Mr.D was the only spy. I disagree personally. And I don't just mean Alpha. I still think Boyd and Saunders and Caroline have suspect intentions too. And I'm not convinced that Mr.D is the only one playing the game with Ballard, but it remains to be seen.

Adele promotes Boyd to head of security. He wants to stay with Echo and protect her, but Adele doesn't think she needs it. We end with Echo getting a new handler, Travis, and doing the trust protocol. Her eyes stray to Boyd as she finishes, "with my life." The end.

This episode is such a mental mindfuck when you really look at who is doing what and why. Caroline as the victim of the Dollhouse, but Echo as its savior? Mr.D as good guy or another bad guy? Brutus is on whose side anyway? And there's another essay in the themes and how they interconnect that I'm not going to be able to write. It's all beautiful and brilliant. I love this show.

RIP Laurence, until they need to pull you out of your box. You were awesome.

Dollhouse 1x08 Needs

Written by Tracy Bellomo

Directed by Felix Enriquez Alcala

"Freedom has to be earned."

Another episode that reads one way the first time through but looks a little different the second time. 

We start with Ballard opening his door to Echo, with another message from inside the DH. Apparently the inside man thinks Ballard needs something from him, that something being Echo's bod. Men. Yeah, in your dreams, which it is. "Save me Paul." As he and Echo start making out, Mellie appears. Ballard is all, "I know this is confusing for all of us," which cracks me up. "I'm sorry; I have a thing she needs." That what he said. Mellie says Caroline isn't real and is dead. Ballard looks down to see he's macking on a corpse, albeit a pretty one. Then Mellie's head starts to bleed and she says, "How did they know what we shared?" Ballard wakes with that thought echoing (see what I did there?) in his head.

At the DH, sleeping pods open to reveal Echo, Victor, Sierra, November and a new guy, Mike. They arise as Adele looks down on them. Then we VO transition into a DH staff meeting about the problems they've been having with Actives lately. She mentions Echo going off-mission, Victor's man reaction, all the glitches that happened because of the drug last episode. The house is out of balance.

So they're upgrading electrical and security feeds, which is causing periodic interruptions of service, as the utilities would say, and they're requiring all employees to turn in reports at the ends of all shifts that list anything unusual they notice about the Dolls and Actives. Mr.D says to not get too attached and to think of them as pets instead of children. Doc Saunders is not feeling that. But Mr.D is kind of awesome here. "If your child starts talking for the first time, you feel proud. If your dog does, you freak the hell out." He's worried about having another Alpha. Boyd's concerned about the actual Alpha, which Adele says is off-topic, but knowing Boyd, I wouldn't be surprised if he started his own investigation eventually.

Topher wants to refine his scrubbing process in some way nobody else understands but Adele approves. He also wants to mess with their sleep meds, but Doc disagrees about whether that's safe. Boyd isn't happy about turning all Hitler youth and informing on his Active so she's sent to the Attic. But Adele says they need to stick together for the safety of the house.  "A tide is rising. Until we learn how to turn it back, we pile up the sand bags together. Unless anyone here thinks they have a better idea." Then we cut out.

Echo is brushing her hair and remembering Ballard's words to her in Man on the Street. They're on each other's minds. Sierra is still freaking a bit whenever she passes the place that Hearn raped her, having flashbacks to it. Victor watches her to see she makes it to bed. After the pods close, Echo is dreaming of supposedly wiped imprints and a snowy, barren mountain. A voice says, "Caroline, wake up." She wakes and freaks out that's she's in a test tube.

Credits.

I like that we're given just enough information to make (wrong) guesses about what's happening, but as soon as it gets implausible, we're given more information to make it make sense again, until we get to the end and it's just a little different than we thought. Topher did talk about messing with their meds while sleeping, and Doc Saunders argued about whether that was safe. Now we see them waking up different. Obviously, something went wrong.

Echo cuts herself getting out of the coffin. Victor is next out, then Mike. They help Sierra and November. Mike thinks they've been abducted by aliens. Victor thinks they're prisoners. Echo thinks they're lab rats. Sierra offers up that they're being held by a deranged millionaire serial killer. November's trying not to hyperventilate but wondering if they're supposed to be here. None of them remember who they are or how they got here. Victor instinctively stands up for Sierra and thinks he knows her. Echo thinks she's supposed to go to the mountains where it's safe. November has lost something. Mike is worried about sex with the aliens.

Then they see Dolls walking past the glass walls and freak out. The lights flicker on and the door opens. Sierra is out of there, Victor close behind. Mike wants to see the aliens. November is scared but Echo won't leave the room without her.

They mingle with the Dolls and try to act Doll-like. An attendant greets them all by name and Victor recognizes the military code. We also see a blonde girl who is Tango. They come out into the DH main floor and look around uneasily. Topher is up top, looking down through his window at them. Does he notice that they're not acting normal? November again offers the idea that "Maybe something bad happened to us, and they're helping us heal." Victor's okay with that idea until Tango walks by saying how much she likes banana pancakes. "We're all going to die," he says. Heh.

Quick snippet of Ballard tearing his place to pieces to find the DH bug.

Then we're at breakfast and Tango is still on about the banana pancakes. Mike is not blending in well and Echo tries to help. Then an attendant sees the bandage on Echo's hand and takes her to see Doc Saunders. Echo OMGs at Doc's scars. Doc warns her that there's cameras everywhere and says she's not Echo's friend in here. It looks to us like she doesn't want to inform on Echo acting weird and get her sent to the Attic. Or maybe she's the inside man and that's why she's not raising an alarm. Then Mike gets taken away screaming to Topher's lab for a treatment as the others watch.

The dream team heads to the showers. November has no problem with coed nudity, but Victor is running down the play list for the Mets while trying not to steal glances at Sierra. They see Mike go into the sauna and follow. He's a pod person again, even saying, "I like sleeping in the pods." This freaks them out enough to want out now.

And it's at this point, where it's more and more unbelievable that someone hasn't noticed something odd going on, that we find out that Adele knows exactly what's happening. Mr.D tells her four Actives are preparing to escape, and she says they're right on schedule.  Mr.D wants to give their people more warning since they're expecting an exercise to happen later on, but Adele says they should always be prepared and that the Actives need real obstacles. "Freedom has to be earned." The second time through I could see that Doc's behavior of acting like a prisoner and warning Echo and Mike's unsubtle abduction and removal to the chair were all part of the plan to give the Actives those real obstacles and reasons to run. Now at this point it all looks like an exercise for DH security.

Victor lures a handler/security type into the sauna and suffocates him into unconsciousness with a towel, stealing his pass card, telling a couple of Dolls that the man is just really tired. Victor is awesome in pretty much any persona. He and Sierra use the card to get out, leaving it behind for Echo and November to follow. They head into the backstage area of the DH, and it's much less zen and more ugly industrial.

Echo is watching Tango's handler ask her if she wants a treatment when November tells her it's time. They head out to meet up with Sierra and Victor. Victor's trying to make small talk, sounding slightly New Yorker to my untrained ears. He says he remembers Sierra, and he thinks something bad happened to her. Echo and November show up and they move out.

They pass by a room where the handler's store their weapons. Boyd is talking to Sophie as they lock up their guns. Sophie warns Boyd about getting too attached to Echo. "Even a good dog needs to be put down sometimes." Yuck. As they pass by, Sierra gets a look at an armed man and remembers that men with guns came to take her away. She remembers the man who put her here. 

Echo figures out they must be underground because they have yet to find a window. Then they have to duck into another room filled with racks of clothing with their names on them. Be funny if this was the real costumer's room for the show. They start suiting up. Victor finds some crazy looking gigolo pants (for Miss Lonelyhearts maybe?). Ha, but also ew. He's ready to go now. November finds a baby carriage and remembers she has a daughter named Katie she needs to find. Then Tango's handler comes in and they hide. Victor and Sierra have sparkage.

They run to the elevator wearing street clothes now, and they make it to the car garage. Sierra is thinking they need to call the police or FBI. November says maybe this is the FBI. Bitter much, Mellie? Victor doesn't want to trust anybody until they know what's happening. Echo's just worried about all the people they left behind.

They hide as an Active dressed as an army guy and his female handler return to the DH. "You wear the uniform, you gotta push it all down, bury it. Never happened right? The good guys lost one today. I had to watch a man die. And I'm just supposed to make it disappear?" Which is apt for Caroline, kind of sad and metaphorically relevant, but also kind of ridiculous and funny because we know it's not real and his handler is just along for the work day, hardly paying him any attention as he babbles on according to his imprint. Very Catch-22-ish, maybe because of the absurdity of that little slice of drama.

Victor runs out to look for keys. Echo is a problem solver. She helps Sierra to remember that the man who put her here is named Nolan and tells November that she'll remember her daughter's location. Echo remembers a mountain house where it's safe. Hope it's not the midwife thing; that would be random. Victor finds the keys and they grab a car, then duck as Tango and her handler come out of the elevator. She's dressed like a Moulin Rouge hooker and speaking French, which her handler doesn't understand.

Mr.D and Adele have been watching the dream team and call security about their impending escape. Adele turns away from the monitor just as Echo changes her mind and gets out of the car. She's going back in to help the others. Says she needs to "try and make a difference," which is what Caroline told Adele in the first episode.

The others leave and Echo tries to bust into the arms locker. Sophie interrupts her and they fight. The fight's cool; not sure if I like the way it's shot or not, but the ending is effective. Echo trips Sophie up with a fire extinguisher and bitch goes down hard. Echo first tries to wipe up the blood from her face, then remembers her mission and goes for the weapons, scoring herself a pistol.

Ballard finds a fishy electronics expert who looks at the futuristic DH bug and tells him he's basically screwed.

Victor is driving around while Sierra tries to remember where the guy is who put her in the DH. November suddenly says she remembers where her daughter is, remembers her whole life even. She leaves them.

Adele finally notices Echo's back in the building; she's been riffling through papers in Doc Saunders' office. Adele says she should have known. This is Caroline without the memories and this is what Caroline would do. She's willing to let her go about it until Echo knocks out the power and D&D spook. Adele checks in with Topher for his bird's eye view of things. He's not liking the darkness, but has a cool flourescent green tube to light his way. He's about to have more to be scared of than the dark though, because Echo is out for his blood.

Echo holds the gun on Topher and questions him about what he does. He's very afraid but seems to answer her honestly, telling her he programs people by hacking into the brain. He won't tell her how long she's been there. She wants to see the chair.

Now we see where Sierra's deranged millionaire idea came from. Sierra and Victor call on Nolan, who calls her Priya. That's probably her real name. His fantasy seems to be to have her even though she wouldn't do him, so I think he'd probably hire her under her real name. Anyway, he's an asshole who pulled a lot of strings and spent a lot of money to get her into the DH after she refused his advances. Now he hires her out whenever he wants to feel like he can own anything he wants. He tells Priya that she doesn't even exist anymore. Victor knocks him around a bit, and Sierra spits at him that she'll be back before they run away from his security. Jerkoff thinks this will make having her all the sweeter. Should have killed him, Vic. 

We briefly see November walking past a church with a bunch of Catholic school kids playing in front of it. Then we're back with Echo and Topher and the chair. "We're good people, nice people. We help people become better people by giving them what they need." And I think he believes it. I mean, I don't think he concerns himself with the morals of his job overly much, but I do think he believes this. And he tells her that she volunteered, which she would know if she had her memories, but she doesn't. He says she'll get them back when she leaves, along with a bunch of money. 

And we get the penultimate piece of the episode puzzle here too, when Topher tells Echo they're running a test on her. Not on DH security or anything like that, but on the four Actives themselves. (Mike was totally a plant to up the stakes.) He says the mountain she's seeing isn't from him, but it's what she needs.

Sierra and Victor are still running from (I assume) Nolan's security since they actually shoot at them. I don't think DH guys would do that even if they were trying to miss.

Echo puts Topher in the chair, and it's not unpoetic. He says you can't imprint a fully functioning brain; that's why the Dolls are Dolls. He almost gets wiped, but Adele shows up to save the day. Echo does shoot the chair though, which doesn't please Topher. Adele tells Echo that she wanted to forget. "I eased your suffering." Echo doesn't believe it. "Taking away basic human rights, free will? My right to feel, choose, remember?" "You couldn't live with the consequences of your own actions, and you no longer have to." The Dollhouse is totally the French Foreign Legion. People go there to forget. Fascinating. I might have turned evil now because that makes sense to me. I think this episode is making me change sides. But Echo just shoots up another computer.

Victor and Sierra are in hiding. Victor describes being a Doll like someone in Supernatural described being possessed. You see it happening but can't do anything. Victor saw what was happening to Sierra with Hearn, but he couldn't stop it. Sierra remembers Hearn and asks why she trusted him. Then she remembers Victor waiting to make sure she got to her pod all right. As they hear pursuit closing in, she wonders whether it's worse to be shot or taken back to the DH. "Feels like dying either way." It's no French Foreign Legion for Priya. Okay, I haven't completely changed sides. 

Victor and Sierra kiss. November cries at the grave of her daughter. And Lonely Ghosts by O+S starts up as Echo forces Adele to free the captives. "The devil that you know is better than the one you don't." Dolls walk out into the light, Echo still holding Adele at gunpoint. Doc Saunders leads the way. "We stay because we don't know where else to go." As soon as Echo sees the sky, she collapses. Victor and Sierra fall asleep together; November sleeps with her daughter. Security comes to pick them all up and bring them home. "We can never move on."

And we come back to the staff meeting, right where we left it, for the last piece to fall into place. "A tide is rising, and until we learn how to turn it back, we pile up the sand bags together. Unless anyone here has a better idea." Doc says, "We give them what they need. Closure." She thinks the affected Actives have open loops that they need to close to get a sense of resolve. "Let the tide come in." So that was the plan from the start, to let these four go on a self-guided journey. Return them to who they were, but without the memories, and let them work through whatever issues they had. Fill their needs so they can return to being blissfully ignorant Dolls.

Boyd asks Doc if the tide has turned. They were programmed to fall asleep if they felt closure, so they should be fixed. November had to mourn her daughter. We don't know yet how that relates to her comments last week about him running out of options and dumping stock. Sierra had to face up to Nolan since Hearn wasn't available to confront. Victor is in love with Sierra and just needed to express that, to get the girl. And Echo needed to free those in cages. But we still don't know what the mountain house is about, so while she got that closure for Caroline, I think there are more things she needs to do. I'm not too worried about her being all Barbie again.

Boyd would have been proud to see her lead them out, even if it was all a game. He basically accuses Doc of playing God with the Dolls, just as Echo accused Topher. She tells him she didn't enjoy it, but she needs to protect all of them from the Attic and the "world of terror and chaos that would have destroyed them." The world that Echo was leading them to. This is Jasmine versus free will in Angel.

The dream team go to bed again, angst-free for now as the pod lids close and the songs fades out.

Then a quick coda of Ballard getting a new message on his machine from Echo! She found his file while she was searching the Dollhouse and called him for help. This echoes (sorry) his dream where Caroline asks him to save her. She tells him the DH is somewhere underground. Please find us. Dun dun dah!

Wow. Better and better and better.

Dollhouse 1x07 Echoes

Written by Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain

Directed by James Contner

"We make choices. I'm well aware that there are forces beyond our control, but even in the face of those forces, we make choices. And then we live with them. And then we die with them."

We open on the flashback from the pilot with DeWitt and Caroline. "I'm going to make you an offer." Caroline wants to be left alone. "My offer is this: your life for your life. I get five years; you get the rest. You'll be free." Caroline mentions the Rossum Corporation, asks why they picked her. DeWitt says Caroline picked them, and we'll see the start of that play out in the episode. DeWitt makes mention of the fact that she's been "dancing" with Caroline for almost two years! Cool. Lots of story stuff can fit into that beyond what we learn here. DeWitt pours her some tea? or sake, it looks really clear. Num, sake...  And repeats her line: Nothing is what it appears to be.

Now we're entering a university laboratory with a tall, black dude named Sam and an unnamed, preppy, white girl and their coffee. They come upon Owen, pasty white boy with only boxers on. He's talking to jars of flies like he's Alice in Chains (whoa, like, later Echo is Alice and she's in chains too; righteous, man). Anyway, he's high as a kite and freeing the flies from their captivity. "Fly, be free.""Fly, fly." Funny.

The girl grad student(?) touches him to try and get his attention. He freaks and runs to the window and starts banging his head on it. Sam tries to stop him. The girl starts laughing, and soon Sam smiles and joins in. Freaking stoners. Owen bangs his forehead against the window until both break, and the camera pulls back to show the window is in the Rossum Building, overlooking the campus of what turns out to be Freemont College.

Cut to a vial of vile yellow liquid. Held up for DeWitt's perusal by Clive Ambrose, co-chairman (and later we learn) the face of Rossum Corp. He's telling DeWitt about the problem at Freemont as Topher comes in. Apparently the yellow stuff is an experimental memory drug, and a vial is missing. They think it's being distributed on campus, resulting in the high students and the suicide in the lab. 

There's exposition about how the drug breaks down inhibitions in the hypocampus in order to break through to repressed memories. Topher geeks out about drugs and their varying effects on individual body chemistries, then stops himself finally. We find out there's no antidote yet and they don't know how it's spreading around the campus. Ambrose wants an army of Actives to secure the campus and Topher to find an antidote. Apparently the Dolls are immune to the drug because their memories are wiped instead of repressed or something. I don't get it, but it's a different process at work according to Topher.

Ambrose seems to be able to call the shots on this, and DeWitt quickly acquiesces to him. Echo is out on assignment, and she tells Topher to keep her out of this one.

Cut to Echo as Alice, repeating the first engagement we saw in the pilot with Matt. We only saw the end of their time before; now we see towards the beginning, when Matt is teaching her some new things to do today, including riding a red motorcycle. Dude, really? You don't want any variation?

Meanwhile, Ballard is cooking breakfast for him and Mellie. She enters the kitchen and they talkcute a bit, before she tells him not to go all clingy because it's his fault she was attacked. Then they talk about Hearn, the Russian thug, and it becomes clear that Ballard is still very much on the case and suspicious of who Hearn really is. Mellie gets scared/mad about it, and says that far from trying to protect her, he's endangering her again because of his obsession -- though not in so many words. I wonder where her imprint came from because she's just perfect for the job. I guess that's the point, but still. Mellie walks out.

Black vans come to Freemont campus and black suited Actives pour out of them to start searching the grid. Victor is sexy, in-charge guy. His name is Tom. Mr.D brings up Sierra, who is Dr. Gawa from the CDC. It turns out that Topher made Victor an NSA agent (I wonder if he knows Casey) who outranks Mr.D in his role as Rossum Security, which pisses Mr.D off. Good.

Alice is tying up Matt and getting ready to video their tryst when she sees the news report of a death at Freemont. When she sees the Rossum Building, she flashes back to something from Caroline's past. She leaves Matt tied to the bed and takes off. I bet he gets a discount.

Credits.

We come back to a Caroline flashback. She's in bed with her boyfriend, Leo, talking about going to an antiwar protest.

Then we're at the DH with Topher. He's got November (Mellie) in the chair, preparing to inject her with the drug and see what happens in her brain. She's immune, so he should be able to see what the drug tries to do without harming her in the process, I guess. DeWitt is with him and bitching about Ambrose. She's not as happy to follow his directions as she seemed, but she says, "Rossum Corporation is why we exist, and I believe in the work we're funding." So Rossum does R&D for DH, and DeWitt and Ambrose are probably peers. She says Ambrose only has his job because he can't do hers. Topher thinks she's oversharing. I like these two together.

Alice drives her red bike up to Freemont and wanders around the Rossum building looking spacy. Tom finds her and thinks shes infected. He sends her off to containment. Boyd is on campus, not knowing if Echo is off-task or if this is a new part of the client's fantasy. He calls DeWitt and she freaks a bit about Echo being there, tells him to pull her out now. Boyd is approached by an infected student acting all acid-trippy. He comes in contact with her hand. It's about to get awesome.

Alice meets Dr. Gawa, who wants to give her a sedative shot. She flashes back on Leo with a video camera saying, "What do they need babies for?" She refuses the shot and Dr. G goes to get something less needly, thinking that's her problem. Alice is trying to figure out why the hell she had to come here and what Rossum means to her. Sam is in containment, just coming down off the drug, and they talk. He says it's probably Rossum who infected people, using them as guinea pigs. She needs to get in to Rossum. "I have to save him," thinking of Leo. Sam wants evidence to use against Rossum (he says). They bail to go break in. 

Sam is Caroline's mirror this episode. Without knowing it, just in trying to finish what he started, he says all the right things to keep Alice on track of her memories. She wasn't infected when she came to the college, so she's remembering on her own.

As Sam and Alice are trying to get away, Boyd comes up to Echo and asks if she wants her treatment. Alice thinks a moment and then says no. They leave. Boyd gets hilarious. "Hey. Wow. Didn't maintain control of that situation." And starts laughing as she leaves.

I love this episode. I don't care that the drug is just like the drug in Star Trek TNG, which was a reprise of Star Trek TOS, which is remniscent of the magic drug Ethan uses in Buffy's Band Candy. I just care what they do with that plot point. And every time, it's beautifully funny. I wouldn't care if every TV show on the planet used that drug to be funny and show different sides to their characters, as long as they did it well. And Dollhouse did it excellently.

We come back on an insert of a magazine ad. The Rossum Corporation. "Because minds matter." With Clive and a bunch of smiling children. Caroline is talking to Leo and two other friends about the evil that Rossum does. She's into animal rights and knows they're experimenting on animals on campus. This seems to be after she graduated because she says she spent four years in the shadow of that building. Now she's an activist who wants to break into the lab and get footage of the lab monkeys to put online to shame the company.

Tom enters the lab where his team are taking prints and photos, doing the CSI thing. Now Mr.D gets funny, sitting there playing with his gun. "Now you're experts. Four hours ago you were discussing your love for apple sauce." Tom is talking about how the situation seems contained -- jinx -- when he notices Mr.D being all funny and paranoid and then pulling his gun on Tom. Then he's all, "Oh, man, this is so heavy." Tom gets the gun from him without a fight and calls DeWitt.

She realizes that the drug hasn't been sold around campus, but it's spreading. Topher agrees, "There's no way Dom would consciously try and have fun." They figure out it must be spreading through touch (and Topher touches DeWitt as he says that). But they also realize that Echo's deal is different and going to be a whole nother problem. They both start to more noticably succomb to the pretty colors until they get the munchies. It's damn funny.

Sam and Alice get back to his crappy room and try to figure out how to get to the lab. Alice is still having the worst case of deja vu ever.

Topher is talking about his "phalanx of machines that go ping." Ha! And he's telling Tom he needs to send the Rossum security people home. "You Dolls -- by which, of course, I mean NSA/CDC folks -- are safe as houses. Because of the government. They do things." It's not that funny on paper, but watching Topher try to hold it together while Adele is jumping up and down on a trampoline saying, "Say hi from me" is all kinds of awesome. He says anybody else is susceptible and yes, "I'm fairly sure," as we pull back and see he's taken his pants off.

His call with lofty Secret Agent Victor is interrupted by Boyd, who's worked it all out. He demonstrates his new knowledge by playing Chopin on the piano for Adele and Topher from his location in the containment area. They listen euphorically. (And it's called Fantaisie-Impromptu, which just seems perfect.)

Alice and Sam look for the way into Rossum that Alice is remembering. They pass an infected prof, Professor Janack, who recognizes Caroline, but I doubt she'll remember her in the morning.

Topher and Adele are eating his inappropriate starches and getting philosophical. "We make choices. I'm well aware that there are forces beyond our control, but even in the face of those forces, we make choices. And then we live with them. And then we die with them." Adele is convinced Echo went to Freemont to let Caroline punish her. November sways in the doorway, upset that yet more people are all about Echo. Actually, she's having a flashback/delirium where she's talking to Paul, asking if he's thinking of Caroline while he's on her. Topher and Adele are like, whoa. Isn't she immune? Topher says she's not tripping; she's glitching, remembering. So I maintain, not immune. Then November flashes back to Hearn attacking her and the 3 flowers. She starts saying the trigger words to turn herself into Ninja Mellie.

Another bit of the Caroline story. She's found a way into the lab with building blueprints. Leo starts to spook a bit, realizing that this is really going to happen. But he's with her.

Alice and Sam retrace Caroline and Leo's steps. They make it into the building and separate as they're trying to sneak past a guard. Mr.D lurches up out of nowhere to confront Echo. He very cutely apologizes for trying to burn her to death. "Who does that?" Alice is confused and doesn't know what he's talking about, but as Sam comes back for her, she tells Mr.D she forgives him. "You don't mean it. You still hate me. I can see it in your eyes, right? You just keep looking at me with them." And he goes on to say how there's more to him than the guns and orders and all that, that's just the job, before beginning to wax rhapsodic about his suit. Gorram it, now I kind of love Mr.D. Do I have any characters left to love to hate? Great scene all around.

Sam and Alice make it through the security. Meanwhile another security guy is freaking out and waving his gun around. As Dr. G finds Mr.D, Tom disarms the other one, then calls for everyone to turn in their guns. Sierra starts to glitch, remembering Hearn's abuse. Tom comes towards her, she freaks and grabs the guard's gun, telling him to stay away. Then Victor starts to glitch. Ooh, backstory. He flashes back on himself in an army(?) uniform in some house, trying to comfort a screaming woman. As Tom is trying to disarm Dr. G, Victor tells the woman they have to get out of there. She runs right into an explosion that kills her. In the real world, Mr.D is still loving his suit.

Adele and Topher are hiding from November who didn't finish her trigger. They check on her. She's lying on the floor saying, "He dumped the stock. He ran out of options." Hmmm. They get her into the chair while Topher figures that the only way the drug could affect her is if it broke down blah blah protease blah. Anyway, upshot is it won't last long. From that, they figure that the guy who killed himself must have had an extreme dose for that type of reaction, more than he would have taken on his own. Murder.

Well, I wonder who did it. Sam and Alice enter the lab. Sam goes straight for the fridge to find the missing vial of drug hidden in a blood sample or something. Alice is still trying to figure out why she's there, and Sam doctors up a handkerchief chloroform-style to take her out, saying he's really sorry.

Caroline and Leo sneak into the lab and start videoing. Leo sees stuff on the computer about human experiments. I'm guessing they see Dollhouse related research. Then a guard finds them and they run.

Alice and Sam talk a bit. She figures how he killed Owen; he says he just needed him out of the way and didn't mean for him to die. He and Owen were going to sell the memory drug to a Rossum competitor for a lot of money but Owen got cold feet. Kind of like Leo did, although he followed through. Still it's a nice parallel. Alice keeps flashing back to her and Leo running out. She tells Sam (and Caroline), "Just because you didn't mean it doesn't mean you didn't kill him. You're responsible."

Sam leaves and Alice/Caroline follows, continually flashing back on her and Leo running and Leo getting shot. She tackles Sam on the grass outside, and we get a final flashback on Leo in Sam's position, dying on the lawn. Sam pushes her off and stands, only to get downed by Boyd, who has come to his senses. Now, when he asks if Echo wants a treatment, she says yes. She's ready to forget this again, I think.

At some point after Leo dies, Caroline is in the hospital as Adele arrives. Rossum security or somebody called her because Caroline fit the profile. But Caroline pulls a Faith and escapes out the window. Thus beginning her two-year "dance" with the Dollhouse? Adele is impressed.

D&D walk the house, both uncomfortable about the whole stoner incident. She gives him back his gun and tells him to get over it. He's not being a dick about Echo now. We'll see if that lasts. For Everything a Reason by Carina Round starts up as Adele checks Echo on the monitors.

And continues over Mellie leaving her apartment, bags packed. Ballard comes out to say goodbye, telling her it's better if he doesn't know where she is, but reminding her she can find him. Aw. She comments that "Debbie" might crash at her place once in a while. I don't know if that's setting up another Active or not. She leaves.

And we bookend the episode back in Adele's office. Only this time it's Sam, not Caroline. "I'm someone who can give you what you want." What's that? "A new life; a better life." She offers him money to help his mother. Five years of a stipend for her, and then he'll have enough money to support her. "I'm going to make you an offer." Is the DH getting less evil or is it just me?

Dollhouse 1x05 True Believer

Written by Tim Minear

Directed by Allan Kroeker

"We must keep the garden pure." 

"Once any temptation is introduced, it will spread like a cancer and all will be infected."

We start out in Pleasant, Arizona, at Dillard's Auto Service. We hear Daxton playing on a boom box. "She's in trouble all the time like a runaway train." The mechanic shuts it off as a bus full of smiling cult members singing a hymn pulls up. They smile and sing their way into a store with a list of supplies as the mechanic and other Bubba-types watch menacingly. It's tense. The mechanic tries to start a fight, calling one cultie (Brother Seth) Osama bin Gandhi and asking what they need duct tape and rope for. Local law enters, and things calm down as they take their stuff and leave. Officer comments that it's the smiling more than the singing that's unnerving, and I have to agree. Then they see the back of the grocery list has the words SAVE ME written on it.

Shots of yoga in the DH as a man VOs: Happy? No. This is something quite apart from happiness. Call it a kind of bliss. An unquestioning serenity. True happiness requires some measure of self-awareness." And we're in DeWitt's office with Senator Boxbaum. "We're talking about people here who have their very wills taken away." DeWitt and the senator acknowledge the irony of this. DH will continue to be compared to the cult's Temple throughout the episode, as we continue to try and figure out what description we think best fits the DH. 

The senator tells DeWitt that the ATF finally got a warrant to check out the Temple based on the note asking for help, but it's only for a quick look inside to see if further action is called for, and he doesn't think anyone can get inside that quickly without being a true believer. DeWitt is concerned about working with a federal agency, saying their association with the senator usually works the other way around, but takes the case.

Short scene with Ballard at the FBI, asking his fellow agent, Loomis, possibly his only friend left in the bureau, to run Caroline's picture using her high clearance. I know Minear talked about a shoutout to himself in this episode, and I keep thinking it must be Inside-related so in the FBI parts, but I haven't figured it out yet. Need to listen to his commentary at some point maybe.

At the DH, D&D are walking and talking, as they do. Mr.D is concerned that Echo is more adaptable than predictable and accuses DeWitt of liking her too much. Jerk. DeWitt goes in to see Topher and Doc Saunders as Echo is leaving her exam. Turns out that for this assignment, they're going to operate on Echo to make her into a human camera. They make it sound plausible. Echo herself will be blind because the images will bypass her brain and be piped to a monitor for the ATF to see. We see here that Doc really is concerned with her patients and willing to stand up for them. Topher is all excited about the possibility, says Echo will see no evil, but she's concerned that even a sneeze could cause Echo to go into a seizure. DeWitt deems the risk within acceptable margins.

The ATF bunker is apparently 6 miles outside Pleasant. The AIC is Agent Lilly (Mark Totty). Oh, Joan of Arcadia is where I know him from; that's right. Anyway, he's briefing his crew on Jonas Sparrow (Brian Bloom) the leader of the cult who's been in and out of federal prison and had a conversion experience that Lilly doesn't buy. He says he could be involved in anything from gun running to human trafficking. Like the DH? Boyd is there and introduced as a private consultant there to help them. They have 48 hours to prove cause for a more comprehensive search warrant.

Boyd explains that he works with Esther Carpenter, "an extraordinary young woman," but "just a girl," who can infiltrate the closed group. As he's talking, we cut back and forth from him with the ATF to Echo, looking all Giger as she gets her eyes operated on.

Now we're in a car with Esther and Boyd. She's been hitchhiking across country from New Hampshire and he's giving her a ride on the last leg of her trip. She's got a good sense of humor for someone on a religious quest. They talk about Saul of Tarsus (who had a vision and turned into Paul), and Boyd asks her if she wants to become a new person. "More than anything." Having done this recap after watching the next three episodes, I can definitely see how that statement is of continuing importance to Echo and the other Dolls, but more on that later.

Esther arrives at the Temple and feels up Jonas' face.

Credits.

Ballard is scoring drugs as Loomis approaches him. Asking Mellie to bring him his meds, I mean. Cute. Anyway, she can't find Caroline.

Jonas is questioning Esther, and she describes having a vision of him, crying with the remembered awe of it. The culties are convinced and Jonas accepts her in, but you can tell he's not buying it yet. We never really get an answer as to whether he is a criminal needing a cult as a front, or whether he really converted but is still dangerously unstable. It's played with refreshing subtlety. Pan up to the ATF bunker on the hill overlooking them.

Then Jonas and his #2, Seth, have a talk about whether Esther's on the up-and-up. BTW, Seth is hot. Jonas says he needs to test for all of the signs. "If a serpent should enter, we must crush it underneath our heel...we must keep the garden pure." 

Here comes the snake...as we cut to the DH and Victor and Sierra are talking in the shower. Victor feels good, and Topher, as he's talking about the Valsalva mechanism for some reason, notices the entrance of the serpent. He goes and talks to Doc, having some homosexual panic about having seen Victor's "man reaction." He says that in the Doll state there's a limpness so that this shouldn't happen. Doc thinks it's a byproduct of Victor having been imprinted with his persona for Miss Lonelyhearts for the 8th time. Apparently she thinks that's a bad idea, but according to Topher, no one reads her reports. She decides they need to search the shower footage of Victor. Can I help?

Esther is being introduced to the group by Kris, a cultie who takes her under her wing. Seth comes for her to take her to Jonas. 

The ATF is running photos of the culties they got from Echo's camera, just like Ballard is running Caroline's. It's interesting that Agent Lilly here is a mirror for Ballard. Boyd is interested in finding out who wrote the note so they know who would help them from the inside, but Lilly just says they can't assume they have help. The mini mystery here is really well-played; you can sense Lilly's obsession, but only by the end know its extent. Their monitors go dark, then flare with indecipherable light.

Jonas has Esther is a dark room and is shining a flashlight into her eyes, trying to see if she's really blind. She has no reaction. "I do not come into this garden a pure being, Esther. I come into it the way Adam left: broken, corrupted, impure." And Jonas is something of a mirror for DeWitt, so I think we get some idea of her backstory in the things he says. "But those whom I shelter, they are not corrupted. They have not walked in the world the way I have. They have not seen the things that I have seen. And against this world they are defenseless. So I will protect them. And any who seek to harm them, to foul this garden, shall fail." As he says the last, he puts a gun right to Esther's face, and she doesn't blink. He welcomes her to the Temple, kisses her head and leaves. And we pull back to see a nice sized arsenal of guns, enough to get the snake rising amongst the ATF.

Mellie brings Ballard his meds and some more "leftover" manicotti. Also, she was handed an envelope by the mail guy (presumably) that's another gift from Alpha. It's the video yearbook he was watching in the first episode. "This is real. I mean, this is who she was. Just a girl." Ballard and Loomis watch, and Mellie leaves as Ballard forgets she's there.

Doc and Topher play spot the tumescence and finally figure out that it's Sierra that Victor is reacting to. Doc: If it had been a snake -- please pretend I didn't say that.

ATF are preparing to go in, which Boyd thinks is premature and dangerous to Echo. We find out Lilly busted Jonas once when he was a cop, and Jonas got out in a couple of years because of mishandled evidence. Based on what we learn later, could have been Lilly messing with things even back then, or maybe he fell down the slippery slope after that defeat. Anyway, Boyd gets now that he's obsessed with taking Jonas down, and he calls Mr.D for permission to pull Echo. Mr.D gets all assy about Echo again, accusing her of screwing up and not letting Boyd pull her out.

Jonas is sermonizing to the group about the Esther in the bible, inducting our Esther into the Temple as the ATF begins to sneak in. I like how the cult scenes are played. There's humor and intelligence there, like with real people, not stereotypes. And again, you can't tell if he's for real or playing to the crowd or both. Jonas asks Esther if she's willing to "forsake the world of men, to give yourself, your life, your fidelity and your industry" to the Temple. "Return to the temple; a new beginning." Just like the offer DeWitt made Echo at the beginning of episode one. There's a nice bit of scoring over the ensuing hugs intercut with the approaching ATF that captures both emotions.

Then the ATF trip a wire and flood lights go on. Jonas and Seth turn out the inside lights and run to the arms shed for weapons. They return, and Jonas turns on Esther and asks if she did this, then slaps her in accusation. When he goes to slap her again, she stops him. Her sight is back and the ATF monitors are out. Way better miracle than a sneezure.

Come back on a morning seige. Culties are scared and aren't happy about the guns, but still trust Jonas. He keeps staring at Esther, trying to figure out how it couldn't be a miracle. He talks with Seth and comes to a decision.

Meanwhile Boyd is arguing with Lilly again about trying to find their ally inside the compound as the press pulls up. 

Jonas says he had the weapons stored in case of attack, but Esther is a sign, and they won't be taking up arms. That's not reassuring to me at all.

Ballard sees the report on the seige on TV and sees Caroline, wonders if he's seeing things.

Boyd investigates on his own, talking to the shop keeper about the note and asking to see the security footage. He finds out that Lilly, disguised as "extra with baseball cap covering face" in scene one, was the one who wrote SAVE ME on the paper in the first place, planting evidence to get his warrant in his obsessive need to bring down the DH--oops, wrong agent--I mean, Jonas Sparrow. Boyd confronts Lilly, saying that "nobody ever asked to be saved, not by you."

In the chapel, Jonas is sending Seth out to do a job he needs faith for, and has Esther read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the three men who were thrown in the furnace for not bowing down to a false idol and survived unburned. As she's reading, Seth is siphoning gas, tossing it on the walls of the building, and setting it on fire. Esther is putting it together and not looking happy. At the smell of smoke, Kris tries to leave but Jonas urges her to have faith that they'll survive the flames if they're righteous. And he seems to be planning on staying there with them. So he either really doesn't want to go to jail, or his conversion was real, or he had a conversion right here because of Esther's miracles. Who knows?

Lilly is talking to his #2, trying to smear Boyd in case he uses what he knows against Lilly. You get the slight sense that #2 is not totally convinced, but still following orders. Lilly says they should take Boyd down if he's inside. And we see he is inside, knocking out one of the ATF agents.

Smoke is getting thick, and Esther appeals to Jonas, saying you can't force a miracle. He slaps her again, which is just one time too many, I guess, because when he kneels to pray she knocks him out with a honkin' big candlestick. She then orders Seth to get people out, saying her message from God is "Move your ass!" Iilya, one of the other talking culties, doesn't want to go. Esther says she doesn't think God gave her back her eyes so she could just watch, which I think is kind of a cool thing to say, but Iilya disagrees. He spits in her face. She punches him and has Seth carry him out.

Jonas wakes and grabs his gun, but then an ATF agent walks in and guns him down. Boyd! No. Psych! Mr.D it is. He plans to get rid of the Echo problem by having her die in the fire. Bastard!

Lilly is also happy to have Boyd and Echo die in the fire. He pulls his people back, and again his #2 is looking at him a little strangely. I would love to read his report of all this. Esther wakes as this time it is Boyd who enters. She doesn't know how she knows him, but thought he was an angel. He carries her out in full view of the cameras as Lilly is saying he doubts anyone else survived. He sees them and says, "Thank God." Heh.

At the cinders of the Temple, Lilly is wandering around looking surly as Ballard drives up. Apparently, he's no longer the AIC, hence the surly. He won't tell Ballard anything, saying Caroline could be anyone. And as far as we know, he never caught a good luck at Echo anyway. He won't "unofficially" help Ballard because he doesn't do that underhanded stuff. "Get a warrant." Ha.

VO of Jonas--oops, wrong head of household--I mean, DeWitt. "A place of safety, of untroubled certainty, of purity. This is the world we must maintain." Over more yoga/tai chi/DH stuff. "It is imperative that nothing disturb the innocence of life here. Once any temptation is introduced, it will spread like a cancer and all will be infected." Religious metaphor or scientific one, take your pick. She orders Victor scrubbed (his mind, not his body) and watched. Doc looks sad; Topher a bit too.

D&D walking and talking, as they do. She knows he went to Arizona and probably suspects why. He's unrepentant, accuses Echo of glitching again (she didn't, jerkoff), and wants her in the attic. DeWitt is not happy with him.

Echo wakes in the chair with Topher and Doc. Doc asks her, "How's your vision? Can you see okay?" Echo looks across the DH and focusses in on Mr.D. "I see perfectly." Ooh.

Note to self, look up character names so you get them right and spell them right. No need to be totally lazy.

Dollhouse 1x06 Man on the Street

Go live in your real world. If you ever did.

We open up on a local news report on the urban legend known as the Dollhouse. A reporter type is walking the streets of Los Angeles, asking people he meets what they think about the whole deal. Interviewee #1 is a sketchy looking dude in front of a convenience store, looking all paranoid. He believes.

Reporter states that the rumors started surfacing in the late '80s for anyone who ends up trying to put a time line on the Dollverse. I don't know if that corresponds to any scientific discoveries of our world or not; probably not important.

Interviewee #2 is a black woman who believes in this new form of slavery and that it can't be voluntary. "Only one reason that someone would volunteer to be a slave; if they is one already." Interviewee #3 is a lower class white woman with an apron and name tag. Not sure if she believes, but she wants to sign up to party with the rich and famous.

The reporter is saying, "Like every good fairy tale, the story grows more intricate and more devisive every decade," as we move out of the tv and into the FBI office where Agent Ballard is running the news story along with the cult footage from last week and the Caroline yearbook footage. He's in Agent Tanaka's office, I think, looking over his files for the kidnapping case from Ghost. Sheppard's been showing up in so many things I watch lately that I had some cognitive dissonance of my own for a second there, trying to remember who he is on this show. 

They trash talk for a bit, Tanaka makes a crass joke about Caroline and hand cream that made me think of Of Mice and Men, then the tussle and Ballard roughs him up and tosses him out. This is the first mention of Ballard being particularly obsessed with Caroline.

In the DH, Echo and Victor are eating together, and Sierra pointedly doesn't join them. Victor goes to invite her over, touches her shoulder, and she screams loudly as if terrified. If that's not creepy enough, cut to her in a gyno chair with Doc. No way this is going to be good. Doc asks about Victor and Sierra says he likes to pretend they're married. Sierra's had sex as a Doll. Ew. And I called the perp right away on this one, but still was very interesting how it played out because it could have gone several ways.

Hearn is all agro about not wanting Victor abusing Sierra, and links him to Alpha, all very realistically played. Boyd and Doc discuss Victor; apparently she or Topher told Boyd about the man reaction, or maybe there was a memo. Hearn didn't seem to know about it until right then though. Doc: "There's a difference between being attracted to someone and hurting them." Yeah, that's more about love than attraction right? And this seems to comment on the Dollhouse in some indirect way and on the case of the week and Ballard, but it's subtle and I'm not sure all that it means yet. Anyway, Echo has been following some of this from the door and offers up that Sierra has been crying at night in the sleep pods. Echo's the Barbie with the glasses and lab coat that came about after the '70s.

Ballard is talking his one friend in the FBI into doing some warrantless searches of an Internet mogul who has a connection to the DH. He's had a break in the case from following the money trail. The DH hedge fund in this case is called Mayfair. I don't know if it's significant that that's the name of an area of London in Westminster or not. Maybe that's Madam's thing. Q-Field and Redwing were the companies linked to the Internet guy, Joel Minor, creator of Bouncy the Rat. (I'm very sorry there's no made-up Internet page of Bouncy. Missed opportunity there.)

Anyway, Ballard has "liked this guy for a while." "You ever thought of asking him out?" No, but maybe champagne and strawberries could enter the picture at some point? Ballard convinces the other agent to help him out using the patented Helo-puppy eyes. He thinks this is his way in since they'll have buried Caroline where he can't find her. Dude, their opinion of your talents is not that high.

Ballard is now at home, eating Chinese take-out with his neighbor (Mellie, who I was calling Ellie) and talking over the case with her because he has no one else to talk to who doesn't think he's nuts. They're getting closer and it's nice. They also talk about her old boyfriend. She makes the second observation about how obsessed he is with Caroline.

Joel Minor is Patton Oswalt! He's awesome in this role. He's waiting in front of a nice house in the suburbs as Rebecca (Echo!) drives up. Ballard's taking out the cute Asian security guard as they meet up. He enters the house and follows the voices to the kitchen. And sees the not so buried Caroline. Wha?! Credits.

Interviewee #4 is an old Jewish? guy wafting poetic about Ida Lupino. He thinks if DH exists, all veterans should be able to have a night with Ida. I don't think he gets how it works. It's not L.A. Confidential's "modeling" agency. Interviewee #5 is a female office worker type who gets giggly at the idea of hiring a man to -- well, she's not going to tell you what for.

Ballard gets over being gobsmacked and tries to tell Rebecca her name is Caroline. She's, of course, playing this in character and thinks her husband did something illegal. "You didn't just break in to impress me?" "It's porn, isn't it?" "My husband does porn." "Is this a porn man?" It's pretty hilarious. Those who think the show isn't funny, take note. Then Ballard's tasered and down, then he's back up and takes out three security guys. He's the energizer bunny of badasses. While he's fighting, Boyd sneaks in and grabs Echo for her treatment. Then Ballard settles down to talk to Minor in this empty house that looks like a dollhouse.

This conversation is brilliant but I won't copy it word for word. We get Minor's story, his very cogent take on reality and the need for fantasy, and his instant understanding of Ballard's focus on Caroline. Obsession mention number three and it's starting to hit home with Ballard. Minor plays out the scene he wanted to enact with his wife when he finally hit it big, but she got killed just before she could find out and he could give her everything he always wanted to give. He thinks Ballard wants to play out the rescue scenario, or the hurt/comfort scenario so prevalent in fan fiction, which is what the Dollhouse is, fan fiction brought to life. Create your own character, be your own Mary Sue, all for real. I just got that connection. That is awesome. And these two actors were both so good here. Wow.

Back at DH, Doc and Topher are questioning Victor about Sierra. He thinks she's beautiful and different, and she makes him feel better. Boyd is talking to Bicks, a fill-in handler for Victor (I wonder what's up with the regular guy). Bicks is freaking out that he's going to be in trouble or he's worried about Victor maybe. But he gives Boyd the clues he needs to put it all together. He talks about how everything is taped and the Dolls couldn't be getting it on without it being seen. And he asks why, when the Dolls are smiling all the time, Sierra only cries at night. Means and opportunity right there. Then they talk about how the Dolls are all broken. That's not what Boyd told Echo after the vault job.

Minor is finishing up his story and Ballard unbends enough to have a strawberry but no champagne. Ballard listens to the story and appreciates what Minor lost, but he's not buying the good guy angle. He talks about how the house is empty, just like he thinks the fantasy is. The upshot is a sideways argument in favor of the DH that sneaks up on you. For a moment you wonder who is the good guy and bad guy here, or if either one fits either role. Is it a matter of what fantasy is better or less selfish? What part does reality play in all of this? By the way, I loved Helo muchly, but it wasn't until DH that Tahmoh began to totally OWN me. He's brilliant and beautiful and I love this character. And for some reason I'm getting a Harrison Ford in Blade Runner vibe off him this week that just makes it more intense. Okay, no more gushing.

Minor convinces Ballard that the cops are coming for him as the crazed trespasser, not innocent property owner guy. Ballard leaves with this: "This is all going to come apart. You might not be punished and I might not be alive, but this house will fall." Like Usher. Which is a story about a girl who was buried alive and who eventually broke out of her tomb. Great.

Minor replies, "First hurdle in my business is that people will not accept the change that has already happened." "Go live in your real world. If you ever did." Much food for thought. 

Interviewee #6 is a hot California blonde. She says that if you could figure out the perfect person you needed, who signed on to help you, it could be okay. "I think that could be, maybe, beautiful." Interviewee #7 is a young woman on an old bike who says it's human trafficking, end of story. Repulsive.

Boyd is in the sleeping area, mapping out the camera dead zones that Victor would have no way of knowing about. He figures it all out and sets a trap by pulling in Victor and Bicks. Victor is so sad. He says he did something bad but no one will tell him what it is. Innocence. Echo asks Boyd where he's going. Hearn is all, "Why don't you go paint something?" (Which she does at the end of the show.) Boyd says he's protecting Sierra.

Ballard is at his apartment with Mellie, getting patched up. Yes, it's a shirtless scene. He had me with his face. Says he would have been able to write the great American arrest report if he hadn't been surprised by Caroline. He remembers his talk with Minor about there being no real girl in his life and he's obsessed by fantasy Caroline. Then he kisses Mellie. Is it for real? Is it proving a point? Does he like her? All three? She doesn't think it's real because she's not all Hollywood model perfect body girl. They agree to just be neighborly neighbors.

At bedtime, Sierra peels off from the rest of the group to enter the dead zone, where mothereffing Hearn is there, using his handler unconditional trust implant to abuse her. Evil son of a bitch! But Boyd not only catches him, he punches him through a pane of glass! Yes!! He's protecting more than just Echo now. And this is showing that there's levels of exploitation involved in all of this, and different people in the organization are involved at these different levels. Anyway, Madam is not happy he didn't let her in on the plan, but happy he figured it out. She gives him a bonus he doesn't ask for, I think not as what she needs to do as boss, but what she needs to do as a person.

Boyd exits and Madam and Mr.D move on to the Ballard sitch. They have a camera in his place, and they start watching it at exactly the point we left them.  Mr.D thinks that the situation is out of control and is wondering if Madam has an exit strategy for when all of this stuff blows up in her face. She's not packing yet, and decides to send Echo out after Ballard. It seems like an assassination thing, but from what we learn later, they don't want him dead, probably because at least they know him and have him covered. They just want to mess him up a bit and show them they are taking an interest and don't play around. 

Interviewee #8 is a genial redneck standing next to his wife, talking about how it might be cool for some guys to be able to do it once with a guy and have it forgotten. Wife is trying to keep smiling. Man on the street is very Springer.

Topher is putting together a persona for Echo. I like the visuals they used of different brain centers melding together into one. It's a nice and simple conceptual way to touch on the much more complicated blending he's doing. He sends his assistant Ivy out for food instead of giving her any chance to help him with the actual work. Ah, life as an intern. He finishes and goes to upload the file and is interrupted by Boyd. Spoiler alert, this is where someone comes in and changes one of Topher's parameters. So is it an accident of timing and opportunity, or is Boyd involved? He could be the man inside, but that would necessitate there being more than one. Ivy is the obvious suspect. Last time she was around I wondered if she was working with Alpha, but this is supposed to be different. Or it could be someone else entirely. And for all we know, there could be other sleepers involved who don't know what's happening. It's a puzzler.

Anyhow, Topher lies to Boyd about Echo's assignment. They obviously don't think that Boyd will be down for the job, which makes sense whether it's assassination or what it actually is. Topher goes back into the lab to imprint Echo and says to her, "Ready to play?" Which references Hearn's game with Sierra and highlights the parallels and different levels again.

Madam interrogates Hearn and is visibly amused when Mr.D causes him some pain. Hearn says, "You put her under some fat old emir. It makes it better because she thinks she's in love for all of a day? We're in the business of using people." Madam: "You understand less about this business than you think." Then she sends out Mr.D and tells Hearn he'll get out of this without going to the attic if he kills Mellie for her. Interesting that the handlers also get sent to the attic, not just the Dolls.

Mellie and Ballard did it! They have sweet post-coital talk that's not annoying, then she tells him that what he's doing is important, and he asks her to look over the case file. I love that while he is playing the stereotypical obsessed with the case to the exclusion of all else detective riff, he's still a nice guy. It's very noir, but also he seems real. Driven, but not completely out of touch or something. I don't know; just love him.

Ballard goes for Chinese, splitting the two of them up when we know badness is coming. Cool shot of Echo reflected in the round glass of the restaurant kitchen door. Alice is through the looking glass. Ballard sees her and goes to the kitchen. She pistol whips him to the ground and does a nice power pose.

Interviewee #9 is a male office worker type. He believes. If you don't think they're controlling you, "Don't worry about it. Just sit back and wait for them to tell you what to buy."

Finally, less typing. So much happens in these episodes. Ballard and Echo have a kickass, very realistic and painful as all hell looking fight that includes another glass door getting smashed. Is this season 1 Smallville? They end up in the alley behind the restaurant. He finally gets the upper hand and she goes all don't hit poor me on him. He lets his guard down and she head butts him to the ground. Then it gets good. Gooder?

"The Dollhouse is real." This was not an assassination attempt! They just sent Echo to get him off the case. "We have a person inside," who corrupted the imprint behind Topher's back. And she says it's not the person who sent the tapes, Alpha, but this imprint parameter is their first communication. She won't tell Ballard where the DH is, but says he's doing it all wrong. "There are over 20 Dollhouses." And he had no idea. Of course, it just occurred to me that this could all be a lie, and Madam is playing a loopier game with Ballard than we know, but that seems stretching it a bit too far. 

Anyway, "The Dollhouse deals in fantasy; that is their business, but that is not their purpose." Eeee. "What is?" "We need you to find out." Oh my god! "You have to let the Dollhouse win; make them back off. You have to trust me," she says, handing him the gun. And then, as a cop runs up, making him shoot the cop and ruining his career. That's just ballsy.

"They don't want to kill you, but they will protect the information." "They don't want you dead, but anyone else..." Which leads him directly to Mellie, knowing she's in danger, which is what the DH wants him to know right? What does that mean about what the inside man knows? Who knows Hearn's mission? Or is that a guess? And what does it mean that his mission is different than we think? OMFG.

So now we get just the creepiest scene of sexual predator Hearn breaking in and attacking Mellie, who's just in a Paul's shirt and underwear, to a classical music score as Ballard is running back to his apartment, dialing on his phone. Disturbing as hell. They struggle, and Hearn has her on the ground and is throttling her when Madam, watching on the vid tap, calls and leaves a message on the machine. "There are three flowers in a vase. The third flower is green." Bam! Sleeper made Active! Damn! I had forgotten that I had wondered if she was a Doll by this point. She beats the crap out of Hearn and kills him. Yes! Then Madam switches her off with a yellow flower, she becomes Mellie again and freaks out as Ballard finally gets there.

Dude, a sleeper Active! So she's Doll, programmed to be Mellie, the neighbor with a crush on Ballard, with a secret imprint of assassin? Totally parallels Echo's assassin Active with a secret imprint of double agent. Totally awesome. This episode made me love her character so much more than I thought I could when she was so pathetically making "leftover" lasagne for Ballard. That's Joss. Make you love them, then give them hell.

Interviewee #10 is a college professor type. "Imagine this technology being used on you. Everything you believe, gone, Everyone you love, strangers, maybe enemies. Every part of you that makes you more than a walking cluster of neurons dissolved at someone else's whim. If that technology exists, it will be used, it will be abused, it'll be global and we will be over as a species. We will cease to matter. I don't know. Maybe we should." Bummer, dude.

Then a sad scene of Paul turning in his badge with no talking, only music. Did I mention the scoring this week has been legen-wait for it-dary? Don't know if this is score or the beginning of the end song. Somehow Tahmoh still conveys that he's not out of the fight, even as he does the head high walk out with some degree of false humility.

Mr.D tells Madam that Ballard is suspended. And apparently Hearn is thought to be a Russian so that they make it all seem to be about the Borodin fued. Neatly done. He congratulates her on her winning hand, and she claims to have played a bad hand well. They're going to do a diagnostic on Mellie to make sure she's okay. I wonder what her name is, this girl programmed to love Ballard? Madam is adamant that they contact the other DHs to warn against handler abuse, which I would have thought would have occurred to somebody before now, given the circumstances they operate under are pretty much what Hearn claimed. Madam seems sad for Sierra, saying Topher's been helping her. "Ignorance in this case truly is bliss." Madam identifies with this particular crime, which is interesting, and reflects the levels again. What is she in this for?

Sierra and Victor have a nice moment of bonding over a picture book, watched by Madam and Mr.D and Boyd and Doc, as always. Madam approaches Echo as she's painting a picture of a house with a man and woman in front of it. Rebecca and Joel Minor? She says it's not finished. The picture? Madam: "You'd like it to be finished?" Then we cut to Minor's fantasy finally being played out with no words, while the beautiful Sweet Dream by Greg Laswell plays. The music is killing me. Minor gets his ghost closure and the show ends on their hands entwined together, pulling out with the memory wipe graphics. This is so dense.

Just a ton of thought-provoking stuff about what the DH is really about, whether what they do is good or bad or neither, what the whole crux of the show means, along with an awesome bunch of plot twists and an ever-deepening mystery. Does TV get any better than this?

Feeling better today, so I'm going to recap episode 6 of Dollhouse. I will come back to 5 soon; I just can't not do last night's episode. It was utterly brilliant.

Dollhouse 1x04 Gray Hour

I'm not broken.

We open in a really remote mountain cabin where Echo is acting as a midwife to a couple who I assume have reason not to bring in a real one. I'm trying not to imagine the many colorful scenarios that could lay behind this because it's a short teaser-like scene. After a lame lesbian joke we get to what's significant. Echo says, "All this scary painful stuff you won't even remember." "I want to forget. I want to forget." Amen, sister. But seriously, part of the point of all this is that we all do sometimes want to forget. How high a price are we willing to pay to forget who we are?

The baby pops out and then we go into the memory wipe, flashing through images of the baby and the mother wanting to forget, accompanied by that lovely, gross noise. Echo completes her treatment routines.

In the cafeteria, Echo's eating what looks like a stuffed yellow bell pepper. Yum. Sierra joins her at the table at Echo's invitation and they exchange bland small talk. Sierra says at one point, "I try to be my best." That's what the Echo in Jenny's drug hallucination said that led her to the arrow she crammed in his neck. I think it must be part of the Dollhouse philosophy, along with exercise and eating right and massage and tai chi, because it's doubtful Sierra heard it from Echo. That's interesting.

"Are you your best," Echo asks. "I'm not sure how to know that." "I think if you always try, that's best. Right?" she asks as the camera pans to Victor, also at their table. "Every day is a chance to be better," he replies. Yeah, all that sounds like meditation affirmations or something. But they are talking together socially, even if they're parroting what they've been told. That's interesting too. At least they're not talking about the weather, so they go beyond my small talk capabilities.

CreepyChris agrees that it's interesting. He's been noticing the three of them eat together at the same table every day. He tells Boyd that they're not remembering each other, they're just grouping, flocking, herding and other animal things. This goes "deeper than memory, into instinctual survival patterns." "They're not bison, Topher." "They're a little bit bison." Heh.

Madam is hitting up a client for more money for special circumstances. She's telling him that of course it's all confidential, and only the computers know the details of your arrangement. Total BS. I want to see one of the clients at the "confessional," inputting the details of his wishes, with the entire Dollhouse staff listening to it as they prep.

Before he can comment, Madam's phone rings. It's obviously one of her bosses, a senior partner, if you will. And we don't hear his end but he's calling about Ballard, seeing if the Victor operation is going smoothly. She's not as cool with her boss as with a client, but tries to reassure him that Ballard needs closure, which is something the DH is good at. He hangs up on her before she's done. Classic.

The client is up for the extra money, saying this is not for him but a gift. And the audience heads blindly into the mission with the Active, not knowing what the mission is. Which is cute considering that that's the way it's supposed to be for everyone but the Active. And good because we spend the next several minutes assessing and reassessing the job as it turns from one thing into another and another. It's kind of awesome.

Echo is Taffy, dressed like a slut--I mean, escort-type girl. She's primping in the mirror, it seems, adjusting the bra just right and sticking lipstick in her high-heeled, leather boots. "Blue skies," she says when she's satisfied. Then she struts out to make out enthusiastically with one dude while another two watch or try not to alternately. They talk about how his uncle hired her to entertain at his bachelor party. Just to keep them straight in my head, I'll give them spoilery nicknames. The "bachelor" is Bomber. So he must be the guy getting the Active as a gift, right? The other two are Prof and Tech Guy.

All this is happening in a fancy hotel where they like people to be slightly tasteful in public, so a security guy asks them to stop being tacky and go up to their suite with some free champagne. They giggle and head up. Cut to Taffy with a cut lip and disordered clothing, running down the hall and calling for help. So did the client call for some rape fantasy or did something go wrong again? Bomber and Tech Guy weave out after her, in no big hurry, shirts hanging open (thank you). Taffy finds that same security guard and he says he'll help her.

The guard takes her through the kitchen and into his secure office and closes the door behind him. So scenario number 3 passes through my mind. Maybe he's the client and has a rescue fantasy and rest was just set-up. Or he's a pervy jerk who's going to try and work this to his advantage. (I would have scowly babies too if I ever had them.) It turns out that it's hotel policy to hush up these unpleasant incidents -- brrrr -- by paying off the victim and getting her to sign a release. Taffy just wants out of there, but he's offering $10,000. She wavers, declines, then knocks the guy out cold. Whoa!

She's sticks in an earpiece and says she's in. Her "assailants" are on the way to her now. It was all a set-up; none of it about prostitution at all. Well done, show.

Credits.

We're back and in the middle of a kickass heist movie. Taffy's the team leader calling the shots. Tech Guy's a worrier. He worries that she didn't kill the guard, but Taffy half throttles him and says she learned the hard way not to second guess a client because she likes to get paid. She exposits to us all about the Gray Hour, when the security is down next door so they'll be able to break in unnoticed. Prof asks a stupid question and she replies, "That's 6 seconds we can't get back." It's all snappy and fun. Bomber blows their way through the wall to a vault door in the next building.

Taffy is the safe cracker, and she starts making love to the vault door while the others wonder why if she's all that they've never heard of her. She's all, you've heard of Bonnie and Clyde and they're dead. "When this is over, feel free to forget I exist." She goes down on the vault door and it opens up for her. Wouldn't you?

They're in a storage facility for controversial, counterfeit, or stolen works of art. Prof is there for the I.D. Bomber asks, "What are we taking out of here, huh?" "The Parthenon." "Isn't that kinda big?" Ha.

Now we're at Ballard's house. He comes in favoring his bullet wound, carrying the Alpha envelope (he must take that everywhere with him) and some prescription drugs. He finally notices he's not alone and pulls his gun on Victor, who's freaking out that he's a marked man for talking to the FBI. He wants protection; Ballard wants to know why he set him up to die. Victor says it was a tip from a man with a Georgian accent. "Russia, Georgia, not Sweethome." Ballard puts down his gun all, it's Alabama dumbass. Victor begs for witness protection, and Ballard tells him to stay here and he'll see what he can do. 

Back in the vault, they're actually looking for a missing Elgin marble, not the whole Parthenon. Tech Guy's acting like an ass, all worrying about the guards and getting in Taffy's grill. Bomber's trying to get into Taffy's pants, and the Prof decides to steal the marble for himself. As he's running for it, he stabs Tech Guy with a sword and closes the vault door behind him. Oops.

Taffy calls Boyd to set him on Prof. Boyd says he'll finish the job. Then the call is interrupted by a burst of static, and Taffy drops the phone and her face goes blank. "Did I fall asleep?" Uh-oh.

CreepyChris is talking to one of his assistants/trainees/grad students? (Ivy) about some dumb errand he wants her to run when they see Echo's vitals implode. He freaks and tries to call her but she's not answering.

Echo is sitting in the vault mumbling "should I go now" over and over and underwhelming her fellow thieves. Bomb guys turns from charming to asshole in 5 seconds flat, slapping her in his frustration. Meanwhile, outside the building, Boyd takes back the art and shoots Prof in the leg to keep him from taking off.

CreepyChris explains the problem to Madam and Mr.D. She chides him for trying to call an Active in the field without her permission -- focus Madam. They replay the phone call and figure out what happened. Echo's been remote wiped, and CreepyChris can't fix it or do that himself. He's big into the "it's not my fault" of it. He compares the wipe to birth, saying it's traumatic when it's not happening in the comfort of the Dollhouse. "Right now Echo is experiencing extreme sensory overload, and that could lead to a coma state, or it could turn her into Carrie at the prom. Either way we have to help her. She can't help herself." Aww. Okay, from here on out I'll call him Topher, and he's no longer my favorite character to hate. I think I'll switch to Mr.D.

In the vault, Bomber is trying to get through to Taffy, not realizing she's no longer in there. He gets her to say that she's Taffy and can get them out. "I try to be my best." Tech Guy says, "Taffy's gone, man. She's not coming back."

Cut to Sierra in the chair already dressed in leather. Taffy 2.0 is up and running.

Echo is looking around at the art while Tech Guy bleeds and Bomber runs around trying to figure out what to do. Looking at a Picasso or Picasso-like painting, she says, "This one's broken." Tech guy laughs, "Yeah? Look who's talking." Echo feels her face. "On the inside," he clarifies. Echo says, "She makes me feel funny." Tech Guy has stopped worrying and gotten philosophical instead. He talks to her about art. "That's what art's for, to show us who we are. This one is saying how we start off whole, and somewhere along the line the pieces start to slide. We get broken." Bomber is not into that idea. "You can either get broken, or you can be the one doing the breaking."

Taffy 2.0 is upset her Parthenon job went to someone else, but she learned early on not to second guess a client, so fine. But she finishes with a disgruntled, "But I learned how to lap dance." Ha! Madam and Mr.D are good at playing to the Active personas as real people. They start to strategize.

Meanwhile, Topher is still freaking out about the remote wipe. Ivy is wearing flower-patterned, lacy nylons, high heels, and a party dress under her lab coat. What's with that? She listens as Topher rants about the artistry of the wipe. "This isn't a lone gunman. This is a conspiracy." Talking about the level of detail and breaking through their firewalls, etc. It made me wonder if Ivy was going to be the inside man or something, but then I'm naturally suspicious.

Boyd is watching over Prof and waiting for Taffy when Topher calls to see if Echo was acting okay earlier. Boyd wasn't told what was happening. He calls Madam to bitch about it, and she says there's nothing he can do but prepare for an unhappy outcome. Yeah, I'm sure he'll get right on that. Or...he'll go interrogate Prof for ways into the vault. Which is at least as good as Taffy 2.0's plan of calling Echo when Echo ain't taking no calls. But there's no time for anything else.

Echo sits with Tech Guy looking at a landscape painting of mountains. "I like sky." "Yeah, the blue kind. You mentioned." Ha again. Echo doesn't remember her name. "When I'm there, my name is something else." Tech Guy now goes beyond philosophical to nihilistic. He has a suicide kit because he doesn't want to go to prison. Prison is "a place with no sky." "When bad guys get caught, we don't get to see sky." The Dollhouse is full of light, but is there sky? I don't think they can see outside. Echo asks, "Am I a bad guy?" "You're a talking cucumber." Echo doesn't like that. Bomber doesn't like Tech Guy's way out. He takes his needle away and rescinds the no kill order, arming for a fight.

Topher talks about a programmer in Tokyo, Takahashi, who wants his job. But he's a hack. "Only one person I know who could achieve a remote wipe. And he's dead." Okay, why on earth would they give Alpha the knowledge of the imprinting process? Seriously.

Taffy 2.0 is trying to call Echo because she wants to talk her through some complicated way of opening the vault door without setting off the alarms, but Echo is not answering and the Gray Hour is over. Echo says, "I don't like this room anymore. Where are the better rooms?" Echo outside the Dollhouse is hilarious. That line reading was perfect.

She finally finds her phone and answers it. They've still got some time as all the security stuff goes online one at a time, so Taffy 2.0 talks her through her plan. It turns out that the cleavage adjusting and lipstick in the boot thing were less lascivious than it seemed earlier. She was stashing tools of the trade on her person for emergencies. I don't understand the whole trick with the door, but the upshot is that Echo followed directions very well, but no longer had the hands of a safecracker so it didn't work. Alarms go off, lights go off, and it all turns a pretty blue in the vault. Bomber kills the phone in frustration.

Back in the Dollhouse, Taffy 2.0 goes for her treatment. C'est la vie. Mr.D's going to put Boyd on standby in case he needs to take Echo out before she's captured, but Madam tells him to send somebody else, thinking that Boyd won't be able to do it. Topher asks about Echo as Sierra comes in with Mr.D, not even changing clothes before getting back on the chair. That confused me at first, but I guess it's to ward off any cognitive dissonance she would get if she "woke up" in different clothing than she was wearing when she went in.

Tech Guy is giving Echo pointers on how to avoid being shot by the guards, but Bomber sticks a gun in her hand and tells her to shoot the bad guys, be broken or do the breaking, etc. She's all, so we're not the bad guys? Poor Echo, it's all very confusing. When the door opens, Bomber decides to have her start shooting first, so the guards can aim at her while he shoots them I suppose, so he threatens to shoot her if she doesn't start firing.

Echo sees the suicide needle on the floor nearby, grabs it, and shoves it in his neck, just like Jenny did with the arrow to the Middleman, when she was trying to be her best. He falls out in the open and starts shooting, and the guards outside the door shoot back. Echo goes right back to Tech Guy to try to help him. He throws a smoke grenade type thing and tells her to run for it. Aww.

Boyd's on the way to the hotel security office. Echo comes out of the vault supporting Tech Guy. "He's broken. Can we fix him?" Aww. "I'm not broken," she says to Boyd. He agrees, "No, you're not."

Back with Ballard. His place is in West Hollywood, where "two guys in an idling car isn't news" he informs a worried Victor. Turns out though, that Ballard didn't find a new identity for him, he actually dropped a dime on him all over town. (I just realized I've been calling him Victor forever, and his persona has always been Anton Lubov. Oh, well. Retroactive spoiler alert.) Ballard's upping the stakes. He tells Anton that he can get a lot of information from a dead body, like whether it was killed by Russians or not. He either suspects he's being played by Victor or by Victor's bosses, or he's just in a pissy mood, I don't know for sure.

Victor is feeling betrayed. "Put on your mean face, act tough, but you'll care, Agent Ballard. That's your problem." And he's out.

Echo goes back in the chair, unremembering everything that happened after the remote wipe. It seems painful. Madam is telling Mr.D that "Michaelangelo believed his sculptures already existed inside the marble, waiting to be formed." Then she tells him to hand over the art and Prof to the client right away. Topher reports that Echo is fresh as a daisy or whatever, no memory of what happened in the vault. He says it had to be Alpha right? She has him sign a paper to up his security clearance and agrees. He's using the "gifts we gave him." Again, I'm intrigued. Did he move beyond regular Active to some sort of Dollhouse employee? 

In the Dollhouse, Echo walks, swims, and sits on the bottom of the pool in solitude for a while as Sia sings "I Go to Sleep." She showers, exchanges smiles with Sierra, and looks at herself through a misty mirror. She traces over it a few lines that seem to shape the cubist face she saw before that was broken, then quickly wipes it out.

More, more, more.