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.