The writing room for Dollhouse must have a big white board with the phrase “anything but hookers” written on it.  You have to give them credit for being creative with the engagements they create.  We’ve had a blind inside agent into a religious cult, a hostage negotiator, a wife of a gun runner, the neighbor of an FBI agent, a rich lady investigating her own death and now a mother.

The basic premise of “Instinct” is that a man has lost his wife shortly after child birth.  He hires the Dollhouse to send him an active to be his wife and mother to his infant son.  Tohper has outdone himself by creating an imprint for an active that changed things on a glandular level.  His changing of the mind has changed the body.  Echo has become a mom with all the knowing best and instincts of a maternal nature that the role implies.  The problems arise when she suspects her husband is having an affair after finding pictures of the dead wife.  Then after overhearing a conversation he has with the Dollhouse and seeing a Dollhouse van outside for more than a few days, she suspects she and her baby are in danger.

A trip to the police and then a visit to the Dollhouse, Mommy Echo is constantly claiming she’s not crazy but her baby is in danger.  Topher wipes her mind but Echo punches him and escapes.  She’s in doll mode and acts as limp and watery as they normally do, but something else is pushing her.  The motherly instinct has overwritten the treatment and she must find her baby, even though she doesn’t know the baby’s name.   She shows up at the man’s house, gets the baby and threatens him with a knife until he convinces her the baby is not hers in the least exciting climax of any show I’ve ever seen.

November makes a reappearance as the recovering Madeline, the person she was before her contract.  She is now wealthy and, as she said, not sad.  She’s moved on from her daughter’s death.  Adelle pays a visit to have Madeline come in for a check up to make sure she’s ok.  Everything checks out but she is hit in her head as a thrashing Mommy Echo is brought in for treatment.  Of all the injuries she could have sustained, is it obvious to get a head injury?  Or am I reading to much into thinking that a little bump on the noggin of an ex doll will short them out and make them go Alpha?

Senator Daniel Perrin gets some serious screen time as he receives an anonymous folder containing a huge amount of information about the Dollhouse.  It’s all illegally obtained and can’t be used, so he makes it his mission to find usable proof that he can use to bring the Dollhouse down.  He makes another reference to his mother and we get the feeling he’s doing this on a personal level.

Paul Ballard is still clinging to the idea that he’s bringing the Dollhouse down from the inside out, but his partner has the mental prowess of a terrier with the killing ability of ten ninjas.  Echo is the ultimate loose cannon and Ballard better find another way to free all the dolls and return Caroline to her obviously marketable body.

“Instinct” was a really good idea.  Changing a doll so their glands become that of a woman who has recently given birth and having instincts stronger than that produced by the cognitive powers of the mind.  Dollhouse constantly touches ever so briefly on so many great aspects of neuroplasticity, but it’s always delivered in Topher’s flip egocentric banter and then never heard of again.  The weakness of the show is always in it’s execution; from the acting to the directing to the writing, the only thing we can really count on are decent performances by irregular cast or guest stars. We’re treated to a handful of young actors who continue to not find that spark playing animated mannequins sent to amuse or comfort the ultra rich with morals that make you question why you even watch the show.

It makes me question why I’m watching it.

Two out of five creepy dollheads.