Maybe Dollhouse needs a bit more of the ol’ Number 1.

Jonathan Frakes directed “Belonging” and now I feel like I’m in an abusive relationship with the show.  “Belonging” was easily the best episode of Dollhouse yet.  Even better than “The Target” or “Briar Rose.”

Now, I know a lot of people will say that a good episode of Dollhouse at this point is still worse than a bad episode of a docudrama about colon cancer, and I tend to agree.  But this episode was riveting and so well done that I almost forgot the last two episodes made me want to stop watching.

“Belonging” is Sierra’s episode.  We find she was an illegal from Australia working in Venice Beach selling trinkets and trying to be an artist.  A rich doctor offers her an art showing and she accepts, but it’s all an overblown attempt at seduction orchestrated by the Rossum Corporation and the Dollhouse.  The Doctor, Nolan Kinnard, wants Priya Tsetsang all to himself and ends up using a horrible method to ensure it.  Kinnard is a leading psychotropic drug researcher and begins the convoluted process of turning Priya into a chemical schizophrenic in order to get the Dollhouse to “save her.”  The Dollhouse believes they’re getting a new active, Kinnard gets the girl of his dreams sent to him as someone new any time he wants.

In the Dollhouse, Sierra and Victor are sweet to each other.  He removes all the black paint knowing she doesn’t like it.  While he’s in the shower washing all the paints down the drain, she finds him and they enjoy a little playful time painting each others’ faces until a flashback of war cripples Victor.

Fran Kranz dials up his best performance as his character Topher has to come to grips with what he’s done to Priya.  Echo leads him down the inquisitive path by bringing him a painting Sierra had done, that she always does; a bird and a large, black, menacing shape.  He finds out that Sierra was drugged into her delirium and forced to be Kinnard’s personal doll.  He tells Adelle DeWitt who calls in Dr. Kinnard and tells him it’s over and he’ll never get Sierra back.  He’s good friends with a  Rossum exec (played by Kieth Carradine) and knows she can’t threaten him.  In turn, he wants Sierra exclusively.  Adelle and thus Topher have to comply but Topher is having a hard time stomaching it.

He sends Priya to Dr. Kinnard, but she’s loaded with the memories of what’s happened.  She tells Kinnard she loves someone more than she hates him and they start fighting.  She gains the upper hand and kills him.  Topher shows up to help her, but Langton arrives and begins the cleaning work; showing off a dark and nefarious side.  There are a few scenes with acid, saws and a lot of blood.

Langton also finds that Echo was the one who gave Topher the painting.  She’s also reading and keeping a book mark.  She’s learned to lie and she’s been scratching words and phrases into her glass covered sleep chamber.  She tells Langton a storm is coming (isn’t it always) and she wants everyone to be awake.  He says they aren’t ready and that there will be consequences.

Such as draining a body of its blood to make it easier to cut into pieces.

Langton and Topher share the grizzly secret and make up a story of the doctor running off to Mexico, leaving Priya behind.  Adelle, who’s had a little to much of this job it would seem, seems to buy it.  Topher gives Sierra a treatment after she asks that the next time they have to wake her up to leave out any memory of this day.  She wakes as Sierra and finds Victor waiting for her.  They hold hands.

It’s like night and day with this show.  My only concern is a plot hole at the end.  If Priya was drugged into becoming an active, the procedure paid for by a man who is now dead/publicly missing, would that person still have to be a doll?  In a state of pharmaceutically induced psychosis, would any contract made with her be valid?  Wouldn’t she be free to go after this?  I don’t know how she could or why she would willingly go back into that chair.

“Belonging” was a phenomenal improvement over the first three episodes of season two.  I give full credit to Frakes.  The writing staff brought us the same first three episodes, but I’m now wondering if what the show needs is someone different at the helm.  It was tense, thought provoking and enjoyable in a disturbing social way.  We’re planting seeds of not only the fall of the Dollhouse, but the beginnings of the world we glimpsed in “Epitaph One.”

If anyone from the Whedon camp reads this, do more episodes like “Belonging” and you will be able to take your hiatus without fear of the chopping block.

Four and a half creepy doll heads.