(Reader’s note: Technically, episodes 7 and 8 aired consecutively, but as they are not one two hour episode, they will be handled individually.)

When we left Echo, she was fleeing the Dennis Perrin debacle.  Without her GPS chip, the LA Dollhouse can’t track her.  Paul Ballard has gone AWOL as well and DeWitt and Langton aren’t able to find him.  Matthew Harding from Rossum gives DeWitt an ultimatum; find them or lose her house.  Echo turns up in Medina, TX.  She’s been hitchhiking and living off the streets.  She’s stuck in a bit of Doll state, and when a shoplifting incident involving an illegal immigrant named Galena goes wrong, her past active memories kick in and she beats down a cop.

Three months later.

Echo is a nurse in a hospital.  She fills in for a coworker who is out sick in order to take the task of providing flu shots for inmates.  One of the incarcerated is Galena, but she’s been badly abused by the guards as evidenced by the wicked bruise on her broken ribs.  Echo speaks Spanish to her, saying she’s going to be back to help.  She arrives home that day to see Paul Ballard.

DeWitt has been demoted to gopher while Harding runs the LA house.  Topher Brink has been promoted to R&D and has activated two dolls, Sierra and Victor, to be his assistant along with his regular assistant Ivy.  He pines over Bennett but presses on with his advancements.  DeWitt is interested but Harding scolds her back to her meek and resentful assistant state.

Paul and Echo work on their plan to break Galena out of jail.  Echo is able to use her past personae with instant results; she can fight, recall locations with photographic detail, speak languages and work technology, but at a price.  Her headaches are getting worse.  Paul makes an untraced call into Boyd saying she’s ready to be brought back in.  Their plan is a test of Echo’s abilities before she can go back to the Dollhouse.

The scheme to get Galena out involves giving her a drug that nearly stops her heart, faking her death, and then wheeling her out.  Given the abuse Echo has seen as the nurse, she says she can cover it up but has to act quickly.  It goes awry when the drug wears off too soon and the two are held for a time by the warden, Sheriff Rand (played by that guy who’s always in a uniform, Glenn Morshower.)  Echo’s talented imprints fire up again and they escape.  The pursuing officers, including Rand, are stopped by Ballard who has evidence on tape of them talking about beating up inmates.  He says to let Galena and Echo go and he won’t turn them in.  Paul and Echo give Galena money and a fake ID so she can live her life.

Topher is having problems of his own and he confides in DeWitt who is constantly being belittled by Harding.  There’s a new house opening in Dubai and Harding tasks DeWitt with finding the top actives for it.  Topher introduces to the high brass a new device, a Remote Wipe.  Much like the Disruptor from earlier, this hand held gizmo can wipe any active within 50 feet.  He tests it again on Kilo (second time a remote item has been tested on her.)  Later, in the bowels of the house, he tells Adelle that he finished it months ago and has been stalling.  Between some tech he saw at Bennett’s lab and this Remote Wipe, he’s been able to sort out that Harding has been getting components build by all 22 (now 23) houses.  The end result being a giant device that could imprint un-architectured minds in a large area.  In short, making a huge number of actives out of ordinary people.  Adelle is shocked, but betrays Topher by taking the design to Harding.

This ends up securing her the LA house but Topher is furious.  She doesn’t care and it’s obvious she’s been planning this for some time.  She’s colder and more calculating than previously thought by anyone.  She pulls Topher off R&D and puts him back on active duty (heh.)  It’s then that Ballard and Langton arrive with Echo.  They put her in the chair and are ready to wipe her, relieved that her headaches will go away, but Adelle says she’s special and they should see what she’s capable of instead.

Side note:  Harding catches Sierra and Victor making out after Topher’s demonstration.  Topher zaps them out of their researcher imprint but they continue to “group.”  Harding says it’s not a problem, it happens all the time.  The fix is to separate them, Sierra would make a good candidate for Dubai.

With six episodes left (in the entire show) we’re building up to what eventually will be the dystopian world of “Epitaph One” in which normal people can be remotely imprinted by any technology and rebels fight back by avoiding it altogether.  It would appear that Harding’s technology may come to fruition, the question remains who is brought down in the process of trying to stop him.  Whiskey may be involved very soon, as well as Alpha.  Remember, Whiskey was the only one we saw in Epitaph One (spoilers.)

The performances in Dollhouse continue to improve and even Echo was not impossible to watch this time.  It’s easy to see that the show’s strength has always been its overall story and not individual assignments, but without those assignments Echo wouldn’t be the person she is now.  Should we have listened to Whedon when he asked for patience?

Four and a half out of five doll heads.