Guess who’s back?  That’s right, season one baddie Alpha makes a return to wreck havoc upon the Dollhouse.

Alpha talks to a man who went broke making repeated engagements with Echo.  Alpha kills him.  Victor has been programmed as a psychologist in charge of asking an isolated and straight-jacketed echo who she is and if her headaches are worse.  He doesn’t provide much, but Adelle is tormenting Echo to make Paul squirm.  Boyd Langton tells him as much.  ”Man up!”  Topher is back at his erasing and imprinting job.  Adelle tells Boyd and Paul they should send Echo out.  She’s still the top requested client.  She comes into the lab to get an imprint, but since it’s a repeat client, she recalls the persona and heads out, no chair needed.  Topher reconsiders his future.

Echo’s engagement finds a man who would be her “husband” sitting at a table all alone with his throat slashed.  But the body was moved, the man killed days ago.  Someone set this up.  Flowers on the table have a note from Alpha to Echo.  They also contain a clue to the next victim.  Paul and Boyd find the man on his roof with Alpha, tied to a chair with explosives wrapped around his body.  After some playful banter by Alpha, he blows the man up in no uncertain terms and detail.

Sierra comes in for a treatment but as she’s about to go under, she mentions Alpha’s name.  The Dollhouse is in full Y2K and starts wiping all actives and tracing all of Echo’s past romantic engagements.  They end up with Joel Mynor, the internet tycoon from season 1.  Using Echo, and against Adelle’s orders, they bring him to the Dollhouse for protection but Alpha is already there.  After showing Adelle some photos (which we can’t see yet) they head down to the main floor.  Ballard and Langton see him on the monitor but it’s too late.  He exits the elevator, activates a gizmo and all the dolls turn into crazed fighting machines taking out all the staff they can find.  Everyone scatters.

Eventually they make their way to the sleeping chambers where they decide to try to get Topher’s Remote Wipe device.  Alpha has come up to the lab, and captured Joel.  When Paul arrives to rescue him, a brainwashed Victor stabs him with a syringe and Paul goes out.  When he comes too, Alpha has him hooked up and begins talking about love.  He’s obsessed with why, for three months together, Paul never made a move on Echo.  The photos are of Echo and Paul “playing house.”  He’s going to study his brain to find out what about Paul makes him so special to Echo.  He makes a comment about Adelle as he’s zapping Paul but the brain mapping goes wrong and Paul is rendered brain dead.

Echo arrives and begins a lengthy duel of fisticuffs with Alpha right after he gets out of the chair.  They crash onto the main floor and just as Echo is about to pummel Alpha’s face with a rock, Paul begins speaking through him.  He says to end his life, but Echo can’t and so Alpha returns to consciousness and flees.  Topher and Boyd zap all the dolls to a blank slate.

Joel decides to leave.  It’s obvious Alpha wasn’t after him and he’s rich enough to afford protection.  He says goodbye to the Rebecca imprint in Echo.  The Dollhouse licks its wounds.  Joel says for Echo to live on for him.  Echo then goes to Paul who is hooked up to a breathing machine and says to live on for her while Adelle watches on.

“A Love Supreme” is an action oriented episode that plays to the strengths of its cast.  Alan Tudyk is again completely enjoyable as Alpha.  He’s clever, intelligent, demented and charming and I find myself rooting for him as I would the Joker or V or any other anarchist whose motives are idealistically self centered but almost noble in they way they want to upset the status quo.  The first time we meet Alpha, it’s in the midst of (and the saving grace of) the first season.  This time, the previous episodes have already stood on their own so the character of Alpha is an integral part rather than a sweeps gimmick.  When he’s about to mind fry Paul and tells him what he saw between Paul and Echo was love, he adds, “DeWitt thought so too.”

That small, nearly lost line could mean a lot in coming episodes.  Alpha and DeWitt have something between them more than the Administrator/Tool role we’ve been lead to believe.  I have a feeling DeWitt (as seen in her latest betrayal over Topher) might be orchestrating something bigger than she’s letting on and possibly using Alpha as a tool yet again.  How would he know that Paul has feelings for Caroline/Echo?  How would he know that Adelle thought as much and was using Paul with it as leverage?  It’s a throw away line, but I think it’s a sneak at what may lie in store.

I’m partial to shows where order is upset by the machinations of a psychotic genius.  If those include a lot of snappy banter, some hand to hand combat and a weapon that zaps brains, then you’ve got a mix for an excellent episode.

Why did you have to wait so long, Dollhouse?

Four and a half out of five creepy doll heads.