Mrs. Lonely Hearts is back and desires the services of Roger.  He cuts her short saying there’s someone else, to which she is incredulous, knowing full well there isn’t and that there must be a game being played against her.  Victor’s contract is up and she wanted “one more go ’round.”

Topher tells Boyd that Paul Ballard’s brain has been scrubbed clean, there’s absolutely nothing there.  Adelle confronts Topher about what she thinks is a joke against Mrs. Lonely Hearts.  He catches on that it’s her but he didn’t know.  Ivy makes a broken hip joke as Victor comes to and immediately asks for Sierra instead of “Did I fall asleep.”  Topher says it’s just grouping and it’ll go away once they’re separated.

Boyd warns Echo off seeing Paul and says Topher’s working hard on restoring him but DeWitt is watching her.  When he tells her that Victor is leaving she’s sad because she needed his help freeing everyone.  Boyd then asks Adelle to allow Echo some time with Paul and she refuses, blaming Echo for everything.  She starts drinking and wants to know more about Echo’s special brain.  She asks Boyd to handle his release.  Victor and Sierra are having breakfast when a handler asks Victor to have his treatment.  Echo warns him he should say goodbye to her.

In the chair, Victor is having his war-vet self put back in.  His name is Antonio Ceccoli and as he comes back, he thinks something is wrong because it wasn’t that long since he started the procedure.  Topher gives him a flip line about the future and robots and genetically engineered dinosaurs.  Antonio, Tony, has also had his PTS cured.  His release story is that he was in a VA hospital and that for a while he’ll need to come in for check ups.  Boyd gives him the exit interview and they drop him off.  A zoom lens finds him and takes several shots.

Tony finds his new apartment and tries to find some order and some reason.  He spends a lot of quiet moments watching TV, bathing, sitting, staring into the distance.  Sierra is still waiting for Victor, Echo tells her he’s not coming back.  Sierra says she’s sad, but for him.  He’s not ready to be by himself.  At a bar, Tony thinks he sees Sierra but it’s just a lady who looks like her.  Later that night he tries to sleep but can’t in the bed, rather he puts a pillow in the bathtub and goes out like a light.  As if to push home the point, we fade to Sierra going to sleep in her box.  Echo leaves hers and goes to Paul’s room but he’s not there.  She uses her new key card to visit Adelle who’s still drinking.  She says Paul’s been moved.  The two verbally jab each other and it ends with Echo telling Adelle to pick a side; her or Rossum.

Some men in black masks and guns break into Tony’s house.  He fights them for a time but is eventually beat down and a hood is put over his head.

Topher tells Boyd that Victor/Anthony is in trouble.  Boyd gets Echo to investigate.  Echo uses her recall to find a personality to process the room; inside job, professional.  Anthony is questioned by soldiers, one of whom he knows.  The soldier talks about how they were “broken” and the government promised to fix them.  They can give Anthony something to fight for, he agrees.  At the training facility, a soldier puts a chip in Anthony’s neck and he drifts into a collective view, a group mind.  Echo and Boyd trace the activity to a Rossum server and Echo hacks it, a company called Scytheon and a group called Mind Whisper; a way to communicate by neural radio, group think.  Boyd tries to tell Adelle but she’s drunk and useless.  Paul and Topher discuss acting quickly or they lose Victor for good.  Echo is loaded with all kinds of military personalities.

Echo’s fully loaded but needs one more thing; Sierra.  They bring Priya back and she freaks out because she didn’t want to remember Nolan, but he needs her to remember that she loved Victor.  The two drive to a remote location and let themselves be captured.  DeWitt is passed out on her desk.  Hooded, the two women are escorted in.  Echo subdues the guards (remember the blind girl?)  But the guards seeing Priya means Anthony has too.  He shows up but is in soldier mode and pins Priya and points a gun at her.

The group think is strong but Anthony eventually fights it off and sides with Echo and Priya.  Echo knocks him out because he’s still connected and goes off to change the programming.  Harding calls Adelle and informs her of the break in.  She’s drunk and wanders off to find out what’s going on.  Boyd calls her drunk and vengeful toward Echo.  She yells at him but leaves her drink behind.  Echo breaks into the chip implanting room and puts one in her neck.  Anthony runs into his friend and they stand off for a time but then he lets the two go.  However, the group think soldiers gun his friend down.  DeWitt showers off her drunk.  Echo gets a chip in her neck which brings all 40+ minds into the group, trying to overwhelm them.  She succeeds and the soldiers go home.

Echo is driving the three away and they share a cute moment.  It’s short lived as they all get hit with a brain zapper.  Adelle is back in control of at least herself, wearing all black to boot.  She’s taken Boyd away and has Echo in a chair with orders to Topher to wipe her for good and prep her for The Attic.  Topher starts the process, says I’m sorry and zaps Echo all to hell.  Adelle says to do the same to Victor and Sierra.  We move to a spartan room where tables are filling with a stasis gel.  Victor and Sierra and Echo are comatose and sealed into the tables with plastic and the entire thing is vacuum sealed.  As the vacuum is pumping out Echo’s table, her eyes snap open.

Which brings me to the idea of The Attic.  It’s an odd concept that we have, dealing with problems.  Adelle choses to make her problems disappear rather than working through them.  She’s a cold administrator and not a technician.  She wants the books balanced and is not interested in discovery or resolution.  The Attic is a concept, hence it’s spartan nature, by which any seemingly insurmountable problem with a broken doll can be easily locked away, but not dealt with directly.  She’s sweeping it under the rug.

But it’s also a waste of effort and money.  It’s elaborate and needlessly prone to failure.  Why not shoot them in the head and then cremate the body?  Why keep them around at all?  It’s the same with Alpha earlier on.  They had him in the LA Dollhouse but no one took a shot at him.  Boyd carries a gun as does Paul.  They were both within range but no one even tried.  They all want to stick these busted brains into Topher’s chair to fix them instead of just eliminating them.

It’s cold and it’s heartless, but I couldn’t help but think that The Attic is a staging ground for later plots and not the purgatory Adelle made it out to be.  Their problems aren’t going to go away, they’re going to fester and gather resentment and hatred until they are eventually freed and let lose upon those who were responsible.  Despite Adelle’s callous and clinical evilness, she’s deathly afraid of what Echo represents but her only choice is to store her away as though the mere act of ordering it is enough to sate her thirst for vengeance.  Adelle craves power and her recent knock down to the lower rung of assistant has galvanized her, illogically,  against Echo and damn the rest of the world.

Joss Whedon is quite adept at bringing us into a show in the midst of a problem, resolving it but then bringing up a new issue to leave us with until next time.  It’s a classic serial device and one that wasn’t used a lot in the first season.  There were tidbits but the end always had the doll wiped and the engagement over.  Now we’re building toward a final confrontation and we just have to see who’s left standing.

Four out of five creepy doll heads. I would have rated higher but I felt the Rossum group think soldier angle was a little jarring and misplaced.  Either a regular Rossum army or maybe a rogue set of group think soldiers, but not both.  They have doll technology, why do this patchwork brain tech?