Here it is, the finale of the show we all loved before it came out, then figured it would be canceled, then loved, then immediately hated, then hated some more but stuck with it, then loved for this short time in October, then REALLY hated, then received a great Christmas gift from so loved again and are now sad that it’s over.

Okay, well maybe just me.

Dollhouse has been an emotional roller coaster for its fans.  It’s never been, as the kids on the tubes say, “meh.”  It’s always been really well done or so bad you’d start surfing the shopping channels.  There were episodes I don’t even think Mike Rowe could have saved and he’s good in everything.  Then there were times when I felt like fans of Empire Strikes Back did when they found out Lucas wasn’t directing it and it was a lot better.  Joss didn’t direct this last episode and in the writing credits he’s listed as Creator.  Does that mean he wasn’t involved?  Not likely.  He was probably on set to do a final heart felt wrap up speech before being whisked away by Lycans to his steampunk castle hovering high above the shores of Malibu.  But the day to day tasks were given to his brother, his sister in law and some guy named Andy.  Andy wrote for Bionic Woman too but I don’t think we should bring that up just yet.

To completely lose the casual viewer (which at this point, are there any?) we start with a recap of a show that never aired.  Really FOX?  You didn’t air “Epitaph: 1.”  Why are you recapping it?  Oh, because you think the fans have all bought the DVD and saw it or at the very least downloaded it somewhere illegally but totally justifiably?

Fair enough.

Well, let’s quickly recap so we can move on with the sequel to the show no one saw.  The year is 2019.  Rossum’s weaponized brain programming has ruined the world.  There are scant individuals who have avoided the signal, they are called Actuals.  They are constantly on the move, always looking for safe places to hide away from technology.  Anything that can send a signal can turn you into a “butcher” or a “scavenger.”  They eventually find a place to hide deep underground where no signal can reach them, it turns out to be the LA Dollhouse.

The episode then becomes a series of flashbacks, showing how we arrived at this point.  After the events in Tuscon, Rossum either sold the tech to China or it was stolen.  The Chinese then used it against the US but it infected the whole world.  What remains of the staff and actives in the LA Dollhouse have holed up, trying to stay away from both the army of Rossum and the savage killers Rossum created.  We even go back far enough to see Topher saying he can slim down the imprinting process and the point Paul Ballard becomes Echo’s handler.

Back in the future, the Actuals run across Whiskey who stayed behind to tell whoever showed up that there’s a wedge with Caroline in it ready to be loaded.  Whoever wants to take on the role of rebel leader should do it.  The actuals load the little girl up and the remaining three head up to Adelle’s one time office to escape, presumably to find Safe Haven, a place where the unimprinted can go to be safe.  The flashbacks end with Paul and Echo busting into the LA Dollhouse to say it’s time to leave.

On to episode two.  We’re in the year 2020.  Butchers have found Zone (Zack Ward,) Mag (Felicia Day) and the little girl Iris/Caroline and they run.  Zone is depressingly cynical, Iris/Caroline is creepy mature (not unlike Eliza Dushku.)  They’re jumped in what they thought was a safe place and taken to Neuropolis, aka Tuscon.  Iris tells them Safe Haven is near the enemy base so they could raid the tech and get the vaccine.  In a high office, Matthew Harding (in a younger but overweight body) talks to Clive Ambrose (in a younger and scrawnier body) about getting a new “suit.”  They march in a few naked “dumb-shows” from which Harding can pick.  One is Paul Ballard.  Harding freaks when he hears he was brought in with woman.  Paul head butts Ambrose.  Back in the Cell, adult Echo beats up a guard and shoots Harding in the head.  Iris and Echo meet helping a wounded person, Paul finds a lunatic Topher.  Harding was making Topher build something to wipe the whole planet at once, but Topher was secretly working on a way to fix it all.

In a a garden, by a nice house, Adelle DeWitt harvests strawberries and tells a boy named T to go show his mom, Priya.  Over dinner, Paul and Echo arrive and recap what they found about Topher and the restoration pulse.  In order to survive the pulse and get what Topher needs they have to go to the Dollhouse.  Zone freaks, saying they just came from there and isn’t there a vaccine.  The main gate alarm goes off and they run out with shotguns to great a large armored truck.  Some cyberpunk looking folk disarm them and Anthony crawls out of the top of the truck.  He’s speaking Russian? and then puts a small disk up to his head and changes back to English, say they got the message and how can they help.

Priya doesn’t like Anthony’s choice of being a tech head, Echo says they need him but Priya doesn’t want to go back (but does anyway.)  We also get the idea that T is the offspring of Priya and Anthony, no surprise there.  Mag has a crush on the Asian tech head (Kilo.)  The tech trucks heads to LA, Kilo shows Zone that they load stuff into their heads one at a time to stay sane.  Priya and Anthony fight over technology and what they have to do.  Paul and Echo talk about what’s going to happen, Paul calls her the loneliest person he knows.  They arrive to a giant mob of butchers.

The group loads up and the top turret on the truck opens up into the mob.  They make their way to the underground entrance.  They get in but Mag’s legs get all shot up.  As Paul goes to pull to safety, he takes a bullet in the head.  The rest get underground.  They arrive in a well lit and cleaned up Dollhouse full of actives (who want to be their best) and Alpha who meets and greats everyone cordially, talking about past fights and how he’s trying to give everyone a new life.  Adelle, Echo and Topher start looking for tech that they’ll need when Kilo and the other tech heads pull their guns.  They want new imprints and they’ll kill Topher.

Anthony and Alpha arrive to diffuse the situation, and they and Echo beat them down.  Topher remembers something and runs off to his bed in the sleeping chambers not for the tech but for an idea.  Priya smashes Anthony’s USB tags.  Echo tries to talk her down, chiding her for not seeing Anthony’s love for her and ends up snapping and turning it on her sadness about Paul.

Topher and Alpha watch an old video while building something.  The video is of Bennett giving a lecture, he needed one piece of info to finish.  The device also requires a manually triggered explosion from high up, Adelle’s office.  Topher was planning on sacrificing himself.  Priya brings T to Anthony and introduces him as the boy’s father.  Adelle is saddened by Topher’s sacrifice.  Zone comes to tell Mag that he’s going with Adelle to help the actives, namely Iris, and to give her crap for crushing on Kilo.  Adelle tells Echo that Alpha left, he wants to be alone in case he reverts to what he was before, a serial killer.  They say goodbye and Adelle reminds her to dismantle the tech, starting with the chair.

Topher takes his bomb to the office as Adelle marches the actives/dumshows out.  Iris says she’s lucky, she gets to start over.  Topher sets off the bomb just as he sees the wall of photos in Adelle’s old office.  The pulse goes out, the people wake up.  Echo finds an envelope on the chair, she plugs in the drive and goes into Matrix world where she meets Paul’s imprint.  The music video montage plays out while Echo walks around the dollhouse and sees Mag in Kilo’s room and Priya and Anthony reading to little T.  She stops in the sleeping chamber and lays down in her bed.

-fin-

And so ends what I like to call the most tortured show on TV.

But there’s a problem.  I can’t resolve in my head the timeline of events.  Something about what happened to Claire and then Alpha and then Paul and then the new people in Mag and Zone and Iris and how Echo was there, then not and how they were trying to reach Safe Haven like they didn’t know where it was, then it was there, and Alpha was running it…

We last left Claire beaten down in a hallway in Rossum with a Clyde 2.0 imprint in her brain.  Alpha had left the LA Dollhouse after another attempt at Echo via Paul.  Echo beat him down but in the end it wasn’t worth it, he just left.  Paul and Echo were apparently fighting  butchers but to get to the Dollhouse that Adelle and Topher and Claire had holed-up in.  Which means at some point those folks were separated.  But Echo had to make copies over herself in case something happened and to help other people, people that were guided once they reached the Dollhouse by a Whiskey that was a dumbshow/doll.  So not long after Rossum finds and invades the Dollhouse and its denizens flee to the country, leaving Whiskey behind, Mag and Zone bring Iris there.  She’s imprinted with Echo and they leave to find Safe Haven.  But they are captured and taken to Neuropolis, but then are freed by Paul and Echo and go back to Save Haven, which is the Dollhouse.

Unless Safe Haven was that farm with Priya and Adelle, but I really thought Alpha was the one who created Safe Haven in the Dollhouse because it was far enough underground to avoid the imprint signal.

So, here’s the main problem.  The show is over.  There will likely be zero people reading this who are as befuddled as I am.  If there was a chance FOX would change their mind and order another season, I could see this all being a problem.  But they won’t and they can’t because the show is over.  We came all the way from the tech being created and abused, through the end of the world, back to its rebirth.  We have seen every loose end tie up but we’re left with a messy middle.  Reportedly Joss Whedon had pitched this as a five year show making what happened in season two a bit of a hurry up.  I don’t know if Boyd was originally the main guy at Rossum but it makes sense.  I don’t know if Paul was going to die.  I don’t know if there was supposed to be more between Mag and Kilo or Iris and Zone (don’t judge me) but we just won’t know.

I was happy the way it ended.  ”Epitaph 2″ was decent enough to leave me not wanting more but satisfying enough that I don’t feel it wasted my time.  It’s a shame the rush and the build up likely made this show better than it had been or possibly deserved to be.

Four out of five creepy doll heads.