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.

(I’d suggest reading Topless Robot’s Nerd Commandments, especially the parable of the Nerd Bastard and the Fox.)

Two years ago, Caroline fights back against Boyd and his smug assertion that she’s going to help him.  But now we find out what they want from her.  Rossum is in many bio research fields.  They provide MRIs and are tops in neural research.  Boyd says they have facilities all over the world and can tell if someone donates bone marrow to a cousin with leukemia.  Caroline reacts to that and Boyd says her medical history is interesting on a microscopic level.  Her options are life in federal prison (or maybe death) for terrorist acts or take the offer.

Anthony and Priya arrive back at the Dollhouse to find it dark and deserted.

Paul, Adelle and Mellie are waiting for a chopper and Echo.  Mellie leans in to kiss Paul but he dodges it.  Boyd and Topher arrive bringing a panicked Echo screaming that she’s on fire.  They sedate her and believe that her Caroline and Echo personae aren’t getting along.  But it doesn’t change the game plan.  Boyd is adamant about continuing and Adelle says they should walk in the front door.  While it’s interesting to watch Boyd now that we know who he really is, his allegiances and motivations remain unclear.

Anthony and Priya look around the abandoned house and find no hard drives, no security footage, but there is a sticky note with a smiley on it saying “Press Enter” stuck to the chair.  Priya is doubtful about using technology but Anthony talks her into it, arming her in case he turns evil (with a great “stay away from the junk” line.)  He gets in the chair and boots Topher into his body.  He sees the blood and thinks he’s dead.  In Tuscon, the ragtag and banged up group walk in the front door of Rossum where they meet Claire, but it’s not Claire, or Whiskey.  It’s Clyde in her body, but Clyde 2.0, the bad one.

Anthony/Topher tries to work out with Priya why a wedge of him was left behind.  He remembers he had a secret security camera installed.  They find the feed, play it back to see Boyd doing something to Echo while she was in the chair.  He drugged Caroline.  They figure Boyd is working for Rossum.  Clyde offers Adelle a drink and says she’s going to save the world, or at least a deserving few.  Besides, it’s not Caroline’s mind they want, but her body.  In holding cell with Paul, Topher and Mellie, Boyd pretends to be hot-wiring the lock, but ends up sneaking a proximity card over it to open the door.

Anthony/Topher is stunned it was Boyd that betrayed them.  He then offers to put Anthony back in with some enhancements.  Priya doesn’t like the idea, but A/T convinces her the good guys need a fighting chance.  The real Topher and Boyd are sneaking around Rossum and Topher tells him about the Topher 2.0 and his hope that Anthony and Priya saw it and are bringing help.  He also says the Caroline wedge was good and Echo’s acting like Sierra did when she was drugged.  Boyd doesn’t like any of this but doesn’t tip his hand.  Anthony wakes up and dispatches a couple hitmen, they decide to take the fight to Rossum.

Caroline is in a chair having a bunch of quick flashbacks, she remembers it’s Boyd.

Boyd “breaks in” to a research lab with Topher.  They find Topher’s tech fully realized.  A device that can make dolls without cranial architecture.  Boyd tries it on Topher but it doesn’t turn on.  Topher realizes they’re set up for mass production.  He starts smashing stuff but Boyd talks him out of it and into fixing one by saying they can get out without taking another life.  Paul smacks a guard down and gets some guns for him and Mellie.  They have a deep debate about self and how they feel for each other, then off to find the mainframe.  Topher fixes the Doll Gun and Boyd is impressed, saying he’s glad he chose him.  He walks off and Echo jumps in and beats him down.  Clyde/Whiskey is right behind her with a gun to her head and another to Adelle.  Echo tells Topher who Boyd really is.  Boyd asks if they really don’t know.  ”You’re here ’cause you’re my family.  I love you guys.”

Paul and Mellie make it to the cooling system.  She makes the wonderful suggestion to shut them down instead of trying to access the mainframe.  Topher ties Bennett’s killing through Claire to Boyd.  Boyd starts listing everyone’s good qualities and that he never liked Paul much.  He says the technology can’t be undone so they have to pick a side; the destroyed or the destroyers.  Boyd reminds Echo/Caroline that he protected her and that she will save them all.  There’s a neural chemical unique to Caroline that prevents imprinting, they’re going to harvest it.  He uses the Doll Gun on her.

Paul and Mellie smash some boxes in the cooling system, Boyd brings the secondary one online then tried to get Adelle to trigger Mellie’s fighting imprint.  She refuses.  In the cooling room, they hear Adelle’s voice with the code.  It’s Boyd replaying security footage.  Mellie starts hunting Paul and is about to kill him when she starts remembering.  She has him in a choke hold gun at his neck, she backs off and blows her brains out.  Caroline is strapped to a table and is lowered onto roughly 10 syringes.

There’s a knock at the door and Anthony and Priya come in to save Caroline.  She sends them to get the rest and says she’s going to try to shut the whole place down.  Topher says he needs to destroy it, just as Anthony and Priya set off flash grenades and take out the guards.  Topher says they have to wipe the tech off the face of the Earth.  Echo and Whiskey meet in a hallway and start fighting.  Paul finds Boyd in a hallway.  Paul doesn’t know, thinks the whole thing is Adelle’s fault.  Echo and Whiskey/Clyde fight right into the mainframe room.  Caroline knocks Whiskey out as Paul and Boyd show up.  Boyd pulls a gun on Paul who asks what he missed.

Echo shoots Paul in the leg so she can get to Boyd.  She and Boyd fight and he gets the better of her and at gun point she says she loved him.  Topher shoots Boyd with the Doll Gun.  He comes to asking if he fell asleep.  Echo says, “For a little while.”  A few minutes later, Echo gives Boyd a grenade to walk into the mainframe room.  We pan back as she leaves to see he’s strapped with explosives.  The building is evacuated and Echo makes it out just as the blast rips apart the research level.  Paul asks her if they saved the world, she says she guesses they did.

Ten years later.

Paul and Caroline are in a dark, screaming, gun filled future.

Boyd’s transformation weirded me out.  I can’t figure out why he wanted the gang all there.  Plus he was aloofly friendly, as though he was shocked his benevolence meant so little to the people he betrayed.  His taciturn, practical and gruff nature has been completely replaced with something of a hippie megalomaniac.  I understand he’s been playing a role, but my concern is we have to come to grips with Echo becoming Caroline, Topher’s tech taking over the world and the spinal tap cure for imprinting, but Boyd’s personality changed on top of it.  It felt like one thing too many.

We do see the beginnings of the resistance from “Epitaph One” with Priya eschewing technology.  This small group is the seedlings of the movement that tried to rid itself of imprinting that casued the world to fall apart.  I would love to recap what happens in “Epitaph One” as it will likely play a part in what we’ll see in the final episode, but in going over the notes I took from watching it, there are a lot of inconsistencies.  We’ll have to wait to see what “Epitaph Two” holds in store for us before making a final judgement and locking the whole timeline up for good.

“The Hollow Men” was action packed; a lot of fights, even a grand explosion.  There are a few things I didn’t like, namely that the mainframe central hub is a glass encased room with the Eye of Sauron in the middle of it.  I don’t know what technology exists where an arcade game that makes you stop a light on a number to get tickets is in charge of the entire corporation, but I wish they’d stop using it.  It’s like watching a Bond movie where the computer screens are like nothing you’ve ever seen before.  And what happens to all those people?  If they’re all linked through The Attic, what happens to them when that link dies?

This episode explained a lot, but it didn’t really make me stop and catch my breath or want to rewind and relive something.  It was what it was.  I also feel a bit confused as to who I should root for in the last episode.  I mean, the entire show was based on finding out who Caroline was, then who was behind the Dollhouse and then who was running Rossum.  We’ve done all that are left with one episode so we can find out what exactly?

Having seen the unaired episode, I’m going to make a few predictions.  Rossum may have lost its Tuscon lab, but who puts all their eggs in Tuscon?  My guess is Topher’s technology has already spread.  Clyde and Boyd likely sent it to as many houses as they could.  Boyd knew Adelle was coming to them, why take the chance?  What we see ten years from now is Rossum’s continued expansion thanks to Senator Perrin’s cover that Rossum was under attack.  Echo and Paul and Adelle’s bringing down of the Tuscon house likely did very little to stop them.

So they start using the remote technology to create armies of dolls, but it gets out of hand and soon the imprints become unstable and cause people to go crazy.  A few avoid it but no one is safe.  However, there is someone who has set up a bastion of normal humanity, Alpha.  He knows the cure and is using it to keep humans free from imprinting.  Now it’s up to Caroline and Paul and anyone else who can still fight, to stop the madness.  But the team will eventually lose and have to make contingency plans.  They’ll seal off the dollhouses and leave instructions with Caroline’s imprint.  She’s immune and anyone receiving her pattern can lead the rebellion again.

Don’t ask me why I think Alpha has the cure.  He didn’t leave Caroline in such a good state.  But perhaps he sorts out that her spinal fluid is the way people can be saved and in the end tries it on himself in order to free the other minds.  He’s smart enough to get the information from Rossum and test it.  I don’t know where he’d get the kindness to do so or the redemptive qualities to acknowledge what he’s done, but it’s one of the last strings not tied up.

We’ll know this coming Friday.

Four out of five creepy doll heads.

Caroline uses a horny middle management suit to get into an executive office.  She handcuffs him and rifles through the files.  She finds a file on herself (Caroline Farrell) and one for Bennett noted with “Full Scholarship.”  She hits a remote and opens a video cabinet and sees security feeds into the Dollhouse.

Back to present, the group plans on using Caroline to find Clyde’s partner and bring Rossum down.  They don’t know what putting Caroline back in will do to Echo.  They put her in the chair as Ivy gets the wedge but it’s gone.

Bennett Halverson is on a campus of Tuscon Institute of Technology trying to find a place to eat.  Caroline fake pukes her way to an occupied table and the two begin talking.  Bennett is studying neurology, Caroline is studying broadly.  They hit it off.  Adelle and Echo watch a Caroline video and chat about what happened to Caroline’s wedge.  Topher and Ivy set up a “ghost chair” linked to Bennett’s chair in Washington.  They’re imprinting a doll that wakes and grabs Bennett’s neck and unlocks the door.  Anthony and Paul show up and grab Bennett, but Paul sees Madeline and says they can’t leave yet.  Back at the LA Dollhouse, Bennett makes some comments and is then taken to Topher’s lab.  Topher gets all spastic about her, Adelle tells Boyd they’ll be going into full lock down mode.  Echo and Paul talk about Madeline/November and it’s obvious Paul’s missing something toward Echo.

Topher and Bennett get cute again when working on Caroline’s destroyed wedge.  Just before they kiss, Bennett asks who’s on the wedge and then sees Echo.  Flashback to Caroline and Bennett being all roommate-like, talking about her big job.  Bennett says no one’s ever taken an interest in her before as Echo spies her Rossum ID badge.  Boyd goes “home” where Whiskey is waiting with wine and candles.  He tells her it’s time for her to come in and they kiss.

Topher is in the clinic with a fat lip.  Echo asks what he did to Paul.  Topher tries to defend himself by saying in order to save him, he had to do major rewiring and it was either live as a vegetable or lose his love for Echo.

(What Tohper is talking about is something referenced in the last episode.  They can put an active architecture over Paul’s brain, but the only thing large enough to interpret the signals would be the motor cortex or the cingulate gyrus.   The cingulate gyrus is a small medial section of the brain, if you imagine the brain as a muffin, the CG is an area that lives between the base and the top.  The CG, among other things, controls emotion formation.  In this case, Paul’s love for Echo, though that’s a highly targeted emotion.  Considering the CG also controls learning, it’s doubtful Paul will really function properly ever again.  What’s odd is he still cares for Madeline, but not Echo.  It doesn’t add up.)

After his explanation, Doc Saunders/Whiskey says she’ll help him with his lip.  Echo makes a comment about Boyd being all tardy and sleepy when Adelle walks up and asks where Bennett is.  She does a double take to Saunders.

We flash back to Whiskey in the real Saunder’s office.  Adelle and Laurence discuss how the security guard let a woman in who took files, Caroline’s and Bennett’s.  He tells Adelle the two are rooming together.  Back at Tuscon Tech, Bennett confronts Caroline about the files she found in the closet.  Caroline comes clean about why she picked Bennett and who she is.  Bennett flips it by asking Caroline why she can’t help.

Boyd and Echo talk about who she is and who Caroline is, he’s very proud of her.  He has to put the house on lockdown, so she rushes off and kicks Anthony and Priya out so they can be with each other.  Just as she closes the door, a weakened Laurence in Attic attire comes to tell her Clyde’s dead and Rossum’s coming.

Given the information, Adelle decides to restore all dolls to their original personalities and then close the house down.  They’re going to Tuscon.  Back three years ago in Tuscon, Caroline and Bennett have sneaked into Rossum.  Bennett runs surveillance while Caroline plants charges.  During her task, she spies a lab that’s not on the map that has people in it.  Against Bennett’s judgement she goes into investigate.  There are subjects in tanks and as she shines a light on one it starts singing opera, another jumps up and grabs her.  They try to abort the mission but we hear and explosion as we fade to white.

Doc Saunders says Laurence needs to go to a hospital.  Adelle says his best chance is in The Attic, which he doesn’t quite like but there’s no time.  Adelle introduces Paul to Mellie and she finally meets Caroline.  Mr. Ambrose is in Adelle’s office with some muscle, he’s there to get rid of Adelle and take over.  Nobody comes out of The Attic.  There’s gun fire and Boyd takes Ambrose and his men out.  But he’s also been hit.  (Note:  There are four men:  Ambrose, Boyd, two bodyguards.  Boyd fires four times.  Two shots we see hitting the two guards, a third hitting Ambrose in the forehead.  The guards never get their guns drawn.  We see only three bullets impact a target.  Where does the fourth bullet go?  Remember that.)

Three years ago, the explosion at Rossum has brought the ceiling down on Bennett.  Caroline pins her badge back on her telling her to tell them she was working late when it happened.  If they’re going to nab anyone, it’d be better if it was just Caroline.  The she leaves.  In the present, Echo makes a deal with Bennett that she can have Caroline when she’s done.  Back in the lab, Topher and Ivy are cycling through dolls to get them out.  One is actually Rick Fox, Eliza Dushku’s real life boyfriend.  This is sort of like seeing Kilo who is played by Maurissa Tancharoen, a writer and story editor of the show.  The cute music plays while Bennett and Topher agree to work together on the wedge.

Boyd is packing to go on the run at Adelle’s orders.  Clair is sad and doesn’t want him to go.  They wish they had more time and he says he’ll come back for her.  Ivy leaves Topher and Bennett alone as they nerd out over technology.  He kisses her which hurts his lip, they kiss a lot and he goes to get another tool.  Claire/Whiskey comes in and talks to Bennett saying good things about her and Topher.  As Topher comes back in she shoots Bennett in the head, spraying blood and brains all over Topher.

Three years ago, Laurence and Adelle nab Caroline.  Adelle gets a call and they send Caroline upstairs to meet the head of the company.  Back in the present Adelle and the others try to comfort Topher and keep their war going.  The building power starts shutting down, Topher kicks Ivy out, wanting her to live and prosper.  Explosives rock the compound and agents repel in.  Paul goes to get more weapons, Topher sets up the wedge and Echo, Adelle makes her way out the back.  An attacker knocks Topher out but is subdued by Boyd.

Flashback to Caroline meeting the head of Rossum, Clyde Randolph.  He mentions “Rossum” is from a play and not his name or his partners, in fact the dolls aren’t really robots.  (This lead me to slap my forehead for forgetting about Rossum’s Universal Robots, a 1921 play by Karel Capek.  The term “robot” is a Czech language term that was coined by the playwright’s brother from the the word “robota.”)  He says Caroline is there to help them and she becomes agitated and rejects the idea.  That’s when Clyde’s partner appears.

Boyd Langton.

Which brings us back to the first episode.  (“Ghost” for those keeping tracking.  ”Echo” was the Pilot, which I never saw and was rewritten after reviews were apparently so bad that the entire show was reworked.)  The first episodes were all about Paul finding Caroline, but sneaked in to the fabric was Boyd Langton as something of a law enforcement misfit who ended up being Echo’s handler because he had no other options.  We never knew if he was police, FBI, Secret Service, Army, or what.  All we knew is during the course of the show, he didn’t hesitate to protect Echo with his life.  And now we know why.

Well not really.  He tells her at the end that she’s important and nothing will happen to her (LIES) and that she’ll trust him with her life.  We don’t know why she’s special, but now we see the strings being pulled together.

Caroline Farrel is an animal rights activist that was able to bloody the nose of one of the biggest abusers in the world, the Rossum corporation.  She used a brainy tech student to gain access to their headquarters but was apprehended in the process.  She’s taken up to meet the heads of the corporation and they in essence force her to become a doll.  But why?  Think of all that’s happened under Boyd’s watchful eye.

Clyde and Boyd (I’m assuming that’s his actual name) created the idea of The Dollhouse.  They tested the idea and imprinted a Clyde 2.0 who betrayed Clyde and hooked him up to a perpetual brain amping machine which would later become The Attic.  The Attic is now the target of Adelle’s little army.  The Dollhouse, this whole time, has been a cover for it.  Rossum’s been developing this brain altering technology to subject the entire world to its whims.  As we see in “The Attic” and “Epitaph One” something goes very wrong.

But this has all been under the watchful and close up eye of Boyd Langton.  He outranks Adelle, Clive Ambrose, Matthew Harding, all of them.  With Clyde out of the way in The Attic, Boyd is running the show.  But why?  What is he trying to do with this technology?  What is special about Caroline that he’s willing to subject her to years of active imprinting.  He never tried stopping her from her mission with Paul to bring the Dollhouse down.  Even when it was found that The Attic is Rossum’s mainframe, he didn’t stop her then either.  He’s using her to try to bring down his own company, but why?

It’s events like this in TV shows that make you want to watch from the beginning again and see what the reactions are.  Was this the plan all along or did Joss Whedon pull a Ronald D. Moore and bring Ellen Tigh back from the dead because he had no other option?

There were a lot of ends being tied up and the use of flashbacks running up to the events of two years ago really made “Getting Closer” work as an episode.  I feel truly sorry for Topher, but it wouldn’t be a Joss Whedon show without someone you like either dying or losing their object of affection.

Four and a half creepy dollheads.

After a few moments, Echo starts twitching and convulsing and her brain vitals go flat.  The techs arrive to check it out.  They unwrap her and say what a shame it was.  Suddenly her brain kicks back on and she chokes one of the techs and stabs the other in the eye with her head electrodes.  She subdues another technician asking where Sierra and Victor are and then uses the terminal to find them and bring them out of their suspension.  They run through the halls, Echo beats up some guards, Victor and Sierra get their guns.  Echo runs on, stops near an exit and runs back but is blocked by a clear force field or window.  Victor tries to shoot it out but to no avail.  Guards come around the corner and shoot down Victor and Sierra…sorry, Tony and Priya.  Echo screams, then “wakes up” back in the nutrient bath.

Adelle tells Topher to fix Paul, he can’t without installing Active architecture.  Boyd’s in his office and the two talk about The Attic.  People in there have their brains kept at a high adrenaline state, like a problem you can’t solve.  Cut back to Echo’s scene of escape only this time she recognizes the repeat and calmly walks off while Tony and Priya are shot.  She makes her way to what looks like the inside of the Dollhouse where it’s snowing on a giant tree.

Topher and Ivy work out what to do about Paul when Adelle calls asking for Ivy.  Topher is suspicious but says, “Darth Vader kills Lieutenants, not Stormtroopers.”  (Funny considering Adelle’s all black outfit with menacing music in the last episode.)  Echo sees and relives images and events of her past lives including people talking cryptic nonsense.  She pieces together her final moments before The Attic and then gets punched by a dark shape.  She runs into Laurence Dominic who tells her he’s been chasing this shadowy menace called Arcane.  They figure they’re both in The Attic running through all the minds that sense fear, usually new comers.  She travels from a nightmare of Topher’s lab to a Japanese tea house where a man is eating.

Topher tells Ivy her Wildcat suggestion (football formation) would work on rewiring Paul.  The idea is rewiring an area not scarred by Alpha’s wipe and use it to reroute the needed architecture so he can walk and talk, but he has to give something up.  She’s reticent to talk to him so Topher goes to Adelle.  They go back and forth until she brings up Nolan Kinnard and his dismemberment.  In Attic Space, the Japanese businessman tells her his in Tokyo and Rossum is watching him.  Elsewhere, Priya and Anthony are making out but Anthony turns into a zombie Nolan and comes after her.  Anthony is reliving a scene of battle in Afghanistan in which he ends up fighting himself.   The Japanese man tells Echo he’s there because he had info on Rossum’s weak and vulnerable mainframe.  He still doesn’t believe he’s in The Attic.  A scream and some blood stirs echo and she tries to get him to leave but he has no legs.  She flees into the kitchen where we see the man’s legs are being cooked and fed to him.  Laurence and Echo sort out that all the attics must be linked.  The shadow figure slices his neck and his world starts disappearing.

Adelle gets on Boyd for being away and distracted.  They quibble over who was at fault for Echo being in The Attic.  Echo and Laurence have to eat some leg in order to escape and they show up in Anthony’s mind just in time to save him from Arcane who is poised over him like Snake Eyes from G.I. Joe.  They fill him in on what’s going on, Anthony says they set a trap and kill him.  Priya relives her Zombie Nolan scene until Arcane shows up.  Echo, Laurence and Anthony trap him and run him out a window.  When they recover they meet Clyde, who’s been acting as Arcane.  His world is the same we see in Epitaph: One – a dystopian future, shape of things to come.

Topher and Boyd talk about what it’ll take to bring him back and how Adelle is going to drag them all down.  Clyde tells the people he’s surprised to see as aware that he’s been trying to take down Rossum by eliminating the “mainframe.”  The central hub are all the Attics tied together, all the brains acting as CPUs, soaked in adrenaline, running problems they can’t fix.  He’s killing people to stop Rossum, he knows all this because he designed it.  They flee the crazed denizens.  Clyde is one of the original founders of Rossum, he and a friend from university.

Clyde tells the group he and his friend created the idea of the architecture and dumping things into it (personae imprints) and they used Clyde’s to start.  His friend betrayed him and Clyde 2.0 put Clyde into what became The Attic, in 1993.  His nightmare, 97% of his probability calculations show the end of civilization.  He can’t remember his friend’s name or face and it’s likely Clyde 2.0 has changed bodies by now.  But Clyde said they let someone in by accident and she saw them, they suss out that it’s Caroline.  There’s no way out of the computer world without dying, unless you’re Echo, who takes a bullet on purpose saying she knows a way out.

Paul is brought back from Vegetable City and it takes a few seconds of stumbling and talking gibberish for his brain to rewire.  He realizes he’s a Doll, but he’s a Doll of himself.  After Boyd tells him the game plan, grabs his gun and goes to Adelle’s office, she has a gun drawn.  Echo’s plan is to kill herself, but she has many brains to let flat line.  Priya and Anthony agree they all go together.  Laurence and Clyde stay behind to help free people.  In a music video montage, Echo dies, frees herself (in a mirror of her nightmare.)  Anthony stabs Priya then goes outside and waits to get murdered.  Echo doesn’t seem to be able to revive Priya.

Echo tells someone she understands it all, and the plan worked.  It’s Adelle.  We flash back to when Echo was “scrubbed.”  Adelle tells her The Attic is whatever hell fits your mind.  But then she leans in and says she’s sending Echo to get information because she thinks Rossum’s big secret is in there and she wants it.  She’s using Echo to get it and come back if she can.  Back to the present, Adelle’s army of Boyd, Topher, Paul, Anthony, Priya, Ivy and Echo are all ready.  Echo says it’s time to meet Caroline.

And yes, I had to go back to “Stop Loss” to see when exactly Adelle gave Echo the speech that completely changes her character.  In just a few sentences, she went from malevolent control freak to deceptive but clever rebel leader.  She’s not working for Rossum, she wants Rossum taken down.

The conversation with Clyde really pushed the idea that the person behind it all is a man OR a woman.  It’s the pronoun farce by which we write and speak in generic terms of people we don’t know as “he” or “him” (occasionally using they or them) until it’s obvious we’re trying to be clever and we say “or her.”  It felt like we were being set up to see Adelle as the founder of Rossum with all the “or her” additions they were throwing at each other.  But with these parting words, Adelle really cemented herself as the one with the plan.

If you’re curious, in the same scene in “Stop Loss” we cut during the part when she’d be telling Echo all this to a side bit with Topher and Ivy talking about much they want things to go back to the way they were.

This episode was really well written and well played out.  It was complex to the point where I was easily confused, but I’m a troglodyte.  I felt as though I was sifting through the Matrix all over again.  Echo is so confident she knows how the Attic works, how to move around, how to bring herself back from the dead, it was easy to get lost.  Whether that was the point or not is hard to say.  But we only have three episodes in which to fight this fight.  Will it be enough?

Four out of five creepy doll heads.

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?

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.

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.

We find out that Bennett is actually not the DC Dollhouse admin, just the techie.  The actual  house runner is (Howard) Lipman.  (I say this in fun parentheses because Adelle calls him Stuart but IMDB calls him Howard.  When you’re Ray Wise I think people may call you different things.)  Bennett is not only a genius, as proclaimed by Topher, but she’s also a bit of a loose canon.  She has a major grudge against Caroline from an apparent accident that left her without the use of her left arm.  She implants Caroline with the memory of being pinned beneath a wall of concrete and left behind.

Topher and Adelle arrive in DC to try and get Echo back, but Lipman isn’t having any of it.  It’s all policy and protocol until Ms. DeWitt crushes his huevos and demands her active back.  Topher goes to Bennett’s lab where the two banter in that adorable hesitant geek way.  He calls home and talks to himself but in Victor’s body.  They work out a way to get Daniel Perrin back.

Speaking of Perrin, he and Echo have escaped.  Bennett let them go and then smashed her own head into a monitor to make it look like Echo attacked her.  (Nerd Girl is hardcore.  Word up!)  They flee but the BrainTrust^2 comes up with a way to adapt the Disrupter to target a specific brain.  Bennett changes the package at the last minute to assassin and Senator Perrin starts attacking Echo.  They fight for a while until Topher punches Bennett and turns him off.  It’s too late, he’s choked the life out of his handler/wife.

The Senator goes before the committee, where Madeline is set to testify, and pulls a complete 180.  He’s no longer hunting Rossum because he believes Rossum is being attacked by rival pharmaceutical companies and they’ve killed his wife in a car wreck to prove their point.  He apparently also has documentation that Madeline spent the last three years in a Canadian mental ward, not the Dollhouse.  He says the Dollhouse is a fantasy used to distract us from the truth.  He leaves, Madeline is sent to Bennett for reprogramming.  (Poor Millie)

Echo and Perrin removed their GPS tracking chips earlier and the last we see of Echo is of her walking the DC streets.

Of note, we have not seen Whiskey in some time.  We didn’t see Ballard this time around at all.  No Sierra and no mention of Alpha (who is apparently still at large.)  The Bennett/DC Dollhouse will likely completely take over the remainder of the show.

I feel like a Torchwood apologist for Dollhouse now.  These last three episodes were really top notch and it’s hard to tell if it’s because the show finally started working well within its own design or a combination of writers and directors finally were able to bring the show up the level the fans wanted in the first place.  There are still some directorial issues I have, even in this episode.  There are a lot of stiff deliveries, and I don’t mean things Echo does on her assignments.  Daniel Perrin is a good character, but Alexis Denisof (which sounds like name cheating) is either really horrible or they editors and sound mixers are giving him the shaft.  His delivery is what I’d expect from my Night of One Acts in high school.  Dushku’s the same way, has always been that way.  The two of them together is Soap-tastic.  But, he was in Buffy and Angel so Joss must like him.

And it’s likely not just their delivery.  Here’s an example of the writing in “The Left Hand” that made me rewind just to make sure I could lap up every drop of inanity.

“If you let them make you forget then you killed her.  Can you live with that or can you trust me?”

It’s one of the logic word problems where you have to suss it out in bits to make sense of the whole, but Echo slings it at you so fast that it sounds like emo, MySpace poetry gibberish.

But I’m dogging on an episode I really enjoyed.  Envar Gjokaj continues to impress and with his impression of Topher, he earned the high rating for them this time.

Four out of five creepy dollheads.

The last outing of Dollhouse was infuriating.  The show was such a hit and miss affair that it didn’t seem possible that it would continue.  It didn’t and around the time episode 4 aired, news came out that the show would go on hiatus for all of November.  Shortly thereafter it was announced that Fox had canceled the show, but would be letting it run out the course of its second season in its entirety, something that rarely happens.

This leads us into “The Public Eye.”  The LA Dollhouse is on shaky ground.  Sierra’s last engagement has likely scarred Topher and has left us wondering about what other evils may live in Boyd Langton’s mind.  But we see almost none of the residual trauma, we don’t even see Sierra.  Instead we’re treated to Senator Daniel Perrin and his wife Cindy shortly before a press conference in which ex-active Madeline Costley (November) gives a statement about her life as a Doll.  If you recall, she was recently visited by Adelle and gave the impression that the life of the idle rich suited her well.  Senator Perrin is using her to get to and bring down the Dollhouse and its parent corporation Rossum.

Rossum exec Matthew Harding chides Adelle for losing control of her house, and that she should do nothing to help correct the problems.  He says it’s been taken care of.  As the LA Dollhouse watches the press conference, Echo slips in and makes comments about Mr. and Mrs. Perrin and how Mrs. Perrin is not right, possibly a Doll from another house.  Topher builds a Doll zapper and tests it on a small active named Kilo.  (The joke is, she’s small like her name.  The lady playing Kilo is also one of the writers.)

Senator Perrin is going over numbers with someone on the phone when he passes out, drugged from the liquor he’s been drinking.  He awakes to find Echo (who was sent out without Paul Ballard) video taping him naked on the bed.  She’s playing the part of a hired hooker set there to ruin the Senator.  He leaves with her to go find his wife (kinky) who knows several neurologists.  She’s now evidence in his case.

Madeline and Cindy are at a safe house waiting to testify before congress.  Ballard finds Madeline (who he keeps calling Millie) and goes to zap her and Cindy with Topher’s toy.  Echo and Senator Perrin pull up in the driveway just as Ballard hits the button and Madeline, Echo and the Senator go down, but not Cindy.  The Senator is a Doll, and his wife is his handler.  Cindy’s bodyguards jump Paul.  Dennis and Echo get back in the car and run.  Ballard eventually escapes before being terminated, he heads to the airport to try and stop Madeline.  Dennis and Echo pull over and talk a bit about being Dolls before Cindy pulls up.  Echo and Cindy fight, Echo beats the stuffing out of her.  They flee again but Cindy uses the Doll Zapper™ to stop them.

Ballard is unsuccessful in talking Madeline into not testifying.  She’s free, she should be able to make mistakes.  Which is an odd thing to say, if you know it’s a mistake, why do it?  Echo and Dennis are taken to another Dollhouse where we meet Bennett Halverson (Summer Glau) and her assistant Grace (Jillian Armenante.)  Bennett’s arm is in a sling and she at first appears to be this Dollhouse’s Adelle, but as the unconscious Dennis and Echo are brought in, she starts drifting into a perfectly mental equivalent of Topher.  She’s apparently the administrator AND the techie.

Cindy shows up with the two Dolls and gives her the Doll Zapper.  Bennett recognizes it immediately as something Topher built.  She then goes to greet the Dolls.  Dennis protests but is put under for a treatment anyway.  Then she goes to Echo and calls her Caroline and says she knew she’d be back.  On goes the chair.

Other than the completely ridiculous notion that Madeline would purposefully make a choice she doesn’t believe in, or the fact that every character is becoming an active, “The Public Eye” held my interest and began showing signs of tragic life in the show.  Now it’s just a matter of playing it out.  We know (if you’ve seen Epitaph One) that the world goes to pot because of the Dollhouse(s) and so all we need is that John Conner/Skynet inception to link us to the doomed future that only the DVD buyers have seen.

If that last sentence wasn’t thoroughly depressing to you, you’re probably a fan of the show.  And it was a decent one this time.  Four out of five creepy doll heads.

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.