SPOILERS BELOW FOR EVERYTHING THAT HAS BEEN AIRED TO DATE
For the second episode in a row, Dollhouse gives us a disorienting teaser. This week it revolves around Sierra, who we find selling trinkets and artwork at the beach. It appears to be a flashback, but later, at a party being thrown by wealthy doctor and scumbag Nolan to celebrate a painting she has created for him, we see both Echo and Victor. So is this before or after Nolan has Sierra “sent” to the Dollhouse? Turns out it’s before, and the two actives on hand have been tasked with talking Nolan up so that Sierra — Priya, actually — will fall in love with him. It doesn’t work, of course. In fact, she almost leaves the party with Victor.
“Belonging” is the first Dollhouse episode (other than “Epitaph One”) to let Echo fades into the background. Dichen Lachman and Fran Kranz are the stars of this outing, and that was kind of refreshing. When Echo brings one of Sierra’s disturbing paintings to Topher, he tells her he hasn’t observed any problems with Sierra. “Maybe you’re not looking hard enough,” she responds. Topher discovers a collection of paintings in Dr. Saunders’ office, along with notes about “the bad man”. Saunders believed the bad man was Topher, but he rejects that out of hand. Being brilliant, Topher quickly pieces together that Sierra was made psychotic by drugs administered to her by Nolan. This is significant, because Sierra was brought to the Dollhouse as a means of curing her paranoid schizophrenia. If she was deliberately made that way, then the Dollhouse has been guilty of slavery.
Adele is outraged, and summons Nolan to her office. He’s a VIP with Rossum, however, and demands that Sierra be permanently imprinted and delivered to be his wife. Another Rossum bigwig, Matthew Harding (Keith Carradine) agrees, and implicitly threatens Adele with the attic if she doesn’t comply (“You won’t like our early retirement program.”). Topher also objects, but Adele chides him by pointing out that while everyone at the Dollhouse was hired for having compromised their morals, that doesn’t apply to him: “You’re here because you have no morals. You’ve always viewed human beings as playthings. That’s not a judgment. You’ve always taken very good care of your toys.” Topher finally agrees, reluctantly, to give Sierra the permanent imprint.
He doesn’t give her the imprint he’s supposed to, however. As anyone with half a brain could have predicted, Topher gives her back her original personality. So when Nolan’s perfect woman shows up at his door, it turns out to be Priya. There’s some irony in that, I guess, since Priya was the woman that he wanted in the first place. But after goading him by talking about how she fell in love with someone even as a blank slate, he begins slapping her around, and she kills him.
Despite the generally predictable nature of what transpired before this, I was fascinated by all the moving parts. Did Adele push Topher over the edge toward making a moral decision by accusing him of being wholly amoral? Did Topher know the encounter between Priya and Nolan would turn violent? And perhaps the biggest question of all, since a legally insane person wouldn’t have been able to consent to a five-year contract with the Dollhouse, why did it suddenly become outrageous to Adele and Topher when they learned Sierra had been drugged? Was Adele bothered by the moral implications of slavery, or was she just angry about being deceived? Does Sierra — who we learn, by the way, is not the first Sierra — “belong” in the Dollhouse? Does she belong to Nolan? Does Topher belong there? Does Adele? What kind of people are these anyway? It seems like no one is really free.
The remaining quarter of the show didn’t pack as much punch as the first three acts — Boyd shows up at Nolan’s house and helps Topher and Priya dispose of Nolan’s body, along with concocting an explanation for his disappearance — but there was a nice scene at the end between Topher and Priya where she, devastated by what she’s done, asks him to wipe the whole day from her memory. Somewhat disturbingly (to me, anyway) she has to go back to being a doll, but when she wakes up from being an active for the last time, she doesn’t want to know anything about the murder. Will that make things any better for her? She’s still going to remember what Nolan did to her, and that wound isn’t going to be any less fresh (unless they do some kind of neurological mumbo jumbo like they did with November). Topher, for his part, is equally horrified but doesn’t have the option of forgetting.
But it’s hard to argue that Nolan didn’t deserve his fate. As if it’s not bad enough that he kidnapped Priya, drugged her, drove her crazy, and arranged for her to be taken in by the Dollhouse so she could be made more pliant to his desires, he also did try to kill her when she again refused him at his house. Her sense of morality is clearly very different from the rest of the characters — killing is wrong no matter what, I guess — but it’s notable that Topher is also affected, perhaps because he feels he forced Priya to do it.
In the end, Priya goes back to being a doll, and walks down to the spiral staircase to meet Victor, who has been sitting on the floor waiting for her all night. Is there a sweeter romance on television right now than the one between Sierra and Victor? The moment in the show with the two painting each other’s faces was nice, and gave us an interesting — albeit brief — Victor flashback, where he remembered being a soldier during a battle (Sierra’s painted face is also called back to later when she finds herself covered in blood after stabbing Nolan). Good stuff, especially their little snuggle session in the shared pod at the episode’s end.
Echo wasn’t completely absent from the episode. After handing over the painting to Topher, Echo spends the rest of the episode perplexing Boyd by reading. I didn’t catch what the book was, but for some reason I remember it being Paradise Lost. Anyway, he’s skeptical that she would want to read a book with no pictures, but she assures him that she’s able to follow some of it. However, after Boyd discovers the book (with a little leaf as a bookmark), he manages to completely overlook that Echo has been taking notes on her pod’s glass door to help keep track of everything she knows and all the personalities she’s had.
I was trained to kill.
Victor loves Sierra.
My son killed me.
Dominic was bad.
Women are whores.
Echo is messed up. But she confesses to Boyd that she fears “a storm is coming”, and she wants to make sure everyone in the Dollhouse survives it. Boyd later leaves a gift for her: an all access keycard. Echo now has the run of the place (including, presumably, the freedom to leave). It’s interesting. For a titular head of security, Boyd seems to have no concern whatsoever about dolls not knowing their place — especially Echo. When she asks him if she’s in trouble for reading the book, he responds blandly, “Not with me.”
The evolution of Topher from smug puppet-master to destroyed, regretful Dr. Frankenstein is one of the more compelling story-lines of the series, so I’m glad to see that continuing week-to-week. I also enjoyed Harry Lennix’s assured deadpan skills while Topher explains the intricacies of the human brain: “I’ll take your word for it.” And yet, this episode felt like a missed opportunity. The performances were strong, but the plot was by-the-numbers, and the final act fizzled out. But it did manage to demonstrate that there are ways to make the characters come through even when personalities aren’t permanent.
I wanted to love it, but I only liked it. But perhaps more importantly, I love where we’re going.
Rating: 
With the start of November sweeps, Dollhouse is now off the air until December, when the network plans to run two episodes at a time. After that, who knows? Enjoy it while it lasts. The ratings for this episode where down 20% over the previous one, though the DVR numbers will probably look better than that.
