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: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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.

The opening scene of “Belle Chose” was one of the strangest and most disturbing thing I’ve seen on TV in quite awhile. We open on a man with an unfortunate haircut dressing mannequins for what appears to be a line of croquet-wear. But then we see that the mannequins are sweating. And then one of them tries to crawl away. What the hell is going on? At first, I assumed these were actives, and the strange man was a rich eccentric who had contracted the Dollhouse for his bizarre role playing fantasy. But no, as one poor woman tries to escape, he beats her to death with a croquet mallet. This isn’t just a fantasy; this is his real life. He just happens to have his own dollhouse.

The parallels between what this man — Terry Karrens — is doing and what the Dollhouse does are obvious but compelling. Terry immobilizes his dolls with a powerful horse tranquilizer. Adele and Topher use “the chair”. But ultimately neither has complete control over their captives. Terry is destroyed. Can the Dollhouse fare any better?

Terry is hit by a car as he prowls the streets of Beverly Hills in search of a new Aunt Sheila for his collection (after having killed the old one), and because his uncle is a major shareholder in the Rossum Corporation, he ends up in the care of the Dollhouse’s medical team. With Dr. Saunders’ whereabouts still unknown, the lesser doctors try to manage Terry’s condition as best they can. But upon scanning Terry’s brain, Topher makes a frightening discovery: Terry doesn’t use the part of his brain associated with empathy. This clearly marks him as a bad, bad man, and Topher has concerns about waking him up. “Topher has ethical concerns,” repeats Boyd. “Topher.” Harry Lennix’s deadpan was put to good use in this episode. Adele agrees, and they rouse Terry not through conventional medicine, but by implanting his personality into Victor.

With Uncle Bradley (Michael Hogan) on hand, Paul questions Victor-as-Terry, but doesn’t get very far. He’s able to determine that Terry has a group of women he’s holding captive — forcing them to pretend to be his real life mother, sisters, and aunt — but not where he’s keeping him. And before he’s able to get that last bit of information, Uncle Bradley runs off with … Victor! Thinking Paul’s techniques aren’t going to work with Terry, Bradley figures the best solution is just to ask Terry to show him his secret hideout. Victor-as-Terry instead smashes Bradley’s face against the steering wheel of his car, causing it to crash. He walks away from the accident and into the streets of Los Angeles, a dangerous psychopath at large.

Meanwhile, in a seemingly unrelated subplot, Echo is sent on an engagement as Kiki, a dim, college party girl in search of a better grade in her medieval literature class. The professor (Arye Gross), it seems, has always dreamed of banging one of his students. I found these scenes perplexing for awhile, in that they didn’t seem to connect at all with the rest of the episode, but also fascinating. Though I’m not sure how a man could afford to hire the Dollhouse on a university salary, I found it interesting that the professor seemed just as interested in educating Kiki about Chaucer as he was in bedding her. His fantasy has this girl trading sex for a grade, but he can’t quite get past his instincts to genuinely teach, even though she’s not really a student (though the TA seems to recognize her when he hands her the essay she supposedly flunked).

I started wondering if maybe I’d misjudged the professor’s intentions entirely, but then we moved into preliminary “Epitaph One” territory. Since Victor’s internal GPS had been removed during his facial reconstruction surgery, the Dollhouse has no way to track him. Paul tries to find him in Beverly Hills, but just to be safe, Adele commands Topher to find a way to perform a remote wipe. Topher attempts it and fails spectacularly. Rather than wipe Victor, he ends up swapping Victor’s imprint with Echo’s. Now Victor is Kiki, who really feels like dancing — and what luck, she’s in a club! And of course, Echo is Terry, who promptly stabs the horny professor in the neck with a letter opener. Terry, who doesn’t like nor have very healthy feelings about women, is alarmed to find himself inhabiting the body of one. He decides his mannequins must have something to do with this (those whores), and sets off toward his lair so he can kill them properly.

This was an excellent episode up to this point. Once Echo-as-Terry returns to the lair and confronts the women — who are confused, but not nearly as confused as they should be to have to have this crazy women talking to them like she’s their tormentor — the whole thing kind of fizzles out. The imprint fades momentarily, and Echo tells the women they should kill her, but it doesn’t resonate because she’s only been in the room for about ninety seconds. The captive women have a history with Terry, but not with Echo. The scene feels rushed.

The episode also left me with some questions about the technology. Presumably Topher was able to perform the wipe/swap because the actives are linked into biofeedback monitoring system. How this allows Topher to mess with their imprints is completely unclear to me, but I suppose this isn’t the point to start quibbling with the plausibility of the tech. I do have to wonder, however, why they can’t use Whiskey’s GPS system to track Dr. Saunders.

I have to single out Enver Gjokaj again, who has demonstrated himself repeatedly to be the most versatile actor in the cast. He was chilling as Terry and hilarious as Kiki. But I thought the cast did a great job all around this time, except Dichen Lachman (who wasn’t in the episode). I also thought the script, by the always reliable Tim Minear, was both witty, tense, and entertaining. He found a great use for Boyd, wrote a great opening scene, and kept me guessing throughout. I was also delighted to discover that the Dollhouse has its own department store! “You’re new. And you, well, you’re always new.” This scene was not only enjoyable for its silliness, but nicely tied back to the opening scene with Terry dressing his living mannequins.

So the big question, I suppose, is this: Is Terry really any more evil or crazy than the clients of the Dollhouse? His dolls are decidedly there against their wills, but we know that at least one active (Sierra) didn’t consent to her Dollhouse contract. And even those that did agree initially now have no wills of their own. Is it really possible to consent to every possible scenario in advance? Everyone wants something they can’t have. Both Terry and the professor want women to behave differently than they do, and both take drastic steps to enforce this desire. Is the professor any less psychotic than Terry?

Belle chose translates as “beautiful thing”. That pretty much sums up the attitude at play. It’s also Chaucer’s euphemism for female genitalia. Here endeth the lesson.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

This was a very promising episode after last week’s disaster, but the team still needs to figure out a way to bring these episodes to a close in a more satisfying way. The last act was really the only thing keeping “Belle Chose” from greatness.

After a solid if not strong season premiere, I was looking forward to Dollhouse bringing something new and exciting to the table in its next outing. And I suppose it did, if you consider making the main character lactate to be something new and exciting. For about ten minutes in the middle of “Instinct”, I was hooked. Oh, I see what they’re doing. Okay, this could get interesting. And then it sort of turned to crap.

Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas, the writers of this episode, created the series Reaper, which I only watched once but seemed like a fun if unambitious diversion. Dollhouse, on the other hand, is an ambitious diversion, and in trying to incorporate some of that ambition into this episode, the writers demonstrated that they may not be up to the challenge. This was a disappointing outing for all involved.

To recap, Echo is assigned to Nate, a new father who became a widower when his wife died during childbirth. Topher gives Echo all the traits necessary to be a replacement mother for the baby — love, willingness to go sleepless, and that aforementioned ability to lactate. This premise is immediately ridiculous. Is Echo going to raise the baby forever? And given that the Dollhouse is a secret organization, how is the man supposed to explain the strange woman everyone keeps seeing with his baby in the park? And why is she claiming to be Nate’s wife and the baby’s mother? But whatever. Suffice it to say that Echo flips out when she finds photos of Nate’s dead wife and thinks he’s having an affair. Then when she eavesdrops on Nate’s angry phone call with Adele, she misinterprets what she hears and believes Nate is planning to have her killed.

The bright spot of the episode for me happens when Echo sees her best friend — who is actually Sierra, also on assignment — pull up in front of her house to escort her and the baby out, only to have men in a black van show up and take Sierra away. Of course, we know that Echo and Sierra are actives, and that the men in the van are their handlers. And it’s messy because we’re tempted to think, No, it’s okay because those are the good guys, even though there’s nothing good about what they do. Echo manages to flee before Paul can get to her and offer her a treatment, and goes to the police for help.

That’s pretty much where my enjoyment of the episode ended. Echo sits in an office with a nice detective who praises her for coming forward and not becoming a statistic. But as soon as Paul and Nate show up, the detective steps aside and lets Echo be wrestled into submission. It’s one of many, many moments in “Instinct” that rings horribly false. I enjoyed the idea of a cat and mouse game between Echo and the handlers, but it never went anywhere. They caught her, took her back to the Dollhouse, and Topher wiped her clean.

Well, he wiped away everything but her maternal instincts, which leads to the awful and completely unoriginal climax where Echo holds Nate’s baby in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other while he begs her not to hurt anyone. On the one hand, I can appreciate how they turned a tired horror movie trope on its head by playing with our notions of who’s the victim and who’s the potential killer. But it was so over-the-top as to be ludicrous. For one thing, the show takes place in Los Angeles — I can’t remember the last time I saw a single lightning strike in Los Angeles, let along a full on electrical storm. I also didn’t buy Nate talking Echo down. He may have been able to do that had Echo still been imprinted with the wife identity, but Nate would have had no skills in communicating with an active as messed up as Echo. The scene was mishandled from beginning to end.

But the worst sin for me was the way the episode undercut its own ideas. We’re presented with the notion that maternal love is such a deep down, base instinct as to be impermeable to a personality wipe. And yet we’re reintroduced to November, who you may recall signed a contract with the Dollhouse in the first place because she was so grief stricken over losing her young daughter to cancer. November is now completely free of that grief. If maternal (or paternal, I suppose) love were so great — if it can’t be wiped clean — then this change in November shouldn’t be possible.

So the only explanation is that it’s Echo’s unique retainage of prior imprints that is in play here, and not any special characteristics of motherhood. I guess it’s significant that the confrontation at the end involves Echo as Echo, rather than Echo as an imprinted person. That Echo is developing into a complex character, after all, is what makes the stories of Dollhouse worth telling. But they’ve got to do better than this.

In other news, Senator Perrin receives some kind of unsolicited dossier at his doorstep, which includes information on the Dollhouse and the name of someone inside. Is this once again the work of Alpha?

I’m going to be charitable and suggest that “Instinct” was meant to be a horror movie homage that missed its mark, rather than a sorry collection of cliched scenes, phony suspense, and bad acting. That doesn’t really improve the experience of watching it however. This was was rotten episode.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 stars

Better luck next week.

The good news is that “Vows”, the premiere episode of Dollhouse’s second season is superior to the season one premiere, “Ghost”. Actually, the good news is that Dollhouse is back at all, particularly after a season that started low in the ratings and kept sinking lower. And it deserved those low ratings at first. Of the first five episodes, only “Gray Hour” really tried to do anything interesting with the series premise. The mythos of the show will say that “Man on the Street” changed all that, with Joss Whedon finally able to make the show he set out to make in the first place, with less interference from the network.

I don’t know how much freedom Whedon has now. On the one hand, the show’s not successful enough to give him carte blanche. On the other hand, it’s not like the ratings can get worse. Dollhouse was renewed specifically because Whedon has a comparably small but insanely devoted fanbase that will watch the show online and buy the DVDs when they’re released. You might as well try to satisfy them with good storytelling because you’re clearly not going to reach anyone else, especially in that awful Friday night timeslot. The last few episodes of the first season (including the heart-stopping, as-yet-unaired “Epitaph One”) showed the many interesting philosophical explorations the series could embark upon. I sat down to watch “Vows” hoping for some of that.

Unfortunately I found it kind of ho hum overall, but it did boast a wonderful Saunders vs. Topher storyline that kept me entertained and riveted. I maintain that the primary unexamined question of this whole interchangeable personalities technology is that it doesn’t address the difference between personality and consciousness. In the world of Dollhouse, you can change someone’s personality — their memories, emotions, desires — but it’s unclear what impact (if any) this has on their consciousness, that spark of life within the brain that makes a person aware. My assumption is that that personality can be copied, but consciousness cannot. This makes the final conversation between Saunders and Topher so interesting.

Saunders, after having spent most of the episode playing pranks on Topher, sneaks into his bedroom — apparently they both live in the Dollhouse — and tries to seduce him. Once this game is suspended, Topher explains that he imprinted her with faults and fears and such because he needed her to be a fully developed human being. And he answers the question she asked in last season’s “Omega”: “I made you fight for your beliefs. I didn’t make you hate me. You chose to.” This doesn’t provide comfort for Saunders, who still feels like a puppet, a phony creation. “How do I go through my day,” she says, “knowing that everything I think comes from something I can’t abide?”

Dr. Saunders has quickly become the most interesting character on the show. Her torment over knowing she is an active, but being powerless to do anything about it makes her the — early Battlestar Galactica spoiler alert! — Boomer of the series. And her frightened whimper when Topher asks why she doesn’t just track down her original identity and have it reprinted was especially heartbreaking: “Because I don’t want to die!” And yet if her original contract is honored, that’s exactly what should happen. However, if you’ve seen “Epitaph One” … well, you know. In any case, we had fantastic work from Amy Acker this week, and I hope she’s back next week in spite of the little automobile trip she took near the end of the episode — where did she get a car? Fran Kranz, much less twitchy than last season, also impressed.

The A-story didn’t do much for me though. Echo, in stark contrast to Saunders, is still the least interesting character on the show, even with all their attempts to make her “special”. Her sham marriage to this week’s creep of the week, an arms dealer played by Jamie Bamber (another BSG connection), was about as routine a Dollhouse stunt as any other engagement, with the exception that this one was long-term and that the client was knight-in-shining-armor Paul Ballard. Paul’s unresolved (and unexamined) feelings about Echo make for some nice character stuff on his end, but do nothing to make Echo more compelling. We do learn at the end of the episode that Echo has an almost complete grasp of what it means to be an active and that she remembers all of the personalities she’s ever been imprinted with. Paul, understanding what kind of power this gives her, agrees to DeWitt’s rather implausible request that he become Echo’s handler. But there’s an implicit conspiracy between the two in the scene where this relationship becomes official. They are finally, really working together.

But what is Paul up to anyway? Supposing his takedown of the arms dealer were enough to get him reinstated at the FBI. Then what? He provides inside information about the Dollhouse, which he can easily do because he has hired them? I think he still wants to expose and bring an end to the Dollhouse, but I’m intrigued to find out what we’ll learn about former Agent Ballard this season. Suffice it to say that he is not the pure of heart hero he once appeared to be. As for the weapons, I find something ironic about Ballard using the Dollhouse to help stop a weapons smuggler when the Dollhouse itself possesses the single most powerful weapon ever built.

I enjoyed Sierra recoiling at the sight of Ivy (“I’m not comfortable with Orientals.”), then suggesting a little S&M play. As for Boyd, I still think Harry Lennix is proving to be the weakest cast member. I’m tempted to cut him a little slack because he tends to get saddled with the most expository dialogue, but he also seems especially ill equipped to handle it. Where’s Anthony Stewart Head when you need him?

Speaking of former watchers, Alexis Denisof makes an introductory appearance in this episode as a crusading U.S. senator going after the Rossum Corporation. I trust we’ll be seeing more of him.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

It wasn’t the gangbusters kind of season premiere I would have liked, but it wasn’t a dud either. And it’s clear the series is going to remain character-focused most of the time. I’ll leave you with these snappy last words from Topher and Saunders.

Topher: “You’re human.”
Saunders: “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“They were children playing with matches. And they burned the house down.”

The FOX Network aired twelve episodes of Dollhouse in its first season, but Joss Whedon and company actually produced fourteen. The original pilot was rejected by the network and so far hasn’t seen the light of day, which is just the kind of thing that happens. But “Epitaph One”, the fourteenth episode (which is included on the Season One DVD release and just yesterday became available for download on Amazon and iTunes) is kind of an oddball. It’s not a season finale. In fact, it doesn’t advance the season plot at all. It seems rather to have been intended as a series finale in the event the show had gotten the (generally expected) axe in the first year.

But that’s not what happened. The show was renewed, albeit without a great deal of network enthusiasm. FOX didn’t air “Epitaph One” because, by their explanation, they didn’t order it in the first place. Having seen it now, I think that was probably a good decision. While the episode is completely crackerjack as it introduces us to the nightmare world of 2019 Los Angeles, it takes a lot of mystery out of future seasons of the show. Unless –

Well, I’ll get to the “unless” in a moment. First, let’s get you up to date.

The show opens in a burned out warehouse or something, where a young woman named Mag (Whedon veteran Felicia Day) talks to fellow post-Apocalyptic rebels through a walkie talkie. After reporting her situation, the person on the other end of the conversation instructs her to get rid of “the tech”, which turns out to be the walkie. Soon her crew arrives: three young adults named Griff, Zone, and Lynn, a pre-teen girl named Iris (Adair Tishler of Heroes), and her father, Mr. Miller, who unlike the others, seems unusually dazed given all terrifying scene.

Why all the violence and burning buildings? The Dollhouse technology has apparently taken over the world in some way. Now people can be wiped and imprinted just be answering the phone or being in range of a radio signal. Mag learns that a friend of hers has recently been euthanized, essentially, after suffering an imprint. Only ten years in the future, but it’s a brave new world.

The ragtag bunch eventually stumbles upon the old Dollhouse headquarters, which they like because it’s fairly comfortable and too deep under ground for any dangerous signals to reach them. But of course they eventually find The Chair, which they hope will unlock the secret of how to cure people who have been wiped. They pluck Mr. Miller — himself a blank slate — into the chair and start loading memories into his brain, hoping to stumble upon the key to their salvation.

It’s right about this time that Lynn is murdered and Whiskey (aka Dr. Saunders) appears before them.

Through the memories they load into Miller they (and we) learn what has happened since the inception of the Dollhouse: that an active can be programmed to feel anything, that Topher sped up the process of imprinting significantly when he was hired, that Caroline’s personality began to return to her even while being imprinted as Echo, and that she and Paul had plans to take the survivors of all the madness somewhere safe — a mythical place these people have come to know as Safe Haven.

It’s never really clear whose memories we’re privy to at any given moment in these flashbacks, but it doesn’t matter. We learn that the brass at The Rossum Corporation have decided that actives would be better if you could buy rather than lease, and — in arguably the most haunting moment of the episode — we see a broken down Topher musing about how easy it would be to create an army to do your bidding simply by sending an imprint signal over the telephone. “It’s genius,” he says. “Why didn’t I think of it.” And then, “Did I think of it?” I, like most fans of the show, quickly wearied of Topher’s goofball antics. Seeing a mentally ill Topher relive his mad scientist role in starting a holocaust was refreshingly grave.

Ultimately it turns out that little Iris has been killing the young refugees, and is really someone else. Turns out she just wants to get back into an adult body. But she’s found out and instead imprinted with Caroline’s personality, who then leads the surviving members of the group out of the Dollhouse and presumably toward Safe Haven, wherever that is.

If this had been the final episode of the series, I’d say it was fantastic. I mean, the whole “mysterious signal turns everyone into zombies” thing is certainly reminiscent of Stephen King’s Cell, but a world where identity is basically meaningless (and thus the most important thing of all) is stunning and horrifying. It’s a fast forward version of all the themes I’ve hoped the show would explore.

But if you’ll pardon the major geekiness of this statement, I’m not sure what role “Epitaph One” plays in the canon of Dollhouse. Is this a “real” story, for lack of a better term, or is it merely speculative? If Season Two returns us to 2009, is the 2019 of “Epitaph One” the future that awaits our heroes? Or does the second season order (and fact that FOX never aired the episode) essentially render it void? I’m not sure how to handle it.

Certainly Lost has flashed forward successfully, giving an entirely new dimension to its stories and characters. Dollhouse doesn’t seem old enough to need that kind of shot in the arm. I suppose it’s also possible that Season Two will pick up right where this episode leaves off, though I think that would confuse pretty much everyone that hasn’t gone out of their way to watch it. So I can only assume that “Epitaph One” is a tease. And given that the show isn’t likely to run through 2019, we may never know if the future it portrays is the future intended for the series.

On its own terms, it is a disorienting, frightening, very entertaining entry in the series. It’s easily worth the two bucks.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

For what it’s worth, I hope we return to this world periodically during Season 2. Even if only die hard fans bother to watch this episode, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

FOX hasn’t announced yet whether or not we should expect to ever see Dollhouse on the schedule again, but I thought Tim Minear’s “Omega” did a reasonably adequate job of finishing off the season and leaving room for the future without keeping anything dangling that can’t be stomached if the show never returns. It was not my favorite episode, and by the end I was feeling a little disappointed. But there’s a balance that has to be kept when you’re managing a series with a 10% chance of renewal. You can’t run your series as a prequel for upcoming graphic novels.

When we last left our crew, Alpha had imprinted Echo with the personality of a white trash tart, and set off to places unknown. Those places turned out to be an abandoned electrical plant of some kind, where he has set up — GASP! — his own Dollhouse chair! I’m not sure how he figured out how to build it, but he uses this piece of technological wizardry to imprint a kidnapped young woman with the original personality of Caroline. Why would he do something so weird, you ask? Because Alpha blames his original personality for abandoning him when the going got tough — in fact, he destroyed his original personality. Smashed the “wedge” containing it to pieces. And now he wants Echo to do the same to Caroline, making the body they’ve written over over experience a painful death.

But first he implants Echo with the personalities of every imprint she’s ever had — something, it turns out, that happened to Alpha right before he escaped from the Dollhouse. For some reason Alpha believes his surfeit of personalities makes him a kind of god, and he assumes Echo will respond more or less the same way. He miscalculates. Alpha was just a few steps away from becoming a serial killer before becoming an active. Echo, on the other hand, was a college student battling the unethical treatment of lab animals. It looks like no matter how many sets of memories, emotions, goals, and desires you give to somebody, their original self will eventually win out.

That may be bad news for the Dollhouse. And in the short term, it’s bad news for Alpha. Echo kicks his ass. But then he shoots “Caroline” in the neck and runs off with her wedge.

Meanwhile, back at the Dollhouse, Ballard is helping DeWitt and Langton hunt down Alpha. He’s convinced that you can’t just wipe a person clean, so whomever Alpha was before coming to the DH plays a critical role in determining why and how he’s doing what he’s doing. He uses the word “soul”, which causes Topher to roll his eyes. But of course, we know Ballard is correct. We’ve seen it in Echo all along. Eventually Ballard and Langton track Alpha to the plant, where they arrive just in time for Ballard to catch Caroline’s wedge.

Strictly in terms of entertainment value, “Omega” works very well. I especially enjoyed the revelation that Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker) is, in fact, an active who used to be known as Whiskey. But that’s also a great example of what bothered me about this episode: everything happened too fast. Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to show Saunders slowly come apart as she begins to suspect she might be a doll? In this case, she just hacks into Topher’s files and learns the truth. She does get off a good line to Topher though: “I don’t understand why you made me hate you.” Good stuff.

But it all felt rushed. So rushed, in fact, that once Sierra and November were implanted with … some kind of crime solving agents, we never saw them again! I guess there just wasn’t time to follow their pursuits. They must not have have been very good imprints, though, since they never made it to the electrical plant. And Alpha, who seemed so terrifying and real last week, this week was more of a cartoon. I also don’t think I can overlook that Alpha allowed himself to be chased by Echo, even though he had a gun and she didn’t. I suppose you can argue that he was just too in love with her to kill her or something like that. I don’t buy it. I thought it was lazy.

But nothing felt more unduly compressed than the conversion of Paul Ballard from anti-Dollhouse crusader to Dollhouse subcontractor. This just doesn’t make any sense, and it’s simply not the kind of transition that can convincingly happen in 44 minutes (or however long these things are with the extra-short commercial breaks). If the series does end here, this will be the thing that leaves the worst taste in my mouth. And since Ballard arranged for the early release of November (real name: Madeleine) rather than Caroline, are we to assume that Ballard is now going to be Echo’s handler? I’m willing to accept that Ballard isn’t the morally upright savior he initially appeared to be — in fact, that’s what I enjoy about the character — but I’m going to have to see how that conversion from outsider to insider really went down before I’ll be able to accept it.

Unless … maybe he thinks he can bring them down from the inside? So on that point, why would DeWitt even trust him? “I know what he wants,” she tells Langton. We’ll see.

Whither poor Victor? Another visit with Ms. Lonely Heart?

I’m still just as interested in the universe of this show as I’ve eve been. I just wish the events of “Omega” could have been stretched out over three or four episodes. But at least FOX came through on their promise of airing a full (half) season. Dollhouse will almost certainly never be a hit show, even the network does renew it. But as the viewing public becomes more segmented, and as the cable television spectrum continues to grow, there ought to be room on the dial for shows with small but devoted groups of fans. And if you want to keep it on Friday nights with low rating expectations, that’s fine with me. Some of us geeks are tired after a long week of work and like to stay home.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

So there you have it. This finale was okay, but not good enough. I want more. But if it’s not to be, then at least the show reminded me what it’s like to set foot in a Whedonverse again. Thanks, guys.

When fans of Dollhouse mourn its inevitable cancellation this month, we will point to three episodes as evidence of what might have been. “Man on the Street” and “A Spy in the House of Love” will be two of them. “Briar Rose”, this week’s excellent entry and the penultimate episode of the season, will be the third.

I have been very, very careful to avoid being spoiled about which actor would be portraying Alpha, the former active who went crazy and started slicing up people’s faces. I knew it was a casting choice that excited people, so I guessed it was probably a Whedon alum. When I saw Alan Tudyk’s (Firefly) name in the opening credits for this week’s episode, I figured he was probably the guy. When they introduced him instead as a housebound, marijuana-growing expert in environmental systems, I began to wonder if maybe they decided not to credit the Alpha actor, and were going to have, say, James Marsters show up at the end. But as soon as Tudyk started gleefully shutting down all the Dollhouse security systems (after telling Ballard that he couldn’t), I knew my initial instincts were correct.

And by the way, what a performance! Tudyk was hilarious for most of the episode (and credit Jane Espenson for writing some wonderfully zany dialogue), but his transition for neurotic tech expert to stone cold psychopath was startling and entirely convincing. It makes me sad that we had to wait the entire season to get this character, and now … well, how much more of him will we get?

“Briar Rose” is full of solid performances. Special mention has to go to Enver Gjokaj (“Victor”) for his spot on impression of Reed Diamond’s boxed NSA agent Dominic. Even Topher seemed unusually subdued (for him) while explaining his idea to implant Echo with a grown up version of a troubled young girl in need of help. That storyline, by the way — Echo counseling the child prostitute — was both resonant and out of place. Yes, it ties neatly into Paul’s attempts to rescue Echo from the Dollhouse (and suggests that Echo may need to “think of herself as the prince”). But during those scenes, I felt like I was watching another show. I do hope we get some kind of resolution about the little girl though. There’s a good philosophical debate to be had about whether the DH can be a force for good as well as … well, maybe not “evil”, but certainly less morally defensible motives. If Echo’s grown-up disturbed girl can turn the actual disturbed girl’s life around — well, does that even the scales at all?

Ballard remains my main source of joy with this series, and his early kiss-off to poor Mellie was just so painful to watch. He makes a comment to Alpha early in their quest that, in effect, the dolls aren’t actually people. Shades of Battlestar Galactica there — not surprising, I suppose, considering Espenson wrote for that series and Tahmoh Pennikett was a regular. It gets a little meta-heavy, though, when Topher uses the word “frak”. Anyway, there’s no question that Mellie’s pain over the way Paul treats her is genuine — hell, she’s ready to fling herself off a bridge before her handler shows up and takes her back to the DH. Poor, Mellie. She really drew the short straw.

But how would Ballard have reacted if Mellie really had jumped off the bridge? Doll or not, that’s the permanent end of someone’s life (not accounting for the possibility of implanting her original personality in another body, which to me is nothing more than a photocopy), even if her emotional attachment to him can be chalked up to “programming”. But she’s not Caroline, and for some reason, she’s the only doll Ballard has any real interested in rescuing. Oh, he wants to bring the whole operation down, yes. But his single-minded purpose is to bring Caroline out of there, even though he really should have no reason to think that would be any less dangerous to him than rescuing Mellie would be.

We’re left with Boyd and Adelle debating whether or not they can put Ballard in the chair. Boyd rejects the idea on the grounds that Ballard hasn’t agreed to it. Adelle, who sent Dominic to the attic without a second thought, naturally disagrees. Which brings me back to a thought I had early on in the series: why don’t they just capture Ballard and write over his real personality with a nearly identical one that doesn’t have any interest in pursuing the Dollhouse? Isn’t that a more sensible solution than trying to kill him? Well, maybe that’s what they’re going to do.

Right now, though, the threat of Alpha — who has written a specific though heretofore unknown personality on Echo and left with her — seems more important. For the moment, Ballard and the Dollhouse have the same goal.

I can’t wait for the finale next week.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“Carrots! I’m growing medicinal carrots. For a friend. They were here when I moved in!” Comment away, but please no spoilers for future episodes.

I suppose one of the most difficult balances to strike when writing a serial is the one between stories that advance the masterplot and stories that generally don’t. In theory, a stand-alone episode should give the audience an opportunity to get to know the characters a little better, laying the groundwork for the pathos that arises out of seeing them battle their larger demons at season’s end.

This week’s stand-alone Dollhouse entry didn’t really do that though, because Echo embodied the personality of a recently dead friend of Adelle DeWitt’s. This wealthy lady apparently visited the Dollhouse at regular intervals over the last few years to basically create a backup copy of herself, meant to be deployed in the event of her death. Paranoid and generally unloved by her family, she suspects murder from the moment Topher implants her in Echo’s body.

The notion of a person preserving her own life through the Dollhouse is brilliant, but why did it have to be couched within a silly murder mystery? I’m reminded of Patton Oswald’s software baron resurrecting his wife every year. Why not show the flip side of this scenario, and explore the ways such a use of a doll could be unsatisfying for all involved? For that matter, is Echo really the dead woman returned to life? Do the contents of our mind comprise all that we are? Or maybe the woman does think she’s been murdered, only to discover that no one felt strongly enough about her to go to the trouble. Maybe her death wasn’t as dramatic as she always assumed it would be. That might have been a good story to explore.

How would it feel to attend your own funeral and witness your own corpse lying in a coffin? In the universe of Battlestar Galactica, you freak the hell out and debate the very nature of your existence. In the universe of Dollhouse, you snicker quietly about the mourning losers listening to your eulogy. But I guess that’s how you have to act when there’s a mystery to solve! There’s no time for sober introspection.

When Dollhouse misfires (so far), this is generally how it does it: good idea, weak execution. Then again, you can almost hear the FOX execs saying, “All the sci-fi and philosophical stuff is okay, but give us an episode where Echo has to solve a murder!” So…there you go. And it was hardly terrible. If nothing else, Eliza Dushku gave one of her most convincing performances of the series so far. Credit director David Solomon (a reliable veteran of Joss Whedon shows) with that. I didn’t believe the son would make the connection between the young woman in his mother’s house and the Dollhouse however. That was writing at its most lazy and convenient.

Actually, this wasn’t a completely stand-alone episode, because we got a little advancement of the Paul-November (aka Mellie) plotline. After a night of reluctant, wild sex with Mellie, Paul responds to her questions about his pursuit of Dollhouse clients with the devastating line of the night: “I found one.” I continue to believe that regardless of billing, Paul is the center of the show. When we follow his character, we invariably get good stuff — like looking up November’s fingerprints, and having the computer find multiple matches before realizing it has said too much and clearing the search results. Suddenly Paul’s former FBI colleague is a believer (which means she’s probably doomed).

The third storyline of the week had Topher imprinting Sierra with the personality of a female Topher so he could have a fun evening talking about “science fiction errors” and playing laser tag and video games. When Boyd does his usual “Do you really think this is a good idea” shtick, Adelle declares that it’s important not to get too lonely — which she should know, of course, having previously been one of her own clients with Victor.

If nothing else, this will certainly be the last stand-alone episode we get this season (and possibly ever, if the show doesn’t get renewed). Then again, the “lost” episode 13 will supposedly be of this variety, but FOX has no plans to air it. I find myself wondering whose side Boyd is on. He seems contemptuous of everything the DH does and stands for, but doesn’t care enough to do anything about it. This is something I’d like to see explored more: why do the DH employees work there in the first place? How do they put their ethical reservations aside in order to do their jobs?

So … better subplots than main plot this week, but I expect the next two weeks will be gangbusters.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Comment away, but please no spoilers for future episodes.