While “Epitaph One” is gripping and thematically rich, it could take a lot of mystery out of future season of the series if we’re meant to treat it as canonical.

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.

When fans of Dollhouse mourn its inevitable cancellation this month, we will point to three episodes as evidence of what might have been. “Briar Rose”, this week’s excellent entry and the penultimate episode of the season, will be one of them.

When Dollhouse misfires, this is how it does it: fascinating philosophical and moral questions tossed between the type of storyline we’ve seen a thousand times before. But at least Paul Ballard remains a wonderfully tragic character.

This was easily, without question, the best episode of the series so far, and revealed a tremendous richness in the premise that wasn’t immediately apparent from the stand-alone episodes that aired back in February.