“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.

I also can’t help feeling like I’m playing with fire if I start posting a whole lot of analysis about a show like Dollhouse which is ratings-challenged at best, and … well, no one will be surprised if the series isn’t invited back to the FOX schedule next season. Why put myself through it?

I wasn’t going to, but this week’s stellar episode “A Spy in the House of Love” changed my mind. 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. All those people who are feeling abandoned by the end of Battlestar Galactica and don’t know what to do with themselves on Friday nights? “A Spy in the House of Love” provides the answer. Dollhouse is not the Aaron Spelling-style sexploitation show you thought it was going to be.

My favorite scene in the episode happens right before the first act break. Paul has just finished telling “Mellie” about all his new discoveries and theories about the Dollhouse, and I was thinking, “Man, what irony that he’s so obsessed with rescuing Caroline, and he doesn’t even realize that his neighbor and sort-of girlfriend is also a doll.” And then she suddenly comes out with a secret recorded message from the DH’s own Deep Throat. In a flash, Paul learns that Mellie is a doll, that she will inform the DH of anything he shares with her, and that he can’t let her know that he knows she’s a doll because she’s actually a sleeper agent who will kill him all kinds of dead if he does.

Sheesh! Then the message ends and Mellie is “herself” again, beckoning Paul to join her in the shower. Suddenly he is using her just as much as Patton Oswald’s software baron was using Echo a few episodes ago. He has to act like nothing has happened, but how do respond when you learn that someone you know and care about doesn’t actually exist?

So that floored me.

There were lots of fun revelations this episode, like the fact that “Miss Lonely Heart” is actually Adele! Yes, our own director of the DH has personally hired her own organization to make Victor her lover. We learned that Dominic is actually an undercover NSA agent who, rather than trying to bring down the DH from the inside as you might expect, has actually been trying to protect it from mismanagement. This nevertheless doesn’t endear him to Adele, who sends him to the Attic. And finally — and most importantly — we learned that Echo is unusual. Well, okay, we already knew that, but we got more details: it appears that Echo, even in a fully wiped state, still has a sense of…duty? Morality? She not only wants to fight for a cause (in this case, weeding out the person who has been spying for the NSA), but believes in her own ability to do it. And she does something kind of remarkable. “You make people different,” she says to Topher. “Make me help.”

Yet when Topher reveals this conversation to Adele later, she’s not disturbed at all. She’s grateful! Something tells me Adele wants to bring down the DH just as much as Paul does. I wonder if she’s really the person who’s sending him the secret messages.

I think Harry Lennix (Boyd Langton) is the weak link on the show. He seems to be the least capable of handling the dialogue, the most embarrassed to be involved in this ridiculous conceit about a secret agency that wipes people’s memories and then pimps them out. And the sooner they tone down the twitchiness of Fran Kranz’s Topher, the better. For one thing, he’s a cliche (see also Kevin Weisman as Marshall on Alias). But in general, this is a very nice ensemble putting out a very nice ensemble show. And this is the first genuinely fantastic episode of what I hope will be a long-running, genuinely fantastic series. But now I’ve probably jinxed it.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

In light of that whole ensemble thing, do you think we could maybe do away with the tacky cheesecake shots of Eliza Dushku that comprise the opening credits and commercial breaks, and go with something a little more tasteful?

Oh, it is the FOX Network, isn’t it? Ah, well.