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.