Caroline is apparently in a lot of trouble, and DeWitt is offering a way out. DeWitt mentions a clean slate. “Have you ever tried to clean an actual slate? You always see what was on it before,” Caroline snorts thematically. She protests that she doesn’t deserve this—that she was just “trying to take my place in the world, like she always said,” but we don’t find out who the “she” is, yet. Finally, she seems to accept the deal, agreeing with an earlier statement that “actions have consequences.” DeWitt looks very pleased with herself as she counters, “What if they didn’t?”
We cut to two motorcycles racing through city streets at night. One of the riders tries to take a shortcut through an alley and wipes out, and when the helmet comes off we see that it’s Echo. She catches up and they continue the race into a fancy Chinese restaurant and pull up on a dance floor with a banner over it wishing Matt a happy birthday. Matt, presumably, is the driver of the other motorcycle, with whom Echo engages in some hypercompetitive banter before they decide to just dance instead. (Buffy fans might experience a flashback to the episode “Bad Girls” here. Viewers who are attracted to females might also experience… other feelings.)
After the dancing, Matt pulls Echo aside. There’s some complicated innuendo about strings and ropes, and then Matt tells her he’ll always remember this weekend. “What, like I’d forget?” asks Echo, because Joss Whedon loves dramatic irony. He is well known at L.A. restaurants for ordering two bowls of dramatic irony instead of dessert.
Matt gives Echo a heart on a necklace and they kiss. Clearly knowing his time is almost up, Matt excuses himself to get another drink. Echo walks happily back towards the dance floor. Then, suddenly, her face goes blank and she makes a sharp turn to the right. She leaves the restaurant and gets into a big black van where her strong-jawed, paternal-looking handler is waiting. Back at the party, Matt makes a Cinderella reference.
The van unloads in a place with many similar vans, including one being loaded with a girl in a geisha outfit with a comically enormous bow on it. Echo asks her handler if he’ll take her back to the party after her “treatment.” He says, with a hint of guilt, that he’ll wait right there. Echo grins and says, “You’re good people,” and it’s suddenly way more than a hint. (Again: avoiding a name is getting rough. Paternal, square-jawed, guilt-stricken handler is Boyd Langdon.)
Echo walks through some high-tech gadgetry, changing clothes and babbling excitedly to the staff about how excited she is about where things are going with Matt. The staff includes a geeky, straw-haired technician who says he’s happy for her as he helps her into an assembly that looks a good deal like a dentist’s chair, except with more glowy bits around where your head would go, and less bitching from the hygienist about whether you’ve been flossing.
Geeky, straw-haired technician (Topher Brink) flips the switch and we see what a mindwipe looks like from the inside: dozens of tiny screens running backwards video. It zooms in and goes forward long enough for us to pick out some events (and see the source of the earlier innuendo about ropes) before we get to the key line from Matt: “An experiment-- to see how much fun we can have in three days.” From there, we speed through some scenes of childhood and Echo drops the necklace. When she wakes up, she wanders off, placid and dreamy.
Topher pulls a hard drive out of the dentist chair and takes it to a computer outside, where Boyd is waiting to check that the wipe went normally. Topher defensively confirms that it did. Sensing Boyd’s guilt, Topher defends the operation in Shakespearean terms: “There’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” He calls it “humanitarian”: Both Matt and Echo enjoyed themselves, and Echo’s not hurt by the wipe.
Topher:“Not a care in the world. She’s living the dream.”
Boyd: “Whose dream?”
Topher: “Who’s next?”
Next we see some cute telephone banter between a father and a daughter. As soon as the daughter hangs up, someone off screen puts a cloth over her mouth and a guy in a creepy leather mask bundles her into a sack.
And… credits. The theme song won’t inspire the same headbanging glee that the Buffy theme does, but it’s effectively plaintive and the visuals are a disorienting mix of Echo on missions and in the Dollhouse. If anyone got through the first act still unsure whether the show was going to ignore the creepy undertones of the premise or face it head on and subvert it, the last measure of creepy, clinky theme music would have settled the issue.
When we come back, the girl’s father is in DeWitt’s office (which closely resembles the working conditions at Wolfram and Hart), asking for help. He’s willing to pay and he doesn’t want to involve the police, so he wants a negotiator. DeWitt says they’ll help, and reminds him that the Active won’t remember where they came from, so he shouldn’t discuss the Dollhouse with them or they’ll get confused and leave.
Back in the Dollhouse, Echo is getting an exam from a skinny brunette doctor with some impressive facial scars. Her knee is still hurt from the motorcycle accident, but of course she can’t remember what happened. She seems a little puzzled by that, but not upset. Skinny, scarred doctor (Claire Saunders) says they’ll look after her. Echo reaches out to touch her scars and asks, “Does someone look after you?” Dr. Saunders flinches away, saying she’ll set up a massage session to work on the knee.
Echo wanders upstairs, through Topher’s office (which is packed with games—chess, darts, pinball, whack-a-mole), and towards the mindwipe room, where there are flashing lights coming from behind the door. A blonde girl is in the chair, dressed only in strategically placed bandages, with electrodes stuck all over her body. She’s obviously in pain. Topher, who was overseeing the operation, tells the technicians to keep “mapping the tissue” and hustles Echo out the door. He tries to comfort her by saying it’s the girl’s first time, and that soon she’d be strong and will have forgotten all about the pain. He says Echo will have a new friend, and that her name is Sierra. (Thus saving me from at least two sentences of adjective-heavy nicknames later in the recap. Thanks, Topher!) Finally, he distracts her with the promise of the massage. As she leaves, Topher makes a gesture at Dr. Saunders that translates roughly to “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m pretty sure it’s your fault” in gesturese.
Some fanwanking here: If they don’t want to be interrupted during procedures in the Chair of Evil, shouldn’t they just lock the door, and maybe make it out of something other than glass? I think it’s possible that we’re supposed to take from this setup—and from Topher’s reaction-- that Echo’s curiosity and empathy are unusual for an inactive Doll. Or possibly they just haven’t had time for extensive renovations since acquiring their office space from the Wolfram and Hart liquidation.
Next we meet FBI agent Paul Ballard in a pair of interlaced scenes. One is a kickboxing training match. The other is the textbook-standard “renegade agent receives reprimand from superior officer” scene. While he’s being pummeled in the ring, we learn that in the course of his investigation into the Dollhouse rumors, he’s assaulted a Senator, boarded a Saudi prince’s yacht, and gotten divorced. The superior officers tell him to back off. He says it won’t be a problem. Meanwhile, in the kickboxing match, he peels himself off the mat and feeds his kneecap to his opponent in a manner that suggests he’s not being entirely honest about his propensity for giving up.
In DeWitt’s office, Adelle and a slimy blonde aide are giving Boyd a briefing on the kidnapping case. They emphasize that the purpose of the mission is to make the exchange safely and that his priority is ensuring Echo’s safety. “We’ll skip any ex-cop heroics, if you don’t mind,” the slimy aide expositions. “Who does she think she is?” asks Boyd.
For an answer, we see Echo opening the door of the father’s mansion in a serious-looking suit and librarian glasses. The father is surprised that his negotiator is a hot young woman; he was expecting Edward James Olmos. Echo—who says her name is Eleanor Penn—insists that she’s the best person for the job. She points out that the kidnappers are professionals, and then, when the father’s security chief tries to talk to the father in Spanish, she replies. She says professionals are the easiest kind of kidnapper to deal with.
From the surveillance van, Boyd asks Topher if the glasses are an attempt to make people take Echo seriously, but Topher says she’s actually nearsighted, or at least that her brain is convinced that she is. Boyd asks why he’d handicap her on a job like this, and Topher says that, to get someone who’s the best at something, they need to be overcompensating or running away from something else. While he’s saying this, the camera turns ominously onto Dr. Saunders and her scars—but apparently we’ll get nothing but foreshadowing on that front tonight. Topher points out that the personalities he creates are made from parts of real stored personalities.
Back at the mansion, Echo as Eleanor is handling a phone call with the kidnapper. She convinces him that she’s not a cop and insists that the kidnapper call her Ms. Penn, which prompts him to crack some jokes about her as a schoolteacher. In a surprise move, she bumps the ransom up to eight million, “two million each,” and tells them to call back to let the father talk to the daughter. The father says it would have been polite to ask about giving away three million dollars of his money, but he’s still willing to pay it. Elly says she’s getting everyone involved used to doing things her way. He asks how she knew there were four kidnappers, and she says it was a guess—four is a typical kidnapping crew.
We cut quickly to Ballard, following a lead about a Russian human trafficking ring by following a slimy showoff to a nightclub.
At the mansion, the kidnappers call back asking for ten million and Elly hangs up instantly. They call again and let the daughter talk to the father. The daughter tries to sneak in hints about where she’s being kept, but Elly interrupts her, asking if she’s been hurt.
When the call is over, the father berates Elly over the interruption, but she says she was doing her job—which doesn’t involve attempting a rescue or letting the girl put herself at risk by passing information. On the roof, the father is having doubts about Echo’s abilities, and grills her in an attempt to prove she’s qualified. He laughs when she says “You have to trust that I’ve done this many times before,” because Joss Whedon loves dramatic irony. He’s just waiting until Massachusetts makes it legal for him to marry an abstract concept.
The father pushes Elly past citations of her dedication, experience, and education until she finally admits that she was herself kidnapped and molested as a child. The father shakes his head, saying, “The terrible memories these men put into your head—why would they do that?” (Joss Whedon has a pool in his basement filled with dramatic irony, and he goes down there and soaks in it until his fingers are all wrinkly.)
In the nightclub, Ballard follows the slimy showoff into the bathroom, sneaks up behind him, and puts a gun to his head while he’s at the urinal. Ballard tells the mobster to find out which of the Russians’ clients are connected to the Dollhouse, and heads out, reminding his new informant to wash his hands—and his shoes.
Back to Elly and the father, who are getting ready to make the exchange on a dock. Boyd is in a covering position with a sniper rifle. Everything seems to be going fine, with Elly in control of the situation, until she gets a look at one of the kidnappers’ faces and panics. She tells the father that they’re not going to give his daughter back, so he chases after them insisting that they let the daughter off the boat. The kidnapping ringleader shoots the father, Boyd shoots the ringleader, and the rest of the crew drives off in the boat with the daughter and the money. Boyd moves in to extract Echo, who is shaking on the ground repeating “You can’t fight a ghost.”
In the van on the way back to the Dollhouse, Echo is flashing back to her childhood trauma, which explains the ghost line: It was something her abuser told her. Boyd realizes that Echo thinks that the kidnapper is the same one who took her as a girl, because her memories were lifted from someone who he really had kidnapped. He presses her for details and she predicts that, once the money is counted, the molester will kill his partners and take the girl. Boyd tries to figure out the boats range, and even though she’s still clearly shaken, Elly points out that the boat was riding too high to have much fuel in it. She theorizes that the kidnapper in the mask is connected to victim.
In the Dollhouse, Topher is insisting that what happened wasn’t a glitch in his programming, and that the breakdown is something that happened to Eleanor. I'm starting to think this storyline is kind of a metatextual criticism of the tendency for writers to try to substitute a single defining childhood trauma for motivation and depth. Topher tried to straightforwardly leverage trauma as motivation and it blew up on him-- and Elly, like a real trauma victim, has to face the trauma's aftereffects head on in order to keep moving.
Boyd storms into DeWitt’s office to ask that they hold off on Echo’s wipe long enough for her to solve the case. Slimy blonde aide (Laurence Dominic) thinks too much damage has been done already and wants to cut the whole thing loose.
DeWitt: “It’s complicated. We don’t have a client.”This is apparently the right argument, as Boyd runs back to the mindwipe room to see Echo emerging from the chair, but she’s still Elly. She asks for her glasses and announces that she knows how to find the girl.
Boyd: “We have a mission!”
DeWitt: “We prefer to call them engagements. I know you haven’t been here as long as some of the others, so I’ll overlook the error.”
Boyd: “I’ve been here long enough to know you like to think that what we do here helps people. Let Echo help this girl!”
Elly thinks that the initial conversation with the kidnapper suggested that the inside man was one of the girl’s teachers. Dominic leads the team to take Echo out to track them down, while Boyd stays at the Dollhouse to await DeWitt’s judgment. Elly insists on going in before the team to try to bargain the girl out safely. This puts her face to face with her abuser again, which obviously scares her, but she fights through it enough to tell the other two kidnappers what the molester is planning to do. She knows enough details of his history to start to convince them—including that they’d have put the girl in the fridge with the shelves taken out, and tied shut because “they don’t lock these days.” Right, that bit was enormously successful on the "understatedly creepy" front.
When the molester threatens her, she throws back, “You can’t hurt me any more. You can’t fight a ghost.” He hits her and a gunfight breaks out among the kidnappers. Elly rushes for the daughter in the fridge. One of the kidnappers, bleeding from a wound in his arm, tells her to take the girl and go, which she does. On the way out, she sees that her abuser is dead.
Suddenly, the door gets blown in and Sierra storms through it, dressed in black combat gear. She shoots the two surviving kidnappers, getting the second one by shooting him through a wall. Elly seems a little put out, saying that she had it handled. Sierra, though, apparently made room for her double serving of badassery by leaving out her empathy module. She asks if the girl was injured, suggests that Echo get over it, then orders the team to clean up the evidence and take the ransom money.
Over footage of Echo and Sierra back in the Dollhouse’s communal shower, Dominic is trying to tell DeWitt that the engagement was a solid win: the client survived, the daughter was returned, both Actives performed well, they got to keep the ransom money, and their exposure was contained. DeWitt says it almost came crashing down on them, and hands Dominic a file labeled “Alpha,” asking how they’re going to contain that.
(Side note: A communal shower? The fan ficcers are going to have a field day with this one. It's like the Room of Requirement and the Astronomy Tower put together.)
We cut to footage of Echo, presumably while she was still Caroline, being interviewed for her college’s video yearbook. Asked about her plans, she says she wants to “take my place in the world, like Mrs. Dundee taught us.” So, I guess we know who the “she” from the teaser is. The camera pans from the screen to give us a glimpse of someone watching the footage who is definitely not fully clothed. He writes “Keep looking” on the back of a picture of Echo and slips it into an envelope addressed to Paul Ballard. The camera keeps panning to show us a couple of unidentifiable dead bodies. I’m just guessing here, but I think we might have just met Alpha.
On the video, Caroline’s list of ambitions includes Doctors Without Borders, and traveling around the world in a jet she designs and pilots. As we cut to Echo falling asleep in the Dollhouse’s crazy recessed beds, Caroline says, “What can I say? I want to do everything. Is that too much to ask?”
(Joss Whedon has run out of veins in his arms to inject the syringes full of dramatic irony, and has to shoot it directly into his eyeballs. True story.)
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Clever recap, can't wait to read more!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the summary. You caught a few of the more subtle plot points that I missed while watching that give some insight into what's in store for us as the story progresses.
ReplyDelete