At the secret task force to investigate the Dollhouse, Agent Ballard is watching the newsreel tape, along with the footage of Esther!Echo from last week's cult infiltration and Caroline!Echo's college yearbook. He's holding some papers and looks like he's having a breakthrough when Agent Badger (from the second episode, where he was investigating the kidnapping case from the first episode) walks in and chastises Ballard for digging his old cases out of the trash. He stops for a minute to admire the footage of Caroline and Ballard asks his if he ever bothered to track a payment that the kidnapping victim's father made to something called the Mayfair Fund. Badger thinks the case is settled, and elaborates that, even if Ballard is right, then Caroline is (a) "effectively dead", and (b) "a whore-- and a mindless whore". With that, Ballard twists Badger's arm behind him and throws him against a wall. Badger observes that he must have hit a nerve-- and Ballard returns the favor, doing something to a nerve cluster that makes a crunching sound. Badger storms off, saying someone is going to put Ballard down like a dog and he hopes he's there to see it.
On the Dollhouse floor, Victor and Echo are sitting at a table. Sierra walks past them and sits somewhere else. Victor observes that Sierra is alone, and Echo says she likes to be alone sometimes. Victor says Sierra usually sits with them, and goes over to her. When he puts his hand on her shoulder, she falls out of her chair and lies screaming on the floor. Victor and Echo both stand there, stunned.
Later, Sierra is in the Dr. Saunder's office, and Dr. Saunders is giving her a pelvic exam. She asks her about Victor, and Sierra says that Victor likes to pretend that they're married. Claire, very softly, says, "I see." (In this episode, several tertiary characters get nice, small moments. This is hers-- a wince of compassion while contemplating the ethical intricacies of inter-Doll sexual abuse.) She asks Sierra to leave and lets in Boyd, with Sierra's large-foreheaded handler (last seen when Echo and Sierra worked the pop-star protection gig together). She tells them Sierra has had sex recently. The Forehead (seriously, the thing is Van Der Beekian in proportion) says that Sierra's last engagement was asexual-- at a children's cancer ward. Claire says she gave Sierra an exam afterwards anyway, and the sex has happened since then. The Fivehead is upset, which Boyd thinks is uncharacteristic-- after all, he's never seemed all that attached to the Dolls. He says that doesn't mean he's okay with them abusing each other, and besides, if Victor is off-program it could be a step toward him pulling an Alpha. Dr. Saunders says, protectively, not to jump to conclusions, and The Eighthead reminds them they don't have to jump-- the Dollhouse is covered with cameras. He goes off to find some evidence he can bring to DeWitt to put Victor in the Attic. Dr. Saunders doesn't want to believe it, but she did discover the evidence of his obsession with Sierra last week. Boyd asks if there's anything else that could help, and Echo, standing at the door, breaks in to say that she can hear Sierra crying in her pod before they go to sleep.
Back at the FBI, Agent Ballard is asking Database Lady from last week if he's right about the funding thing, and she lays out the links: the kidnappee's father made a big payment to a mutual fund named Mayfair during the incident, and another firm makes regular deposits to the fund. The second firm is a wholly owned subsidiary of a company owned by someone on Ballard's list of suspected Dollhouse clients-- an internet mogul whose credits include "Sorceress" and "Bouncy the Rat". Ballard has suspected him for a while, since he regularly shows up to charity events with "some fabulous nobody" on his arm. (Wait-- Ballard is suspicious because an extremely wealthy man dates attractive but unknown women? In LA? His list of suspects must be... extensive.) Ballard says whatever Bouncy the Rat guy is paying for is happening soon, and asks DBL for all the information she can give him. She notes that being shot didn't slow Ballard down any, and reminds him that he can't get a warrant because everyone thinks he's crazy, and he says he's asking for help anyway. She agrees, but says Ballard will get fired if anyone finds out what he's up to.
Later, Ballard and the neighbor Mellie are talking over takeout in her apartment, and she seems to have gotten a rundown of the evidence he collected today, which she summarizes as "one fund paid the other fund which is the same as the other, other fund?" They banter about the glamourousness of his job and the meal, which she says was the best offer she'd had in two months.
Ballard: What happened to that guy you were seeing? Rick?Turns out he dumped her using an extended metaphor about stocks and finance, even though he worked in a doughnut shop. She fishes a bit for a compliment, and gets one when Ballard says she's gorgeous. He sums up the day's work by saying it was a slightly better day for the good guys than the bad guys, then slips a bit by saying that brings him closer to bringing "her" in. Mellie corrects him to "them" and he backtracks a little.
Mellie: Dick.
Ballard: Sorry, I thought...
Mellie: Oh, his name was Rick.
The Bouncy the Rat mogul (whose name is Joel and is played with a good deal of flair by Patton Oswalt) is standing in the driveway of a suburban house, telling a security guy that he wants them to be invisible. Around the side of the house, Ballard sneaks up on an long-haired Asian security guard as Echo pulls up in a tiny blue car wearing a wholesome-looking sundress. The Asian security guy tries to jump Ballard and gets an elbow to the face. Joel tells Echo he has something to show her and leads her inside. Joel is cracking jokes while showing Echo the kitchen, and Ballard comes in, gun drawn, asking them to put their hands up. When Echo closes the fridge, he sees that it's her for the first time and has a moment of shock that takes us-- finally-- to the credits.
We come back to man-on-the-street footage, in which an old guy suggests that the technology should be used to give veterans a night with Betty Grable, and a woman who starts imagining exactly what she'd want a Doll to do, but breaks off when she realizes she can't tell the camera.
(A quick note: I kind of hate the "man on the street" thing as a device in fiction-- It's basically making a list of possible interpretations of your theme. It's too on-the-nose. Also, a little... masturbatory. What's more, it's almost entirely unnecessary in this episode. Pretty much every significant perspective presented by the MOTS footage is also held by an actual character, who acts on that interpretation in, you know, the usual method of expressing a theme through fiction, rather than writing it down on a card and having someone read it into a camera. That said, a couple of these folks earn their screen time. So far, it's just been the "volunteering for slavery" lady at the beginning, but more are coming.)
Back at the Bouncy the Rat house, Ballard calls Echo Caroline, and she says her name is Rebecca, and she and her husband just bought the house. Then a possible explanation for being interrupted by a man with a gun occurs to her, and she turns to Joel to make sure he didn't just break in to impress her. Ballard says he's with the FBI, and that leads Rebecca to another unflattering conclusion: she decides that Joel's "internet venture that finally paid off" was porn, and starts freaking out. (In fairness, if he's created a pop culture character on the internet, by Rule 37, there exists porn about it somewhere. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't actually someone working on their Bouncy the Rat/Jonas Brothers crossover fic right now.)
Joel tries to calm her down, and Ballard talks directly to her as Caroline, saying she's being used and he'd never hurt her. In the confusion, a security guy comes up behind Ballard and tases him. Rebecca!Echo is newly confused by the new presence: "Is this a porn man?"
Ballard gets up and hits the security guy, and Rebecca!Echo continues her freakout. The fight escalates as more security guys join in, and Ballard gets tossed around a little, including a nasty slam into the kitchen island. In the confusion, Boyd sneaks in and escorts Echo out for her "treatment". As they leave, they pass the bed that Joel had set up with candles and rose petals, and Echo says conclusively: "Porn!"
Ballard eventually finishes the fight with the six or so bodyguards and turns to talk to Joel, who makes sure that no one needs an ambulance. Joel asks what Ballard is looking for and Ballard says he found it. Joel says Ballard should look happier, then. Ballard asks about the Dollhouse, and Joel plays dumb. He asks about Echo, and Joel says her name is Rebecca and they've been married seven years.
Ballard is incredulous that Joel would spend tons of money employing a sophisticated clandestine operation in order to fulfill his fantasy of playing house. Joel asks what Ballard's fantasy is, and he says he's fine in the real world, but Joel rejects that-- everyone has fantasies; it's a survival mechanism. Joel thinks Ballard's is about Echo. Ballard goes into righteous rage mode, asserting that her name is Caroline, and she was just a girl whose personality was ripped away so she could be a love slave to any loser with enough cash.
Joel finishes the thought with a rescue fantasy: the heroic FBI agent restores her identity and she falls in love with him out of gratitude. Ballard denies it, but Joel says he saw it in the way he talked to her. Joel points out that Ballard doesn't have any evidence to arrest him on, so he's not really interested in being interrogated any more, but he is willing to continue the conversation over the bottle of champagne he had in the fridge. As he's pouring, he guesses that this Caroline fantasy has made the Dollhouse case personal to Ballard, fueling his obsession. He asks if Ballard is married, and when he finds out that he's divorced and single, he points out that there's no room for a real girl in his life in competition with the Caroline fantasy. Joel thinks Ballard's fantasy is even sadder than his.
(I kind of didn't realize how talky this plotline was until I started recapping it. It works on screen, though-- partly because Oswalt really nails the part, a little smarmy but likable, and partly because I'm really enjoying seeing Ballard called out for his romanticization of Caroline as damsel-in-distress. That's something that most shows would have let pass entirely unexamined-- it's practically in the Heroic FBI Agent Manual.)
In the Dollhouse, Victor is hooked up to a hyper-advanced looking polygraph that includes a super-close-up of his pupil. Dr. Saunders asks him what he thinks about Sierra, and Victor says she's beautiful. Topher points out that the Dollhouse is full of beautiful women, and Victor says Sierra is different. Dr. Saunders asks him if he remembers watching Sierra in the shower, and how that made him feel. Victor: "Better."
Outside the room, Boyd is talking to Victor's handler-- who is apparently subbing for the normal handler. The new guy freaks out that on his first week, his Active "invents rape." Boyd says they still don't know what happened, as the Forehead (whose name is Hearn) still hasn't found anything on the tapes. The sub wants to know how that's possible, since the Dollhouse is covered in cameras. He wonders if it really happened, saying, kind of desperately, "Maybe she's broken." "They're all broken," Boyd replies.
At the Bouncy the Rat Dream Home, Joel is continuing his story. His wife, Rebecca, was a nurse, and he was an entrepreneur with a string of not-quite-viable ideas. (Among them: Floogle, Blahoo, and Facebooger. You know, I'm not sure a booger-focused social networking site is a losing idea anymore. I'm going to pause the recap while I throw together a PowerPoint venture capital presentation involving the phrase "Web 2.Nose". Okay, I'm back.) Ballard asks sarcastically if she looked like Echo, and Joel admits she didn't, but she was beautiful and knew it and loved him anyway. Ballard asks why he's hiring zombies now, and Joel says that, assuming Ballard did any research, he already knows that Rebecca is dead, and that this isn't Joel's house. Ballard says it's a shame; it's a big place, and Joel laughs that he could fit the whole thing in his guest bathroom. He says his first check from the Bouncy deal had "more zeroes than the Luftwaffe". (Ballard corrects his history.)
When he got paid, Joel wanted to impress Rebecca, so he picked out a house he knew she'd like and bought it, paid cash, and called her to meet him. She was hit by a truck three blocks away. (Again, good work here working around the bathos-- he dances a little bit around what actually happens and has defensive jokes built in: "When I got there... well, they said it was quick. I guess they always say it was quick.") Since she never got to see the house or know he made good, every year on this day, he pretends that she does.
Ballard points out that he still has sex with her, and he says yes-- it is, after all, a fantasy. Ballard says he's sorry for Joel's loss, but it doesn't make him anything but a predator. Joel goes on a Whedonesque riff here (and, man, is that a welcome change), including the phrases "moral spankitude" and "not qualified to be my rabbi", whose point is that Ballard has no evidence and is, given the trespassing and the pounding of a half dozen security guys, firmly on the wrong side of the law. As he outlines this, there are sirens, and he asks if Ballard wants to stick around and see which of them gets handcuffed. As Ballard is leaving, Joel says that the first challenge in his business is that people won't accept changes that have already happened. Once he's alone, he sighs, "Happy anniversary," and drains this champagne glass.
There's an act break, and we come back to more MOTS footage. We start with a dreamy girl, sitting on the grass, who says, "If you wanted one perfect moment-- something you knew you were never going to have-- and someone would sign up to help you have that moment, I think that could be okay. That could be... beautiful." Another woman on a bike says, "It's human trafficking, end of story. It's repulsive."
Boyd is on the Dollhouse floor, checking the camera coverage. He walks out of the pod room and through some halls with dark wood paneling and huge light sconces, and notices a nook by a set of frosted glass door. He slides in to confirm that he's hidden, then calls Dominic to tell him to take Victor and his handler off the floor. Victor and Echo are sitting on one of the couches, and Victor says he's done something bad. Echo asks what it was, and he looks sad and confused as he says, "No one will tell me." A woman, backed by two huge orderlies in Nehru collars, asks Victor to come with them. He hesitates , asking where they're taking him, but she just repeats herself and he goes. Echo walks up to Boyd, who is being congratulated by the Forehead, and asks him what's happening to Victor, and Boyd says he's just trying to protect Sierra. "Sierra cries," observes Echo. "Not anymore," says Boyd.
In Mellie's apartment, Ballard is shirtless in the kitchen, borrowing ice to put on his wounds. She asks, "Are you always going to show up bleeding? Cause it's amazing how I'm not getting used to it." She's also clearly a little flustered by his shirtlessness. He relays what happens, and acknowledges that he was distracted by Echo's presence and that let them get away. She asks if he got the john/client, and he says he talked to him. He pauses for a second, looking curious, then moves in to kiss her. After a bit, he pulls back and says he's sorry. Mellie is clearly flustered, and babbles for a bit, but ends it with, "Don't do that-- don't think about her and kiss me." Which is vastly more self-respect that I expected out of her, what with the waiting by the door and the Italian food and the running his errands, and it starts a process that might well end with me liking her a lot more as a character. They agree they should just be neighborly, so she asks about the case and he starts to fill her in.
Sierra is walking through the halls with some other Dolls, but hangs back as she reaches the frosted glass doors, and goes through them. We see a male silhouette approach her and ask, "Do you trust me?" It's the Forehead. She gives the programmed reply, "With my life." He asks if she wants to "play the game," and she shakes her head. He reminds her to be very quiet during the game, and she agrees that noise is upsetting. He starts undoing his belt and tells Sierra to lift up her dress, which is when Boyd punches him straight through the frosted glass door. Sierra observes that that wasn't quiet. Boyd: "It wasn't meant to be."
In the Fortress of Dollitude, DeWitt is giving Boyd grief for not telling them he was setting Hearn the Forehead up. He says he needed him to feel safe, and she tells him never to take that kind of action again. Then she says she's wired a bonus to his account. Boyd says he doesn't need a bonus, and Adelle says she needs to give it to him. As he leaves, Adelle's control cracks for a second and she gives a heavy sigh as she sits down. (Remember what I said about tertiary character moments? Adelle's part this week is made entirely of those moments.) Dominic asks her what she wants to do with Hearn, and shows her a video tap of Ballard telling Mellie all about his investigation. He says things are going badly on a lot of fronts-- a handler raping an Active, an agent interrupting engagements and spilling his guts to the nearest civilian-- and, shockingly, says that he takes much of that as his responsibility. He asks if DeWitt has an exit strategy, because "the higher-ups" will target her if things go south. She smiles and says his concern is touching, but her bags aren't packed yet, and asks him to bring Hearn to her office. Meanwhile, she says to tell Topher to prep Echo for an engagement with Ballard-- it's time for their second date.
Another act break, and another MOTS clip. This time, a guy standing with his girlfriend is saying that Dolls would be great for those sexual fantasies that he's sure some people have that they don't want anyone to know about. Like, say, being with another man. "Just two guys, checking it out. Nothing queeny. And then the other one forgets. That could be pretty sweet for some guys." The girlfriend's smile becomes very, very fixed. (Okay, "nothing queeny" MOTS guy, you have earned my rarely-given seal of MOTS approval, because you are hilarious.)
In Topher's office (which I'm starting to think needs a nickname, but I'm afraid I won't be able to top FoD for awesome terribleness), Topher is assembling Echo's imprint, which he calls a "very bad girl", but gets an instability warning. Apparently the personality he built had major control issues that don't mix well with the enhanced combat skill set. The new Asian intern suggests "offsetting the inhibitors" so they can keep the aggression, but Topher says he needs "a soupcon of rage, not a whole tasting menu." This reminds him that he's hungry, so he sends the intern to the kitchen for almond-crusted salmon. Topher finds the personality fragment he's looking for and starts to upload it to the disk. Boyd comes in and wants to talk, and Topher bitches about being interrupted while he's in his process. Boyd says Echo's been assigned and he's not on the job, so he's worried. Topher says it's just standard "chill time" after the incident with Hearn, and that the job is a cakewalk-- a "life coach" gig where she'll remind some doctor why he helps gross sick kids. He suggests Boyd go celebrate his victory with some drinking, and asks how he got the breakthrough on the Sierra case. "You do the work," says Boyd.
Topher pulls the drive, takes it to the chair, and asks Echo if she's ready to play.
Fortress of Dollitude. Hearn is sitting in a chair, still busted up from his encounter with the glass door, with his hands tied in front of him. DeWitt is leaning against her window. She asks if he knows why he's still alive, and he says he assumes they have plans for him-- maybe wiping his brain to turn him into "one of your fantasy boys." "I find it a bit sad that you consider yourself as a candidate for anyone's fantasy," replies DeWitt. Hearn tries to keep the joke going, but Dominic knocks him across the head from behind, hard. (Which might actually be the first action he's taken that I approve of.) Hearn says he knows the gig is up, but he won't beg. Adelle asks how many times-- she can find out, but she wants to hear it from him. He says four.
Hearn says they have no room to judge him-- that what he does isn't any different from sending her to service some fat emir just because they make her think she's in love first. "We're in the business of using people!"
"You know less about this business than you think," replies Adelle. Hearn says she has no idea how it works on the floor, and that something like this was inevitable: a bunch of stone foxes with no willpower or memory running around naked. DeWitt asks if it made it better that she didn't struggle, which implies that he has a point of comparison, which, ew. He says it just made it easier, and DeWitt asks Dominic to leave. She says they are indeed in the business of using people, and the question now is what the use is for someone like him. She hands him a file on Mellie and says she's become a problem-- through no fault of her own, she's learned too much about the operation. "I need her killed, and it can't be clean," she says, raising a devastatingly cold eyebrow. (I didn't mean for this recap to become Ode to Olivia Williams, but seriously, she's knocking this out of the park. That eyebrow was dangerous.) "Think of this as your chance to avoid the Attic. You might even consider this a promotion. After all, this one will probably struggle."
Cut to Mellie, not struggling, mid-orgasm. She and Ballard have gotten very, very neighborly. He asks wryly if he can borrow a cup of sugar, and she says she doesn't have any left. There's more kissing, then she says that she's going to be very cool when he tells her it was a mistake and they should forget it ever happened. "You'll be bothered by how cool I am." Ballard asks what happens if he doesn't say that, and she says she'll still be cool, but not quite as cool. He asks what happens if she dumps him, and she worries about how needy and clingy he'll be. "I'm not a piece of meat," he huffs as he rolls over, wincing, "I have a heart." "Blah, blah," dismisses Mellie.
After a pause, Mellie says she's been thinking about Caroline. ("I wasn't!" says Ballard.) She thinks it's important the Ballard find her, even though it involves him getting beat up and shot. Ballard says she can help him out, then. (Mellie: "Is this where you dress me up and use me as bait? Because those movies never end well.") He'll go get take out, then they can go through his files and she can give him her perspective. She says that's the sweetest thing he's ever done for her, which throws Ballard a bit, because he thought the bits with the squelching were pretty awesome. "First, fetch me spring rolls. Then, we bust this case wide open," she says, and she's made the transition from plot device to character in about 30 seconds.
At the take-out place, Ballard is picking up the spring rolls, but when someone goes in the kitchen he catches a glimpse of Echo's reflection in the window. He heads into the kitchen and Echo sneaks up behind him and takes his gun out of his holster. He says, "Whoever you are, I don't want to hurt you." Echo says, "I know. I'm counting on it." Then she comes at him with a knife.
I find the starts of knife fights are great times for act breaks. As we're getting used to by now, we come back to a MOTS clip, where a guy says we're all brainwashed-- just sit back and wait for them to tell you what to buy.
Back to the kitchen fight. Highlights: Ballard strips his shirt off, ostensibly to use it in defense against the knife, but I think we can agree that someone on production just wants him shirtless. He blocks the knives using knife honers and disarms her. Echo throws some wicked-looking elbows, and throw a pot at him, which he blocks using the door of the fridge. He storms back at her, and does a seriously good job of portraying a guy with whom you do not want to fuck. That exchange ends in a spear tackle out the back door and onto a car in the alley. There's some more fighting on the car, including Echo pulling a snap-up on the roof and some kind of awesome arm-bar reversal flip. He finally pins her and is about to smash something when her face goes soft and defensive and he hesitates, which gives her an opening for a headbutt.
Finally, Ballard is on his face in the alley, and Echo stops to talk. She says the Dollhouse is real, they know he's after them, and they're going to have him taken off the case, which is why she's here. Ballard asks why she's telling him this. She says "We have a person inside. They corrupted the imprint while the programmer wasn't looking and added this parameter." Ballard asks if it's the same person who sent him the picture and video-- who we know is Alpha-- and Echo says no, this is this person's first communication. Ballard asks where the Dollhouse is, and Echo says he can't know that, and he's going about this the wrong way. He says he needs to take down the Dollhouse, and Echo breaks in that there are more than 20 Dollhouse all over the world, with ties to every major political power, and he can't take them down through normal channels-- only by working with the person who sent the message. "The Dollhouse deals in fantasy. That is their business, but that is not their purpose. We need you to find out what that purpose is." She says for that to happen, he needs to let the Dollhouse win this round so they'll back off.
With that, a cop comes over to see what the fuss is about. Echo yells, "He's got a gun!" Then she jams the gun in his hand, pulls it over her shoulder, and shoots the cop. She says he'll live and Ballard will be blamed, which will get him off the case. She says the engagement is complete, and that the Dollhouse doesn't want him dead yet, but they will protect the information. That makes him realize he's told Mellie, and he taks off running.
The next part is set mostly to instrumental music, with some screaming mixed in. Mellie (dressed, by the way, in a men's dress shirt over her underwear-- a combination that I think the technical term for is "phwoar.") answers the door thinking it's Ballard, but it's Hearn, dressed in black with a ski mask, who begins beating her into submission. To their credit, I really start to worry at this point that they've built Mellie up just to make her the woman in Ballard's refrigerator, which would piss me off to no end. Intercut with the attack is footage of Ballard running down the street, trying to call. In the apartment, the phone is ringing, but Hearn pulls Mellie away from it, climbs on top and starts to choke her. The answering machine picks up, but it's not Ballard-- it's DeWitt. She says, "There are three flowers in a vase. The third flower is green." When Mellie hears this, her eyes go blank, then snap into focus. She proceeds to kick the shit out Hearn, ending by flipping him down so his head crunches against a coffee table, then stomping on his neck. DeWitt, watching on the video tap, says, "There are three flowers in a vase. The third flower is yellow." Mellie's eyes go back to normal, she looks down at the body, and sinks against the wall, crying. Ballard busts in the door, gun drawn. He quickly checks Mellie, then checks Hearn's body, then goes back to comfort Mellie. We'll need an act break to take that in. (Also, it's a good thing she didn't have call forwarding to her cell phone enabled.)
We come back to our last MOTS clip, which a nerdy professor type, complete with tweed jacket, who says, "Forget about morality. Imagine that the technology exists and is being used. Now, imagine it being used on you." (Kind of odd to open with "Forget about morality" and then start the rest of your proposal by applying the absolute most rudimentary and fundamental moral analysis available. But hey, he has the tweed jacket.) He runs through the implications of having your identity erased at someone else's whim, and concludes, "If that happens, we're finished. We will cease to matter as a species. I don't know... maybe we should."
Another instrumental montage as Ballard surrenders his badge and gun to his boss and leaves the FBI building. DBL looks sad, and Agent Badger enjoys the moment. In the Fortress of Dollitude, Dominic gets a report on Ballard's suspension over the phone and relays the information to DeWitt. He says they rigged it so that Hearn's fingerprints came up related to the Borodin family and the break-in and death contributed to the evidence that Ballard was out of control. DeWitt observes that their sleeper Active performed perfectly, and Dominic says he reviewed the tape-- several times. (See, I've been wanting to see this. Dominic is an asshole with no compassion-- but he's presumably head of security because there are people out there who need to be dealt with by an asshole with no compassion. It's nice to see him doing that in a more just-feeling direction.) Dominic asks if they're pulling Mellie out now, and DeWitt says no-- Ballard won't take himself out of the game just because of the suspension. Besides, she says, Mellie is in love.
On the elevator down, Dominic congratulates Adelle on playing a good hand, but she corrects him: "No, I played a very bad hand very well. There is a distinction." Indeed. She's rapidly climbing up my list of Fictional Characters Not to Play Poker Against. Just The Eyebrow could make me fold anything lower than three jacks. (Come to think of it, she might already be in the top ten of Fictional Characters Not to Play Poker Against Who Are Not Actual Poker Players and Don't Have Superpowers. Remove the qualifiers, though, and the list fills up fast with telepaths. I still owe Charles Xavier money.)
DeWitt asks Dominic to contact his counterparts in the other houses and tell them what happened to Sierra, which she says must not happen again. She says Topher scrubbed Sierra the best he could, and that in this case ignorance probably really is bliss. "I don't think they're as ignorant as they're supposed to be, ma'am," says Dominic. "No. We're working on it," says DeWitt.
On the Dollhouse floor, Victor and Sierra are being nice to each other again, reading a book together on a couch as other Dolls do yoga. Dr. Saunders and Boyd are watching Echo paint, and DeWitt stops by to say hello. The painting is of a couple standing outside a house, done in the style of the Late Preschool Period. DeWitt says it's very nice, and Echo says it's not finished. DeWitt asks if she means the painting, but Echo just repeats herself. "Would you like it to be finished?" asks DeWitt, with a little bit of astonishment showing.
Back at the Bouncy the Rat Dream House, Joel is standing outside as Echo pulls up in the car again.
So, wow, there's a lot to talk about in there. I don't know how often they'll get to pull the "That character is really a Doll!" moment, but they played the hell out of here. Speaking of which, they're going through a hell of a lot of effort to keep Ballard occupied and under control. Initially DeWitt denied Dominic's request for a kill order because she didn't think he'd ever get close. But now he definitively has, and she's still employing multiple Actives to keep an eye on him and manipulate him instead of just getting rid of him. Even the person who sent the message through Kitchen!Combat!Echo said they wanted him alive.
Speaking of which, whoa. Who sent that message, and how much of it can we trust? She says someone "corrupted the imprint while the programmer wasn't looking," and there is definitely a moment where Boyd distracts Topher, but, well, I'm the obsessive guy with the DVR and I didn't see any other clues. Presumably you're limited to people with a lot of neurohacking technical expertise, but people have obviously been keeping secrets.
The expansion of the Dollhouse mythos is good. It makes sense that, having implemented this nasty tech, they'd have something slightly bigger in mind than catering dream dates to that elusive clandestinely-bicurious billionaire demographic.
Just a comment about rape as a plot device. Hearn's a scumbag, yeah, but he has a point: there's this enormous-- and nasty-- systemic power differential between handlers and Dolls, and like pretty much every skewed power dynamic that's going to express itself through skewed sexual dynamics. DeWitt hates the thought, but she's creating the environment that spawns it. This is in some ways an episode about rape, and about rape as a metaphor for the Dolls' situation. (Well, okay, there are two. By that standard, this is actually an episode about fights in kitchens, of which there are three, but that sounds less thematically resonant.) I appreciated the fact that rape was shown as a crime of power-- first of abused trust, then of intimidation.
And Echo showing signs of, well, job satisfaction changes the moral calculus considerably. Not entirely, of course.
Final scorecard for MOTS clips:
Says interesting things: slave woman, dreamy beautiful moment girl, tweed professor.
Says hilarious things: "nothing queeny" guy.
Says interesting things that map pretty much perfectly onto themes and opinions expressed better by traditional narrative in this episode and therefore kind of pointless: dreamy beautiful moment girl, since the whole Bouncy the Rat story is basically this argument.
Says interesting things that don't map onto anything else this episode is about and therefore amount to basically thematic masturbation: slave woman, tweed professor.
Overall, though, this was in a different league from what came before, while still paying off a lot of stuff that had been set up. This show's premise was made to be broken-- the house was built to be burnt down. And this episode lit the first match.
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