Recap: Dollhouse 107, "Echoes"

It’s a new piece of the conversation we saw in the pilot. Adelle and Caroline are in a stunningly tasteful room. Adelle is serving tea; Caroline is looking sullen. Adelle says she’s offering Caroline a deal: her life for her life. Adelle gets five years, and Caroline gets the rest. Caroline asks if that’s her talking, or the Rossum Corporation. Adelle stays placid and says they’ve been doing this dance for nearly two years. She pours more tea and assures Echo that nothing is what it appears to be.

In a lab, a student-looking guy and girl walk in to discover one of their colleagues on the floor in his underwear, babbling and letting fruit flies out of jars. Believe me, sometimes the stress of being a science grad student can get to you. When Underwear Guy sees the other students, he jumps up and runs—straight in the window, like a bird. One of the students tries to soothe Underwear Guy, but Underwear Guy throws him to the floor. Batting away fruit flies, the new guy and girl start giggling hysterically while Underwear Guy continues to beat his head against the window. As he pounds away, a smear of blood appears on the window, and then it shatters.

There’s a man in a suit in the Fortress of Dollitude, and he’s giving orders to Adelle. I guess we’re meeting some of the higher-ups in the Dollhouse corporate organization chart. He’s holding a vial of something bright green, and saying he doesn’t just need one Doll—he needs an army. Topher comes in, all prepared to apologize for an incident in which Foxtrot spoke Mandarin instead of Cantonese, but is surprised by the new guy’s presence. Topher recognizes him, and, out of shock and a desperate need to lay down some exposition, nervously runs through his resume, which includes being a VP at Rossum Corporation and a Nobel Prize nomination. Topher is in awe. (“I might vomit. That’s a compliment.”) He then infers from Ambrose’s presence that something really bad has happened. Ambrose says the green stuff in the vial is a new experimental memory drug. In the first phase of exposure, it manifests like a recreational hallucinogen, but the second phase apparently involves a total loss of impulse control, which explains Underwear Guy’s determination in beating himself to death with a plate glass window.

This inspires Topher to go on a nervous tangent about different body chemistries leading to different drug effects—which he then hastily amends to say his interest is purely scientific, and that the company has biweekly drug tests. Ambrose says there are two vials of the drug, that the other one is missing, and that one vial is enough to affect the entire campus. There’s no cure, but they can sedate people who are affected. He wants a team of Actives to secure the campus while Topher works on an antidote. Topher guesses that the Dolls will be immune to the drug, since he’s already removed the inhibitors that the drug’s supposed to work on. Ambrose gives Topher the vial, and Adelle leads him out, telling him to get the team of Actives in the field as quickly as possible. She asks about Echo, and Topher says she’s on a job, doing a new fantasy for an old client. He offers to call her back, but Adelle looks relieved and says to let Echo sit this one out.

Echo’s gig is with the guy with the motorcycles and the Chinese restaurant from the pilot. This time she’s more of a buttoned-up schoolgirl than a competitive rival, though—she’s never been on a bike before. The client says she’s going to drive the bike. In fact, she’s going to be doing a lot of things she’s never done before.

(It’s interesting that the client’s tastes have changed—from wanting a rival to wanting an innocent he can shape. It could just be him sampling at the fantasy buffet, or it could be that the ability to buy his women in whatever flavor he wants is causing a devolution in what he wants out of women.)

Meanwhile, Agent Ballard is cooking breakfast—for two. Mellie is surprised, but he says that he’s now a man of leisure and he thought he’d give cooking a try. She clearly thinks it’s sweet, but she says they need to talk. She says she’s a grownup, and that they got impulsive before, which was good, and then she got attacked, which wasn’t, and she knows that Ballard feels an obligation to protect her, but she doesn’t want to “skip to the honeymoon just because I had a bad day.” Ballard says he likes taking care of her. Mellie replies, “And I think you’re dreamy. But in my dream, I’m stronger than you know.”

The conversation turns to her assailant. Since Ballard knows the Dollhouse sent him, he’s not buying the explanation that he’s a random Russian thug, and he says he’s having an outside contact run the prints for him. This upsets Mellie, and she reminds him that he’s off the case. He says that’s the perfect opportunity to sneak up on the Dollhouse, and reminds her that she thought this was important, too. She says that was before it cause her near-death experience, and that the one thing he could do that would make her safer would be to drop the case. Ballard, naturally, won’t do that. Mellie throws his earlier line about protecting her back at him, and tells him to show himself across the hall.

(Man, Ballard’s got it rough. Every time he gets an impulse to act like a conventional romantic action hero, someone pops up and deconstructs the fuck out of it.)

On campus, a fleet of black vans pulls up and Dolls pour out. (Hey, it must be handy for their motor pool guys when an assignment calls for sinister black vans. They’ve got dozens lying around already.) Victor starts giving orders to agent-dolls who are splitting up to find the vial of drug. Dominic comes up and introduces Sierra, who is a CDC doctor. (Victor: “Great, I haven’t heard a good flesh-eating bacteria story in a while.” Sierra: “Oh, I have dozens.”) Dominic then tries to take command, but it turns out that Victor’s imprint is of an NSA agent, who outranks Dominic. Dominic rolls his eyes and huffs, “Topher!” Hee.

Apparently, among the new things Echo’s imprint is going to do today are amateur filmmaking and light bondage. The client is tied up on the bed, and Echo is messing with the camera. She accidentally unhooks something, and in the process of fixing it she sees a news report on Underwear Guy’s death, which features footage of the Rossum Building. She sits down, shocked, and has a quick flashback. She apologizes to the client and says she has to go. Then she leaves, with the client still tied to the bed.

In a flashback with the title card, “A few years ago,” Echo, presumably still Caroline, is in bed with a guy and trying to talk him into going to an antiwar demonstration.

At the Mental Hygienist's Chair, Topher is giving Mellie an injection of the glowy green drug. (Technically, of course, she's not Mellie anymore. I think, from pre-launch casting rumors, that her Doll handle is November, so that's what we're going with.) His plan is to use her immunity to see what the drug is doing, presumably without dealing with side effects like letting fruit flies out of jars and beating oneself to death against windows. DeWitt is hovering nervously, complaining about being put in crisis mode because Ambrose can't keep his shit together. (She's much more British about it, though, using lovely phrases like "affairs in order" and "glorified dogsbody".) She sums up that the only reason that she doesn't have his job is that he couldn't handle hers. Topher says the pressure, and the oversharing, aren't helping. He does a Mighty Mouse impression, then asks Adelle to get him a juice box.

(Interesting point here: When Adelle is explaining why she doesn't quit, she says "I believe in the work we're funding." Not "the work we're doing." Hmm.)

Echo rides onto campus on the motorcycle she stole from the billionaire she left tied to the bed. She wanders around looking dazed, clearly struggling to understand the new memories. This makes Victor's squad of Dolls think she's on the drug, and they take her to the containment area.

(Pet theory: I think it's possible that the Dolls have base-level programming that makes them look out for one another in the field. Sierra "made a call" to interrupt the kidnapping operation in the pilot, Echo took action to save Sierra in the pop star episode, and Victor looks out for Echo here. There are plot reasons for all of this, of course, but it would kind of make sense. Makes me wonder what happens when you program a Doll to harm another Doll-- which is an episode I'm sure is coming. (Oh, counterexample: Taffy!Sierra had to be heavily persuaded to help Not!Taffy!Anymore!Echo. But then, she couldn't see her, so maybe it just didn't kick in.))

Boyd is on the phone with Adelle, asking if the client's fantasy might be to send a Doll to college. When Adelle finds out which college, she looks devastated. Meanwhile, Topher tells November that her brain rocks, and offers her a high five, which she accepts while looking baffled. On campus, a drugged student walks up to Boyd and babbles that he has mansions in his eyes. He bats her away as politely as he can manage as Adelle tells him to make sure Echo doesn't interfere in the ongoing operation.

In the containment area, Dr. Sierra is trying to give Echo a sedative, but she protests that she doesn't need it. On the cot next to her is the male student from the intro in the lab-- the one who tried to pull Underwear Guy away from the window before succumbing to a serious fit of the giggles. Echo, trying to work things out for herself, says out loud that she needs to get into the Rossum Building so she can save "him", but she doesn't know who "he" is. The guy on the cot, who I will be calling Giggles until we find a real name for him, says that the lab is surrounded by security now. Giggles says he thinks the drug was released as a test, and he wants to get into the lab and prove it. Echo says she knows she can get in-- she just doesn't remember how. Throughout the interaction, Giggles is assuming that Echo's wackiness is drug-induced. (Sigh. He introduces himself at the end of this conversation as "Sam". I will continue to call him Giggles until it ceases to amuse me.) Giggles and Echo decide to team up to get into the lab, and leave the containment area while the Doll security is distracted by a drugged student having a seriously bad trip.

As they're dodging security, Boyd comes up to Echo and asks if she'd like a treatment. She looks shaken for a minute, then says no. Boyd just stands there impassively as Giggles and Echo run off. Then he shrugs and says "Boy. Did not maintain control of that situation." Then he giggles.

In flashback, Caroline, her boyfriend (Leo), and some friends are discussing the Rossum Corporation's latest publicity push, which features a picture of Ambrose surrounded by smiling children and the slogan, "Minds Matter." The group objects to Rossum's animal testing practices. (Sigh. As it happens, Rossum is actually doing hideously unethical things to their animals, so it's good that someone's playing watchdog, but I don't get the impression that Caroline is drawing lines between ethical and unethical animal research and I'm not sure the show wants us to, either. If the show keeps pushing the abolitionist view, we're going to have words. For now, let's put off that conversation.) Anyway, Caroline has a plan: She wants to break into the lab, take video of the animals, and post it online to shame Rossum into policy changes.

At the Dolls' control center on campus, the Dolls are bustling on the containment assignment while Dominic is moping about not being in charge. (Under his breath: "Sure, now you're all experts. Four hours ago, you were discussing your love for applesauce.") Victor is starting to say that he thinks he has the situation contained when he notices that Dominic has been checking his magazine compulsively and acting a little jittery. Victor suggests Dominic go to the containment, and Dominic jumps up and pulls his gun, saying he's fine. Victor starts trying to defuse things, but suddenly Dominic's arm goes limp, and he says, in a hilarious California stoner voice, "Dude, this thing is so heavy. It makes my arms tired." Victor quickly confiscates the gun and a helpful Doll herds Dominic to containment.

Victor picks up the Dominic's phone and calls Adelle, who passes the news on to Topher that the effects are spreading. (Topher: "Dom wouldn't have taken the drug. He'd never have consciously tried to have fun.") Topher reasons that it can't be airborne, because it's not spreading fast enough, but it could be transmitting by touch. To demonstrate, he touches Adelle. (Thus, for those keeping track, completing a chain that started when he high-fived November, who was injected with the drug. And thus begins, seriously, hilarity. I will be quoting heavily here, because summarizing really just doesn't do this stuff justice.)

Adelle starts to berate Topher for not making progress, and he shoots back that she's not really doing anything except standing around being... and here he forgets the word, which I am choosing to interpret as his survival instincts cutting through his drugged brain. Adelle offers to supply the adjectives: "Sarcastic? Unfeeling? British?" Then she marvels, "I am very British, you know. I don't say hard R's." Topher begins talking about his love for brown sauce, and wonders what it's made of-- then chooses to believe it is made of brown, mined from the earth by the hardworking brown miners of North Brownderton. Adelle sits down, deadly serious, and says, "I find lentils completely incomprehensible."

While she's pondering legumes, she then remembers the ongoing operation, and wonders why Echo went back to Fremont College. Topher says: "That can't have anything to do with the drug. Which means... our problems are huge. And... indomitable." Adelle's face lights up: "Oooh, indomitable. I could eat that word. Or a crisp. Do you have a crisp?" Topher, like a child with a great secret: "You haven't seen my drawer of inappropriate starches?"

In Giggles' room, Giggles and Echo swap backstories: Giggles is a scholarship kid, and a mama's boy. Echo is still confused about her past. Giggles pulls out a map, and Echo points to an area and says that's where she saves him, that the way in is underneath, and that they have to find a Lily Foundry. Sam is not overwhelmed by the plan's specificity, but he goes along with it.

In Topher's office, he's on the phone talking excitedly to Agent Victor, telling him what he'd figured out about the transmission by touch. He slips up and calls the team "Dolls" but covers with, "by which of course I mean NSA and CDC types". On the level below, Adelle is jumping on a trampoline and waving frantically, telling Topher to say hi for her. (If nothing else, this episode has given us stoned Adelle on a trampoline.) The camera pans out and we see that Topher is in his boxers. He complains that Agent Victor is "lofty", and Adelle heaves herself over the railing, saying she has a great story about Victor, but before we get to hear it, Boyd is on call waiting. Adelle grabs the phone and asks if he's secured Echo, and he says to relax-- he's figured it out, and she just has to listen. With that, he puts the phone on a piano in the common room and starts playing. Adelle puts it on speakerphone and she and Topher listen, enraptured.

Giggles and Echo are out looking for the entrance. One of Caroline's old professors recognizes her and calls out, but both Echo and Giggles write off her reaction as drug-induced.

Back in Topher's workshop, he and Adelle are sprawled on the floor, enjoying piles of inappropriate starches. Adelle, in a tone of voice usually reserved for late-night dorm room bullshit sessions, says: "I'm saying we choose. I'm well aware that there are forces beyond our control, but in the face of those forces, we choose. Then we live with those choices." (And that, I'm pretty sure, is a thesis statement for one of the two tenets of the Grand Unified Theory of the Whedonverse. In my excruciatingly humble opinion, his other grand recurring theme is the one I still think this show is missing: the created family, and the obligations incurred thereby.)

Anyway, Adelle says she knows why Echo went to Fremont: to punish her. Or rather, she says, to let Caroline punish her. November, somewhat shockingly, walks into the room, sobbing, and says, "Are you ever going to shut up about her?" She continues: "Is she what you think about when you're on me?" (Which causes a funny reaction from Adelle and Topher.) They're talking about the same person, but very different contexts. Adelle looks at Topher and asks why November isn't immune. He says she's not tripping-- she's glitching, and remembering. Her memories include Hearn's attack from last week-- and, apparently the code phrase that unlocks her ninja mode. She stands up and says, "There are three flowers in a vase." Adelle and Topher react with a stoned version of pure terror.

In flashback, Echo has secured blueprints to the Rossum Building, and there's an underground tunnel. Leo gets a little shaken. He says this just got real, but Caroline says it was always real to her.

On campus in the present, Echo and Giggles have found Lily Foundry, which is the company's name on a grate covering a tunnel. Once they're underground, Echo says they follow the red pipe to a ladder that leads into Rossum, but she still doesn't know how she knows. Sam says they'll have to move like ninjas from here on, and Echo worries that they'll have to fight-- she doesn't know how to make a fist. Sam tells her to dodge security like she's playing a video game, but she doesn't play video games. Also, Dominic has snuck up behind her. He starts apologizing profusely for trying to kill her. ("I tried to burn you alive. I mean, who does that?") Again, both Echo and Giggles assume he's drugged. As they hurry off, Dominic keeps begging for forgiveness, and then he starts saying, "The guns, the running around, the barking orders, that's not all there is to Laurence Dominic. I mean, look at this suit!")

In the lobby, the security guard is freaking out from the drug. He's got his gun out, and ends up firing a round into the ceiling before Victor comes in and disarms him. Sensibly, Victor asks everyone to turn in their guns. Then Sierra starts flashing back to being raped by Hearn, and she grabs the gun and points it at Victor, telling him to get away. Victor, simultaneously, starts flashing back to a combat rescue where he was trying to drag someone with him who didn't want to come. They stand there for a second, locked in a struggle, neither reacting to the present situation but to their individual competing traumas, which cause each to do the opposite of what the other needs. Yep, those two crazy kids have got the beginnings of a real relationship going already.

In the Dollhouse, Topher and Adelle are cowering under some furniture. Since no epic thrashing has ensued, Adelle deduces that November never finished the code phrase, and tells Topher to go check. Topher suggests Adelle go check.

Adelle: I am your superior!
Topher: In every way. Go check.

It's safe, so they load November back into the chair. Topher explains that the drug is hitting the Actives differently-- it works slower, and instead of making them high it unlocks traumatic memories. He says the good news is that this means the drug is breaking down and will wear off in a few hours. Adelle wonder why, if it wasn't fatal to anyone else, it inspired Underwear Guy to his failed autodefenestration attempt. Topher says he must have had an extreme dose-- way more than he could process. Which, he deduces, would be more than he'd ever take willingly. The first death was a murder.

Giggles and Echo are in the lab. She says it's different now, but she doesn't know what it was like before. Sam goes to the fridge and pulls out a tube. (They have the genuine article plastic tubes that labs use, but nothing in the fridge is labeled, and that's making my fingers twitch. Everything in the lab needs a label, initials, and a date, and not just because it makes your life easier. If you need to clean it out and nobody knows what's in it, you have to assume the worst. It's best if your fridge clean-up day doesn't involve a bomb squad and HAZMAT suits.)

Of course, the reason that the tube Giggles goes for isn't labeled properly is that it would have to be labeled "Vial of drug suspended in red opaque liquid to hide it", which would kind of defeat the purpose. Echo notices, happily, that Giggles found the drug. There's a beat as she realizes that he found it really, really fast. Giggles pours some onto a cloth and holds it to Echo's mouth. As she collapses, he says he's sorry.

In flashback, Caroline and Leo are breaking into the lab, only in the past it was full of monkeys and dogs in cages. (And indeed, those cages are way smaller than any regulatory agency would allow.) They start filming this when Leo notices a bunch of fetuses on the benchtop in jars. Then Leo sees a record of a brain experiment of some kind on the screen, and tries to get more information while Caroline frets over the animals. Security busts in the door and they run, dropping the camera.

Echo's awareness comes back to the present. Sam is explaining that he's going to sell the drug to Rossum's Swiss competitors. Echo flashes back to a conversation with Leo, who tells Caroline, "You do love a fight." Then she stands up and calls Giggles a killer. Giggles says Underwear Guy was in on the plan from the beginning, but he got scared and tried to back out. Giggles was just trying to get Underwear Guy out of the way long enough to pull off the heist, and he never meant for him to die. Echo says he's still responsible. (See? You don't need the Sledgehammer of Theme-- which to be fair, has mostly been on vacation since the pop star episode, except maybe for a brief reappearance in one of Adelle's voiceovers in the cult episode. Forces beyond our control. Choice. Responsibility.)

He runs and she chases him, but as she runs through the halls she flashes back to running through the same halls with Leo. Rossum's security team is apparently the type that has heard of a "warning shot", but regards the whole concept with suspicion. Leo takes a bullet in the side, right under the ribcage. He and Caroline hide in a closet as security, who have better aim than Storm Troopers, but apparently attended the same seminar on chase tactics, run past cluelessly, and he tells her he loves her and she's going to be all right.

In the present, she chases Giggles past the drugged Dolls in the lobby. (And past Dominic: "Again, so sorry about that burning alive thing!")

In flashback, she and Leo have made it outside, but he's collapsed on the ground and she's pounding on his chest and sobbing. (Probably too late to make a difference in this case, but you know what's a really bad idea to do to someone with a hole through their thorax? Chest compressions, that's what.) (Side note: Choice. Responsibility. You know the rest. They're walking up to the line of sledgehammeriness, but I don't think they've crossed it.)

Flash forward, and she's in a parallel situation in the present: on the lawn in front of the Rossum Building, pounding on a guy. Giggles throws her off him, but Boyd is there. He clocks Giggles, then bends down and asks the sobbing Echo if she'd like a treatment. She says yes. (Since she was able to refuse it before, and has had such a close brush with her trauma, I'm not sure it's just the programming talking here. Which is interesting.)

In a hospital in the past, Adelle is talking to someone who called her in because he thinks someone "fits the profile." He's talking about Caroline, who is in a bed a few rooms over. When Adelle gets there, though, the bed is empty and the window is open. Adelle smiles admiringly and says she won't get far.

In the present Fortress of Dollitude, Dominic comes in to deliver the world's most awkward status report. With plenty of uncomfortable pauses, he says that the Dolls have all been rounded up, wiped, and inspected, and that everything seems satisfactory. DeWitt returns his gun, awkwardly. He awkwardly says the press is buying their cover story, which is that Underwear Guy drugged a bunch of people and then committed suicide. Finally, Adelle loses patience with all the awkwardness: "We got drugged. We behaved like idiot children. It happened. It's over. You may go." Seriously, I'm not sure why they're so awkward with each other-- it's not like they had sex on the hood of a police car. (Yes, this is definitely the Dollhouse version of Band Candy. I'm not complaining.) When he's gone, she sits down heavily, head in hands, and watches on her monitor as Echo walks across the floor of the Dollhouse.

Mellie is locking up her apartment and dragging some suitcases. Ballard catches her and asks if she was going to say anything, and she says she just needs to get away for a while. She starts to tell him where he can find her, but he stops her and says it might be better for her if he doesn't know. As she walks down the hall, he says, "You know where you can find me."

In the same room we started in, Adelle is pouring more tea, but this time it's Giggles on the other side of the table. He complains that they can't hold him without charges or a phone call, but Adelle says she's not with the government. She says she can give him what he wants: a new, better life. She pulls out a file on his mother and starts talking about her money problems, and Sam gets mad, but it's not a threat. Adelle offers to send her a monthly stipend for five years, and at the end she says Giggles will be able to support her on his own. "How?" asks Sam. "I'm going to make you an offer," says Adelle.

And we're done for the week. In your weekly dose of rampant speculation, I don't buy that the whole thing was Sam's idea. A drug that necessitates a response by a full team of Dolls, and then ends up unlocking their repressed memories? I smell Alpha. (Especially since the hunter slipped Echo a hallucinogen that unlocked repressed traumatic memories, and he was clearly working with/for Alpha.) And that has interesting implications if Giggles/Sam ends up becoming a Doll, doesn't it?