Recap: Dollhouse 201, "Vows"

So, there's a second season. As the original spirit of this project was not to obsess over the commercial success or failure of the show, I won't spend too much time doing my happy renewal dance. (Or pouring one out for our former lead-in, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was a very cool show and it's too bad that FOX's newfound tolerance for quirky, low-rated sci-fi shows on Friday evenings didn't extend to them.)

Ahem. To the story at hand. Echo is in the chair. Ballard is hanging around looking worried, and Topher tells him it's fine. (And uses the phrase "frenemy" to do so.) He mentions that this engagement has been long-term, which raises complications, but that he thinks Echo's handler will tell him if anything goes wrong.

Just then, something goes wrong. One of the screens flickers suddenly to show a clip from "Bride of Frankenstein". Topher gets rattled and looks out his window to see the Dr. Saunders enjoying his reaction. Well, the person formerly known as Dr. Saunders. I guess it's a tribute to the complexity of the situation that neither "Dr. Saunders" or "Whiskey" really seem right as names for her. And "Whiskey Saunders" sounds like a rail drink. Let's go with "Doctor Whiskey".

Topher apparently can't handle the added strain of being fucked with by an unbalanced ex-doll, so he says he's going to bed and calls for Ivy to finish Echo's imprint.

On the Dollhouse floor, Boyd and Adelle are doing a Sorkin-style walk-and-talk. Boyd thinks Echo's engagement is too risky. Adelle thinks they need to stick with it, as it's part of the deal she made with Ballard, and the alternatives are that (a) Ballard exposes them or (b) Adelle had Boyd kill Ballard. Adelle still has plans for Ballard and doesn't want to go with options (a) and (b).

While they're talking, they run across Victor, whose scars look noticeably lighter. Adelle checks the progress of his healing by touching his face, which goes on just long enough to become awkward. Boyd doesn't think Ballard's really flipped to their side, and Adelle says she knows she isn't, but she's counting on his obsession with Echo to keep him in line. Boyd notes that Ballard is using his obsession with Echo to fuel a fantasy about righting old wrongs while doing something worse-- which probably has a familiar ring to it for him.

And his worries about this assignment are apparently not all safety-related. He says that he thought he'd seen it all after "that news caster who wanted to be rolled in eggs and flour". ("Ah, Tempura Joe," Adelle murmurs discreetly. "Such a lonely soul.") "But this-- this is sick," finishes Boyd.

We cut to Echo in a wedding gown, walking down the aisle.

And... credits. New, Season Two credits. Which are... kind of all Echo, all the time, actually. Since everyone else is more interesting that she's been so far, you'd think they'd get at least a 2-second shot while their name scrolls by, but no.

When we get back, Topher is waking up from his nap, which he took on a cot in the server farm. You'd think he'd have more comfortable arrangements-- I assume he's almost as much of a workaholic as Adelle and Dr. Whiskey. You think they're sleeping on cots?

He comes out into his office, yawning, and checking in crankily with Ivy. Apparently the House is crazy busy-- so busy, in fact, that Sierra has shown up to get a treatment that they didn't know she was getting. Her imprint is dressed in a pink skirt suit with a pillbox hat and has a Henry Higgins-inspired British accent, but she's not exactly a gentlewoman. When Ivy tries to give her the treatment, she at first objects to being treated by a woman, and an "Oriental". Then she suggests that, if Ivy were to tie her up and spank her, she'd be in no position to resist. Whoever hired her is apparently in the same league of odd fetishes as Tempura Joe.

Topher, meanwhile, went off in search of caffeine, and found his cabinet stocked with huge white rats. He freaks, jumps backwards, and grabs the phone to dial Dr. W. Ivy comes in and starts gathering the rats up, saying, "I didn't know you hated rodents." "Someone did," Topher mutters darkly.

When Whiskey picks up, he asks, "Is this your idea of a joke?"
"You designed me," says Whiskey. "It must be your idea of a joke."

They argue for a bit about whose fault it is that she's crazy. Meanwhile, Boyd walks into Dr. Whiskey's office with a report on the surgery to remove Victor's scars. Whiskey says that she's surprised DeWitt would spring for such an expensive process for Victor. "When she didn't for you," finishes Boyd.

"I like my scars," Whiskey demurs. "They bring out my eyes." Then, more genuinely, "Without my scars, I'm just one of them." She says she's afraid that Adelle will remember that she was a more lucrative asset without the scars or the self-awareness.

"There's no way--" starts Boyd.
"Adelle DeWitt is not the sort of person who--" she interrupts.
"--that I would ever let that happen," finishes Boyd. Aww.
"What if she goes over your head?" asks Whiskey.
"I'm very tall," notes Boyd. Double aww.

Whiskey takes off her lab coat and notes that, when neither of them knew she was a Doll, he wasn't very interested in her. "Should I interpret this as pity? Curiosity? Deviant excitement? There's no judging in the Dollhouse." And, within ten seconds, Boyd's attempts at gallantry get undercut and eviscerated. (Deconstructed aww?) Maybe he and Ballard can form a support group.

It needs to be said somewhere, so it might as well be here: Amy Acker is burning this role to ash. I never really liked her on Angel as Crazy!Fred, or as Sweet!Shy!Fred, and Illyria was pretty much one note. Even before the revelation here she was a little boring. But she's luminous here, swerving from wry to bitter to brittle in unpredictable ways.

Boyd tries to calm her down, but it doesn't take: "My entire existence was constructed by a sociopath in a sweater vest. What would you suggest I do?" she asks, which is when Boyd asks her to dinner. Whiskey goes through the various phobias that make her more comfortable never leaving the Dollhouse: crowds, pets, open spaces, sunlight. "Guess I'm just built that way," she says, hitting the wry/brittle/bitter trifecta.

"Every person I know is pretty poorly constructed," says Boyd, "and they all have an excuse for not dealing."
"What's yours?" asks Whiskey.

Back at the wedding, a bodyguard type is on the phone, saying that the shipment is delayed for a day because his boss is busy. Echo and her husband cut the wedding cake, and we got to commercial.

We get back in time for the first dance, during which Echo and her husband banter romantically. Then, the wedding day is over and it's time for the wedding night-- which is when we find out that Echo's wearing a wire and Ballard is listening. Echo slips out of the wedding dress and gets with the consummating while Ballard eats takeout and works out nervous energy with conveniently timed push-ups.

The next day, Echo walks into a shop, goes to the back and through a door marked "Private" to where Ballard is waiting. There's more banter, except of the platonic partner variety. Echo complains that she's sore. There's a beat, then she says, "My feet, perv." She makes him rub them while they go over the mission status. The husband, Martin, is an arms dealer that the FBI can't get close to. Echo notices that Ballard is grumpy, and asks if it's about the sex. "I know for you the act of love is the most precious thing two people can share, but it's just bodies. And it's fun with Martin. Boy has a work ethic..."

"I think you might be a demon," says Ballard. He changes the subject back to work, wondering what the big shipment is. Echo thinks he's selling an old buddy some dirty bombs, but Ballard doesn't think the arms dealer would escalate that far. Echo asks how long they've been partners, and Ballard surreptitiously checks a list before he answers "three years". Echo says her hunches have a good track record. She's interrupted by her handler offering her a treatment. Ballard protests that he wants her right back, and the handler shrugs. "You're the client."

Back at the Dollhouse, Whiskey is giving Echo a check-up, which includes a pelvic exam. Dr. Whiskey is being her usual professional self, but the contact makes Echo flash back to an engagement they did together that involved making out with each other in evening wear. This leads Echo to call the doctor by her old handle. Whiskey starts out angry, thinking it's a prank, but quickly goes towards shell-shocked. Echo says she doesn't remember the rest. Barely under control, Whiskey asks Echo if she remembers that Alpha cut up her face so that Echo could be number one. As she's talking, her hand hovers over the scalpels. Then she switches to a post-checkup lollipop, but she eats it herself instead of giving it to Echo. "Go, be your best," she says sarcastically.
"No one is their best in here," Echo says as she's leaving. Whiskey watches her in shock.

In the Fortress, Adelle is dourly watching her enormous flat screen as a senator gives a press conference accusing Rossum of withholding medical advances in neurology. The senator is played by Alexis Denisof, which makes him Senator Wesley Wyndam-Pryce until further notice. (It's actually odd, at this point, to see him without Wesley's accent.) Adelle asks Boyd what he thinks. He thinks Senator Wyndam-Pryce is wearing a nice suit, which Adelle doesn't think is relevant, but he uses it as a jumping-off point for his analysis-- old money, connections, and ambition, which makes him dangerous.

Adelle asks why he wasn't on their radar, and Boyd thinks that he didn't really have it out for them. He was just looking for a cause and someone gave him Rossum. "Any ideas who?" asks Adelle.

Ballard walks in. Boyd makes his suspicions clear, glowers manfully at Boyd, then leaves. Ballard tells Adelle it wasn't him-- he's given up on being able to take the Dollhouse down himself. "If you want to point fingers, you should look at Boyd," he says. "I know why I'm here."

"Do you?" Adelle asks, bemused. Ballard says he's using his leverage with the House to take down the gunrunner. Adelle points out that, despite getting him to marry Echo, he's made no progress on closing the case. She wants Ballard to become Echo's handler.

"I don't work for you," says Ballard.
"No, you work for the betterment of mankind, fighting crime by listening to Echo have sex. It's very noble," says Adelle, awesomely. Her continued awesomeness comes as a relief after that tragic, tragic haircut. She points out that he never asks about November. She says she thinks he didn't really forgive her at all-- he was just done with her, but still obsessed with Echo.

She says Echo's special, and everyone can see it, even Alpha. Policy would be to send her to the Attic, but Adelle is curious. Ballard likens it to learning from a rat before one kills it, and Adelle says that's how science works.

(I think she's bluffing, by the way. She's not as cold as she's pretending, to Ballard or to herself. She is curious, of course, but she also feels something almost maternal towards both Echo and Caroline. And, I think, she's hoping that if Echo becomes something transcendent it will redeem her for having her hands up to the elbows in muck to build her.)

She tells Ballard that she'd prefer Echo to have a handler who really cares about her, even unreasonably. Ballard says she's working an angle. "Other than the very special and the comatose, have you ever met anyone who wasn't?" asks Adelle. "Think about it."

In a darkened room, the security guard is flipping through some photos in a darkened room, then calls the boss at the House of Weapons and Wedded Bliss. The boss, Martin, doesn't want to hear about it just now, because Echo just came home for more banter. As we go to break, we see that the photos are of Echo talking to Ballard.

We come back to Topher napping in the server farm again. (He seems to be wearing a medical alert bracelet, but I can't see what for. It doesn't come up in this episode, but maybe it's some long-range plot set-up? Or just a character note? Or, possibly, just a piece of jewelry that I'm misidentifying.) A hand sneaks around his body and travels downward. It's Whiskey, who's spooning him from behind. Topher wakes up, jumps to his feet, and speaks for the audience: "What the hell?"

"Just trying to be my best," says Whiskey sarcastically.
"I don't want your best," stammers Topher.
"I think you do," says Whiskey, with a pointed look at his boxers.
"That's the minority vote," says Topher, covering up, "and you tricked it! It was asleep! You could have been Fozzie Bear and it would have..." Here he makes a vague upward gesture. "Not that I think about Fozzie Bear."
Whiskey says she wants to stop playing games, and Topher, quite sanely, asks how this qualifies as not playing games.

Whiskey has apparently come to the conclusion that the reason Topher made her despise him was so that he could eventually seduce her, and has decided that the best way to deal with that is to get it over with. "I see that now. I love you," she says. Topher pushes her off of him, and she slaps him. "Why shouldn't I love you? Aren't you Big Brother? Aren't you the Lord my God? Why shouldn't I accept your divine plan?"

"Because you're better than that!" Topher snaps. (He's doing a great job here, too-- his usual snide detachment has been shaken by the stress of guilt and Whiskey's weirdness and he's pushed reluctantly into sincerity, which he finds unfamiliar.) "You're better than me." He describes her creation: "DeWitt gave me the call. We need a new doctor. One that's kind, and efficient, and committed to our cause."
"Why didn't you stop there?" demands Whiskey.
"Because I was designing a person, not a Roomba," snaps Topher. "I needed you to be whole. If you always agreed with me, we'd miss something, and someone would get hurt--"
"You don't care if people get hurt," Whiskey scoffs.
"You don't know me!" says Topher. "That's the deal. You don't know me, and I don't know you. Not fully. Not ever. That's the deal. I made you question. I made you fight for your beliefs." His voice drops. "I didn't make you hate me. You chose to."

They both drop to a sitting position, both near sobbing. "How do I live knowing that everything I am stems from something I can't abide?" asks Whiskey.

A thought occurs to Topher. "So... we weren't really going to..."
"I can't stand the smell of you," says Whiskey.
"I did that," says Topher, with just a little bit of the old grin. Then he asks why she didn't find out who she used to be when she had the chance. He think she could even get re-imprinted and released.
"Because I don't want to die," says Whiskey, or rather, Claire Saunders. "I'm not real. I'm in someone else's body. And I'm afraid to give it up. I'm not better than you-- I'm just a series of excuses."
"You're human," Topher says, almost gently.
"Don't flatter yourself," says Claire.

Echo wakes up alone. She calls for Martin a couple of times, then sneaks into his office and starts going through his desk. When she finds a locked drawer, she grabs a letter opener and starts trying to pry it open. She's keeping an eye on the office door the whole time, but Martin is watching from outside. He comes in and catches her. Echo starts to act guilty, then tries turning it around on him and pretending she was just trying to figure out where they're going on the honeymoon. She notes that she didn't damage the desk, and Martin seems to relent.

"That's all right," he says. He grabs her and slams her head into the desk. "I can always have it refinished." The head trauma makes Echo flash through her previous imprints. Martin wants to know who she really is. He shows her the photo of her talking to Ballard, and she claims she doesn't know him.

They yell some more, and finally Martin seems to be buying it. "I can't be wrong about you," he says. Echo moves in to seal it, kissing him and saying, "I'm your wife. I will always be Mrs. Eleanor Penn." (Continuity porn: That was her name as the hostage negotiator in the pilot.) Then she looks confused. "Wait, who did they make me this time?"

After the break, we find out that the slip seems to have damaged Echo's credibility. She's sitting with Martin in the backseat of a car as he fondles a briefcase full of bomb cores and waxing philosophical. "They're not dirty bombs yet," he explains. "Not until you wrap them in plutonium. But then they're ordinary looking. I like the heart of the thing. The light from within. The mechanism. That's why I loved you."

Echo just sits there, looking poleaxed and bleeding from the forehead. Ballard calls Topher and asks him to check on Echo. The handler said she spiked a couple of hours ago, but he ignored it because he figured they were just being newlyweds. Topher looks at the logs and decides (from the serotonin levels, apparently) it wasn't hot monkey love, but pain. The rest of the logs are inconsistent and he thinks she's concussed. "I'm calling it," he decides. Ballard stops him, saying that if he tries to send the Toy Soldiers in now, Martin will kill Echo. "Do you have a better idea?" asks Topher.

"No, but I have a much worse one," he says. He walks out of his stake-out position and straight up to Martin, who recognizes him as "Paul Ballard, Special Agent in Charge of Bugger-All". Martin's guard all have guns on Ballard, and Martin punches him a couple times as he asks Echo if he told her he wasn't with the FBI anymore.

Echo, though, is still skipping between personalities. She starts off as Crystal, the ditzy Southern criminal that Alpha imprinted her with. "I don't know what you're talking about," she drawls. "Where's Bobby?" Martin hits her, and she switches to Margaret, the rich dead woman. "Mommy's head is killing her. Would you be a doll and get me a Vicodin?" Martin's not amused, but Ballard recognizes what's going on.

He turns on Echo, acting furious. "All you had to do was remember who you were." This sparks a flashback of Ballard telling her that she's Caroline, and that he'd never hurt her. Then he punches her. "Now we're going to die and this guy is going to walk, because of you." He hits her again. Martin and his guards have apparently decided that if these two are going to beat each other up, they're going to let it happen. "The Chinese restaurant. You remember that, right?" She does. She punches Ballard back.

They exchange a few punches until they're in range of the guards, then Echo switches to them. She grabs one's gun arm, twists it around her, and shoots the others. Ballard goes for Martin, who's going for the car and drops the briefcase of bombs. One of the henchmen recovers enough to take a couple of shots at Ballard, which makes him take cover and lets Martin start driving away. Echo takes a running jump onto his hood, which leads to a Death Proof-esque scene where Martin tries to shake her off and shoot her and she does improbable acrobatic things to avoid it. Then she tosses one of the bombs into the passenger seat (which had been shot out earlier) and jumps off. Martin manages to get out, too, but before he can get up and start shooting, Echo disarms and headbutts him.

I'm kind of wondering what Ballard's original plan was. He didn't know she was manifesting old imprints until he got there. Maybe it's just supposed to show that he really is unreasonably attached to her?

After the break, we're back at the Dollhouse for Echo's mindwipe. Adelle congratulates Ballard on accomplishing his goal, and points out that it wouldn't have happened if he hadn't picked up on something Echo's handler missed.

Looks like we're in for another closing montage. (I guess the show still has the extended run time from the experimental shorter ad breaks. That pushes us into some odd structures-- one of the ways they usually deal with it is a long teaser that actually serves as a first act, and a much shorter tag at the end, which involves one of these wrap-up montages.) Boyd comes into Whiskey's office to find a note on the desk. It says, "I'm running out of excuses." Whiskey drives away from the Dollhouse. Topher mopes on his cot in the server farm. Sierra and Victor run into each other on the Dollhouse floor. Sierra touches Victor's fading scars, and they hold hands as they walk off. Echo watches.

Ballard approaches Echo. He says he's sorry, and that he wasn't his best. "I'm just trying to do what's right, but I can't even figure out what that means anymore. Maybe I should have gotten you out first thing, but instead I put you through-- well, you don't remember, but..."

"I remember everything," says Echo, back to Doll blankness even as she says un-Doll-like things. "I still feel them." In an echo from last season, she says, "I've been many people, but none of them are me." She asks Paul if she knows who's real, and he tells her it's Caroline. "I want to find her," says Echo. "I want to find all of them." (This is looking out at the Dollhouse floor.) "We are lost, but we are not gone. Will you help me?"

Ballard replies, "I swear. No matter what. I'm with you."

We cut to the handler bonding ritual. Echo's bathed in pink light, and they hold hands as they say the words.

"Everything's going to be all right."
"Now that you're here."
"Do you trust me?"
"With my life."

So, two major motifs running through this episode, which really ends up centering on Ballard, with Whiskey's awesomeness serving as a counterpoint. The first is the "series of excuses" set of lines. (Which is a little similar to "How do you live with yourself?") Claire is doing what it takes to hold on to her existence even though she knows she's fictional. Ballard was constructing convoluted plans that let him stay close to Echo, and he gets confronted by the difference between his actions and his stated goals. Accepting his role as handler might be seen as abandoning his excuses.

Second, of course, is vows, for which the wedding just served as an intro. It's bordering on too obvious to point out, but the real ceremony was between Echo and Ballard, and his vows were not just the handler ones but also the promise he made to Echo on the Dollhouse floor.

By doing this, he regains a little of his clarity of purpose-- at the cost, of course, of throwing himself in with the Dollhouse. Which is probably a path that Boyd and Adelle would find familiar.