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?

Recap: Dollhouse 106: "Man on the Street"

No previouslies this week. Instead, we start with newsreel footage of a reporter doing doing a human interest piece, gathering reactions to the Dollhouse urban legend. We start with a paranoid-looking guy who insists it's real: "They're out there, you know: Dolls." There's a fired-up black lady who says that people will always find ways to make other people slaves. The reporter says some versions of the story say the Dolls are volunteers, and she says, "The only reason someone would volunteer to be a slave is if they were a slave already." A slacker girl working a parking booth runs down the pro-side of the list-- no responsibilities or memories, partying with the super-rich-- and asks where she can sign up. The reporter does a quick bit about how the governor and FBI both insist that there's certainly not a secret task force to investigate the Dollhouse.

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?
Mellie: Dick.
Ballard: Sorry, I thought...
Mellie: Oh, his name was 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.

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.

Recap: Dollhouse 105, "True Believer"

Previously on Dollhouse: A bunch of stuff that really doesn't make much sense when it's strung together like this. Seriously, I'm kind of confused now, and I've written five pages on every episode.

We open on a traditional small-town gas station: a radio plays country music, a guy in overalls is fixing a truck, and a schoolbus full of singing people is pulling down the dirt road. Okay, maybe not an entirely traditional small-town gas station. The bus pulls up and about a dozen people get out, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and smiling broadly. They keep singing on the way into the store, and one of the guys in front hands the shopkeeper a list. Since no one says anything, the smiling and singing get creepy fast.

(I'll pause a minute here to point out that the show so far has had enormous variance in the subtlety with which the themes are expressed-- sometimes from minute to minute in the same episode. That's going to keep up here, but it starts out subtle. The cultists could have been singing anything vaguely religious, but they're singing "Everlasting Arms"-- a song about the sense of peace that comes from dependence ("safe and secure from all alarms"), something the cultists and the Dolls share.)

Anyway, some of the townsfolk are also creeped out, and one of them responds by following the guy with the list around, bumping into him and trying to start a fight. The cultist with the list just keeps singing. The townie says he knows what they're up to out on their compound, and calls the cultist "Osama Bin Ghandi". Finally, he loses patience and tackles the cultist into a rack of merchandise. The sheriff comes in to break things up, and the cultists leave with their box of duct tape and twine.

The sheriff tells the shopkeeper that it's not the singing that creeps him out as much as the smiling. The shopkeeper suggests they might just be happy, but the sheriff notices that someone has written "save me" on the shopping list.

In the Fortress of Dollitude, DeWitt and a client are having the same discussion as the sheriff and the shopkeeper. The client is saying that the cultists look happy, but they can't be, really-- they have no self-awareness or will. DeWitt , with an ironic smile, says that sounds terrible, and the client says the irony of bringing the situation to the Dollhouse isn't lost on him. Well, the parallelism isn't subtle, but at least they admit it.

DeWitt is worried about placing an Active with a federal agency. She calls the client "Senator" and says one of the advantages of having him as a client is that he helps them avoid entanglements with federal agencies. He points out that it's the ATF , who wouldn't really be interested in the Dollhouse. He says it's an election year, and having a very public nasty cult situation puts him in trouble with all the wrong demographics, so he can't bank on someone going undercover-- he needs a true believer.

At the FBI office, Agent Ballard is trying to pester a woman to look up Caroline in her databases. "Aren't you supposed to be shot?" she asks, and he says he was, but he got better. She says she has things to do for people who are much more impressive than Ballard.

Ballard: But not as charming.
Woman: Was that flirting?
Ballard: I think so. It's been a while. Did I mention I was shot?

The woman takes the file and agrees to run it.

Back at the Dollhouse, Dominic is saying he doesn't like it, and DeWitt says it's his job not to like it, but they still have to do it to keep the Senator happy. Dominic worries that Echo is unpredictable.DeWitt says she's adaptable, and Dominic says Alpha was adaptable, too. DeWitt says Dominic doesn't like Echo, and Dominic says, "It's not that I don't like her. It's that I'm worried that you do."

DeWitt leaves Dominic outside and goes into see Topher and Dr. Saunders, who are preparing an operation to put cameras in Echo's eyes to feed back to the feds, which will make Echo temporarily blind. Dr. Saunders warns that the technology is dangerous, and that just a sneeze could lead to Echo having an aneurysm or seizure. ("Or a sneezure," breaks in Topher, who looks very pleased with himself.) DeWitt says to get started.

At the ATF base, the Agent in Charge is going over a briefing-- the cult leader is currently calling himself Jonas Sparrow, but he's an ex-con who claimed a conversion experience in prison, joined a shady cult in Texas, and then formed this splinter group. The AIC is sure there's something wrong going on in there, and the message on the shopping list was enough to get him a warrant to do some observation, but just for 48 hours. He introduces Boyd, who describes what Echo, who will be called Esther Carpenter, will be doing. Boyd assures them she'll be accepted by the cultists. One of the agents asks if she escaped from a cult, and Boyd says, "She didn't escape from anything." To emphasize the point, we get a shot of Echo getting her scary eye surgery.

Next, Echo and Boyd are in a car. Echo is blind, sensing that they've made turns by the sun. Boyd says he admires her courage, and I don't think he's just playing along with the imprint. Echo reveals that Esther has been blind since she was nine, and Boyd asks if she blames God. Esther says no, citing Saul of Tarsus: He went blind, went to Damascus, and became a new person.

Boyd: Do you want to become a new person?
Esther!Echo: More than anything.

Boyd drops her off at the gate and she walks into the compound, tapping with her staff. The cultists close in around her but no one speaks. She walks up to a man, feels his face, and says, "Jonas Sparrow-- I'd know your face anywhere."

Which takes us, finally, to the credits. Writer Tim Minear apparently feels the same way about teasers that Fain and Craft do: Just Act One with some music during the act break.

When we come back, Agent Ballard is on the phone, giving instructions to someone about where to drop off drugs. This conversation earns him a funny look from Database Lady, but he explains that he forgot his pain meds and his neighbor is going to drop them off. Database Lady says the search for Caroline came up negative.

At cult compound, Sparrow is looking at Esther's driver's license. (Which, come to think of it, is probably not actually a driver's license, but some other form of ID, since I assume the state of Arizona frowns on the operation of motor vehicles by the legally blind.) Sparrow is obviously suspicious, but Esther says she was led to the ranch by Sparrow in a vision, and her story convinces the cultists. Sparrow goes along with it but doesn't look sure. Inside, Sparrow tells Shopping List Guy, whose name is Seth, that they still need to test her, in order to protect the "garden" and keep it pure.

Victor is enjoying a Dollhouse communal shower. Sierra comes in, and they chat about the water. Victor agrees that it feels nice, then starts looking confused by something happening below his waist. In his office,Topher notices Little Victor standing at attention on his video monitors and cuts short a neurobabble phone conversation: "Something came up."

He fumbles in to Dr. Saunders's office and babbles hilariously around the issue, finally admitting that he noticed Victor having a "man reaction". Dr. Saunders tries to use more medical terminology, but Topher insists on "man reaction". He says it shouldn't happen-- that blank Dolls have a "limpness" built in. Dr. Saunders thinks it's a consequence of Victor being sent on the same engagement to "Miss Lonelyhearts " too often. She asks if it's happened before and tells T they'll have to go through a few months of tape to look for man reactions.

(In what I think will be a Dollhouse hallmark, our first communal shower plot point is pretty much takes the titillation inherent in the concept and runs in the opposite direction: a quest to stomp out erections, accomplished by hours of assiduously inspecting phalluses on video. It titillates with one hand and deconstructs the expectation of titillation with the other. (Hee, I said "titillation" a lot.))

At Crazy Cult Ranch, Esther is being introduced to the cultists, who dispense some backstory about how Sparrow led them out of a bad situation at their previous Crazy Cult Ranch. Seth breaks in to take her to see Sparrow. At theATF headquarters, they're printing out pictures from Echo's eye-cameras and matching faces to names. Boyd asks the AIC if they can figure out who wrote the note, since it would be good to know who their ally is, but the AIC doesn't think they can rely on having a friend inside. One of the techs point out that their picture has gone dark, but they're still getting a signal.

There's a good explanation for this, which is that Echo is in the dark. Sparrow has her in the basement and shines a light in her eyes, watching the pupils as he asks her if she's with law enforcement. The pupils don't move as she denies it. Jonas turns on the light and says he wants to believe her story, but that the serpent had a beautiful story too, and believing that story led to Adam and Eve being forced to leave the garden. As he loads a revolver, he says he comes into this garden as Adam left, broken and corrupt, but that the others are pure and innocent, so he has to protect them. He points the gun at her and she doesn't flinch. Jonas welcomes her to the temple, with a kiss on the head, saying her name and that she came for "a time such as this".

(I'll say this for the portrayal of religion in this episode: Whoever wrote it didn't get their knowledge of the Bible from Wikipedia. The serpent/garden stuff is part of the cultural background, but nobody pulls the link between the name "Esther" and the phrase "such a time as this" without a little more in-depth background. (For the uninitiated: Esther is the only book of the Bible that doesn't mention God. When Mordecai tells Esther that she became queen "for such a time as this", it's the closest the story comes to acknowledging divine providence.))

As he leaves, Esther says to Seth that Jonas is a great man-- and the feds can see that the basement is full of guns. Which is a great time for an act break.

When we come back, Mellie has brought Ballard his meds, along with some cleavage and manicotti. Oh, and an envelope someone had given her with Alpha's handwriting on it, which is enough to render Ballard oblivious to the combined charms of drugs, breasts, and homemade Italian food. Ballard and Mellie go to visit Database Lady, who opens the envelope and plays the enclosed DVD-- it's the college video yearbook footage of Caroline. Ballard is convinced this is Original Recipe Echo, Mellie somewhat jealously notes she looks prettier on video, and Database Lady notes she has a "potty mouth". Ballard starts scribbling down bits of information he can glean from the video, and Mellie resignedly excuses herself. Ballard thanks her absently, intent on the video.

In the Dollhouse, Topher and Dr. Saunders are similarly intent on a video. Claire makes Topher back up the tape because she saw a "tumescence", and Topher euphemistically agrees. He offers to burn the video to disk so Dr. Saunders can take her work home with her, but she just had a breakthrough, which makes her exclaim, "If it had been a snake..." She stops before she finishes the unfortunately phallic phrase. (Between the crazy Bible people and the colorful Southern expressions, I'm really uniquely qualified to be recapping this episode. Again, for the uninitiated, the full phrase is "It it was a snake, it would have bit me," and it's used when you've been overlooking something obvious. (Also, it semantically ties our erection-hunt plotline to our extended Garden of Eden metaphor.)) In this case, the something obvious is that Little Victor only gets excited when Sierra is around. Claire says Sierra is "the catalyst to his physical response", and Topher translates: "He likes her."

At ATF HQ, the AIC is prepping to raid the compound. Boyd wants to extract Echo first, and the AIC points out that he can't really in. Boyd says the raid seems premature, but the AIC says he won't pass up another chance to take Sparrow down, which makes Boyd realize that the AIC has a history with the guy. When Boyd presses him, the AIC says he was a cop on Sparrow's original case, when he was trafficking underage girls, and that Sparrow got out of prison in two years. Boyd gives up on convincing the AIC and calls Dominic for permission to extract Echo. At first Dominic is worried that Echo is glitching again, but Boyd says she's not-- her imprint just isn't prepared for what's about to happen. Dominic, naturally, still denies permission for extraction.

At the compound, Jonas is leading a cult meeting. He says he makes no claim to special revelation, and that he's just a man, and weaker than most, but that his people, and the appearance of Esther, gives him faith. He ritualistically asks Echo if she will forsake the world of men and dedicate herself to the temple, then anoints her and welcomes her as a sister. She's still hugging the other cultists in celebration when the ATF agents moving into position hit a tripwire and activate floodlights all over the compound.

Most of the cultists are confused, but Jonas and Seth react, running down to the basement for guns. The AIC tells his men to hold positions, and they've got a standoff on their hands. Inside, a furious Sparrow is asking Esther if she brought the feds in. When she denies it, he hits her, which makes the feds lose picture on her eye cameras. Sparrow swings again, and Esther blocks. She says it's a miracle: She can see.

When we come back from the act break, the cultists seems to have settled in to the standoff situation-- they're huddled on the floor, crying and praying. Seth tells Jonas his people need his leadership, and Jonas asks if Seth believes Esther. Seth points out that they tested her blindness themselves, and Jonas crawls across the floor to her. He says he believes she didn't bring the agents, and asks if it really was a miracle. Esther just says, "I was blind, but now I see." Jonas says she was brought here for this purpose, and that he now knows what to do.

Outside, Boyd is telling the AIC that he can't contact Echo, and the AIC complains that she's useless now, just one of the cultists, and that's how she'll be treated. Some news vans pull up, which upsets the AIC.

Inside, Jonas tells the cultists that he hid the weapons in preparation for this kind of raid-- which seems like a chicken-and-egg sort of situation, really-- but says that, because of Esther's demonstration, he won't ask them to take up arms.

At the FBI, Ballard walks past a TV that's playing the news coverage of the standoff. He watches as the cultists move out of the main building and into the chapel, and sees Echo with them.

Boyd has gone into town and is asking the shopkeeper about the note-leaving incident. He asks to see the store's security tapes.

Back at the compound, Boyd storms up to the AIC as he's going over tactics. AIC takes him aside and says he's open to letting him extract Echo, under certain conditions. Boyd has a counteroffer: The AIC lets Boyd do whatever he wants, and Boyd doesn't tell anyone that the AIC wrote the note himself. "No one ever asked to be saved. Not by you." Props to Harry Lennix here-- he's got a good "controlled outrage" thing going on with his "badass negotiator" schtick, and it takes us into the act break.

In the chapel, Jonas is talking to Seth privately. Seth looks worried, but Jonas tells him he'll witness the wonders of the Most High, and he goes. Jonas asks Esther if she can read by sight, and she says that learned before she went blind, a long time ago. He hands her a Bible and asks her to read. It's the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abdenego , who survive execution-by-furnace. As she reads, we see Seth siphoning gas out of the Creepy Singing Bus, dumping it on the chapel, and lighting it on fire. Jonas says they've seen miracles already, and they're about to see another. Esther and the cultists are catching on to the plan and getting nervous, but Jonas says if they lose their faith they'll be consumed by the fire.

AIC tells his people to put on fire gear, but that this isn't a rescue operation yet. He takes an agent aside and tells him that he thinks Boyd was working with the cultists, and should be taken down if he's found near the building, which I guess is a clever if somewhat implausible way to get rid of someone who knows something incriminating. Boyd is indeed sneaking towards the chapel to rescue Echo. He knocks out an ATF agent and takes his fire gear.

In the chapel, Esther is telling Jonas to let people leave, and that he can't force a miracle. He knocks her down again and tells her to pray, then kneels and starts to lead a prayer himself, which is when Esther brains him from behind with a candlestick. The cultists are shocked, but she tries to get Seth to help her herd them out: "Seth, God brought me here. The blind girl is looking you in the eye; do you know what that means? It means God has a message for you, and that message is 'MOVE YOUR ASS!'"

It's apparently a convincing doctrinal argument, as the cultists run out of the burning chapel, off the compound, and into ATF custody. Most of the cultists do, anyway. Elias tries to stay, and Echo tries to reason with him. He asks how she can have so little faith after God restored her sight, and she replies, "I don't think God let me see again so I could just watch." This is a good line but apparently a less convincing theological argument, because Elias spits in her face. She slaps him back, and lets Seth drag him out.

Jonas suddenly stands up behind Echo, aiming his gun and saying, "He commanded them to purge the evil from their midst." Someone offscreen takes a reformist view of this proposition, and shoots Sparrow a couple times in the chest. It's someone in ATF fire gear-- he raises his mask to reveal it's Dominic, who knocks Echo out with the butt of his gun and says, "Problem solved."

(While we're on commercials, I'd just like to point out that hitting someone with the butt of a gun is a serious Dollhouse narrative tic, sitting pretty at once per episode. I was going to point out that the Toy Soldiers manage to drop below being useless an average of once per episode, by virtue of not appearing in this episode. Then I realized that they're actually useless twice in "The Target": once in the normal timeline and once in flashback. So they're holding a steady Uselessness Ratio of 1.0.)

After the act break, Echo is still on the floor unconscious, and outside the AIC is asking his second-in-command about Sparrow, then about Boyd and Echo. When he hears that they're all still inside, he says to pull the team out.

In the chapel, Boyd runs in and pulls off his mask. Echo recognizes him and doesn't know why, and the fire traces wings over his shoulders. Outside, the AIC is telling a camera that he doesn't think there will be any more survivors. Behind him, Boyd carries Echo out of the burning chapel. Without enthusiasm, the AIC says, "Thank God."

Later, Ballard pulls up at the ruins and tries to get the AIC to let him talk to the cultists in custody, but the AIC is not feeling very friendly towards the FBI and is suddenly very concerned about doing things by the book. Ballard shows the AIC Caroline's picture, and the AIC shrugs it off, with some help from the Irony Fairy: "She could be anybody."

Which takes us to a voiceover from Adelle, who telling the abashed-looking Topher and Claire that the Dollhouse has to remain a place of safety, untroubled certainty, and purity. It is imperative to maintain innocence, as any temptation will spread like cancer. She orders them to "scrub" and monitor Victor.

(And we take the Garden of Eden imagery home with us-- and we're clearly getting the humanist/His Dark Materials take on it, where the Fall is the triumph of messy human-ness over sterile obedience. And, as seems to happen so often with this myth, people think the Fall is about sex when it's really forbidden knowledge.)

As they leave, DeWitt asks Dominic how his trip to Arizona went-- she knows he took the company jet. Dominic says he was worried about Echo glitching on an important job, and says that he was just watching out for DeWitt's interests. Adelle sarcastically says that she's touched, and Dominic starts pressing her to do something about Echo. He says that she's showing the same signs as Alpha did before his break.

Dominic: If you're not willing to send her to the Attic...
Adelle (interrupting): Don't gamble on what I'll be willing to do.

With that, she awesomely shuts the elevator door on him and tells him to take the stairs.

We see Echo's mindwipe, and Topher and Dr. Saunders are both waiting. As Echo leaves, Dr. Saunders asks her about her vision. Echo walks to the rail overlooking the Dollhouse floor and clearly recognizes Dominic. She tells Dr. Saunders, "I see perfectly."