Dollhouse S01 E09 – Botanical Sculpting

Previously: Echo lead an escape and then they were all captured again because it was fake. Womp.
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A Spy in the House of Love

Sweeney: This episode begins with lots of horror movie-esque flickering of lights in the imprint room. I can see Topher and Boyd and other people I can’t identify. Echo and Sierra are down in the main room, looking up at the weirdness through the frosted glass windows. Sierra asks what’s happening and Echo answers that “she made a mistake – now she’s dead,” and then a shot is fired and blood spatters on the window. This seems contrary to the idyllic, cushioned environment the Dollhouse aims for.

12 Hours Earlier: Echo is in clothing pulled from the BDSM Escort section of the Bad Girl Styling closet explaining to Boyd that it’s not about the pain but trust. Boyd’s got this delightful expression of bemusement as he says that in his experience that kind of trust always leads to pain. In mine too, Boyd. In mine too.

Marines: My immediate association as well. Sorry, people of the BDSM community! EL JAMES KIND OF RUINED IT FOR YOU.

Sweeney: Forever. Probably forever for us, at least. Maybe other people will get past it in a year or two. I’m not sure.

Boyd takes a pass on Echo’s invite to let her show him otherwise.

Back at the Dollhouse they encounter Victor on his way out. His handler groans about yet another Lonely Hearts engagement and even as Echo says annoying shit, lady handler would still take that job over the crazy old lady spending all her monies on engagements with Victor. Echo whips that lady in the leg, because what she really needs is a few more people who want her sent to the attic. As Victor and his handler leave, Echo tells Boyd, “Sometimes it really is about the pain.”

That line segue magicks us to her cry of pain in the chair when she gets wiped. This time she’s getting wiped by Topher’s assistant. Topher pops up from behind his computer to correct her because she didn’t get the script right. As he’s about to explain why that’s important, Dominic comes in to get Echo out because Topher’s behind schedule. Dominic wants to know what’s up and Topher explains that the crazy experiment in the last episode left Topher resulted in massive destruction to Topher’s equipment which he appears to have gotten functional again pretty quickly, so Dominic should back the fuck off.

Dominic leaves with Echo, sending her to an appointment with Dr. Saunders. He spots Adelle and goes to chat with her to say that stuff’s basically under control. Adelle exposits that she trusts him to keep it that way while she goes off to HQ for a meeting which she suspects will be about how things are kind of a shit show. She says that everything that happens under that roof is her fault – except for the next 48 hours when it becomes his.

Stephanie: Yeah, good idea. Leave the Dollhouse in the hands of Mr. Send Them to the Attic

Sweeney: What could go wrong?

Downstairs, Echo stops to say what’s up to November and inform her of her appointment with Dr. Saunders. These weird stilted doll conversations are heartbreaking because they are essentially feeling this urge to be social but there’s nobody home so all they can do is engage in exchanges of mundane facts.

Mari: Such a good way to explain it. Good and heartbreaking.

Stephanie: You guys say heartbreaking, but I think of it as a much more appealing alternative to small talk. “I like the sky. The sky is blue.” > “So… What do you do?”

Sweeney: That’s an amazing point. Having just returned from an awkward situation in which I had to try to interact with strangers and remind myself of how bad I am at that, this observation speaks to my soul. Another point in the doll column.

Later, as Saunders wraps up her examination of Echo, Boyd comes in to ask about it and talk about how he hates sexytime engagements. They talk a little bit about sexual engagements but what they’re actually talking about is their respective philosophies about the Dollhouse. Dr. Saunders says she believes that the system is flawed, “maybe irreparably,” but not for the same reasons that Boyd feels that way.

Outside of the office, Topher flags down Boyd for a private Echo-free conversation. He tells Boyd that he’s about to call Adelle and Boyd could maybe take this opportunity to flee. Boyd has no idea what’s going on. Topher explains that he found a chip in the chair which would allow people to fuck with the imprints and add parameters that he doesn’t know about. Boyd confirms that Topher suspected him as the spy, while looking pointedly into Dr. Saunders’s office. He also notes that if anyone finds out Topher talked to Boyd first, he’d get in a lot of trouble. Topher didn’t really consider that, but Boyd thanks him anyway. (M: With such a genuine smile! If I were the type of jerk who told people what to do with their bodies, I would tell Boyd to smile more!) Then Boyd has to go deal with Echo being distracting, but he tells Topher to go make that phone call before he does anything else to get himself in bad standing with their terrifying ethically unsound bosses.

Echo is in art class as Boyd ordered. Except she’s trimming a tree. IDK.

Mari: Tree trimming enthusiasts who read this blog are probably yelling, “IT’S ART, DAMMIT.”

Steph: You’re both so uncultured. It’s called botanical sculpting. JK, I don’t get it either. 

Sweeney: Anyway, she notices Dominic storming into Topher’s office and yelling at him. Echo is NOTICING THINGS. She continues to NOTICE as Dominic tells a bunch of guards to lock down the building, including communications in and out of it. He gruffly orders Sierra upstairs for a treatment as Echo NOTICES. She wanders upstairs and watches Sierra rise from her treatment and the continuation of Topher’s fight with Dominic. She stands off to the side as Dominic and newly-imprinted Sierra come walking by, overhearing Sierra say, “I’d kill him.”

Echo goes back into the imprint room to tell Topher that people are unhappy and ask if Dominic was mean to him because he wasn’t his best. (That this is her innate line of thinking adds yet another horrifying element to the sexual exploitation of Sierra.) Topher grumbles that if it weren’t for him, there would sill be a security breach, and Dominic of all people should get that. He rants for a while before remembering that Echo can’t understand him. Echo says that she can help. Topher shuts her down, but she insists, noting that he makes people different. She sits in the chair, asking him to make her different so she can help.

LA-LA-LA-LA-LA

After the credits, we see November being imprinted as Mellie. When she wakes up, Topher’s assistant asks how she’s feeling and we learn that Mellie thinks she’s feeling jetlagged from taking a Red Eye. The assistant answers some questions of a security guard while Mellie wanders out into the hall and we see that we’ve actually gone back a bit to when Echo was waving at November and cutting off Topher and Boyd’s chat. Mellie asks the security guy (her handler, I assume) where she knows Echo from, but he tells her to go because an airport shuttle is waiting to take her home.

As she’s getting out her keys to unlock her door, Paul opens his door, gun pointed because he heard something. (S: Never change, Paul.)  “In the hallway, where your neighbors walk to their apartments?” Mellie asks. Before she can unlock the door, he grabs her bag and brings it in his apartment because it’s not safe to talk out there. In his apartment, we see that he’s added a millionty new locks. He reveals that he had been bugged and suggests checking out her place, which she agrees to, figuring she’ll stay there where she’s safe from the Dollhouse. Before she can finish that thought she reaches the living room which has been converted to a full scale DOLLHOUSE INVESTIGATION ZONE. How is Paul going to keep paying his rent now that he’s been fired? (M: Paul, may I suggest selling tickets to that gun show? *eyebrow waggle*) (S: BRB, getting my wallet.) Paul mentions something about his quest to locate the Dollhouse somewhere under Los Angeles. Maybe he’ll find Angel somewhere in that inexplicably vast network of well-kept underground area in an earthquake-prone city! (M: He can even call him! Perfect reception down there!)

 
 
  Mellie looks a little bewildered and sad as Paul crazies about all of his big discoveries. He stops himself and Mellie says that she came back to see him. He tells her to go back and insists that he’s giving her an out. Mellie says she can’t because her life is here and also because she’s going to keep him grounded. With sexy showers.

In his bedroom, though, shit gets real and absolutely heartbreaking. November cuts things off before any clothing is removed, at least, with another secret imprint parameter. The look on Paul’s face as he tells her this isn’t funny and then realizes that it’s true – that all that delicious pasta was laced with lies – is gut-wrenching. (M: A+) November explains that their person on the inside has been found out and this will be the last contact. It had to be this way, though, because now that Paul has cleaned out his apartment, they’ll rely on Mellie more to spy and he needs to make sure he tells her nothing. November doesn’t answer any of questions, but merely reiterates something Echo told him: “The Dollhouse deals in fantasy, but that’s not the reason it exists.” November tells him that is what he needs to focus on and the person/people on the inside will find some other way to contact him. “Remember, you can’t tell her – you must maintain the illusion,” November says before going back to Mellie, and resuming the make out session. Rough.

Mari: Especially because Paul has been almost self-righteous to this point about the Dollhouse. How could anyone do that? Well, SURPRISE! You are making out with a Doll.

Steph: But he shows us how not cool he is with man-on-doll action by keeping his eyes open during the kiss.

Sweeney: We cut back to other things Echo only half-saw: Topher’s confrontation with Dominic. Topher explains that any number of people have access to the imprint room. Dominic says that when Adelle comes back, her wrath will reign down on him and he’ll be passing that along. Sierra witnesses this little argument, so I’m guessing she’s imprinted as someone on the inside? That’s interesting because I wonder (a) how many people on the inside might actually be dolls -and- (b) how often people on the inside might find themselves wondering if maybe they are actually secretly dolls too. I feel like that would be the great existential crisis of working there.

Mari: That is a horrible thought. “But I remember interviewing,” you would think. “But they can make me remember that.” Again: rough.

Sweeney: Sierra is, indeed, imprinted as an ex-FBI member of Dominic’s security team. In Adelle’s office, she looks at the chip Topher found and he explains that it’s NSA. IS JOHN CASEY THE SPY? (M: IF ONLY.)

Dominic wants Sierra to get access to the NSA files. Topher scribbled some magic encryption cracking voodoo on the back of a fortune cookie paper and Sierra’s got to go get changed so she can break into a building. Pro-tip, girl: it’s under the Buy More!

On a train, there’s a neat little bit with Sierra sitting next to a woman she’s dressed to resemble and drugging her and stealing her shit / a closeup of her eye. It’s weakened by excessively cheesy dialogue.

Steph: What I want to know is how she predicted what this woman would be wearing in order to get an identical outfit.

Sweeney: At the NSA building which is tragically not the Buy More, Sierra gets in as this other woman, without problems in spite of not actually looking like this other woman. (M: “Vaguely Asian? COME ON IN!”) (S: Use that racism in your favor, girl.) She goes to look at some files in a room where she can’t take stuff in or out. She gets 20 minutes to look at whatever she’s cleared to see. She goes in and steals something that I think is a chip in a big plastic sleeve. Or something like that. On her way out, the Stolen Spy Stuff Detectors go off, so Sierra has to knock out the guard that let her in.

She gets off the elevator and a woman announces over the speakers that there is a security lock down. She ducks into the office of the woman whose badge she stole and does some magic on the shiny sticker on the plastic paper (TECHNICAL SPY TERMS, GUYS) and makes everything light up with green spy words. (S: Sci-fi shows love computer tech on clear materials. Seems like it would be difficult to read.) She can’t read them, though, because someone knocks on her door to let her know she’s got to go join everyone else in lock down. She rolls up her plastic paper and leaves.

She calls for a roof extraction on the north side of the building, but is spotted and has to correct that to the south side. While she’s running away she takes the wig off for reasons that make no sense at all since I’m sure there are cameras and the last thing she should want to do is reveal identifying information, but, you know, it’s much more dramatic to run with your hair flowing. (S: Shhh. She looks beautiful. Go with it.) Men with guns are chasing her. She calls again at the top of the stairs to the roof.

Victor’s turn for a rewind! He wakes up from his Lonely Hearts imprint. Topher’s Assisstant arrives and he tries to blame her for stuff being all slow but she counters that she just got there and he’s the one who crossed all the wires trying to make things work again.

Victor arrives for his 10th engagement with Miss Lonely Hearts. The old woman answers the door and receives roses from him before he heads out the back door and gets in a car and drives off to some other house. And meets “Katherine” who is, in fact, Adelle! Crazy. They make out and are interrupted by a call from Topher. Victor and his sexy accent joke with Adelle about her phone and eventually throws it off a cliff. Adelle confesses that things at work are really hard right now, especially with the secrecy. Victor says he can’t even wrap his mind around the concept of the Dollhouse. Adelle calls the people who hire dolls “pathetic self-deluding souls.”

Inside, Victor and Adelle do a little sexy sword fighting. No euphemism! What else is the head of an ethically problematic secret organization to do to let off steam, you know? (M: Are they supposed to sexy sword fight without sleeves? I guess that helps the sexy.) Naturally, sexy sword fighting leads to actual sex. “If I could make a woman, I’d make you,” Victor says. Adelle is confused by this. She says that he’s ironically the most real person she’s ever met and he corrects that nobody uses the word irony correctly. I love this because that’s such a common correction BUT HE’S ACTUALLY THE ONE WHO IS WRONG. GOTCHA, VICTOR. They banter about an escaping-it-all weekend-all-the-time kind of life for a bit before Adelle reconnects with reality. It seems like she’s maybe considering telling him, but she stops short.

Later, she wakes in the middle of the night and returns fully dressed, with the sword. Victor asks if she’s all right and sits on the bed and sobs.

Steph: This is a storyline that we only see for about 3 minutes, and it still gave me a lot of feelings. I think it’s because Enver has chemistry with everyone. They could write a love story between him and Echo’s tree sculpture and I’d probably cry over it.

Sweeney: I feel like Topher would be excited to accept that challenge.

After a Not Break we return to Echo, waking with her I CAN HELP imprint. She asks for copies of personnel records, security logs, access to his mainframe, and also some clothes because pajamas aren’t helping clothes. Listen, girl, working in your pajamas is awesome. I mean, less awesome when days lose all meaning and you wake up one day and realize you’ve been in the same pajamas for three days, but that’s totally not even the point here.

Mari: That has never even happened to me I have no idea what you are even talking about la la la!

Steph: Me neither. Only three days?

Sweeney: We don’t blog anonymously. ONLY THREE DAYS. IT’S NEVER LASTED LONGER THAN THAT. SWEARSIES.

Up in Adelle’s office, Echo asks to speak to everyone on a list. Dominic is annoyed with Topher for programming another spy hunter, but he promises it’ll be super helpful. He slips up a bit when he starts to say it was Echo’s idea, but corrects that it was his. Dominic asks to see the list, and points out that she wants to start with Topher. Topher is mad that his helper doll is turning on him, again reminding everyone that he discovered the breach. “Which means you’re either dangerously incompetent or your trying to throw us off your trail.” Dominic smirks and it’s the second most delightful he’s ever been.

Echo interrogates Topher. She asks why he joined the Dollhouse. He says that he came there because the work they’re doing is off the map advanced and also he’s a genius.

We cut to Echo asking the assistant if it matters what others think of her. She, too, is a super genius but has now been relegated to snack bitch and receiving blame for stuff that’s not her fault. “I probably know enough about the imprint equipment to rip it down and reassemble it without Topher ever knowing,” she says before realizing that this is not the right thing to say in this interrogation.

Boyd, in his interview says, “We’re pimps, killers, but in a philanthropic way.” Echo notes that she feels she can trust him and he says he must just have one of those faces. Possible hat tip the fact that Echo would be an ineffectual interrogator of Boyd, what with that link likely overriding whatever else is in the imprint. Dr. Saunders is asked about how she’s not really left the Dollhouse since the Alpha incident, but before Echo can pry too much, Dominic cuts her off because Sierra’s been extracted and has the mole’s identity.

Dominic returns with the assistant as she swears it isn’t her who spied, questioning why she would even do that. Dominic threatens her with the attic (S: See?!), asking if she knows what happens there. She doesn’t and neither does the audience, though I think this line is there more for our edification than hers. “It’s a mental suck. You know that feeling you get when a name is on the tip of your tongue. but you can’t say it? It’s like that, but with every thought you never have.”

Echo’s watching all of this pointedly and interrupts because the mole is actually Dominic! Well, shit. There I was, so dedicated to hating him. Basically: there was a call made to the NSA from Adelle’s office after the lock down, this being the only place such a call could have been made, by Dominic trying to implicate Ivy (Topher’s assistant – sorry about not knowing your name, girl!) – a fact which means maybe I can keep hating him. Dominic and Echo fight and yes, indeed, hatred may resume. He reiterates that Echo is broken and he’ll easily explain to Adelle that he had to kill her and Topher and Ivy will simply be collateral damage. As he says she’s broken Echo has a flash of his last attempt at killing her. Eventually she dangles him out a window (you know, many stories high and not underground) saying that she’s not broken.

  Echo brings Dominic to Adelle at her house. She says she trusted him with a gift and he laughs. She says the countless people they’ve helped would agree and he asks about the countless people they’ve hurt. He only has to glance to his right to come up with one they’ve hurt. “Name one” was an all-around stupid response and makes me question whether Adelle is truly deluded. Anyway, Dominic says that he wasn’t trying to bring the Dollhouse down – he was making sure they didn’t bring themselves down. Because the NSA is evil! Obvs. I feel dumb for not knowing this twist was coming. Dominic says that if it wasn’t for him, Ballard would have found them already and that the NSA’s concern is Dollhouse’s tech getting out, adding that it needs to be reigned in. “By a clandestine organization with no government oversight?” He says she’s embarrassingly naive. That stupid “name one” question kind of backs that sentiment. Regardless, Dominic sasses a little too much for someone tied up. Adelle has him sent to the attic, noting that when the NSA comes looking for him, he’ll go tell them everything is fine before getting sent back in his box. Which, you know duh to the NSA for not anticipating that.

Mari: It’s like every episode they up their own, “ANYONE COULD BE A DOLL!” game. First Victor, then Mellie and this episode you are all, “people inside the Dollhouse??” but really we end up with, “the undercover secret agent NSA man is going to be wiped and essentially used as a doll for their purposes.” COOL.

Sweeney: In the van on the way back to the Dollhouse, Dominic smiles even though he’s about to get beaten and erased. He says that before they erase him they’ll erase her and he knows she can handle herself, which is why he’s smiling. Even after everything, they won’t see it coming when one day she’s the one erasing them. Knowing you’re about to be effectively murdered, there is a sick humor (IRONY, INDEED) in knowing that the broken doll he tried to stamp out is what he’s ultimately counting on to avenge him. “Sooner or later everybody gets theirs.”

We come full circle to the opening scene, with a whole team on hand and lots of additional wires required for this big wipe. Dominic somehow gets hold of a gun as he’s being strapped down. He gets a shot at Adelle, but it just grazes her stomach. Splatters a bit, though, which is what the dolls saw on the window.

Mari: Why did Echo say “she made a mistake, now she’s dead”? Who was she referring to, do you think? It bothered me on first watch and I can’t put it together.

Steph: She actually says, “now she’s sad.” I think she’s referring to Adelle and how her mistake was trusting Dominic.

Sweeney: OOOOOOOHH. This is helpful. Thank you.

Outside the imprint room, Adelle stops to catch her breath. Topher steps out, stunned, holding the drive with everything that made up Laurence Dominic. Topher also confesses to the Echo imprint having been her own idea. Adelle marvels at the fact that Dominic had been trying to wipe her out for months and she managed to take out her own biggest threat – protecting herself. Topher wonders if she should be wiped again, what with her continued evolving, even after the wish fulfillment episode. Adelle, ever fixated on Echo, doesn’t want that, since Echo just saved the Dollhouse. She only advises Topher to keep an eye on her. Adelle casually adds that Topher should also destroy the Roger imprint because Miss Lonely Hearts called, randomly, in the midst of this big investigation, and decided the indiscretion was unwise.

Mari: And it seems Dominic is dead on. Echo asks to be imprinted and effectively took out a worker and they are all, “awesome!” instead of red flagging this.

Sweeney: Adelle gets stitched up in Dr. Saunders’s office. As Adelle gets dressed again, Dr. Saunders tries to talk to her about Dominic, but Adelle is characteristically cold and terse about it, unwilling to feel any feels because it would imply she’d lost something. Dr. Saunders asks if she did. “Nothing I can’t live without,” Adelle says, staring at Victor out in the Dollhouse.

Boyd stops Adelle to give her a file summarizing his investigation into the leak. tl;dr is that it was just Dominic and stuff’s fine now. Adelle instantly promotes him to head of security. Boyd says he doesn’t want the job, adorably insisting that he needs to take care of Echo. Adelle corrects that he doesn’t since Echo is the one taking care of them.

Imprint room. Echo wakes up and meets her new handler, Travis. Echo says the lines, but she stares off at Boyd, standing in the doorway as she says, “With my life.” That self-preservation instinct is strong. I don’t know New Guy. Stick with Boyd, girl.

Mari: Again, they are all watching her say the lines to Boyd, but I bet no one is going to red flag this. “It’ll be fine,” they all say. “Just you wait and see.”

I’m amazed at how much I’m enjoying this show right now. I was so hesitant coming in and had my guard up during the first handful of episodes, but since Man on the Street, I’ve just been enjoying myself watching and recapping this. There are so many darn layers and we once again see here how everyone individually deals with the Dollhouse and how the compartmentalize in order to work there. Ivy and Topher are in it for the science and Dr. Saunders seems to believe there is some good there. Adelle has to be brutal, and yet, we see her lonely and naive sides in this episode as well.

We’re heading deeper into territory I only vaguely remember and I’m super excited to see where we go from here.

Steph: This show holds up really well to recapping, which I was not expecting, especially because coming in, I had so many memories of not liking a lot of it. Now I’m kind of in love and I’m sad we’re nearly halfway through the entire series. 

Sweeney: It’s interesting because we’ve talked a lot about shows not holding up to the scrutiny of recapping. An aside on that: I think part of the problem is that recapping defies the sort of uncritical devotion that a lot of die hard fans would like to see. That is, one of the things we ran into a lot on Buffy (much like Fifty Shades, it’s A THING that we will never get over) was that the times we took the show to task were taken as being akin to not liking that show. I adore that show. I just know it has problems and recapping a show is all about digging into those problem.

This show is almost the opposite of that. This show asks all these big heavy questions and I feel like I would have found it deeply unsatisfying to just binge watch it as a solo experience. We’ve done a lot of shows now where the recapping and the conversation brings a lot to the table, but usually on shows where I probably could have enjoyed them on their own. (Game of Thrones and Orphan Black both come to mind.) This is a really special category of show that I think actually requires this sort of slow, dissected viewing.

To be clear, I’m not trying to steal footing out from under the people who take issue with this show. I think requiring this kind of special assistance to view a show implies some comparable foundation issues to the you-just-need-to-binge-watch-it argument we’ve heard a thousand times. But as someone whose only experience with the show is like this, I’m grateful for it because I’m truly enjoying it.

 

Next time on Dollhouse: Echo is imprinted with the personality of a murdered lady who tries to figure out her own murder in S01 E10 – Haunted.