Previously: Paul broke into the Dollhouse with Alpha-in-disguise.
—
Omega
Sweeney: Picking up shortly after her and Victor’s run-in with Alpha at the end of the previous episode (SORRY IT’S BEEN A WHILE, GUYS) Dr. Saunders emerges from her office calling out for help. Adelle and Boyd take in the situation – Boyd says he thinks Alpha’s already gone, though Adelle calls for a full lock down anyway. Dr. Saunders realizes that Alpha came for Echo.
Upstairs in the imprint room, Topher confirms that Echo was taken. Topher says he can’t tell what imprint Alpha used because he buried the signature. Echo also dug out Echo’s tag, which means that not only is her GPS tracker gone, so is the way Topher monitors her vitals and stuff. But more importantly: EW. He didn’t have a lot of time for this, so I can only assume it was messy and gross. Adelle tells Topher to hurry the fuck up and find out what Echo was imprinted with. Dr. Saunders lingers and somberly notes that Alpha asked if she’d always wanted to be a doctor. Topher seems at a loss for how to respond to that and asks who can fathom the mind of a crazy person. “The one who made him crazy,” she says sadly before walking off. I’m not sure if she means herself or Topher or both of them.
Kicky music transitions us to Alpha and Echo riding down the highway as imprint-unknown!Echo whines a little bit about the soreness in her neck from the tracker removal.30 seconds in, this girl essentially seems like a dumber version of Faith. Whoever she is, was first sprung by Alpha (?) when she was 13. “Already a woman,” Alpha responds. Again: ew. It seems I need to start being more conservative with my “ew” usage this episode; I’d hate for them to lose their proper weight. Alpha starts having weird flashes, though, between different personalities – he didn’t know her at 13 but maybe one of his personalities (Bobby) did? He is still driving while having these glitches and occasionally staring at Echo, none of which seems very safe. This, however, is apparently a trifling concern: Echo starts grumbling about Bobby!Alpha leaving her Tasty Couture shirts out of her bag except then she looks in the backseat, blaming this on a woman tied up in the back seat, who Echo calls a bitch. This is not that lady’s day. Echo snuggles up to Alpha, further endangering the other freeway drivers.
LA LA LA LA LA I FORGOT HOW MANY LAS WE USE BECAUSE IT’S BEEN SO LONG LAAAAAAAAA
Stephanie: I always figure it out by singing the LAS. You had it until that last one.
Sweeney: Damn. So close.
We come back from the credits with a flashback. In the very specific time frame of “a few years ago” Adelle is talking to handlers in the field about an engagement involving two actives. Alpha is one and he apparently knew he was being followed by the handlers. Topher – who is with Adelle – interjects that he made it perfectly clear that these imprints were prone to paranoia. When Adelle asks how potentially lethal these imprints are he gives a non-answer that basically means, “A SUPER SERIOUSLY HIGH AMOUNT OF LETHAL.”
We cut to a club where a woman (who is probably Echo) shrouded in blue light is dancing. Elsewhere, Alpha is tortureterrogating a man in ways Dick Cheney would totally repeat with no shame or concerns for morality or basic human decency or whether torturing people actually works to gather intel. (S: Timely.) Alpha wants to know who the torture victim works with. Alpha’s also got the southern accent that he used to speak as Bobby, so maybe same same? Many questions. Torture Victim (who is named Lars) cries out that the situation is complicated and the quickest way to uncomplicate it is to tell Alpha that he and his girlfriend aren’t real. The guy crazy laughs that they think they are on a cross-country crime spree with a doomed love. The torture victim cries that he paid for this because it was supposed to be his fantasy to have a little fun. WHAT. THE. FUCK. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK. This is a new variety of sick for Dollhouse customers. And before I can properly process that, I am sideswiped by the next plot twist: the “girlfriend” isn’t Echo – it’s Dr. Saunders. IS EVERYONE A MOTHER FUCKING DOLL? IS ANYONE NOT A DOLL? AM I A DOLL?
Marines: YEP. The Victor/Dominic one is one I noticed this watch too. Seriously, these doll reveals are THE BEST because like I mentioned with the last one (Mellie) you keep telling yourself that anyone can be a doll, but when it turns out to be true, it’s still a kick in that gut.
Sweeney: Somehow, I will forge ahead: we cut back and forth between Topher thinking he’s got their location and Alpha and Dr. Saunders torture-sexing this deeply disturbed and probably soon-to-be-dead customer. They are interrupted by handlers asking Alpha and Whiskey if they’d like treatments. They oblige. Lars doesn’t die today.
Back in the future, Paul is tied up in Adelle’s office when she and Boyd return. Paul is confused by the fact that they weren’t able to catch his shifty, paranoid accomplice. Adelle hands over a photo of Alpha and explains that he’s a former active who murdered the guy Boyd thinks he brought in. Adelle coldly says that Alpha was just a technological anomaly and she’s super pissed that Paul brought Alpha back into her house to defile it again and steal Echo. Girlfriend is really good at condescension. Almost makes you forget that this is actually way more her fault than Paul’s. That’s a great skill to have. (M: In general, but especially when you are running a shady corporation. A+ recruiting.) Paul’s got no fucks to give for this and vows to break out like Alpha did. Adelle’s all, “Yeah, but, like, he’s a genius, so…”
This is interrupted by Boyd turning on the security TVs because of a terrorist threat being called in at their location. Paul chimes in that he can make this go away.
Outside, he approaches his former Paul Ballard-hating coworker, asking him to nod because they’re being watched. In her office, Adelle tells Boyd she doesn’t so much trust Paul as trust that she knows what he wants. Paul tells this guy that the bomb threat isn’t real but that this is the Dollhouse. The other guy’s all, “OH. LOL.” and he calls everyone off because he assumes that crazy mother fucker Paul just called in a bomb threat to prove the existence of Atlantis. He thinks he’s doing Paul a solid by not getting his ass sent to prison. The guy leaves and Paul looks up at the camera and smiles. That was a brilliant play – and I loved it partially because it’s brilliance is also pretty fucked up.
Mari: I loved it, particularly because I can imagine him thinking, “what can I say? What can I say? I KNOW. THE TRUTH.” Well done, Paul.
Sweeney: Topher comes into Adelle’s office to say that he still doesn’t have answer but he has some not good news: all of Echo’s past imprints are also missing.
Cut to Alpha, Echo, and Hostage Sales Lady arriving at a shady basement version of Topher’s swanky imprint room.
After a Not Break, poor Victor lies on Dr. Saunders’s operating table, lamenting that he just wants to be his best but he doesn’t think he can be his best now. Dr. Saunders recoils a little but Victor doesn’t stop asking how he can be his best. “You can’t, Victor. You can’t be your best – your best is past. Your past you can’t even remember. You’re ugly now. You’re disgusting. All you can hope for now is pity, and for that you’re gonna have to look somewhere else,” she angrily replies.
Steph: Victor and Doctor Whiskey feels all day, every day.
Mari: It just has to be mentioned again that Enver KILLS at the doll state acting.
Sweeney: There’s a lot of great acting in this episode and his screen time is minimal, but he’s phenomenal with the little bit he has.
Flashback: WHISKEY is brought into Dr. Saunders, who is an elderly man. Actual Saunders (UNLESS HE’S A DOLL TOO BECAUSE WE’RE ALL DOLLS) says he keeps pushing for the dolls to get a week of rest, but Whiskey’s handler knows the boss lady will never let the #1 active have that. (S: I’m not surprised she’s #1. Amy Acker is a work of art.) Whiskey says she tries to be her best and I get a little sad that this wasn’t the Amy Acker show. Can you imagine the greatness it would have achieved if Joss had decided to make it her vehicle?
Steph: Yes yes yes. Her superior acting is highlighted even more because we see Whiskey and Echo with the same imprint for Bobby’s girlfriend and Amy Acker manages to play her in a more interesting way with barely any dialogue and just some sexy dancing.
Mari: Amy Acker’s sexy dancing is a better actor that Eliza’s, you know, acting.
Sweeney: Whiskey’s handler leaves because another “friend” is coming. We see Alpha getting a massage as we pan out to Adelle showing Caroline around the facility. Alpha creepstares at her.
Mari: I creepstare at those shoulders. Mmm.
Sweeney: Same. Gif staring and staring.
Caroline is horrified by the fact that the dolls are all zombies. Adelle assures her that this isn’t really the end of her life but what’s actually important here are all the shots of Alpha staring at Caroline and noting to Whiskey that Caroline-soon-to-be-Echo is sad. Alpha stares up at the imprint room as Caroline is led in there.
Sidebar: what the fuck is with this nomenclature? Why did they get all the way to W and then double back to E? LEARN THE FUCKING ALPHABET.
Mari: It just makes me wonder about how quickly they cycle through dolls. Like… what happened to the last Echo?
Sweeney: I guess that probably makes more sense. I wonder if they have a 26 doll max capacity?
Back in the main timeline, Paul is in the imprint room, declaring the chair the site of soul-stealing. Topher grumbles to Adelle and Boyd about Paul being in his room. Adelle explains that Paul will be lending his investigative skills, and Topher angrily reminds them that Paul is the one who led Alpha into the building. As Adelle tells Topher to shut the fuck up and rally for the team, Sierra and November come in because they are ready for their treatments. Paul is physically taken aback by seeing Mellie in her doll state, because that has to be horribly jarring. Topher laps this up, explaining to Paul that the dolls are additional “deck hands” and deliberately choosing to imprint Sierra first so that Paul has to stand side-by-side with November while they wait.
Elsewhere, things get worse for that shopkeeper having the shitty day: she’s been strapped into Alpha’s torture basement imprint chair. Echo watches and wonders what’s going. Alpha explains that Wendy is going away and won’t be there in a minute. Echo asks if this is a magic trick, and Alpha is frustrated. Alpha jumps from condescending doctor to Bobby consoling his girlfriend. In the background, light flashes while Wendy moans in pain as she gets wiped. I could watch these Alpha scenes all day because while they are creeptastic and terribly uncomfortable, watching Alan Tudyk perform the shit out of all of these characters is incredible. That man is brilliant.
Steph: I love him so much in this role. He’s always comedic characters in pretty much everything else I’ve seen him in, and he’s very good at that, but watching him effortlessly slide in and out of multiple personalities is so fantastic. He gets my vote for best performance from a Firefly star turned villain.
Mari: Is that even fair up against Gina Torres as Jasmine and my boyfriend Nathan Fillion as Caleb? ALAN TUDYK AS ALPHA ALL DAY.
Sweeney: LOL, JASMINE. Gina Torres is amazing, but she got screwed. I hope Whedon sends her extra nice birthday presents.
Flashback land: Echo is walking the halls of the dollhouse when Alpha appears out of nowhere and kisses her. She continues speaking as though it didn’t happen. Alpha says he likes her and when she gives the usual doll response about trying to be her best, he responds that she is the best and kisses her again. She’s unaffected by this. Alpha’s handler rounds the corner and breaks this up, sending Echo off to Topher for a treatment. Alpha looks very doe-eyed as he watches Echo leave. The handler asks Alpha what the hell he’s doing, but Alpha doesn’t know the word “hell” and instead takes the handler’s advice to watch his step very literally. He stands in the main room and looks super murdery as he watches Echo go in for her treatment.
Steph: Alpha’s doll-crush on Echo is not even remotely as cute as Victor’s crush on Sierra.
Mari: The way that his handler speaks to him is super strange. This is the last episode of the series I ever saw and it was a little hazy in my memory. I fully expected/believed that the handler was in on Alpha not being as “wiped clean” as he ought to be.
Sweeney: Forward: Boyd watches November get her imprint and tells Paul that while Topher considers it akin to childbirth he feels more like he’s watching someone die. Sierra sasses because “sassy kickass spy lady” is their favorite imprint for her. She flirts with Paul as November wakes up and snarks at her for “molesting the furniture.”
Torture Basement. Echo notes that Wendy has stopped screaming. Alpha crazies some more as he holds Wendy’s new personality imprint up to his ear. Echo says that Bobby is scaring her and Alpha jumps back and forth between personalities. He says that there’s only one person that can hurt her now and that’s what they are about to take care of.
Paul, meanwhile, wants to know what Alpha was after the day of the “unfortunate technological anomaly.” Topher insists that it was just a random killing spree and that Alpha can’t be profiled because he’s not so much a person as an amalgamation of people. Topher insists that Alpha experienced “a composite event” in which he had 48 full and complete personalities dumped into one. Paul isn’t arguing with any of that – he just wants to know the sequence of events. Who got targeted first? Topher first throws up his hands about Alpha’s handler and then Dr. Saunders (without clarifying that no, Amy Acker isn’t who he means by that) before having an aha! moment where he remembers that Alpha’s first order of business was himself. He came to the “self shelf,” where the original personalities are kept. Alpha took his original self and smashed the hell out of it. Fuck. That’s a total trip. Paul asks about Caroline’s imprints, but Topher returns with Caroline’s original imprint: also smashed to bits. That however was the backup.
When asked where the original was, our answer is to segue back to Alpha’s torture basement where Wendy is waking up…as Caroline, asking if her five years have past.
After a Not Break, she wigs the fuck out. Alpha tells Echo to meet herself. Wendy!Caroline blanches at the wrongness of this situation and asks whose body she’s in. Alpha says that they’re all about the same. Echo stands around confused. Alpha goes on to say that Wendy!Caroline is responsible for all of the terrible things that Echo can’t remember. Wendy!Caroline shouts about wanting back in her brain, and Alpha tells her that she should have thought of that before vacating the premises. Alpha goes on, speaking to Echo now, about how shit got a little hard for Caroline and she abandoned…her body? Echo? IDK, exactly, but it’s a heavy twist that I totally hadn’t even considered as Alpha’s motivating force. Alpha says that Caroline left Echo to the predators. Wendy!Caroline says that Adelle promised her she’d be taken care of and safe. Alpha asks if she feels safe and Wendy!Caroline tears up, saying she just feels confused. Alpha turns back to Echo to say that she is Caroline, but Echo is capable of evolving, ascending. While Caroline abandoned her, Alpha has always been there for her.
Flashback: Alpha’s getting into some tree art and creepstaring at Echo and her tree art. Except, again, as a testament to why Alan Tudyk is a fucking powerhouse of an actor, it’s not actually creep staring. It’s innocent child staring, which is distinctly different from the hardcore rage we just saw. Anyway, sorry, the episode is still on or something: Echo notes that someone’s getting a treatment. It’s Whiskey. The handlers discuss how requested Whiskey is – everybody loves her. Alpha crazy eyes at this and then we see him standing over Whiskey, telling her to let Echo be #1. Then he SLASHES UP HER FACE. SHIT. I’m just going to keep saying that. “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” This episode, man.
Steph: The flashback scenes are so great. We already pretty much know what happened this day from tid-bits laid out through the season, but now we finally get to see all the pieces come together, and it’s super satisfying.
Sweeney: Absolutely. This business of a flashback event with a delayed reveal is a common plot tactic – we’ve covered more than a few seasons of shows that do this – but this NOW YOU LEARN ALL THE INFO episode is particularly satisfying in the way it expands those scenes to reveal new information.
Music swells and everything happens both quickly and also in slow motion as Alpha is hauled upstairs and strapped into the chair. Adelle asks Topher how the fuck this happened, and he’s not entirely sure. A bunch of handlers try to strap Alpha down, with questionable success given that they outnumber him. He plays along at the word “treatment” but only to have the leverage to attack. Weird cuts of the computer show Alpha getting a partial hardcore treatment. I’m not entirely sure what happened in this scene, to be honest, except that Alpha murdered his handler by gauging his eyeballs out and I refuse to rewatch the eyeball trauma to make it make more sense, so hopefully the other ladies can let me know if I missed anything important.
Steph: It’s the composite event. Topher’s attempt to sort through Alpha’s recent imprints goes bonkers when Alpha kicks his handler into the computers and he ends up imprinted with all of the personalities.
Sweeney: GOT IT. I didn’t quite understand what Topher was trying to do, but that makes sense.
Dr. Saunders enters and Alpha greets him in a menacing about-to-murder-your-face-off kind of way. (S: His evil voice is kinda sexy. IDK IDK.)
Flashing back forward, Paul and his new Scooby Gang enter Adelle’s office. Paul is annoyed because he had to, like, read and stuff. He’d rather be punching faces in than reading Alpha’s 48 profiles. He wants Adelle to simplify things for him/ us. She obliges, saying that Alpha is all of those 48 people. Topher is annoyed with Paul’s confusion because he’s all, “No shit you didn’t learn anything because I AM SMARTER THAN EVERYONE.” I don’t know how Topher makes arrogant so endearing, but he does. Paul wants to know who Alpha was before he he became a doll. Adelle balks at the question, but Boyd, voice of reason, backs Paul up on that being valid. Topher excuses himself to trying to rebuild all of Echo’s imprints to figure out what Alpha put in her.
Speaking of, Wendy!Caroline is tied to a chair, begging Echo not to let Alpha do this as he preps her in the imprint chair. Echo haughtily insists that Alpha is making her a superior creature, but with that sort of half-conviction of someone trying to convince themselves as much as the person they’re speaking to. Wendy!Caroline tries to point out how anyone who watches TV should be able to ID this as an evil lair, and while Echo looks unsettled, she doesn’t protest. Alpha interrupts only to give Echo instructions but tells Wendy!Caroline to keep talking and that Echo is going to ascend and kill her. I’m not sure what her talking has to do with the latter, but sure, dude. Alpha says that there needs to be some sort of blood bath and blah blahs about the need for sacrifice, new life from death. Echo looks more scared, but still not scared enough to move. “Alpha, meet Omega,” Alpha says before pushing the button. Here you go, Alpha:
A series of blurry flashes show us every person we have seen Echo be on the show so far. Echo bursts out of the chair and stands up. Her lip is bleeding a little, and she slowly says that she gets it now – she understands everything. She picks up a random pipe that was lying around (standard issue props your average Obvious Villain Lair) and walks towards Wendy!Caroline but instead takes a giant half-circle swing back around to knock out Alpha. “I understand everything,” she repeats.
Dollhouse. Adelle hands over a document with Alpha’s original profile. Initially, The Dollhouse worked with the Department of Corrections – trading lengthy prison sentences for time as dolls. That this was seen as right and fair certainly muddies the proverbial waters all the more. Doll time = jail time. In fact, doll time = accelerated jail time. Paul reads off the file that Alpha had been put away for kidnapping and attempted murder – the only reason he wasn’t an actual killer is that the victim got away. Boyd notes that this means there is a living witness and the two decide to set off to discuss.
Obvious Villain Lair. Alpha wonders if something went wrong, but Echo assures him that all of her profiles are now alive and well in her head. She attacked him because he wanted her to kill herself, insisting again that Caroline is very much her. He gives some more Psychopath’s Intro to Philosophy 101 monologuing and Echo’s having none of it. She says that they aren’t anything or anybody because they are everybody. She says she’s experiencing a bunch of personalities that she can slip into – or have slip into her – but none of them are actually her. (S: It’s easy to experience all those personalities when they’re all the same person: Faith.) (M: Hey now, all those Faiths are wearing different outfits, okay?) They hollowed her out – they had to – and now she’s just a container. As Alpha creeps toward another stray pipe, Wendy!Caroline insists that there is a her sitting right there. Echo says that Alpha might be crazy but she’s right – Caroline abandoned her. She asks why. As she’s about to challenge Wendy!Caroline’s insistence that it was “complicated,” Alpha attacks. They fight with their pipes and Echo’s Faith imprint fighting skills.
Moral Compass Bro Mission. They arrive at the victim’s apartment building, and Boyd asks why Paul is working for Adelle. Paul insists that he’s not working for her, just trying to save his obsession the girl. They call up to her apartment and Paul again lies about being a federal agent and asks to speak with her. She says she doesn’t want strangers in her home, but she’s heading to work and will be down shortly. While they wait, Boyd speculates that maybe they are about to drag up painful memories for no good reason – pre!Alpha might have nothing to do with Alpha. Before he can finish that sentence, though, the elevator opens and out walks the victim, with giant facial scars.
Obvious Villain Lair. The fight continues and Alpha says that she doesn’t know what she’s giving up. Echo sasses that surely she wouldn’t want to live in a luxurious spa when she could have ALL THIS. She tells him she’s not his girlfriend and knocks him out for good. Or, like, he pretends for good because homegirl’s 38 brains don’t have the good sense to check before she goes over to Wendy!Caroline to untie her. Echo says that she’s Echo, who is nobody – “just a porch light, waiting for you to come home.” Wendy!Caroline says that she has to get put back in the wedge so that Wendy can go back into her own body. She’s not sure about going home to her own, though, because CONTRACT. Funnily enough, the only “contract” related tag we seemed to create during Fifty Shades was about sleep talking which is entirely irrelevant to this scene, but it’ll have to do. They joke about current events Caroline has missed – black president! – and Wendy!Caroline’s all, “Yeah, sure!” Just as she does, though, she’s shot through the neck. SHIT. SHIT SHIT SHIT. Alpha holds a gun up to an imprint and tells Echo to do as he says or have her brain blown out.
Steph: I’m not even going to bother getting into my rant about whether any other version of Caroline after this point is really Caroline if she was just killed here. #existentialcrisispart2
Mari: THIS. SHOW.
Sweeney: I HADN’T EVEN CONSIDERED THAT IDEA.
Indeed: THIS. SHOW.
Dollhouse. Topher is going through more of Alpha’s old imprints, but feeling like it’s all a bit futile. Boyd calls him to ask about the ghosts of engagements past. Boyd explains about Alpha’s abducting a woman in his criminal past and keeping her hostage for three days, somewhere in San Pedro. Topher’s all, “SHIT, I KNOW.” He asks for Whiskey’s files, remembering the engagement from the beginning of the episode. He reads off an address for Boyd, and then has a revelation, checking the imprint Whiskey had during that mission, and finding that it was, in fact, recently activated. Nice of Alpha to put everything away so neatly after!
Speaking of Captain Crazy, he’s ordering Echo into the chair so that he can order her into the chair and then murder her. He doesn’t want to destroy the wedge, though, because he wants to roam the country abducting ladies and imprinting them as Caroline so he can carve them up and kill them. Echo realizes that he’s got a carving fetish and remembers him attacking Whiskey, realizing he did it because of her. “For you,” he insists and she calls him on it. It’s a quick moment but I LOVE IT. This is a really common thing both in fiction and in life. People pull the, “I did this for you!” card when it’s like, “No, you did a thing because it would satisfy you in some particular way that has fuck all to do with me and what I want.” I’m adding way more words on the matter than the show does, but I love the show for acknowledging it, however briefly. Echo jumps out of the seat again, telling him she’s over it and he should go ahead and shoot the imprint. Alpha crazies out and one of his personalities says he’s bluffing. Echo doesn’t back down and gets shot in the shoulder. Alpha flees with the imprint.
Outside, Echo chases him upstairs. He fires once, but hits nothing. We see Boyd and Paul arrive at their location and find the car Alpha was driving. A shot is fired near them, which doesn’t serve to actually hit them, so much as alert them to Alpha’s location. Good job! Paul spots his obsession, Caroline, up there.
Echo continues running up for Alpha, who tosses the Caroline imprint off a ledge, causing Echo to ditch her pursuit of him to shimmy out for the imprint. Unfortunately, her bullet wounded shoulder causes her to spaz out and drop it. Fortunately, Paul is standing just below and catches it. “You saved her,” Echo says. LOL. PAUL SAVED CAROLINE. HE CAUGHT HER IN HIS PRINCELY ARMS. OK, show.
Steph: This made me laugh a lot, but it’s still a step up from those Briar Rose metaphors.
Mari: All they had to do was delete the painfully obvious, “YOU SAVED HER!” Trust your audience, writers. WE GET IT.
Sweeney: After a Not Break, Topher is still doing all his big thinking and notices Dr. Saunders/Whiskey standing over his computer. She says he gave her more computer skills than would be required of a medical doctor, making it very easy for her to hack his system – his computer is now displaying Whiskey’s profile. Dr. Saunders says that she gets why they wouldn’t want to waste an investment and why imprinting her made more sense than hiring a new physician, but she doesn’t understand why Topher thought it was so important for her to hate him. As she walks away, Topher sadly notes that she didn’t actually open the file and he asks if she’s curious to see who she really is. “I know who I am,” she says before walking away.
Upstairs, Adelle hears from Boyd: they didn’t catch Alpha. An anonymous source is providing for Wendy’s family. Adelle says that she is confident they will find him, now that they have Paul in their employ. Paul says not so fast – Caroline’s freedom, plus full payment on her contract, is part of the deal. Again, his fixation on this one person – with no regard for any of the others – is insane. Adelle is all, “Yeah, yeah, of course,” but in a very ambivalent way. OH BUT PLOT TWIST. In walks Mellie! Or November! Or whatever the fuck her real name is! Shit. All right, Paul, well done. Good work. This is the one-over-all-the-others sacrifice that I can support and comprehend.
Steph: I’m very happy that he does this. It redeems him from his creepy Caroline obsession by approximately 5%. You still have more work to do, Paul, but you’re getting there.
Mari: I’m so glad Sweeney got to recap this one. So many twists and turns and sweet Paul, saving two of his girls this episode.
Sweeney: Around the Dollhouse: Echo is waking up, freshly wiped again. Victor is leaving Dr. Saunders. November tells Adelle that this was all so easy – she feels like she just got there. Weird. Paul watches and his face agrees with that, “Weird,” assessment. He stops her before she leaves. Dr. Saunders stops Victor to let him take a sucker.
Echo asks if she should go now and Topher awkwardly says yes, but Echo turns to look at him. Paul thankfully asks November for her name – it’s Madeline. Thanks, Paul. Echo goes to Topher and puts her hand on his chest before leaving. Madeline asks who Paul is and he says he’s nobody. She smiles and leaves.
Back in the sleep pod, the dolls settle in for the night. Once her door closes Echo whispers, “Caroline.” END.
I love this show, you guys. I really do. I was having a conversation with some of my new co-workers the other day in which they mentioned hating it. It was weird and awkward because I didn’t want to be all, “SO I HAVE THIS BLOG, RIGHT…” and so I just let it drop.
Steph: I was like them once. Now I’ve seen the error of my ways.
Mari: SAME. I even voiced those opinions before we started recapping, but I’m eating all my words. I love this show.
Sweeney: Watching this episode, though, I was reminded of how much this recapping experience adds to my appreciation of this show. I don’t know what it might have been like for everyone watching it otherwise (and Steph & Mari seem to be a testament to the superiority of watching it this way) because even if I marathon it later, I can’t ever un-have this experience with the show. I’m grateful for that.
I understand why people would not like a show that asks as much of its audience as this show does. In a certain sense, saying, “This show is best when you watch it really slow and talk everything through,” is a comparable defense to all the, “You have to binge!” that we hate so much. Comparable, in that I suppose it speaks to some sort of deficiency in the show. Still, for me, the latter deficiency is one I can’t get behind (it basically translates to, “It’s good if you don’t think too much!🙂 whereas the very fact that I have this blog is indicative of why the former works for me (“It’s good if you like your TV shows to make you think through lots of complex shit about society and have all the thinky thoughts forever and ever.“)
This episode raised so many unexpected questions about the ethics of all of this. I was genuinely shocked by Alpha’s abandonment rage, but it also made a perfect kind of crazy person sense. Between Alpha’s sense that their original personalities “abandoned” them and Paul’s insistence that it’s not possible to truly wipe, this episode added all sorts of lovely new bits of nuance to this show’s many questions about identity and the ethics of the Dollhouse itself.
Mari: I originally commented on this precise thing earlier, but am moving it to +1 this sentiment. It all goes back to the exploration of what makes people people and what these dolls really are. Echo is a person, but so is Caroline. The idea that Echo has been betrayed by Caroline or anything of the sort just fills my heart with feels and my brain with thinky thoughts, which is clearly something I appreciate as well.
Sweeney: I love that they are leaving no stone overturned in terms of the ways to approach the philosophical dilemma they’ve created with their premise. We’ve spent the season basically retreading the territory of who the dolls even are, only to come up with ever more questions and very few concrete answers.
Even the corny business about Paul “saving” Caroline was redeemed a bit by making it more of a cathartic thing to set the stage for him to free Madeline instead. It’s weird, though, because I usually vastly prefer highly character driven shows and while there are a number of interesting, compelling characters on this show, it is propelled forward principally by the onslaught of big ethical questions raised in every scene. (Again, I get why that might not be someone else’s jam, even though it’s clearly so totally mine.)
One last note on that: I appreciate the attempts a both (a) cohesion in its universe -and- (b) ambiguity about the answers to those questions. I point that out specifically because I’m aware that very same thing is also what some people might like about Doctor Who that I’m not yet rallying around.
I could go on forever about how much I’m digging this show, but we’re headed into the finale now, so I’ll shut up. ONWARD.
Next time on Dollhouse: We wrap up the short first season with a peek into the future in S01 E13 – Epitaph One.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
I'm a miniature adult who still gets offered the kid's coloring menu at restaurants. I like to pretend I'm an illustrator, but mostly I spend my time complaining about TV on Twitter. My life dream is to have my consciousness placed into an android body so that I'll have more time to watch/read things.
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