Dollhouse is a hard show to pin down. Through its run — I’m not implying anything by that phrasing, I still hold out hope that it will get a second season — it’s experimented with the implications of the technology at use on the show. It is, in many ways, one of the true science fiction shows remaining. This episode not only tinkered with virtually every form of mind-frakking, but it blew away all my issues with the way last week ended by taking the cliche and playing with it.

After Alpha and Echo headed off into the sunset, it all seemed very blasé as an explanation for the byzantine plans Alpha has concocted to test Echo. This was initially justified by the many personalities of Alpha; rather than Alpha’s goal being the imprinting of Echo with a Bonnie to his Clyde, it was simply the goal of one of his many minds. But that didn’t hold out for long. Alpha’s personalities start to break down and intermingle and the megalomaniac personality that embodies the Alpha mythos starts to once again take hold.

But even then, as revealed through flashback, Alpha is doing all of this because he “saw something” in Echo. Basically he had a crush on her and the psychopathic killer that grew up in his body had many bizarre ways of expressing that. As I was watching those scenes, I was reminded of the obsession that Ballard has with Caroline, and how little of it is based on anything he actually knows about her.

So, for the first half of this finale I was feeling a little let down by it all. First Ballard, and now Alpha; all the men in Echo’s life keep getting killed by candarian demons keep ending up being these cliches of male messiah-complexism. But then the second half won me over; once Alpha had imprinted Echo with all of her past personalities at once, thus creating an Omega to his Alpha, she didn’t follow his path to megalomania.

And all of that was basically getting around to the idea that an Active is more than an object. They’re more than a container. Alpha is not Alpha because he was overloaded by 48 personalities. And Echo did not become Omega because of what Alpha did to her. There’s a fundamental base to each person. You can call it a soul if you like, but it’s there no matter what Topher does. So Alpha was always broken, the composite event merely allowed him to express that brokenness. But as Echo has said before, she’s not broken.

The show is mixing its messages here though, because as the audience is seeing that Alpha went evil because Carl William Kraft was always evil, and Echo stayed sane because Caroline was, new Echo is saying just the opposite. “There’s no me, I’m just a container,” which I think belies the message the show’s trying to put across. And before she can further articulate her thoughts on the subject Alpha gets aggressive again, so it’s hard to see if she’d eventually realise that she is more than a container. Regardless, even if Caroline was hollowed out, little bits remained. So Boo-urns for sending mixed messages, but I suppose it would’ve been a less exciting hour if Echo spent the next five minutes examining the meaning of selfness and the permanence of the soul.

I also enjoyed the Boyd/Ballard hook up, and now that Ballard is working with the Dollhouse, I really hope the second season is greenlit so we can see more of them hanging together and hating on the evils of the Dollhouse while working for it. And speaking of Ballard, what he did in this episode also redeemed a lot of my annoyances regarding him. First off, he awesomely got the FBI to cancel their terrorist alert by telling Tanaka exactly what was going on in that building, and knowing it was just nuts enough to get Tanaka to call off the alert. And then, as the episode ended and he accepted his new position at the Dollhouse — which, by the way, it would be really awesome if he became Echo’s handler next year — under the condition that a certain special Active was given back her old self and her five-year debt paid in full: November.

Yes, Ballard finally realised that the Doll he needed to rescue wasn’t the one once called Caroline, but the one once called Madeline; the one he knew and genuinely cared for. I was really proud of Ballard in that moment. Even if it turns out in the second season (come on FOX, do it for me) that he chose November rather than Echo because he wanted Echo at the Dollhouse with him, he still made the right choice, albeit for the wrong reasons.

This episode also let Ballard be an awesome investigator since he was the one that figured out that who Alpha was before he was Alpha was the missing part of the equation.

One of the most interesting things in this episode was the reveal of Dr Saunders’ past. I’ve always imagined it was a possibility that she was a Doll, and it was broadly hinted at when it was mentioned earlier that she never leaves the Dollhouse, so the reveal wasn’t mind-blowing but it certainly put a twist on all her past interactions. As Whiskey, she was the number one Doll, and it was that popularity that led to Alpha slicing her face, in the hopes of making Echo number one, and in turn led to Alpha going in for a diagnostic and the accidental composite event.

Dr Saunders’ acceptance of her past is intriguing though. Since her first appearance, I’ve found her to be one of the most interesting characters and the way she’s dealt with what should be a soul-shattering experience only adds to that. Seriously, Amy Acker can do no wrong. She needs to have her own show.

The finale was great in ways I didn’t expect. I was disappointed by Alpha, though the problem was that the rest of the season built him up too well; it’s very hard to build up a character to those epic proportions and then successfully reveal them to the audience without disappointing in some way. Luckily, a lot of other directions the show took delighted me. Saunders’ revelation, Ballard’s new employer, and Echo’s awakening (and its persistence based on the closing shot of the season) all elevated Dollhouse to a new level and set up a drastically different, yet reminiscent, world for the second season. Which probably won’t happen.

But liking television comes with that risk. A movie has a set goal to tell the story it wants to tell. They can from time to time establish things that can be explored further in sequels but, for the most part, movies are self-enclosed, much like the Dollhouse. Television has to plan for more. Television has to tell an interesting and self-enclosed story while constantly writing a superstory above it all. If the larger story is flawed or uninteresting, you’ll get very little connection with the audience, but if the individual stories aren’t strong enough the audience won’t come back and get caught up in your universe. It’s a delicate tightrope that television writers have to constantly walk, and it’s something that I thought Dollhouse did very well. And even if the show doesn’t come back, we’ll still have that.

From what I’ve read online, this was originally scripted as the seventh episode of the season. Some of the direct correlations between scenes in the pilot and this one make that statement suspect but it does explains why there’s so much exposition regarding the mythology mysteries, answers which normally would have taken half a season to unfold. But if if truly was the seventh originally, I can see why they bumped this episode up because it was an amazing hour of television.

Last week’s main story was a little lackluster, despite the interesting implications of what happened in it. This week was more exciting, less cerebral. The sort of exciting adventure the show needed to let its audience see a less restrained side. Not that this was a light-hearted romp; an episode where a seemingly innocent adrenaline junkie’s weekend date — with the crazed survivalist Richard O’Connell played brilliantly by Matt Keeslar — for Echo turns into her running for her life from the same man determined to find out if she’s worthy of living, if she can escape his manhunt, isn’t something to dance around about. But there’s much more levity in this episode, and the dialogue has become much smoother. The growing pains the pilot suffered from are almost completely gone here.

While this week’s main story was by far the more interesting half of the episode, the flashbacks in the Dollhouse to the events of a few months ago were excellent as well. The naked man who ended last week’s episode is Alpha; an Active, presumably one of the earliest versions of the Actives given his name, who, either at least partially retained his implanted personalities despite mind wipes after missions or was implanted by an unknown party with a personality and skills he shouldn’t have, broke free killing almost everyone in the Dollhouse and disappearing. He spared Dr Saunders her death, instead slicing her face leaving her scarred and damaged, and left Echo alive and unharmed surrounded by the dead bodies of her fellow Actives.

In this back story, we also learn of the imprinting process Boyd, Harry Lennix’s character, went through with Echo which made her unconditionally trust him in any circumstance. This trust is ingrained in her via key phrases which she reacts to in a preprogrammed manner. Which is why when, in the midst of the hunt, Echo ignores Boyd’s invocation of the key phrase and instead takes charge of the situation and going up against O’Connell on her own Boyd is perturbed. As would the Dollhouse if Boyd mentioned it, but it seems like the paternal connection he has with Echo will encourage a few helpful omissions from his report.

Alpha is said to have been killed after his escape by the Dollhouse, but we know he hasn’t and his message to Ballard was received this week while Paul was examining the crime scene from last week’s episode, much to the chagrin of the detectives actually assigned to the case. (Ballard has a few scenes this episode and they’re all fairly unrelated to the rest of the action on screen which is why it’s possible they were taken from whatever was originally the second episode and injected into this one to make the continuity stick.) Now that Ballard has a face to connect to the Dollhouse, albeit a face that doesn’t exist according to the FBI database, he will be even more determined. There’s a nice scene in there where Ballard’s attractive and clearly into him neighbour tries to offer him a nice home cooked dinner and gets shot down via the obliviousness and doggedness of the agent. It’s a little heavy-handed at getting it’s point across, but it’s still better than the kickboxing scene from the pilot.

The beauty of Joss Whedon’s work, as I noted when discussing the Buffy episode Doppelgangland, is his ability to combine stand-alone story lines with ongoing arc threads and this episode is an brilliant example of this. O’Connell’s actions originate from him and the conflicts he introduces are resolved within the span of the episode but the mystery of his origin’s, which were meticulously constructed by someone else (most likely Alpha), add to the overall arc. Similarly, the back story related to Boyd’s introduction to Echo not only allows some exposition regarding the process and Active and their handler go through together but also develops the long-term relationship between the two characters which is built upon by the main action of the episode.

If this episode is a sign of what’s to come from Dollhouse, then consider me in it for the long haul. However long that may be.

Dollhouse, Joss Whedon’s new show on the network he swore to never work with again, premiered Friday night to not-great ratings and to not-great reviews, but I think what we’re asking ourselves right now is “what did Blair think of it?” If you really want to hear about it, either read this longish review or, if you want to hurt my feelings, skip to the end.

The opening scene where Eliza Dushku’s character Echo signs up to become an “active” — a reprogrammable human willing and able to be whoever and do whatever the client requests — at the Dollhouse — the eponymous organization behind this booming industry — was definitely there for the mythology builders. It quickly established that the reasons Echo joined the Dollhouse will be a part of the mythology of the show while preparing the viewers by asking the question “what if actions didn’t have consequences?”

The first consequence-less action we’re shown is a perfect weekend between Echo, playing the flirty and fun twenty-something role, and some dude with too much money. It’s interesting that they chose to introduce people to Echo as a high-end prostitute, but it’s also obvious they chose it to demonstrate that actives are completely blank slates when they’re not “active.” Switching from Echo’s peppy and sexy dance moves with a bright smile on her face to the doll-like emptiness of the actives is both a quick way to demonstrate the answer to the opening scene’s question and also gives Dushku a chance to stretch her acting muscles, which is really what this show is all about.

After she’s returned to the Dollhouse and “reset” there’s a short scene of awkward exposition with a brief foray into the philosophical questions this show will undoubtedly ask week to week, when Topher, the tech behind the mind-wipes played by Fran Kranz, says “[Echo's] living the dream” to which her morally conflicted handler, played by Harry Lennix, responds “whose dream?” It’s a simple scene but it sets up Topher as the Xander of the Dollhouse, and establishes the conflict at the heart of Echo’s handler. I keep wanting to use the phrase “effectively introduces” because most of the scenes are explicitly designed to introduce these concepts and characters to the audience without being too weighed down by clunky dialogue.

Following this, the requisite Monster of the Week is introduced as a little girl is kidnapped out of her bedroom in a pretty effectively creepy scene. Then the credit sequence plays which is interesting but not quite interesting enough to want to watch each week. I’ve previously talked about my annoyance with the lack of interesting and evocative credit sequences in modern television. HBO and Showtime excel at this but the networks apparently aren’t willing to give up a full one or two minutes for credits the way cable stations are.

After another scene which establishes what the client of the week needs out of the Dollhouse, a hostage negotiator to handle the payment of the ransom for his daughter, we’re blessed with a scene between Echo and the staff doctor, Dr Saunders, played by the always beautiful Amy Acker. Acker plays this scene very peculiarly, with a strange cadence to her delivery. She seems guarded in her interactions, which may be as a result of the two or three large scars across her face, which do nothing to make you forget that Amy Acker is gorgeous.

Echo then walks in on the creation of an Active, a procedure which is more painful and invasive than the typical “treatments” she’s used to. Echo’s dialogue in this scene is a little too child-like for my tastes, actually all of her scenes in the Dollhouse have this problem. Hopefully her growing awareness of what she is will solve this problem, but for now we may be cursed with obnoxiously written child-like dialogue from the inactive Actives.

By now all the set-up for the episode, and most of the set-up for the series, is in place so it seems like a good time to introduce Paul Ballard, the FBI agent tasked with finding the Dollhouse, played by Tahmoh Penikett. Long story short: he’s very dedicated, to the detriment of the rest of his life, hence the ungraceful reference to his divorce. Oh, and in this scene Tahmoh has a weird shape to his lips that I never noticed on BSG so I hope it’s just a fluke of the scene and not something he’s actively applied to his character’s appearance. Because me no likey.

After all this set-up, we’re over a third of the way through the episode, already an extended 50 minute episode, so the story proper begins with Echo arriving at the client’s house as Eleanor Penn, an expert negotiator who’s handled these sorts of payouts time and again. At least she thinks she has. There’s a couple scenes of her establishing her dominance and her overall awesomeness, and an interstitial exposition scene from Topher about the techniques of implantation. The personalities the Actives are implanted with come from real people, which implies another mythology question that will be answered over time.

I’m not in love with the main story of this episode because, quite frankly, the story of someone who helps kidnappers get their money without police complications isn’t a particularly thrilling idea. There are some interesting tidbits though; in particular, one of the real people who was the basis for Eleanor Penn was kidnapped herself as a child and sexually and physically abused which makes the client, who’s aware of where Eleanor Penn came from, ask what would make those men put such terrible memories in her mind. An interesting question, and one that won’t be forgotten on this show.

Meanwhile, in the world of Paul Ballard he manages to find a Russian mob member who might be able to get him information about the Dollhouse. Though, the mobster looks remarkably like the third male Active in the promo photo above, so I’m thinking that might be a dead end.

After this little interlude, we return to the adventure’s of Ms Penn who’s about to hand over the money in exchange for the girl when one of the men in the team of kidnappers sparks a deep memory in her. He’s the man who took her years ago. Wait, what? Yeah. This episode doesn’t handle it very well, but the question is still floating there to be asked.

After a few scenes of Echo heading back for her “treatment,” which unbeknownst to her is when she will return to being Echo, the Dollhouse ultimately decides to allow her to remain as Ms Penn long enough to get the girl back from the kidnappers despite the complications of the mission. The girl is saved by Echo, and the kidnappers are all unhesitatingly shot down by another Active, Sierra, the one being created in the earlier scene and the other female Active in the photo above. There’s another interesting snippet here. The real person who was taken by the kidnapper years ago killed herself a few years earlier because she was haunted by the memory of that monster for the rest of her life. But here, her memory gets closure. The kidnapper is killed and before he did she gets a chance to stand up to him and face her greatest fear. Is this catharsis equivalent to the real thing? Is the recording of this woman’s memory resolving her deep-set issues in some way resolving them for the original person. It’s an interesting question and an idea I hadn’t thought of when first thinking about the premise of this show. It may be a ridiculous question and one that only I asked but it caught my attention regardless.

Finally, to close of the show we have another mythology building scene. A nude man is seen from behind preparing an envelope for Agent Ballard encouraging his hunt for the Dollhouse while watching a video of a pre-Active Echo discussing her post-graduation goals. The camera moves back to show the room he’s quietly resting in has several dead and bloody bodies in it. Who is this man? Why does he want to encourage, and aid, Ballard’s search for the Dollhouse? And why does he have a video of Echo before she was Echo? There’s a lot in that scene to be explored in later episodes.

This review was much longer than it probably needed to be, but I felt that a pseudo-scene-by-scene write-up was necessary to get at the numerous themes and ideas being introduced throughout this pilot. Should I keep up these episode reviews of Dollhouse, which is unlikely given my post frequency,  they’ll likely gloss over most of the details. As for this episode, the one thing I liked was that while the exposition wasn’t handled with excellence it was usually paired with a mythology or character development chaser that made it more palatable.

Overall, I’m excited about this show. I want to see what happens when Echo begins to remember things she shouldn’t. I want to see Ballard’s investigation progress. I want to see more of the history of the Dollhouse; how it came to be; how people become Actives; what kind of person donates their personality to the Dollhouse and why. Most of all, I want to see more Amy Acker. If this show gets a second season, I hope she’s upgraded from recurring to regular cast. She brought such intrigue and mystery to her two scenes and I can’t wait to see why her character is the way she is.

But then again, given the massive Joss Whedon marathon I undertook a little over a year ago, I suppose it’s not a huge surprise that I’ll be watching this show to the (most likely bitter) end.