This week’s episode of Dollhouse delivered heavily on the creepy factor with both story arcs that played out and eventually intertwined. What’s dumber than unloading the mind of a serial killer into an active? Answer: Helping him escape custody and letting him loose on the street. Yeah, nice going, Saul Tigh. On the upside, in terms of my perception of the show, I think this episode stands out as being the best of the three eps that have aired this season.
The episode toggled somewhat awkwardly between Echo’s assignment, fulfilling the dirty fantasy of a professor who wanted to seduce one of this students, to Victor being imprinted with the mind of a serial killer on the request of his Uncle Brad, a client at the Dollhouse. Echo was programmed to play the role of “Kiki,” the star-role in a college professors dirty fantasy to seduce a student. Poor Kiki received and F on her Medieval Lit class, but really it’s not her fault. She thought she’d do better in the class considering it was “mid-evil lit” as opposed to “advanced evil.” The whole arc had me cringing for the most part, as it seemed to emphasize the more hookerish-aspect of the active’s duties. Sure, we’ve seen Echo on romantic assignments but the naughty school-girl-act really brought to light the semi-pornish nature of what she and her fellow actives are occasionally assigned to do.
When the episode started we were introduced to Terry, a creepy guy who was keeping women locked up somewhere and forcing them to pose as mannequins. When one of the women had enough of being treated like a doll, she tried to escape, resulted in Terry killing her. He took off to find a new “Miss Sheila” to replace the dead woman in his own personal human-dollhouse and ended up getting hit by a car. Stuck in a coma, his Uncle Brad (played by Battlestar Galactica’s Michael Hogan) had him taken to the Dollhouse. It seems Uncle Brad suspected that his troubled nephew might have some girls locked up somewhere.
Adelle and Topher worked it out so that Terry’s mind could be dumped into Victor’s head. Then they’d just ask him where the girls were. Easy-peasy, right? They pulled Ballard off Echo’s assignment, replacing him with Boyd (like old times!) and brought him in to use his FBI skills to question Victor-Terry. Ballard actually stepped it up with his questioning of Terry but when he and the rest of the Dollhouse staff’s backs were turned, Uncle Brad snuck Victor-Terry out of the building. He didn’t get far with his fake-nephew though as Victor promptly knocked him out and returned to searching for a new Miss Sheila.
We learned that actives are all Lojacked with a GPS strip so they could be found wherever they go. Seems like a smart idea to tag the merchandise, considering some of the imprints they’re given. But Victor’s GPS strip was removed, which meant he was out on the loose with the mentality of a serial killer. Scrambling to fix the situation, Adelle wanted Topher to do a remote wipe. Alpha managed to do that with Echo last season but he had the luxury of being able to reach her by cell phone. As Victor didn’t have a phone on him, the only way Topher could think to wipe his brain was to release a signal over the radio.
I spent the bulk of the hour wondering why we needed to see Echo’s assignment with the professor as it seemed pretty irrelevant but that ended up playing a big part in the serial-killer arc. In the end, it did turn out to be mostly irrelevant other than to show us what Echo was doing before her true role in the episode was going to be introduced. When Topher executed that radio-wipe plan, Echo, who was busy dancing with the professor. She heard the signal through the radio and responded by stabbing the professor in the neck. She was accidentally imprinted with Terry’s mind and Victor got stuck with Kiki’s. So while Victor was off busting a move in some nightclub, not realizing that he was anything other than a girl-gone-wild, Echo was headed for the place where Terry hid his women.
Echo-Terry got to the women and started screaming crazy at them before Echo fought through the imprint. Conscious of the crazy man in her brain, she encouraged the women to kill her, believing it was the only way to be safe from the man who’d stalked and abducted them. After a bit of goading, one woman stepped up and tried to pummel Echo with a croquet mallet before the dollhouse people finally tracked the place down through Echo and saved her from a brutal death.
The episode ended with Terry being prepped to be sent back to a hospital to finish out his coma there, for better or worse. When a freshly wiped Echo stopped in to see Ballard, she commented on Terry dreaming. Ballard alluded to the fact that Terry wouldn’t be dreaming anymore. Terry died a few moments after Ballard left the room, so I’m assuming he pulled some plug or another. And once again, we know Echo will harbor some effects of her recent imprint as she stated a quiet and creepy“Good gracious” as she looked at Terry in the bed.
That’s the bulk of what we got tonight but here are a few other notable moments. Ballard’s attraction to Echo seemed more evident tonight as he gawked at her in the shower and watched with concern as she was dolled up for her student/teacher assignment. In other news, Saunders absence was addressed by Adelle, who seems intent on finding the missing doctor.
Now let’s talk about the theme of the episode because it’s hard to ignore the parallels in Terry’s little setup with his women and what’s going on with the actives in the Dollhouse. Terry was forcing his women to stay still, each of them playing a role in his own personal fantasy world. When the drugs he put them on started to wear off, one of them asked another girl what her name was and then emphasized that they all have names and don’t deserve to be trapped there and forced to be a play thing to some deranged psychopath. While Terry might be a deranged psychopath, is what he did with those women all that different than what the Dollhouse is doing with the actives?
