Dollhouse

Heart-stopping revelations aplenty this week, which focus mainly on the reason behind Alpha’s psychotic behaviour and the unravelling tale of his one true love.

Finally we’re ploughing into the story and it’s all getting really interesting ... just in time for the end of the season. But in this penultimate episode of season one, many loose ends were chased up and many more things - or people - left hanging. But who? And how? And what did you think of it? So much going on.

In the present:

"I need help in here!" shouted Dr Saunders, not kidding around in the slightest as she ran out of her office shouting things about Victor, knives and Alpha. And with that we picked up from the very end of last week’s episode, and went straight into this one.

After all the furore about Ballard having broken into the Dollhouse, Victor was suffering from a touch of cutty-face, much like Dr Saunders before him, which doesn’t bode well for his future (though more of that next week). And Alpha had run away with Echo. (Caroline. Whatever. I’m going to settle on a convention by season two, I swear it). In fact, as we learned, he’d not only run away with her, he’d fitted her with an imprint first. He also grabbed a car, and some poor random woman off the street - and took them all (bar the car) to the kind of dark, damp basement that you can hire out for such nefarious purposes. And once there, he removed the random lady’s original personality, and replaced it with Caroline’s.

He wanted her to see how much better life is when you have several dozen personalities doing battle in your head. Or, as he put it: "You can ascend. You can evolve. It’s in you, I’ve seen it."

Turns out he was, unusually, correct. He put all the personalities into Echo … and once they were in, she seemed to deal a lot better with it than he did.

In fact, having all the imprints she’d ever had placed in there at once seemed to complete her, where they only served to fracture him. And finally, some kind of progress, now all those single-faceted characters come together to form a completely rounded, all-knowing, all-seeing woman (who, coincidentally, will have crazy ninja skills and a fierce eveningwear collection).

There was arse-kicking (Alpha’s), deep revelation (Caroline’s) and, eventually, some freedom (November’s, released from service in exchange for Ballard’s silence and possible employment at the Dollhouse - she’s free: free to make lasagne for people on her own time. No charge).

Echo was brought back into the Dollhouse, and re-wiped. But effectively? No. Not at all.

In the past:

This was the really interesting stuff - we basically got the whole Alpha story.

Alpha - already damaged goods when he arrived at the Dollhouse, fell for Echo the second she arrived. Because she was so beautiful and magnetic and incredible and blah blah blah, and I’m still not falling for this argument no matter how many times it’s posited.

But that’s the given story we’re working with: the root of Alpha’s psychotic obsession is Caroline/Echo. Echo, who he loved at first sight. Echo, for whom he returned; Echo, for whom he disfigured Whiskey, (who was the Dollhouse’s number one most popular doll) so that Echo could be queen of all the robot whores; Echo. He loved Echo, slashed Whiskey up, killed his handler and Dr Saunders (the first one), and then escaped.

Alpha, bets?

You think he’s gone? I hope that’s not the last we see of him.

Alan Turdyk giving a performance of Alpha as a terrifying battleground of inner voices - like a badly-tuned radio, where all the stations happen to have their variation on Psychotic’s Hour on a loop. Not to get too effusive, but it did feel like a performance that displayed what could be done with the concept of interchangeable personalities. And you have to respect anyone who can deliver the line: "I didn’t know you when you were 13, none of us did, one of us did," and make you feel as if you’re actually watching a war of personalities under one skin. I hope he’s back. Soonish.

What we learned

 The person we know as Dr Saunders is a doll, an active. Used to be known as Whiskey, but got imprinted with the old Dollhouse medic’s personality when Alpha sliced her and murdered Dr Saunders 1.1.

 Does this means that all the staff have their personalities, somewhere? On discs? So they can be imprinted on a doll in an emergency. If they’re not all imprinted on dolls already. Right?

 Ballard: man on a mission with a deep growling hatred of the Dollhouse: sold out after spending half a day there. Hurrah! Hurrah for principles!

 Alpha was a "technological anomaly", according to DeWitt. His composite event. 48 personalities. That’s an awful lot of people to keep happy all at once. Echo now has 38 in there somewhere. Just saying.

Hits to the face for Echo: One, of course. By Alpha. She hit him more, but no, in the name of equality, there was at least one hit in the face for Echo. At least one is mandatory, we have learned.

Line of the episode

Echo with all the imprints: "I have 38 brains, and not one that says you can sign a contract to be a slave. Especially now that we have a black president." I don’t know whether it was the amassed tension, the line or the delivery that caused loud laughter at that point, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the intended purpose.

(All right, that wasn’t strictly the line of the episode. But in an episode of so many highlights - and this really did feel like the pace, energy and the passion with which these ideas and writers should have been moving all along - I felt it would have been unfair not to pull out the one slightly bum-clenchingly bad bit)

What thoughts?

Next week we move on to the last episode in this season - and the one that wasn’t shown as part of the US TV season at all (apart from on DVD) - but before we get there: What was your view? Omega-ly speaking?