Dollhouse

Underdog Doll: That collective groan you heard earlier this week may well have come from the Whedon-verse (Joss Whedon’s vocal fan base, for the uninitiated) as news broke that Fox was benching his strange new series Dollhouse for November sweeps. Hardly a surprise given its dismal Friday night ratings, not to mention the show’s uneven handling of a bizarre and elusive premise. (After tonight, the show will return in December with back-to-back episodes in a march to the inevitable end.)

This week’s episode, “Belonging,” arrives just in time—maybe not in time to save the show, but to remind ambivalent viewers (a camp in which I often find myself) that Dollhouse is still capable at times of being a dark powerhouse. If you want to see a flawed show in its best and most unsettling light, check this one out. It’s easily the most compelling, surprising and emotionally turbulent episode so far this season, always challenging one’s perception of what’s real and unreal, of who’s a hero or villain or merely a tragic pawn in a deadly game.

The focus is not on the problematic central figure of Echo (which may explain why it works) but on her dollmate Sierra (Dichen Lachman, a knockout here), as we learn the unhappy circumstances of her arrival and continued existence at the Dollhouse. Her story gets to the very essence of the Dollhouse’s unsavory methods of mind-control manipulation and subjugation of will to realize the fantasies, often sexual, of unscrupulous clients.

At the center of all this mad science is demented boy genius Topher (Fran Kranz, in probably his best work outside the DVD-only “Epitaph One”), who Echo tells early on, “You’re not looking hard enough. You never do.” Including at himself. “I’m not the bad man,” Topher insists, but “Belonging” suggests that Topher’s immature amorality may be a more damaging character flaw than actual immorality. In the case of Sierra/aka/Priya, formerly a free-spirit bohemian artist, Topher finds (as with the departed Dr. Saunders) he can no longer afford to stay detached. Saying he gets his hands dirty this week is a wild understatement. Topher’s conflicted boss Adelle (Olivia Williams) also rises to the occasion, in encounters with a Rossum Corp superior (Keith Carradine) so cold and calculating he makes her stewardship look like Mary Poppins.

Some of the other dolls are emerging as actual characters as well, including Enver Gjokaj as Victor, whose emotional attachment to Sierra adds a palpable poignance to this heartbreakingly weird tale. Very little of Dollhouse is likely to rank among Joss Whedon’s finest hours, but episodes like this come close.