Dollhouse

(S02E05) This was truly an excellent episode of Dollhouse. The show has improved leaps and bounds, and I can’t wait to see the developments Joss has waiting for us next season ... oh. Oh yeah. Forgot about that.

Despite the imminent cancellation, this was an excellent episode with so many twists and turns you’d think it was the SR1 in California. Okay, Daniel Perrin is a Doll (sort of) and his wife is his handler (making her more of a fake than him). The mysterious Bennett in the D.C. Dollhouse has a past with Caroline, Echo’s original personality. And it all ends in a cliffhanger making this the perfect night for a two-parter.

When Echo (as Bree) and Perrin had their scenes together, I couldn’t help but flash back to several scenes from the Buffy and Angel series which had Wesley together with Faith. Faith tortured Wesley in one of those, I recall. Fortunately, no grudges were held between series.

Did anybody else notice that Kilo was played by Maurissa Tancharoen, who is engaged to Jed Whedon (Joss’ brother) and was one of the co-writers of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog? If you didn’t, then you should have. She’s also a writer for this series and co-wrote the last episode.

I see that the D.C. Dolls (which would be an interesting name for a band) are given the names of Greek Gods and Goddesses rather than the NATO phonetic alphabet. Kind of ironic considering that they’re actually slaves. I couldn’t tell clearly, but was Perrin’s code name Hades?

Judging by the number of girlfights in the episode, you can tell it’s a Joss Whedon series. Favorite line: "You just woke up a lot of people and they all think you’re a bitch."

Admittedly, I figured out somewhat early that Cindy Perrin wasn’t an Active. It was too obvious, and Whedon and company never go for obvious.

A moment on Summer Glau’s character of Bennett Halverson ... I think Glau is channeling a little Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper in her portrayal (and she did guest star on The Big Bang Theory last season). If Sheldon were evil, he’d totally be Bennett. The ending was a twist, as well. I’m on pins and needles to learn the history between Bennett and Caroline. I’m convinced that the character is an Active, which means she probably isn’t.

It was interesting to see the real Madeline (as opposed to the fake Mellie a.k.a. November) interact with Ballard. She’s pretty unappreciative of being freed.

Technically, this is only the 18th episode of the series but I can’t help but think that if the creators served episodes of this quality sooner ... the show would have probably still been canceled. It is Fox, you know. However, showing episodes in sequential order like this gives a greater appreciate to the sort of tapestry Joss and company can weave.

Did Dollhouse deserve better treatment from the network? If you’re a fan of the show, the best thing you can do is buy the season DVDs (possibly in mass quantity) so they make the inevitable spin-off movie in the vein of Serenity.

(S02E06) In our last episode, our hero Echo was tied to a table and getting her brain fried by the evil and deranged Bennett Halverson. And now, part two ...

Admittedly, the "two parts in a single night" works well with this show and its current penchant for cliffhanger endings. Plus we don’t have to wait until next week to see how our heroine Echo gets out of her current trap.

Tonight we also discovered a new application for Dollhouse technology: the ability to experience other people’s memories without actually taking their personality. Okay, Summer Glau ended up not being a Doll. As mentioned, it was too obvious. However, she already had her hands on Topher’s disruptor and the opportunity to study it. She could have developed a countermeasure.

The series was created partially in order to give Eliza Dushku more of an acting range, but I think the person who best qualifies for the "biggest acting range of the series" award is Enver Gjokaj (Victor). His Topher character was spot-on and the interplay between the two Tophers was utterly hilarious. Favorite line: "Think John Cassavetes in The Fury as a hot chick." (Of course, nobody mentions what happened to Cassavetes at the end of that film.)

He’s the Devil! He’s Stewart Lipman! He’s the Devil AND Stewart Lipman! It was very exciting to learn about Ray Wise’s appearance on this show, and while there was one or two moments of greatness in there, the end result seemed a little disappointing.

His character wasn’t quite as over-the-top or snide as his Devil in Reaper, plus he didn’t get a lot of screen time. Perhaps the creators thought he would take too much attention away from everyone else, and they would probably be right. It was pretty obvious what Adelle was doing in his pants before the story got to the rather painful-looking conclusion of that angle.

Back to Bennett, was she a student at the university where Caroline was committing her eco-terrorism? Something about that entire flashback scenario doesn’t work for me. Was Caroline a bad person? That doesn’t jibe with what we previously learned about her. This may be a case of a psychosis on Bennett’s part in which she’s misremembering certain aspects of the past in order to fit her worldview (next up, an army of killer robot Jews).

The entire scene between Topher and Bennett seemed a case of asking who was using who. Both had ulterior motives that they didn’t want the other to know about. The scene in which Bennett changed Echo’s assassin trigger to the word "puppies" was cute.

In the end, Rossum did not get what they want. Of course, this is only a setback as they could always set up a similar scenario in the future at a different Dollhouse.

The title of the episode appears to be a reference to Bennett’s inability to move her left arm and hand. The theme was continued at the end of the story when the stop signal (which could be interpreted as a left hand, depending on your angle) turned to a walking person go signal. Did I overlook any other thematic occurrences? Is there a literary or film reference I’m missing with that?

Another great episode. On to next week’s double-feature.