Dollhouse

Right now I feel like Ballard when they woke him up from his coma. My brain is scrambled, my words are coming out backwards and I want to punch something. This was it — this was the "Dollhouse" that could be, and it’s canceled. I love the back-to-back episodes and these two, especially "The Attic," were just amazing. Mostly, though, this was the Whedonverse. Whedon has themes in his shows — they’re not repetitive, they’re his strengths. He has a group of outsiders, oddballs, misfits, who fight together for a common purpose. These two episodes had major Whedonisms that all his other shows have had, at least once they got to a certain level. You can tell the show is cruising at this point because there was even a trippy dream episode in "The Attic." I wasn’t a fan of the dream episodes on "Buffy" — the Cheese Man episode, "Restless" or "Nightmares" — but "The Attic" dream episode was very cool, very "Pan’s Labyrinth." Then, there was the flip-flopping of characters’ evil and good statuses. As it turned out, Adelle hadn’t really gone from goodish to full-on evil, but Lawrence Dominic suited up for the good team. Whedon and the writers on his shows always have flawed characters, even the good guys aren’t perfect, but they always have the chance for redemption. And, finally, the biggest thing that came in the closing shot of "The Attic" — they finally have a Scooby Gang.

Every Whedon show has a Scooby Gang. The originals on "Buffy," Mal Reynolds and his crew and castaways in "Firefly" and Angel and his team. "Angel" started out flying most solo, but the show didn’t really get good until the whole gang — Cordelia, Lorne, Fred, Gunn and Wesley — got together. "Dollhouse" didn’t really have a Scooby gang. It was hard to do in the beginning since the dolls didn’t have a constant personality and the other characters weren’t exactly united under a common purpose. In the final scene of "The Attic," they all sat around — Echo, Adelle, Ballard, Boyd, Topher, Ivy, Priya/Sierra and Tony/Victor ready to bring down Rossum.

"Stop Loss," the U.S. military term for extending a service member’s active duty without them re-enlisting, was the weaker of the two episodes, mainly because the soldiers-sharing-a-brain stuff wasn’t particularly interesting. But it was fun to see Echo and Priya suiting up to bust Victor out of the Rossum boot camp.

The story behind the real Victor, Anthony Ceccoli, wasn’t as heart-breaking or fascinating as Priya’s story, but once again, Enver Gjokaj was great. Someone really needs to hire this guy after "Dollhouse" — maybe for J.J. Abrams’ "The Undercovers," so that he’d have a chance to play different characters again.

The strong parts were the constant connection between Sierra and Victor even after he was sprung from the Dollhouse. Them sharing their breakfast of strawberries and pancakes and Victor giving her one last dorky "goodbye," while the enlightened Echo rolled her eyes was good stuff. Unlike Priya’s story, we didn’t get the full background on Victor. He was in the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, he came back damaged, and they sent him to the Dollhouse for five years. I loved the very quiet scene of Tony back in the hotel ("Angel" reference, it was the Hyperion hotel), just checking out his surroundings and himself. Seeing the war on TV, seeing his hair much longer. I also love that when the guys in masks busted in, that they weren’t like most action-scene idiots who attack a guy one-on-one, but just all ganged up on him.

The soldier storyline didn’t really work. I like that Rossum has this going on, and that the plan was never to really let Victor out of the Dollhouse, but why the big secrecy? Did Rossum not want the employees of the Dollhouse to know about the soldiers? Did they wait to grab Victor because they needed him as Tony and after he’d spent some time "healing" in the Dollhouse?

But all this lead to Echo becoming awesome. I actually like her now. In fact, I don’t really care if Caroline ever makes a reappearance (although it sounds like that’s the plan) and it’s definitely good that Eliza Dushku has at least one constant personality to latch onto. In "Stop Loss" and "The Attic," she showed flashes of a Faith-like, take-charge, having-fun-with-it character. Although if Echo gets imprinted with Caroline’s personality now, will she ever really be Caroline, or will she still be Echo with Caroline as one of her pieces? And maybe there isn’t as much a divide between Echo and Caroline to begin with.

And, finally, we know what the Attic looks like. It involves lots of plastic wrap and goo. They came up with a pretty good explanation for the Attic and why they didn’t just kill the dolls instead of sending them there. Their brains are actually powering the Dollhouse technology.

Having built up the Attic for most of two seasons, they had to have a major payoff. Going the way of the surreal dream sequences was a good move. The dream-world of "The Attic" was creepy, funny and beautiful. The scenes with the Japanese man (Tzi Ma) eating his own legs, and loving it, were wonderfully perverse. I also liked that Echo was experiencing all her personalities’ greatest fears — "and those are my hateful relatives playing croquet." And then they resurrected Laurence Dominic and they made him a good guy, out chasing shadowy, blue Incredible Hulk-looking Arcane.

"The Attic" showed the world of the unaired "Epitaph One" episode with everyone gone crazy now that anyone can be turned into a doll. And they introduced one of the Rossum Corp’s founders, Clyde, who was actually Arcane, going around shutting down the CPU dolls. Clyde (Adam Godley) clued them in that his colleague (whose name he conveniently doesn’t remember) betrayed him and that there’s also a Clyde 2.0 running around. So now there’s a mystery. I was assuming that Matthew Harding is his partner, but then lots of people have seen him, and Clyde 2.0 could be anyone in any body.

Echo, who’s special, figured out if she flatlined, she could get herself out of the Dollhouse, and Tony and Priya crossed over the other side safely, too. It was a touching scene of Tony stabbing Priya. Not usually a romantic image. And then the big surprise — Adelle hadn’t really gotten an evil transplant, this was her plan all along to get Echo into the Attic and to find out how to destroy Rossum.

That’s where things fell a little off track. The twist was great (Olivia Williams pulled off becoming the Mistress of the Dark beautifully) but the setup was not "Sixth Sense" clever. I don’t like when they do the little flashback scenes and show you things you didn’t initially see (like Adelle’s whole speech to Echo, telling her to get the important information out of the Attic and bring it back). "The Sixth Sense" didn’t cheat; we saw every clue there was to see. I’m guessing Adelle didn’t let anyone in on her plan except for at the end, Echo, and possibly Ballard. When she called Ivy into her office, she might have told her the truth so she’d know what to do if Topher didn’t come back.

It ended with Echo realizing she needs to resurrect Caroline, who saw the face of the Rossum co-founder. Did Alpha steal all the copies of Caroline, or did they get those back? She’s going to have to find him if he still has Caroline’s hard drive.

These were just very epic episodes, and the dialogue was on fire. If the finale lives up to "The Attic," it should be insanely good. It’s just too bad it’s the end-end.

A few more thoughts:

Best lines:

Echo: "That’s 40 more brains than you have."

Topher: "Is everybody in this house in a coma?"

Topher: "Darth Vadar kills lieutenants, not Storm Troopers."

Nolan: "Rigor mortis, the new Viagra."

— A little shot at Fox? When Echo was asked what year it was, she answered "2010. I don’t know how long we’ve been off the air."

— I’m wondering what Adelle told Ivy that made her pissed at Topher.

— "Dollhouse" comes back Jan. 8 and has two more episodes, with the finale on Jan. 22. Amy Acker will appear in the Jan. 8 and 15 episodes.