Dollhouse

THE MATRIX and NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET both add themes to an episode that keeps us going on all fronts and ends with a great twist only a few (this reviewer not among them) saw coming

Grade: A-

Stars: Eliza Dushku, Harry Lennix, Fran Kranz, Tahmoh Penikett, Enver Gjokaj, Dichen Lachman, Olivia Williams, Liza Lapira, Reed Diamond, Adam Godley

Writer(s): Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon

Director: John Cassaday

Release Date: December 18th, 2009

Rating: TV-14

From Season One of DOLLHOUSE, the hitherto unseen Attic was the ultimate threat. In “The Attic,” we finally learn there’s more to it than we ever would have guessed. Echo (Eliza Dushku), Anthony (formerly the Active known as Victor, played by Enver Gjokaj) and Priya (formerly Sierra, played by Dichen Lachman) have all been consigned to the Attic, where they are kept in a state of perpetual dream/nightmare. In Echo’s recurring dream, she escapes from her Attic bed, kills the guards and frees Anthony and Priya, only to see them gunned down.

In the outside “real” world, head programmer Topher (Fran Kranz) tells head of house Adelle (Olivia Williams) that the only way to possibly revive the currently brain-damaged, comatose Dollhouse employee Paul (Tahmoh Penikett) is to imprint him with “Active architecture” (i.e., make him a Doll). Topher and Boyd commiserate over not knowing what exactly happens in the Attic, as they are both worried about Echo, Anthony and Priya. Topher also wonders about the “personal” matters that are taking the formerly workaholic Boyd away from the Dollhouse these days.

Echo discovers the only way out of the recurring nightmare is to ignore what happens to Anthony and Priya and flee – but this lands her in a new, snowy, ever-changing nightmare that combines surrealism with flashbacks. Although Echo is aware that she’s dreaming, when she is physically attacked by a dark phantom, she concludes the violence against her is real. Echo encounters Laurence Dominic (Reed Diamond), a Dollhouse employee sent to the Attic in Season One for treason. Once Echo and Dominic get past their confusion about who is in who else’s nightmare – they realize they are somehow sharing the dream – Dominic explains that the phantom calls himself Arcane. Arcane kills the Attic prisoners in their nightmares, causing them to die for real. Dominic has mastered the ability to follow Arcane by jumping from mind to mind, though he cannot wake his real body in the Attic.

Priya’s recurring nightmare has her making love with Anthony – who is murdered atop her, then resurrects as Nolan (Vincent Ventresca), the rapist/murderer she killed in self-defense several months ago. In former soldier Anthony’s nightmare, he’s in the midst of battle in the Middle East, but winds up fighting himself.

Echo jumps into the mind of a Japanese man who does not believe he’s in an Attic, but knows he’s been sent somewhere by Rossum because he detected a weakness in the corporation’s mainframe computer. Echo deduces that this man is in an Attic, but in Japan. Then Arcane appears and kills the man.

In the real world, Adelle threatens first Topher, then Boyd if they do not cooperate with her.

Dominic and Echo drive off Arcane together, but they are trapped in the mind of the dead Japanese man. They manage to escape and enter Anthony’s dream in time to prevent Arcane from killing him. With Anthony, they rescue Priya from the undead Nolan. When Arcane shows up, our group manages to get the best of him, and he is revealed to be a rather mild-seeming British fellow named Clyde (Adam Godley).

Clyde shows the group “the shape of things to come,” which is civilization in ruins. How can Clyde be so sure the future will be such a disaster? Clyde explains first of all that the brains of all those people consigned to the Attic are Rossum’s mainframe. The company uses human minds to do its calculations. Clive was one of the founders of Rossum, but his partner – whose identify Clive cannot remember – betrayed him and put him in the attic in 1993. Clyde has been calculating possible outcomes of the world using Dollhouse technology, and only three percent of them don’t end with the end of the world as we know it. All the Attics are linked, creating one giant human mind-powered computer. As Arcane, Clyde has been killing the Attic prisoners in their dreams partly to put them out of their misery, but mostly because it’s the only way he knows how to attack Rossum and disrupt its mainframe from within.

Clyde does remember that a woman saw something she should not have seen relating to the Attic and subsequently had her mind wiped. That woman, Echo realizes, was Caroline, her “real” (or at least pre-Dollhouse) self.

Topher and his assistant Ivy (Liza Lapira) bring Paul back to consciousness. Paul is horrified that he is now a Doll, imprinted with his own personality, because it was the only way he could be revived at all. Topher and Boyd allude to something that has been taken from Paul, but we do not know what that is yet. Topher tells Paul that Echo and the others are in the Attic.

Echo figures out how to wake herself within the Attic – she will do what she saw herself doing in the repeating nightmare, which was to flatline. Priya is determined that she and Anthony will go with Echo and help her once she revives them. Dominic and Clyde will remain in the Attic and in the dream state, continuing to try to thwart Rossum and help those trapped in the nightmare.

Echo allows herself to be shot in the dream, causing herself to flatline in the real world. The flatlining disengages the Attic stasis state, allowing Echo to wake, choke out her guards and try to revive Priya, who in the dream state is killed by Anthony, and Anthony, who in the dream state allows himself to be beaten to death in the street.

And now that Echo is awake, with the secret of what the Attic really is – we learn that Adelle sent her there to find out what the Attic really was and its purpose for Rossum, because Echo was the only person Adelle could imagine being able to get back out of the Attic intact. Adelle means to take down Rossum, with a team now comprised of herself, Echo, Topher, Boyd, Paul, Anthony and Priya. However, Echo wants another player added – she wants to meet Caroline.

There is some clear borrowing from THE MATRIX here, but it has been set up honestly and honorably by all that has come before. The return of Diamond’s Dominic and the revelation of Clyde as someone with good intentions for all his murderous activities are both brilliant moves. The escalating confrontations between Adelle and everyone else who is awake – Topher, Boyd, Paul – are bracingly fierce and the sadness in the dreams is actually fairly haunting. Famed comic book artist John Cassaday directed the episode, and it is indeed visually striking. The script by Maurissa Tancharoen & Jed Whedon keeps us engaged throughout and all of the actors make strong contributions.

However, what truly propels “The Attic” to exceptional status is the plot twist regarding Adelle. She’s been set up as so angry, upset and plain old inebriated over the past few episodes that it seemed clear she was on the opposite side from Echo and Friends. Establishing in one swoop that Adelle is against Rossum after all, that she has the brains to conceal her intentions thoroughly and the intelligence to know where to look for secrets after the breathless events in the dreamscape is a true dramatic coup, and Williams makes the most of it.

This is a terrific episode in terms of content, momentum, surprises and emotion. Bravo.