Dollhouse

(S02E12) The problem with prequels (and with regards to Dollhouse, I consider everything that happened before "Epitaph One" and "Epitaph Two" a prequel) is that you know how things are going to turn out. This somewhat ruins any sense of surprise one might get from any revelations of the program.

Granted, it was a decent stopping point for the show. All the dangling plot-lines were resolved and if we weren’t aware of the two "Epitaph" episodes, we’d all drink our collective Slurpees and let out a sigh of relief knowing that Dollhouse ended on an emotionally satisfying note.

TWO WEEKS until the next episode? Come on, Fox. What’s up with that?

The question we must ask is did the Boyd revelation happen earlier than it should have? The answer is likely "yes". It does make sense and there have been clues since the beginning of the show. I loved the reversal at the end where Boyd became an Active and Echo his handler. Also, whereas Boyd protected her, she ordered him to kill himself.

My guess is that either Topher escaped with the remote imprinting technology or (more likely) Rossum had back-up servers in Thailand or somewhere equally non-accessible. Boyd’s motives were pretty super-villain standard: the desire to control the world. He tried to intellectualize it but it boiled down to arrogance and greed. He was also nuts, which helped. Not Alpha-style nuts where he acts like the Joker, but nuts nonetheless.

Obviously, Whiskey was going to survive any smackdown that her character was going to have with the Scooby gang (a term borrowed from Mr. Whedon’s previous series) considering the high profile role that Whiskey had in "Epitaph One." I dimly recall hearing a line in there about getting Whiskey or Saunders or whomever out of the building before Active Boyd blew it up real good. Or am I mistaken?

Who didn’t call the Mellie turn? It was so telegraphed as to be pathetic. They even threw in the cliché "Mellie stopping herself at the end," which would have been far more interesting if Paul had to kill her, particularly in light of the Dollhouse wiping his feelings toward her. Hell, it would have been more interesting if Adelle actually had Mellie’s sleeper agent programmed so she could distinguish friend from enemy, but at the time (last week) they were in a hurry to get out of dodge and they weren’t aware of Boyd’s true nature.

Keep in mind that some of the future we saw in "Epitaph One" won’t come to pass since the Dollhouse is already out of commission (such as the sale of the Actives’ bodies). However, the general apocalyptic future seems secure. I recognize that this is television, but Echo/Caroline and Paul looked no older ten years later. Getting imprinted must also give the recipients a facelift or something to remain eternally young. Or it could just be that vague "20’s to 30’s" age in which Caroline and Paul’s are living.

It was an enjoyable episode, but not as much as last week’s. Fortunately, there is the series finale to look forward to. In two weeks, the mega-happy ending. See you then.