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| Wednesday, April 15, 2009 08:54 PM |
| On the Viewer - Dollhouse (Episode 8 - "Needs") |
 by Fëanor |
Ballard has a creepy dream about Echo and Mellie that makes it clear his feelings for Caroline are, deep down, not entirely noble. Also, the dream brings to light for him a disturbing question: how did the Dollhouse know about his relationship with Mellie?
Dollhouse staff meeting! Time to talk about all the recent problems. Dominic, of actives: "Don't think of them as children. Think of them as pets." Wow. He has a point, though: when your child says its first word, you're proud; if your dog starts talking, you freak the hell out. Also, looks like it's common knowledge now that Alpha is still alive?? I thought that was a deep dark secret! When Topher figured it out, he had to sign extra non-disclosure documents.
Saunders and Langton make it clear they care a lot more about the actives as people than anybody else at Dollhouse. DeWitt always puts the safety of the Dollhouse as a whole ahead of them; to Dominic they're just pets, to be discarded if they become unruly; and to Topher they're just interesting science experiments.
The actives are still glitching. Echo is flashing back to when Ballard barged in on her mission with the tech geek. Sierra is having disturbing memories of her handler assaulting her. Laying down in the pods is not helping; has Caroline reasserted control of Echo's mind?? In fact, a whole group of them has dropped out of tabula rasa state; they're all fully emotional and self-aware. But they have none of their memories. Way to go on your alteration of the drug cocktail in the pods, Topher!
Victor's connection with Sierra is still intact. They all have fragments of memories, impressions. Echo wants to go to the mountains. Mellie feels she's lost something. Interesting. The other dolls are still in doll state. That's particularly creepy to see, through the eyes of someone who was herself lately a doll.
They're blending in. Good thinking! Mellie's code name is November.
Woman: "Good morning. We're having banana pancakes for breakfast today."
Doll: "I like pancakes."
Victor: "We're all gonna die."
Uh oh. Ballard found the camera in Mellie's place. And it's incredibly super high tech.
Saunders knows right away that Echo is not in doll state, but tries to keep it secret, even though, as she tells Echo, "I'm not your friend in here."
Ha! They have to go into the coed showers. Mellie says it's no big deal. Victor tries to handle it by reciting the lineup of various baseball teams.
Argh! This was all planned! When Dominic tells DeWitt there are four actives planning to escape, she says, "Right on schedule." Ah, but not everyone knows - only the upper-ups. It's a test. Nice.
It's going to be interesting to see what's just outside the confines of the Dollhouse! We've never seen anyone go in or out before. Looks like we've got bland, industrial, white hallways, and the handlers' locker room. And now they found the wardrobe section!
They're remembering more things. Sierra remembers men with guns who brought her here. Mellie has a daughter named Katie.
Woah, they made it to the garage! They can see daylight! This is crazy. They pile into a car and prepare to go, but Echo goes back in to try to make a difference. That's the Caroline in her - the empathetic activist, willing to risk her own life to make things right and to save others. She's insane! There's no way I'd go back in there.
But she took down a handler and now she's armed, so... maybe she's got a chance of doing something!
Mellie's going off on her own, and says she remembers her life, and where her kid is. Hmm...
DeWitt also recognizes Caroline's unrealistic altruism in Echo's actions.
Topher: "Echo?"
Echo: "Not anymore."
Wow, Sierra's story is a truly screwed up one. Some rich guy she refused to have sex with pulled strings to get her put in the Dollhouse so he could have her whenever he wanted. Seriously sick.
Topher: "We're good people! Nice people!" Heh. No. No, you're not.
Topher finally reveals to Echo that this is all just a test.
Topher: "I have your memories. You can have them back."
Echo: "You can do that?"
Topher: "Yeah."
Echo: "Okay. You first."
Ho ho!
Echo shot up the chair. Good one!
Echo brings up everything that's wrong about Dollhouse to Topher and DeWitt, but DeWitt counters her at every turn, pointing out that Caroline subjected herself to this voluntarily. She couldn't live with the consequences of her own actions. DeWitt promised to protect all the dolls from the unbearable truths that led them here; promised not to return their terrible memories. But Mellie has gotten back her terrible memory. It looks like her daughter is dead. Perhaps she was somehow responsible?
This adventure has brought Victor and Sierra much closer together.
Echo forces DeWitt to let all the dolls out into the world! But then collapses. All four of the escaped dolls collapse, in fact. It looks like the Dollhouse had a failsafe installed, and activated it.
I was about to say this test went horribly awry, but in fact they've now revealed that there was yet another level to all this, and that it went entirely according to plan. The idea behind it - Saunders' idea - was to let the priority cases go on self-guided journeys and experience some sense of closure. Echo got to save everyone. Mellie got to grieve over her lost child. Victor got the girl, and Sierra got to fight back. And the collapsing wasn't a failsafe; it was a sedative that activated the moment they felt closure.
Saunders: "You should be grateful."
Langton: "Yeah. I'll work on that."
And here they all are, back again in their pods. It seems even more horrible now that we know they were made aware of the prison they're inside of, and that they had a taste of freedom.
The final scene: Ballard finds a message from Caroline on his phone. While she was messing around in the Dollhouse, she found his number in her file and called it, asking for help.
This was a particularly deep and powerful episode, really taking a hard look at what the Dollhouse is and who the actives are. There were plenty of clever twists I didn't see coming, plenty of tough moral and ethical quandaries. Good stuff. |
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