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| Monday, March 23, 2009 05:54 PM |
| On the Viewer - Dollhouse (Episode 6 - "Man on the Street") |
 by Fëanor |
We open with a TV newsman interviewing people on the street about LA's urban legend: the Dollhouse. Apparently the legend cropped up first in the late '80s. Interesting.
One person says the only reason anyone would volunteer to be a slave is if he is one already. Good point!
Ballard is messing around in another agent's files and finds something interesting about a money transfer. The agent (played by the drunk Irish lawyer from Battlestar!) finds Ballard and tells him this girl (Echo) is nothing but a mindless whore, which must be his type. Ballard twists his arm behind his back, and possibly sprains or breaks something in there. Ouch! I kind of forget how crazy Ballard is sometimes, and then he does something like that.
Victor is upset because Sierra came into the lunch room and sat at a different table. Echo says of Sierra: "When we go sleep, I hear her." What does that mean?
Woah! Victor touched Sierra's shoulder and she started screaming!
Sierra tells Saunders: "Victor wants to pretend. He pretends we're married." Agh! This is getting even more twisted than it already was.
Echo reveals that when they go to sleep, Sierra cries. That's what she was talking about.
Ballard's been following the money and he may have actually found a real connection to the Dollhouse. It looks like an internet mogul named Miner is paying the Dollhouse the same sum every year for some kind of service - possibly for providing him girlfriends he can take to parties.
Ballard's neighbor is getting closer to him! They're actually having Chinese takeout together.
Ballard: "Weren't you seeing somebody? Rick?"
Neighbor: "Dick."
Ballard: "I thought it was Rick."
Neighbor: "Oh, his name was Rick..."
Ballard: "Ooh."
Ballard is definitely focused on saving Echo, a focus his neighbor notes and is jealous of.
Holy crap! Ballard's at Miner's house, and Echo's there! He actually found her! That I did not expect.
Echo, in her identity as Miner's fictional wife, discovers that Ballard is with the FBI and suspects that Miner is into illegal porn. A bodyguard comes in and tasers Ballard.
Echo: "Who is this? Is this a porn man?"
Miner: "There's no porn!"
While Ballard is beating up all the bodyguards, Langton comes in and sneaks Echo out. On the way out, Echo sees the bed strewn with flowers, points at it, and cries, "Porn!" Ha!
Ballard berates Miner for his messed up fantasy, but Miner points out it's our fantasies that keep us going, and that Caroline/Echo is Ballard's fantasy, too. Miner's seen right through to what's really going on in the back of Ballard's head.
Saunders and Topher are trying to figure out what Victor's deal is. Looks like they're giving him the Voight-Kampff test!
Victor's substitute handler: "I don't believe this. I'm filling in for Ramirez for a week, and my active invents rape?" D'oh.
Victor's sub. handler: "Maybe she's broken. You figure?"
Langton: "They're all broken."
Something about that conversation made Langton realize something. What did he realize??
Miner reveals the story behind his fantasy. He had finally made it big, but hadn't told his wife yet. He bought the perfect house, called her to come over. She never got there; she was killed in a car accident three blocks away. She never found out that he'd finally succeeded. Now every year he reenacts the moment that he could have had with her if she'd arrived. That's actually rather moving.
Miner: "You put me in front of a judge, he'll take you down. He'll throw the Kindle at you!" Heh.
Miner: "First hurdle in my business is the people who will not accept the change that's already happened."
After being so close, Ballard just has to walk out. There's nothing he can really do to Miner. He has no evidence, and Miner has all the advantages. He should have gone after Echo, not Miner! What was he thinking?
The interviews with people on the street about the Dollhouse continue to be intercut throughout. Some people think the services the Dollhouse offers would be great, even beautiful. Others, not so much.
Langton seems to have figured out what was going on with Victor somehow. It involves his substitute handler?
Ballard's finally making out with his neighbor. All this stuff that's been building the whole series is finally coming to a head in this episode! But the neighbor actually shuts Ballard down, because she doesn't think he's really into her; he's just carrying over his passion for Echo.
This is sick. Sierra's real problem was not Victor, or Victor's handler: it's her handler. He's been taking advantage of her programmed trust in him to molest her. Langton did figure it out, but he had Victor and his handler taken away to make Sierra's handler think he was safe, so he'd do it again and could be caught in the act. Nice one, Langton!
The Dollhouse has a camera in Ballard's place - or his neighbor's? Wait, is Ballard an active? Is his neighbor? What??
Rather amusing TV interview about Dollhouse where guy reveals in front of his girlfriend he thinks it'd be nice if a guy could see what it's like to be with another guy. She's a little taken aback.
We get to see Topher building a personality - one for Echo. Apparently he gets a warning from the computer if the personality he's created is too unstable. That's a good idea! He completes the profile, but then steps out to talk to Langton. Is the profile that he picks up afterward still the one he made?? I have this strong feeling it was tampered with...
Sierra's handler points out what he did with Sierra is not much worse than the usual things they do with the actives. "We're in the businses of using people." DeWitt gives Sierra's handler a chance to avoid the Attic: kill Ballard's neighbor because she's learned too much.
And we cut to Ballard and his neighbor having sex. Typical Whedon plot structure: keep a couple apart forever, then as soon as they finally get together and are happy, tear them apart with gruesome violence and death! Aww, and his neighbor is so cute now, and not stalkery at all. Damn you, Whedon!
They sent Echo in to attack Ballard? What's this about? Just to keep him occupied while they kill the neighbor? Or is he finally too much of a liability and they're taking him out for good? Regardless, it's Echo and Ballard in a serious knock-down, drag-out!
Oh, crap! All the secrets are coming out. Echo says: "The Dollhouse is real. We have a person inside. This person corrupted the tapes and added this parameter." The inside person is not the same one who sent the picture and the folder (that was Alpha, I believe). "This is their first communication."
Ballard: "Where is it?"
Echo: "You can't know that. You're going about this the wrong way.... There are over 20 Dollhouses in cities around the world. They have ties to every major political power on the planet. You cannot possibly stop them alone."
Ballard: "You're gonna help me?"
Echo: "The person that sent this message is.... The Dollhouse deals in fantasy. That is their business, but that is not their purpose."
Ballard: "What is?"
Echo: "We need you to find out.... You have to let the Dollhouse win. Make them back off. You have to trust me."
Ah, she made him shoot a cop! "He'll live. You'll be blamed. The engagement is complete. They'll never know I spoke to you. You have to go. They don't want to kill you, but they will protect the information." He finally realizes his neighbor is in danger.
Here's the scary thing: How can we know for sure if what Echo said is true or not? It could just as easily have been another part of her intended program - just another fantasy Dollhouse threw at Ballard to make him believe he was succeeding, so they can continue to lead him around by the nose.
Okay, my mind has now blown. I was sure Sierra's handler was going to kill Mellie, and that it was going to be Ballard's voice on the answering machine - he was calling to warn her, but would arrive too late. But instead it's DeWitt's voice. She says a code phrase and activates Mellie, who proceeds to kill the crap out of Hearn. Then DeWitt turns Mellie back off with another code phrase.
Interview with professor: if Dollhouse technology exists, we'll be over as a species. "We will cease to matter. I don't know. Maybe we should."
As I suspected, Ballard's neighbor is an active, but she's a special version: a sleeper active.
DeWitt, of Sierra: "Ignorance in this case truly is bliss."
Dominic: "I don't think they're as ignorant as they're supposed to be."
DeWitt: "No. We're working on it."
Echo has painted a picture of a man and a woman walking up to a house. Is she still remembering her engagement for Miner?
DeWitt: "You've drawn a picture. It's very good."
Echo: "It isn't finished."
DeWitt [stares at her]: "The picture?"
Echo: "It isn't finished."
DeWitt: "You'd like it to be finished?"
They send her back to Miner to finish the engagement with him. It's really sweet seeing her react to his surprise and embrace him. But you don't really know how to feel. It's moving, but twisted, but sweet, but wrong. Brilliant!
Every time I think I've got Whedon's number and I know just where he's going, he makes a sharp left turn at the last second. Well done, sir! I feel like this one episode has transformed Dollhouse into a completely different show. I'm so damn excited.
Some things that confuse me though: why hasn't DeWitt killed Ballard? It made sense to keep him alive when he was the head of the FBI task force investigating them; they knew who he was, they could keep an eye on him, and they could shove him in the wrong direction when they wanted to. Killing him then would have just raised suspicion. But now that they've gotten him disgraced and thrown off the force, what's the point in keeping him around? He knows too much about them. Plus now they could easily make his death look like it had come at the hands of the Russian mob - something everyone would believe at this point.
In fact, why get him disgraced and thrown off the force if you're not going to kill him? Now someone else will probably be put in charge of the investigation into the Dollhouse, which means they'll have to worry about that guy and Ballard.
I'm very confused. And I can't quite decide whether I think Echo's programmed speech about a spy hidden inside the Dollhouse was true or not. I want it to be true, but it could just as easily be another trick to confuse and control Ballard; to make him think he has help when he has none, and to make him think he should lay low and not act.
Regardless, I was very pleased to see so much stuff going on, so many things getting revealed, and so many things coming to fruition in this episode. I'm looking forward to seeing what new direction the show takes off in now! |
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