|
|
| Monday, May 11, 2009 06:40 PM |
| On the Viewer - Dollhouse (Episode 12 - "Omega") |
 by Fëanor |
As this episode opens, Alpha and Echo seem to be setting out on a Bonnie and Clyde-style crime spree. They've just come from a clothes store, and Echo complains that the woman at the register failed to put an item in her bag. Then she yells at the woman, who, we discover, is tied up and gagged in the backseat!
And it's only now that we see just how crazy Alpha is, as his different selves begin arguing with each other. Then we get a flashback that explains just what personality Alpha has imprinted Echo with. It turns out Alpha and another active were often paired with each other, and in one case they were set up with Bonnie and Clyde-type personalities for a dude whose fantasy was to accompany a crazy couple of that sort on a cross-country crime spree. But Alpha was a little too smart, noticed the handlers' van following them, and slipped away, torturing the client to see what he knew about the people in the van. The client reveals the truth about the whole sequence of events: that Alpha and his girlfriend aren't real, but are just his fantasies. Unsurprisingly, this freaks Alpha the hell out. I'd been assuming all this time that Alpha's girlfriend, who's dancing in silhouette in the background, is Echo, but when he calls her over, I got a huge shock: it's Dr. Saunders!! Whedon is really adept at leading you carefully towards one conclusion, and then making a sharp 90 degree turn at the last second and revealing something else entirely, and he totally got me again with that technique here. Further flashbacks reveal that the real Dr. Saunders was an old man, and that the woman we know as Dr. Saunders was actually Whiskey, the number one most requested active at the Dollhouse. When Whiskey and Alpha are brought back in for treatments, Alpha sees Caroline getting her tour of the facilities before being transformed into Echo, and is instantly obsessed with her. So obsessed that later, he attacks Whiskey and slashes her face up, because he wants Echo to be the number one active, not Whiskey. And this is what leads to Alpha's composite event. I had for some reason assumed that the composite event was something that happened spontaneously somehow, but in fact after Alpha's attack on Whiskey, he's taken upstairs to Topher's office and strapped into the chair while Topher goes through all of Alpha's prior imprints to see if he can discover what's gone wrong with him. But Alpha is struggling crazily, the wrong button gets pushed, and all of those old imprints get layered into his head simultaneously. The real Dr. Saunders happens to be there, and Alpha kills him instantly. He then destroys all of his prior imprints, beginning with the imprint of his real, original self.
And now a lot of things make more sense. An active with a scarred face is hardly useful, and they were down a doctor, so Whiskey was transformed into the new Dr. Saunders. Saunders always seemed a little weird, and people always seemed to act a little weird around her, but it was easy to assume this was because of her scars and how they reminded everyone of Alpha's attack, and also because she was troubled by the moral implications of the Dollhouse. But it turns out there's a lot more to her than we realized! She's a far more interesting character now, especially since later on in the episode she hears some things that tip her off and ends up hacking into the computer and finding out what really happened - that she's not the original Dr. Saunders, but actually an active who was semi-retired after the incident with Alpha. She confronts Topher about it, but seems sort of resigned to the whole idea. Interestingly, she points out that Topher built her Saunders imprint to hate him, and she wonders why. Maybe Topher was harboring some guilt about the real Saunders dying, and Whiskey getting sliced up, and tried to exorcise that guilt by making the new Saunders hate him, as he felt he deserved to be hated? Fascinating stuff. Another interesting moment: as Saunders is leaving, Topher asks her why she didn't look up the information on her true self. "Don't you want to know who you really are?" Saunders replies, "I already know who I really am."
And that's indeed the theme for the episode, and for this season in general: that selfhood isn't something you can erase and replace. That who you really are - your "soul" - will always remain somewhere inside you, no matter how completely your brain is wiped, or how many times it's rewritten.
Topher, of course, thinks this is bull, but Ballard is convinced it's true. So when they bring Ballard in to help them track down Alpha and save Echo, Ballard wants to try to determine Alpha's motives by taking a look at who he really was before he became Alpha. Turns out Alpha was brought in as part of an early program where they offered prisoners a chance to spend five years at the Dollhouse as an active instead of five years in prison. Alpha was in prison because he kidnapped a woman and tried to kill her. Ballard is outraged that they would have brought a criminal like this into the Dollhouse, but DeWitt protests: it's not like he actually killed anybody. After all, it was only attempted murder. Heh.
Ballard and Langton head out to interview the woman Alpha tried to kill. It's good to see the two of them working together finally. They're already so similar in terms of their love for Echo and their general moral outlook that they really needed to be a dynamic duo. As soon as they see Alpha's victim, they know talking to her was a good idea: her face has been slashed up in the exact same way as Whiskey's and Victor's. Deep inside, Alpha is still the same wanna-be serial killer he always was. Also, it turns out when he kidnapped this woman, and when he kidnapped the man from the flashback at the beginning of the episode, he took them both to the same place: an abandoned power station. So Langton and Ballard saddle up and head out there.
Meanwhile, we cut to the power station where Alpha has indeed set up shop, and where he's performing a really effed up experiment. He and Echo have kidnapped a poor innocent retail saleswoman whom Alpha straps down into his homemade Dollhouse chair (yes, he made his own!!) and loads up with Caroline's imprint. Then he puts Echo in the chair and loads her up with aaalll of her previous imprints, except Caroline. He dubs her Omega, and is certain that now that she's a "superior" composite being, like himself, she will want to sacrifice her original self, just as he did, and join him on his journey to... take over the world? Or something? Who knows, he's crazy. Anyway, it's an insanely mind-blowing situation, with the composite Echo in Caroline's body staring down the Caroline personality in some random other woman's body, and the two of them freaking out in their own ways. But it's not particularly surprising when Omega decides to attack Alpha instead of Caroline. Then there's another fascinating and mind-blowing moment when Omega accuses Caroline of abandoning her. How could she have left her body to go through all of this for five years while she sits quietly dreaming, waiting to be reunited with it? Caroline accepts this criticism and agrees to be loaded back into her body. But just then Alpha breaks up their conversation by killing the body that has Caroline in it and running off with the wedge that contains the only remaining Caroline imprint, threatening to destroy it.
It's at this moment that Langton and Ballard show up. Alpha manages to keep them all from following him by tossing the Caroline wedge into the air. It lands on a thin ledge and Omega crawls out to get it, but knocks it off by mistake. All that is Caroline falls through the air, certain to crash on the ground and break into a million pieces! Luckily, Ballard is there to catch it. Omega: "You saved me." Aww. He finally got to save Caroline, just like he always wanted to.
Unfortunately, Alpha gets away. Ballard agrees to help the Dollhouse track him down, as long as they agree to let a particular active out of her contract early. Of course, I assume, again, that it's Echo, but again Whedon makes that unexpected, last second 90 degree turn, and instead it's... November! Ballard greets her briefly, learning her real name, but then lets her go without telling her his. He's content to have saved her. DeWitt looks on with an indecipherable expression. I'm guessing she's thinking of the love she gave up in the form of Victor's lonely hearts imprint. Meanwhile, Omega is wiped and becomes plain old Echo again.
Echo: "Did I fall asleep?"
Topher: "For a little while."
Echo: "Shall I go now?"
Topher: "If you like."
Wow! Such an insane, amazing episode. It really sums up the whole season in many ways, answering so many questions, revealing so many secrets, and making some powerful observations on the nature of selfhood. But it also sets us up for another season of adventures with Echo, with Ballard now firmly inside the Dollhouse, working with Langton to track down Alpha. Oh please, please, please let there be another season! I want to watch it so badly. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
