I promise I will get to my Young Avengers posts that I promised soon. But there's been so much going on in television that I cannot ignore it. Last week, we had the end of Battlestar Galactica and the first episode of Dollhouse that laid the groundwork for the overall mythology of the series. This week, the curtain got pulled back a little farther, and we learned a little about an evil corporation that is (probably) funding the Dollhouse as well as the reason Caroline was forced to become Echo. Also, while last week's episode was the first one to show Whedon's trademark emotional center, this was the first episode to show off his trademark wit.
First of all, the title of this post is a Firefly reference; Blue Sun was the mega-corporation that was partially responsible for the tests on River Tam, but due to the early cancellation, we never really learned anything about them. It looks like this time around, Whedon is wasting no time in bringing the sinister Rossum Corporation to the forefront (though I really liked how, in Firefly, even though we never formally met Blue Sun, there was plenty of evidence of its existence throughout the series). Rossum is a drug manufacturer that is performing all kinds of unorthodox experiments. Caroline was an outspoken opponent of Rossum, and when thesy caught her breaking into their labs, Rossum shipped her off to DeWitt, where she became Echo. Based on the little we saw, Rossum is clearly evil, but I really hope that Whedon finds a way to partly justify what they are doing or show that things aren't exactly what they seem. The "evil corporation" thing is much too simplistic for a Whedon story; one of my favorite Whedon quotes is that the best villains are the ones who are partly right...
Elements of this episode kind of reminds me of Buffy's "Band Candy" episode and Angel's "Spin The Bottle" episode (and kind of Buffy's "Tabula Rasa", but that one was much more emotional in regards to the relevant elements); this episode dealt with a drug created by Rossum that broke down mental processes and turned people into goofy children. Topher and DeWitt's reaction to the drug was, in my opinion, the best because those two really went all out with the lunacy. I think that DeWitt's Brit-bashing comments and trampoline adventure were brilliant in their simplicity. Boyd and Dominic also had great moments (though I think Dominic's best line was when he was still sober; after Victor had a special agent personality imprinted, Victor started ordering Dominic around, which pissed Dominic off to no end).
The drug's effect on the dolls, on the other hand, caused them to "glitch", and they started remembering past imprints, events from their inactive states, and, in Echo's case, her life before the Dollhouse. Echo's journey into Rossum in the present mirrored her last experience before joining the Dollhouse, and her inability to fully remember everything yet still know what she was doing was creepy to watch, but will have interesting effects on her character if the effects don't wear off.
As for Ballard, he didn't get much screentime this week, but we learned that not even an attack on Mellie (can I start calling her November yet?) and a suspension won't deter him from pursuing the Dollhouse. In fact, it has strengthened his resolve. Why is Mellie (November?) being extracted? I would think that now, more than ever, DeWitt would want her in place to monitor what he was doing. Oh well, now we'll get to see how she interacts with the other dolls. Hopefully, the series has run through its purely stand-alone episodes (although, there was still some arc stuff in the first five), and from now on, we'll get episodes like this and last week's.
Oh, and is anyone else wondering where Alpha is?
Up next: That's not our name, by the way...
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