Dollhouse: Second Chance

Last night, I missed the second season premiere of Dollhouse (I doubt I'll be catching many when they first air because it's on Friday nights... fuck you FOX), but I had an interesting exchange with a friend of mine, who is also a Dollhouse fan. She asked me if my girlfriend and myself were going to an after-party, but I told her that we couldn't because we had to get up early this morning. I said that it wasn't a matter of what we wanted, and my friend responded that it was about what we needed. She didn't even realize the show started up again last night. Fortunately, unlike Firefly, Dollhouse has gotten a second season and second chance to show us that Joss Whedon is a master storyteller.

Although I was unsure of the merits of this series after that back-up singer episode, every episode from "Man on the Street" through the unaired "Epitaph One" thoroughly entertained me and made me want to see what happened next immediately after viewing. "Epitaph One" made me want FOX to commission a companion show that takes place in the post-apocalyptic future after the imprinting technology got out of control. Although that isn't going to happen, Whedon has said that we will see more of that time period. Originally, a scene from 2019 was going to open the second season, but it was cut for time (episodes are no longer 50 minutes; FOX got rid of its "Remote-Free TV" campaign).

However, the episode did a lot to set up the new directions the show is going in. First off, Ballard's deal with DeWitt is rather strange; although we're still not clear on the specifics, he is acting as a kind of in-house client who uses Echo to take down criminals. Why DeWitt is allowing this is unclear, but Ballard proved his loyalty to Caroline/Echo, and he eventually became Echo's new handler. But this was after Echo was fundamentally altered. Although Topher thought he undid Alpha's composite event (all of Echo's personalities were simultaneously uploaded into her mind), the treatment didn't hold, and now Echo is now a different version of Alpha. Her composite personality has not caused her to go crazy the way Alpha's drove him insane. She has made it her mission to help the Dolls regain their true personalities, and Ballard is all too happy to help.

My favorite parts of the episode involved Topher and Dr. Saunders/Whiskey. The knowledge that you are not who you think you are, that you are not real and are only temporarily occupying someone else's body, cannot be good for the psyche. Dr. Saunders is trying to make sense of who she is and what she can do, and it doesn't help that her slight contempt for the Dollhouse, which maker her want to return her body to whoever owns it, is being overtaken by her sense of self-preservation. How can you ask someone to willingly give up their life (over the hiatus I wondered what would happen if someone accidentally triggered her by asking about a treatment, but when Topher made such a comment, it didn't seem to have any effect on her)? What makes matters even worse for her is that DeWitt has spent big bucks on facial reconstruction surgery for Victor to heal the scars Alpha gave him. As of now (though as we know, not forever) Whiskey still has her scars, and even though she was the most popular Active, DeWitt loves Victor (or at least one of his imprints). Knowing that the surgery is available, but that you aren't getting it while someone less qualified gets it right away may not be as jarring as knowing you are a doll, but it can't help the situation.

So she has resorted to playing cruel pranks on Topher; not only did she learn she isn't real, she learned that the man she loathed was responsible for everything about herself (her line about being designed by a sociopath in a sweater vest was pretty great). This culminated in an incredible scene between the two (about 1/3 of the incredibleness extends from the fact that Amy Acker was in a nightie the whole time) in which she got into his bed to see if he would sleep with her. The result was both an incredible conversation about free will and an illuminating look into Topher's character. Topher explained why he gave her some of the character traits he did, but explained that it was her own mind that used such traits to form opinions. He didn't make her hate him, she came to that conclusion on his own. And for all of Topher's arrogance and amorality, he showed that he does care about the Dolls and wants to do everything possible to keep them safe, even if it means working closely with someone who won't get along with him every day. Dr. Saunders finally left the Dollhouse, going against Topher's programming intended to keep here there, in an effort to show herself she had free will and to defy Topher and DeWitt. Quick side note: last year, I noticed that we never saw DeWitt, Boyd, Saunders, or Topher at their homes (unless that place in "A Spy in the House of Love" was DeWitt's home), and I wondered how much freedom people who work are the Dollhouse are given by the Rossum Corporation. It probably can't be too much, based on the sensitive nature of their work, but why would anyone want to be subject to such restriction? Even if they were paid all the money they could possibly want, there would be no way to derive any pleasure from it. I bring this up because we see Topher's makeshift bedroom inside a server room, and I have to wonder, is that where he lives, or is that his sanctuary during his long hours?

Finally, I am really excited to have Alexis Denisof become a recurring character on the show. He is playing a U.S. Senator (and therefore using his real voice, which is a bit of a change from the British accent Whedon fans are used to hearing; on that note, Jamie Bamber of Battlestar Galactica got to use his actual speaking voice, which has a British accent, in the episode) with a bone to pick with the Rossum Corporation. Ain't It Cool News referred to him as being either the Big Bad (something familiar to Buffy fans) or the Big Good of the season. I find that observation both funny and astute, because we cannot forget that at the end of the day, the non-Doll characters we follow every week are not working in humanity's best interest, no matter how they justify what they do. As we saw in "Epitaph One," the Dollhouse tech will lead to very bad things, and even if DeWitt and Topher don't believe everything the higher-ups in Rossum do (DeWitt seems to draw the line at permanent, rather than temporary, slavery), they are certainly helping the problem right now.

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