Dollhouse: Needs

By Sonia Aurora

Dollhouse returns to the form of its potential, and that definitely fulfills the need I was hoping for with this episode. But before I sing its praises, I want to clarify something about my feelings on the show– I know that fledgling shows, shows with Creative Heavies attached to them, carry with them an awesome responsibility. I intend on tuning in week after week not only for its pedigree but because I also like the show, and in flashes (or with certain episodes like “Man on the Street” and this one) I love this show. I’m not expecting or anticipating Buffy: Redux, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t expect something up to par to a show like that, because it comes from Joss. No siblings are ever alike, so I know that this Joss-child will need to stand up on its own merit, but still in the shadow of Dad.

And now, on with the show.

Shirtless Ballard starts things off, answering the door to Caroline. Some tug-of-war making out goes on because Caroline insists that’s what Ballard needs. He wants answers but, as we all suspect, he also wants her. She pleads with him to save her, and now I’m certain this is Ballard’s wet dream – or nightmare – when Mellie comes in and instigates a back and forth about what Ballard wants, needs. Caroline turns up pallid dead, Mellie starts to bleed from her head, and Ballard finally wakes up in a cold sweat.

As Ballard comes to, the Actives awaken from their coffin beds, and we’ve got Victor, Sierra, Echo, Mellie (heretofore “November”, as is her handle in the Dollhouse) and a guy we come to know as Mike but I dubbed him “Red Shirt” as I expected he was going to die.

Cut the Dollhouse staff and handlers, with DeWitt leading the discussion on the plan to make changes due of the affects of the memory drug. They have to upgrade the security systems, make some other tweaks to strengthen their house. They need to think of the Actives as pets, not children, because any kind of developmental progress would be a problem: if your child started talking, it would be a treat, but if it were your dog, you’d freak. Dr. Saunders hates that thought process, and even more the idea of pumping the Actives with more sedative/antipsychotic/CO2 cocktails into their sleeping chambers.
They’re vulnerable when they sleep and messing with their meds could severely backfire. DeWitt is adamant that something needs to be done, because the tide is rising and they all have to pile the sandbags together, so unless someone has a better idea…

The Actives still show flashes of memory, Ballard telling Echo her name is Caroline, Hern’s attack on Sierra, Victor swooning over Sierra with puppy dog eyes. They go to bed, Echo experiences a ton of nightmare images, and then she awakens, banging against the door. She cuts her hand in prying it open, but she and the other four emerge, all throwing out ideas of where they are (my personal favorite that they’re kidnapped by aliens). Echo thinks their lab rats but, more importantly, they all agree to venture out to see where they are.

As they walk through the hallway they are greeted by their Dollhouse names, and Victor immediately catches onto the fact that their names are military codes. Are they government prisoners? Asks Echo, and they enter the main concourse.

Something here seriously throws me off because their clothes change once they enter. Where Echo and Sierra were in night gowns, they pass through the door in tanks and yoga pants. It can’t just be an editing oversight – it’s a tell.

Ballard, meanwhile, is tearing his apartment apart until he finds the bug in his vent, the bug that the Dollhouse planted. Later, he comes to learn that the bug is science fiction top-notch good, and whoever planted it is, well, not someone he can really get away from.

Someone takes notice of Echo’s cut hand and she winds up going to Dr. Saunders. On seeing her scars, she freaks out, asking if “they” did that to her. Saunders seems unfazed that Echo is actually freaking instead of her usual vacant self. She tells her that she is not her friend in there, and indicates that the cameras are watching. Even as they watch Mike get hauled away, they have to act as if everything is normal, including showering co-ed without “reaction”. They run into Mike (who’s wiped again), which eggs the other four to plan to escape. DeWitt and Dominic are watching, and she’s pleased that they are right on schedule. It’s a scheduled “awakening” – turns out, they want to give them real adversaries, real obstacles. They are also seeming to test their own security – it’s a type of fire alarm to see if everyone is capable should this actually happen. Seems risky to me, but exciting.

Victor and Sierra pair off and, after Victor disables a security guy for his badge, run into a hall until Echo and November can meet up with them. They do, and in their escape run into a room with all their assigned clothes. Sierra is slowly remembering (in her Brit accent) that men with guns took her away because of a man named Nolan, and November has a daughter named Katie. They pass the handler room, filled with guns and ammo, and overhear a female handler and Langdon chatting. She-Handler clearly thinks Echo is dangerous, but Langdon has faith in her.  Echo overhears this before they make their way to the garage.  They hide out while they watch a fellow Active, Tango, trussed up in a Cabaret/Bob Fosse outfit and spouting French. Victor manages to swipe car keys, they all get into an SUV, but Echo can’t leave. She has to try and make a difference.

Echo takes down the She-Handler but is clearly horrified at the amount of blood the She-Handler is gushing in unconsciousness. She grabs one gun and leaves, and manages to cut the lights while Topher and DeWitt are chatting on the phone. While the Actives may not be afraid of the dark, Topher is, but even more afraid of the gun Echo has drawn on him.

Some back and forth ensues, Echo insisting people aren’t computers, Topher proclaiming that our brains are natural motherboards. She asks what year it is and how long she’s been there, and all he can tell her is “a while”.

Meanwhile, November leaves Victor and Sierra because she knows where her daughter Katie is. Sierra and Victor confront Nolan, and we come to learn that he paid to have her made an Active because she was the only one who said no…I’m horrified at this, that a rich pig could throw enough money out there and create a willing partner. And the rich pig also has security, and Sierra and Victor have to escape.

Topher is still trying to explain what they do there, but all Echo believes is that they kill and gut people. She forces him into the treatment chair as he sputters that you can’t imprint a fully functional brain and that he doesn’t have the power to let anyone go.

DeWitt walks in before Topher’s brain can get fried because she’s the one who has the power. Echo shoots at the chair to stop the imprint. DeWitt explains that Echo volunteered because she couldn’t live with the consequences of the choices she’d made pre-Dollhouse, but that she can’t tell her what those consequences were, as a part of the deal she made. Echo wants to free everyone, and DeWitt is willing to let her leave, but who is she to decide for the others that are there? Echo turns the question back on DeWitt, as she shoots the chair again.

We watch as November melts in tears at Katie’s grave. Victor and Sierra hide and comfort each other knowing they will be caught but still try to remember one another. They kiss. Echo holds a gun to DeWitt’s back while all the Actives are released, walking in the sunlight from the garage. In slow motion they walk, the brightness of the sun warming them, and Echo faints. Some Men in Black scoop her up, and November, passed out in the cemetery, and Victor and Sierra, collapsed into each other.  And then, like lemmings, the Actives walk back into the dark.

Back to the beginning, where Dr. Saunders offers a better idea than more drugs and stronger security. She offers that they give the higher priority cases what they need – closure.  Her theory is that recurring experiences are reactivating old ones. Couple that with the memory drug mishap and things are going haywire, opening loops in their memories that need to be closed. And, to try and close those loops, they need to give them each a sense of resolution, a sense that they were able to fix whatever is broken. DeWitt isn’t thrilled at the possibility of a self-guided journey, but Dr. Saunders insists that they “let the tide come in…it’s the only way to wash it back out.”

After the experiment, and the four are wiped again, Langdon asks Saunders if they are better now, if the tide has indeed turned. Well, since they were programmed to release a sedative once they felt closure, and all of them did, in fact, fall asleep, it stands to reason it did work, that the glitch is gone. Langdon understands why November needed to grieve for daughter’s death, and for Sierra to confront one of the two men who took away her power (Langdon having saved her from the other), and Echo’s need to free everyone, but he doesn’t understand Victor’s need. Well, he’s in love, and he had to get the girl to close his loop. It’s apparent Langdon’s not pleased with the game the Dr. set in motion, but her reasoning is that she cares more than he thinks – his responsibility is Echo, but her responsibility is all of them. Echo would have led the Actives to terror, unaware of who or what they were if they were set free. Langdon doesn’t see the plus side; he clearly doesn’t agree with his job and his superiors, which intrigues me as to why he even wound up there himself. Our four musketeers are back to their bland wiped selves curling into their caged beds. All is right with their world…

Ballard is fudging with his cell phone and calls into his voicemail, where he hears a message from Caroline! Turns out she found his name and number in her file, she thinks they’ve met. And that they’re all being held underground, please find us. And so, the case continues…as if we had any doubt it would.

This was a great episode, fascinating to give the audience as well as the Actives what they needed. I’m sure we all believe that at one point one of them (Echo, probably) will actually become either self aware like Alpha or fully aware as their true self, but it was nice to get a taste this early. It fleshed out some more about the backgrounds of the Actives, guiding us to believe that November came to be there to forget her daughter’s death, Echo to forget her boyfriend’s death at the Rossum lab. Victor’s the least fleshed out, though he’s obviously of a military background and it’s probably war he wants to forget.  I’m bothered that the Dollhouse could be ruthless enough to create an Active at the whim of a rich pig with Sierra; I hate to think that they would stoop so low. Surely they make enough money with their volunteers without having to resort to the rich’s power whims, even if the whole Dollhouse is based on rich and powerful men playing gods. And Sierra’s a fairly new Active, I mean, if they’ve been around as long as it’s been reported then there wouldn’t be a need for “forced” volunteering.  Yeah, I suppose it’s naïve to think that the Dollhouse would even have a set of moral codes, but maybe that’s the dreamy Active in me, blank and wanting to believe things are easy, black and white, and safe.

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About Sonia Aurora: Aspiring screenwriter and seamstress, Sonia’s dream is to write life-changing films while product-placing her own line of handbags. In 1999, she wrote, co-directed and co-starred in the short film Dr. Lovestrange, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bug, a satirical homage to Stanley Kubrick set amidst the panic of Y2K (Featured on ifilm.com & Coming Soon to YouTube!). While Sonia waits patiently for the Studios to call, she continues her selfless, humanitarian efforts (think Mother Teresa) through her scripts, short stories and sewing (a true triple-threat!), knowing all the while that someday her efforts will indeed save (or at least mildly tweak) the world. She still struggles with which picture to kiss before bedtime: her boyfriend’s or Bruce Campbell’s. And, in the interest of time, she’d like to start thanking the Academy now.

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