Dollhouse: A Spy in the House of Love

By Sonia Aurora

When all was said and done, this episode was DeWitt’s showcase. Even though it dealt with the reveal of a traitor, as well as a new facet to Echo and who/what she is likely to become, DeWitt’s layers got peeled just enough before they closed back up and froze again. And I have to add that, again, Dollhouse demonstrated flashes of genius; it is finding its footing and I hope to takes a toehold; I think this could be one of the greater shows on TV right now, and I just want the Powers That Be to allow it to continue to flourish – I want it to end when its supposed to, not prematurely (ahem, Pushing Daisies) so we can get the truest, clearest vision. What I also loved is that this episode stayed with me long after it was over – I had to keep chewing on it before I could fully digest it. I love when that happens; there’s this mixed sensation of being satiated and hungry for more at the same time.

In the treatment room it looks like Topher and Co. are creating a new Active, lots of lightening electric flashes and discomforting grunts and half-screams. Echo and Sierra look from below, their conversation is about whomever deserving it. I think I hear “she” deserved it. Suddenly, a pop and some blood on the glass.

12 hour earlier…

Victor’s on his 10th engagement for Lonelyhearts Catherine, some old lady who asks for him (a British guy named Roger) all the time, and his handler thinks its hilarious that the old bag continually wants him. Echo’s coming back from her Dominatrix engagement which is a nice contrast to her vacant with shades of worry and determination the rest of the episode. Topher’s in a frenzy for having to repair the damage Caroline (aka Echo) did to the chair last week and Dominic’s being left in charge since DeWitt’s gotta deal with Rossum and all the insanity that’s been going down at the Dollhouse. She’ll be gone for two days, so what can possibly go wrong (cue panicked violins).

Langdon and Dr. Saunders talk shop, about needs and wants, about the consent request of Actives to fulfill desires (ie, S&M, or sex in general). They do this in front of Echo who is blankly looking forward until her eyes shift and you get the sense some of their conversation is creeping into her imprint brain.

Langdon walks Echo out and runs into Topher who pretty much spells out he found an imprint protocol (aka chip) in the chair and tries to tip Langdon to a head start before he calls DeWitt – in other words, someone is spying on the Dollhouse and possibly messing with the imprints of the Dolls and Topher thinks its Langdon. He’s mildly amused by this (I love how cool under pressure Langdon is) and now they have to figure out how to quell the breach. Meanwhile, Echo is madly waving to November (Mellie) who is overlooking the central room of the Dollhouse and she asks “Where do I know her from?” Has her imprinting messed her brain?

Echo’s bonsai-ing a tree but she leaves, she is aware something’s up while Topher and Dominic go at it. Dominic brings Sierra in for treatment to get into the NSA (the only culprit that could have planted the chip). When Topher’s on his own, Echo comes to him and says that everyone’s unhappy and points out that Dominic was mean to him.  She offers to help Topher because he can make people different and he can “make” her help. Put this on the heels of the awakening of last week, you understand more that Echo really is like no other active – she is recognizing her role in the Dollhouse and now she wants to offer herself up to help someone she feels is in need – in this case, Topher.

Cut to November’s imprint (she’s going back to Mellie) and then we see how she sees Echo as she has become Mellie. Her memory of Echo is understandably fuzzy – she either knows her from Ballard’s pics, or from some deep November memory.

She goes back to her apartment, and Ballard holds a gun to her, she’s all calm and soothing, Ballard is full crazy, with mapped out pics and lines all over at least one wall of his apartment. He’s ultra-paranoid from the bugs he found in his apartment. She’s trying to calm him but at one point she just blanks, like a robot shutting down. She re-activates as November, and tells him that she needs to know that the Dollhouse is aware that there is a spy and this was the only way they could get a message to him. The technology is dangerous, do not tell Mellie anything, she implores, she’s a sleeper and she will kill him if they activate her. Ballard is clearly being torn apart in his own head and with his emotions at this revelation. She tells him (as Echo did) that the Dollhouse deals in fantasy but that is not their purpose and that he needs to investigate and find it’s real purpose.

Then, just as quietly, she becomes Mellie again and kisses him, and you can tell he has no idea how to wrap his head around all this.

Sierra, meanwhile, infiltrates the NSA disguised as an employee, slips in, does a lot of high tech Bond-like stuff and steals what she needs…until the security guard figures out she did.  She knocks him cold and has to slip out, calls Dominic for a roof extraction because she has the name and the proof.

Victor as Roger gets dropped off at a house where he brings red roses to the older woman there, but he passes through and gets into a car, drives off and meets the “real” Catherine, who is DeWitt! Nice twist, and they kiss, he tosses her cell, and they cut to a fencing match. For a moment it looks to be getting dangerous, but it’s just the sport, and then cut to post-coitus. He knows about her job, and there is an interesting dynamic to that as she has no reason to hide anything from him because it will be erased. At the end of this little get together she comes back into the bedroom breaking down into tears and we wonder what caused our normally cold Dollhouse Surveyor to do so.

Imprint: Echo. She’s now a spy for the spy of the Dollhouse, a blend of Sherlock Holmes, with observation of body language and interrogation techniques. She decides to go through all the info they have on the system and talk to everyone – and start with Topher. He gets a little egotistical (natch) as he goes on about why he’s at the Dollhouse (he’s a supergenius, yadda yadda). Ivy, the Asian chick (aka Topher’s Gopher – yes, I couldn’t resist!) resents her roles as she admits that she could probably re-do the whole imprint system without Topher knowing it –hmm, an admission? Langdon thinks the whole place is full of pimps and killers, and Echo admits to just trusting him. Dr. Saunders’ whole life is the Dollhouse since the Alpha incident, and I immediately suspect her though I don’t want to (since I really like her). Dominic gets a call and the Sierra info reveals the spy is Ivy. We also finally get an explanation of what the Attics is: it’s a “mental suck” – a torture of memory with the repetitive sensation of something being on the tip of your tongue (or, more accurately, on the tip of your brain). Echo doesn’t buy that Ivy is the culprit and calls Dominic out as the guy, basically as his body relaxed when he got the call about who the culprit was. Echo eggs him, and says that the last tell he gave was when he unsnapped his holster – and then he comes out with gun blazing at Echo, telling her that he’ll kill her, Topher and Ivy will be collateral damage and she finally gets the better of him by (ultimately) hanging him out the window. She insists that she’s not broken.

Dominic’s being interrogated by DeWitt in her home (as it happens, prior to her crying meltdown with Roger/Victor) and he admits that he was sent not to bring them down but to monitor the Rossum technology and make sure the Dollhouse didn’t sabotage itself. DeWitt effectively signs his “death warrant” (aka, his being sent to the Attic) and she shows no emotion to him.  “Did you think I’d show you mercy or rage?” she coldly asks, and then she falls apart in Roger’s arms.

As Echo and Dominic ride back out to the Dollhouse he smiles at her. He says that before they erase him they’ll be erasing Echo, but the real reason he is smiling is because “one day you’ll be erasing them and after all this they still won’t see it coming.”  At first I think there’s a flaw in this boast, because Dominic’s been out to get Echo almost from the get-go, but then I see its genius: he probably didn’t trust what she was capable of, and his disdain for her actually protected her.

Back to the beginning, as Sierra and Echo watch from below and Dominic is strapped in the imprint chair, wired with electrodes. He struggles, grabs someone’s gun and shoots at DeWitt (hence the blood splatter) and she orders that they get on with it. And Dominic gets wiped.

Topher dangles a drive in his hand towards DeWitt – the “unabridged Dominic archives” and she asks him to put it away (idiotic move). DeWitt chides herself for not seeing it coming, and commends Topher for seeing it, but he didn’t, Echo did. DeWitt sees it as Echo taking out her biggest threat, and her way of protecting herself. I feel it’s a little short-sighted of her to not see anything more to it, but like Dominic said, they still won’t see it coming because DeWitt has to believe in her work and in the Dollhouse, which means believing in Echo’s capabilities as extraordinary in a way that has to be good, and not something dangerous (and seriously, after Alpha and Dominic, you’d think there’d be a greater lockdown, but that is the flaw of humanity running machines, which the Actives are, in effect). She also says that the Lonelyhearts engagement will be shelved per “Catherine”. Dr Saunders fixes DeWitt up from the bullet that grazed her, and she tells our cold fish that it’s ok for her to feel something (a loss?) for Dominic.  “That would imply I lost something,” she retorts. “Didn’t you?” asks Saunders, almost incredulously.
“Nothing I can’t live without.” She says this as she looks at Victor among the other Actives.

After a security sweep, Langdon gets offered the Head of Security position, but he’d prefer to stay with Echo; he wants to take care of her. Doesn’t matter – DeWitt wants him to take care of all of them. As Echo gets imprinted with her new handler Travis, she looks longingly at Langdon.

I was impressed I think above all at DeWitt’s flaws: of romance (with Victor/Roger), of business (trusting Echo, overlooking Dominic’s deceit and then being coldly rational about it) and of self (the sacrifice of no longer meeting with Victor/Roger). I can’t say I was sorry to see Dominic go in the sense that I didn’t like him (he always seemed like a weasel to me) and I feel pretty confident we’ll see him in Attic-mode at some point (and looking forward to that!). This episode also sheds a different light on how we see Echo’s diversions for the other Actives as potentially sinister, because though she’s not a sleeper the way Mellie/November is, there is obviously something dormant in her that has yet to unfold. It will also be interesting to now see Ballard’s future interactions with Mellie now that he knows how dangerously close he really is to the Dollhouse, and what lengths they will go to keep their enemies closer.

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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.

Related Reading:

The Dollhouse Murders

Dollhouses, Miniature Kitchens, and Shops from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center

Mixed-Media Dollhouses: Techniques and Ideas for Doll-size Assemblages

Making Furniture & Dollhouses for American Girl and Other 18-Inch Dolls

Midnight in the Dollhouse (Apple)