Dollhouse: Omega

By Sonia Aurora

Season endings often do one of two things: they either cap off the season and end a story arc that has carried on over the course of x amount of episodes, or they allow themselves the indulgence of a cliffhanger, which is risky for those shows whose fates are not yet secured. Dollhouse went with the former, while still leaving some interesting opportunities in the event (hope) of a Season 2 pickup.

Overall, I enjoyed this show. While frustrating at times, the frustration lay in that it shorted its potential, shooting itself in the foot while trying to find its footing. And when it did walk instead of stumble, Dollhouse really strutted. Yes, I am hoping there is a Season 2 pickup because there are still questions to be answered and new wheels set in motion this week that I would like to see explored. But, overall, this episode did exactly what it was supposed to – gave us more insight while still wanting us to know more.

The episode begins immediately after last week’s ended, with Dr. Saunders coming out screaming that Alpha cut Victor. DeWitt and Langdon are coming followed by an entourage and DeWitt is calling out for a complete lockdown and sending medical assistance to Victor. It becomes apparent Alpha came for Echo. Topher is freaking because Alpha was able to bury the signature of the imprint and remove Echo’s GPS strip, so she’s no longer tagged (and, therefore, untrackable). Topher is left to research who Echo could have been imprinted with, and Dr. Saunders comes in, shell-shocked in part because Alpha asked her if she’d always wanted to be a doctor. “Who can fathom the mind of a crazy person?” asks giddy Topher. “The one who made him crazy? Maybe…” responds the good doctor.

Alpha and Echo, meanwhile, are driving away and their weird Southern drawls are making me think we’re experiencing a retread of Natural Born Killers (bleh). Tudyk continues his genius in being Alpha as little short circuiting bursts of random ideas come out of his mouth: “He’s not Bobby; I’m not just Bobby.” Echo’s ditzy, but all about Bobby; she’s also pissy at the bound and gagged girl they have in the back of the car.

Oh boy.

A few years ago…

Alpha is hiding from his handlers, torturing the guy who turns out to be the one that paid for the engagement. Alpha’s been noticing the guys in the vans, but the persona he’s been imprinted with (Bobby, same as he is acting out now) is bent on keeping him and his girlfriend hidden. A sexy girl’s silhouette dances in the background. We assume it’s Echo.

DeWitt and the handlers seem to be aware that the imprints are prone to paranoia, and you get the impression this “few years ago” scenario playing out was early in the time for the Dollhouse.  Since Alpha is off the grid they are worried about how lethal these imprints may be. Considering that the guy is bound to a chair, mostly naked, and bloody, I’d say, pretty dangerous. Alpha asks the guy again about who is following him and his girl in the vans; he’s told it’s complicated; “Make it simple,” Alpha responds, menacing but not lethal, yet. He’s told he’s not real, and neither is his girlfriend, which, of course, he doesn’t believe.  The guy explains that he paid for this cross country crime spree scenario because it was his fantasy. Alpha beckons his girl over to see if they are having fun…and it turns out its SAUNDERS.

Ok, maybe I’m naïve. Maybe I had finally figured out the twists and turns of the show, figured out all the Actives and regular folk, by this time. That reveal definitely floored me. I loved it, don’t get me wrong, but it definitely caught me off guard.

So Saunders started out as Whiskey, and the handlers burst in after some more torture of the poor bound guy, and take both Alpha and Whiskey/Saunders go back to the Dollhouse.

In real time, Dewitt explains to Ballard that the supposedly homeless guy found dead in Tucson was actually Kepler, and Alpha took over for him for Ballard to then bring him back to DeWitt’s house. Alpha suffered a “technological anomaly” and now he’s enough of a genius to figure out to call a terrorist threat to the Rossum Building above the Dollhouse to keep them sequestered. Ballard recognizes an FBI colleague (one who has clashed with him before about the non-existence of the Dollhouse). Ballard tells DeWitt he can make them go away, and he does. He explains to the guy that the Dollhouse is underneath and the guys should come in. Ballard acts his paranoid self, and the guy, thinking he’s making bogus bomb threats, tells him he’s crazy and that he’s gonna just make the whole thing go away. I liked Ballard the most in this one small moment, when he turns to the camera after the Fed has walked away and, as DeWitt and Langdon are watching, Ballard smiles. He’s getting wise to the game now, and DeWitt smiles fully back at his image. I felt in this instance that there was a craftier Ballard in there somewhere, a Ballard I’d definitely like to get to know more (and, let’s be honest, he looks way hotter smiling instead of brooding).

All of Echo’s imprints are missing, primary and backups. Turns out, Alpha’s built a makeshift lab, and he’s going to do something to Echo, presenting to her a castle (this makeshift lab) and throne (a replica of the imprint chair). Echo’s imprint is such a dimwit I can’t stand it, so I’m just waiting for the denouement at this point.

Victor is lamenting that he’s in pain and he’s not his best anymore and Saunders gets angry that he can’t be his best anymore: “Your best is past, your past you can’t even remember. You’re broken now, you’re ugly, all you’re good for now is pity and for that you’re gonna have to look somewhere else.”

Cut to the past and the real Dr Saunders, and older, grey haired man. Whiskey comes in with shoulder pain, and as some Dollhouse members talk, it turns out that Whiskey is their #1 requested Doll.

Caroline is being toured around by DeWitt; Alpha catches a glimpse of her and can’t turn away. He’s officially smitten.

There is a mutual disdain between Ballard and Topher, who doesn’t want another morally judgmental man around (the other being Langdon). DeWitt insists that they have to help one another to catch Alpha, as Topher gets ready to imprint Sierra and November (Mellie). November innocently says hi to Ballard. He’s uncomfortable, not sure how to react.

We come to find out that Alpha imprinted Echo as she is because she’s a criminal and devoted to Bobby so she would escape with Alpha. Now he’s getting ready to imprint her with someone (or something?) else. But not before he imprints the prisoner they have, whose name we learn is Wendy.

In the past, Alpha runs into the newly minted Echo in the hall and tells her that he likes her, she’s special. He kisses her once, then twice, and her handler sees this and breaks it up.  He asks Alpha what the hell he’s doing, but Alpha doesn’t understand hell. The handler makes the mistake of not reporting what happened to anyone. Later, Alpha reacts with contained anger as he watches Echo being lead by her handler, seething jealousy that the handler gets to be so close to her in a way he’s not allowed to be.

Sierra emerges from the chair a bounty hunter and hits on Ballard while November gets her imprint on. Topher explains that Alpha is like Soylent Green; he’s people. A freak composite event caused 48 imprints to get dumped into him. Ballard asks who he went after first (it was a handler, everyone who was in the way). Ballard, trying to understand what fuels Alpha, asks who was the individual he went for when he had a choice – when it wasn’t a matter of who was in his way, but who he could get to? Turns out it was his original self, the imprint wedge that held all his real self information. Quickly they realize that Alpha’s taken Caroline’s original self, and smashed up the backup.

And then our prisoner Wendy has now been imprinted with Caroline and poor Caroline is looking right at herself. It’s just a body, it’s all the same, Alpha explains. Caroline wants back in her brain. Alpha explains to both the new Caroline and Echo that she can ascend and evolve.

Alpha cuts at a bonsai tree, staring at Echo. Whiskey is going to be called into a new engagement and we overhear her handler proudly talk about how Whiskey is #1. Alpha goes to her and asks her to let Echo be #1, and its about 2 seconds before he pounces on her and slashes her face, but in that two seconds you realize it’s going to happen and the breath escaped from my body waiting on it. It amazes me that in that last 2 episodes I experienced emotions of pure fear and horror, but I love that they were able to invoke that in me.

Alpha is in the chair acting his Doll vacant self as Topher makes an attempt to do a full range diagnostic of all his personalities to suss out why he attacked Whiskey. He repeats that he likes his treatment but as the process begins he kicks at Echo’s handler and knocks him into the machinery and that knock messes with the diagnostic and makes the machine go haywire and dump all of Alpha’s Dollhouse selves into his brain all at once.  He gouges the handler’s eyes out while growling, “I understand hell now.”

Ballard insists that he can’t wipe a person’s soul away and believes the Alpha answer lies in who he was before coming to the Dollhouse.  Langdon agrees it’s a fair place to start looking. Echo, meanwhile, insists that Alpha is going to make her a superior being while Caroline pleads with her to not sit in the dentist’s chair in the evil lair they are trapped in (great line). Alpha’s convinced that once Echo ascends, she will kill Caroline. He’s basically going to perform the same thing that accidentally happened to him, springing new life from death:

“Alpha, meet Omega.”

The imprint begins and images of her past imprints flash before us, until we see Echo sitting, eyes closed, blood dribble on her lip. She rips away the electrodes at her temples and gets up. She understands now, and picks up a pipe and faces off at Caroline in the chair. I want her to hit Alpha, but she’s just as likely to hit Caroline, and as she winds up she swings far around enough to hit Alpha:

“Now I understand everything.”

And this is where Alpha learns the same hard lesson Dr. Frankenstein did – you can only create, you can’t control.

Turns out Alpha was once Carl William Kraft (and yes, Ballard acknowledges the ominous three names that so many crazy assassins and serial killers tend to be saddled with). In the beginning, the Dollhouse experimented on prisoners, servitude in exchange for reduced (or obliterated) prison time. Alpha, as Carl, was serving time for kidnapping and attempted murder. They do have a witness they can interview – I assume it’s Wendy (who’s now Caroline).

Alpha is all tripped up, trying to figure out what went wrong, but Echo insists that nothing did, every imprint is alive in her head right now, but it doesn’t explain why she hit him with a pipe? She smashes the computer keyboard, and says that he wanted her to kill herself. They banter about how Caroline is the old her and she’s new and improved; she doesn’t share his reasoning that they are gods now. They might be many personalities, but it doesn’t make them deities. They aren’t superior; they aren’t anybody because they’re everybody, and not one of them is her. Instead, she’s a hollowed out version of who she once was, who is Caroline.

Echo addresses Caroline to try and find out why she was effectively hollowed out, and Caroline explains that it was complicated. Before she can go any further, Alpha’s picked up a pipe and struck at Echo – “How’s that for a complication?”

Ballard and Langdon are visiting the existing witness that Alpha left behind, and in their small talk, Ballard is trying to figure out how Langdon came to be at the Dollhouse. He asks Ballard the same question, and he explains he was trying to save the girl. Langdon replies, “There’s always a girl.” Interesting…what “girl” lured Langdon to the Dollhouse? Did he begin the same way Ballard did?

Nina Walsh, the witness, is buzzed and after some explanation agrees to meet them in the lobby, and it turns out she has slash-scars on her face. Which then goes back to Ballard’s assessment that no matter what the Dollhouse thinks it’s erasing, part of the true soul still exists. Alpha, as Carl, liked to slash, and even when he “ascended”, he still retaliated by reverting to his basic nature – slashing.

Alpha’s emotionally wounded, lamenting that he thought Echo was exceptional. She insists she not his girlfriends, and as he lies supposedly incapacitated, Echo turns to Caroline to see how she’s ok. She’s great, since she obviously kicks ass. Their tender moment is shattered, however, when Alpha shoots Caroline in the throat. He then dangles Caroline’s imprint wedge while holding a gun to it and threatens: “Do what I say or I will blow your brain out.”

Ballard and Langdon surmise that Alpha is at the address where he had taken his victim Nina and Topher realizes that Echo had gotten imprinted with Whiskey’s engagement. It’s understood they will get the address to the hideout from this engagement.

Alpha’s pissed and insisting that Echo get in the chair and that he is going to use the Caroline imprint to imprint other women and kill her over and over again. She doesn’t want to get in the chair (she’s ready to “rinse and spit”) and believes Alpha’s bluffing anywhere (where, comically, one of his 48 personalities confesses that at least one of them is bluffing). Alpha shoots Echo in the arm and goes running, Echo in pursuit, and now Ballard and Langdon have gotten there and Alpha shoots them, too. Alpha, in an attempt to escape, sends the Caroline imprint wedge over the side and tells Echo that if she wants to save the girl she’ll have to go get her. In classic TV–drama form, the wedge is half-hanging off some beam that she has to slowly crawl on and carefully reach for. She has to literally save herself, but, it does topple over into Ballard’s hands, and he does, indeed, do what he’s been setting out to do – save Caroline.

Saunders is in Topher’s office and proclaims to him that he gave her more computer skills than a medical doctor requires (we did catch a glimpse earlier in the Alpha rampage that he did kill the original Dr. Saunders).  On his computer screen is her picture and the name “Whiskey”, but she hasn’t tried to get any more information beyond tat – she just verified what she had been suspecting. She tells him that she understands imprinting a broken doll to get their monies worth, but why was it necessary for her to be imprinted to hate him so much? Obviously the hate stems from her true self, that residual soul that still resides in her, dormant but un-erasable. Topher’s obtuse enough to ask her why she didn’t try to see who she really was. She responds, angry but broken: “I know who I am.”

So Alpha is still on the lam, but DeWitt’s not so worried, as they have a new contractor for the Dollhouse team – Ballard – and part of his new deal was to get full payment on time on “her” contract; he’s signed on to let Mellie (November) go. Her real name is Madeline Costly, and she is now free to be her true self.  I wonder what life is like post-Dollhouse for these Actives; I can’t imagine that if their true souls still exist while they are a Doll, that a little bit of the Doll doesn’t still stick with them afterwards.

Echo’s wiped and goes through the usual script with Topher. Victor’s patched up and given a lollipop by Dr. Saunders. Mellie leaves, and Echo, after tenderly touching Topher on his chest as if to feel his heartbeat, goes back to her pod, serene and blank, the Tabula Rasa ready for sleep. As the pod door closes, she whispers the name Caroline.

I thought this was a great capper for the series. The introduction of Alpha last week infused great life to the show, and while I felt too much attention was paid to Echo (as I’ve mentioned though Echo is the “star”, she isn’t the strongest on the show), it was necessary to bring much of the Echo arc to full circle, and closure of at least some kind. And should the show not come back, I feel as though there is still a future for these characters but I’m at least not left holding the bag (as I have been with Pushing Daisies; yes, still bitter).

I still want to know more, though. Even if I can admit being ok if this is the end of the show, I still will be left disappointed. I want to know Langdon’s history, and how he came to be there. I want to see how much more Eliza can grow as an actress (she did show more potential here than I had ever seen before). I want to even see a snarky, younger Topher, spend a night in the Attic, find and apprehend Alpha, introduce another Baddie (post-op Mellie?). In other words, there are still many stories left here, the main one being the one that Ballard was supposed to be answering: What is the real purpose of the Dollhouse? I hope Fox and the Powers that Be will allow that ultimate question to be answered.

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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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