Dollhouse: The Public Eye/The Left Hand

By Sonia Aurora

Fox, in it’s infinite wisdom, has decided to burn off the remaining episodes of Dollhouse by going the 24 route and airing 2 hour blocks; i.e., 2 episodes in a row. While there is something to be said for getting more answers more quickly, it’s maddening to also know that a network could not only not stick to keeping a show, but also that it wants to usher it out as quickly as possible, like a guest that’s worn out it’s welcome. For all the hemming and hawing I’ve felt with this show, I still believe it deserves a level of send-off dignity. But, then again, the Powers that Be hardly know the definition of that word. (Yes, Powers, still bitter about Pushing Daisies….)

So we’re reintroduced to Senator Perrin and his lovely wife Cindy, and it isn’t a stretch to believe that the wife is an Active, and we’re lead to believe that even as DeWitt and Boyd come to that conclusion too, especially with “special” Echo comes in and says that there’s something wrong with the wife (I will not miss the banging over the head of Echo’s amazingness). Ballard confirms something’s off when he researches her history and there are discrepancies, but the doctored docs are good. It also turns out the Senator has a pawn in his pocket to expose Rossum and the Dollhouse, and it’s Madeline (aka Mellie aka November). She calls the Dollhouse out in a press conference based on info and pictures that someone’s provided Perrin. Both Madeline (in pics) and Ballard (in footage) are shown what happened when her sleeper mode was activated, especially since the running theory is that Cindy Perrin is a sleeper. Even though Harding (Keith Carradine, doing his requisite 2 minute stint for the episode as the Rossum watchdog and enforcer) tells DeWitt Rossum’s taking care of things, Adele thinks it’s a veiled way of telling them to take care of Madeline to make sure she doesn’t testify at the Senate hearings in DC, and they do so in two-fold – they send Ballard to the Senator’s house to take out Cindy and take back Madeline (using a “Disruptor” device that Topher’s invented to render Actives unconscious within a certain mile radius) and they imprint Echo with Bree, an escort, who’s planted with the naked Senator in his hotel bed. The Senator freaks when he wakes up to find her, but realizes that she’s an Active and puts her in the car to go and tell his wife everything. Meanwhile, Ballard’s gone in, tries to reason with a very freaked out Madeline, and presses the Disruptor’s button, which incapacitates Madeline but not Cindy, and since Echo’s in the driveway of the house now she flips out too, nose bleeding.

And so does Senator Perrin.

Turns out Cindy is Perrin’s handler, and he’s an interesting Active, since he actually IS Daniel Perrin, from a Kennedy-esque family who was, up until a few years before, a huge party boy who could care less about political ambitions. Until someone worked in his brain that’s exactly what he wanted to do and be.

So Ballard gets captured, and Echo steals Perrin and they both start glitching and realizing they’re both part of Rossum’s evil Dollhouse plan (or something like that).

Cindy goes after them, getting ready to get to DC for the Senate hearings. There’s a girl fight between Cindy and Echo, in a very interesting flashback flashes where previous Echo fight engagements came into play, and Echo’s able to tap into that part of herself. Perrin and Echo are able to leave, but Cindy comes to long enough to press the Disruptor button, which she had confiscated from Ballard, and they’re captured and sent to the DC Dollhouse.

We then get to DC to meet Bennett Halverson, played by Summer Glau – and I just have to stop for a moment to say she is just freaking awesome. And the reasons she is awesome are:

• She’s the Topher equivalent in DC, and when they meet it’s all geek glory
• She’s quirky and a little kooky
• She’s also touched with scary psychosis. But in a sexy cool way.

She seems to do her own glitchy thing by touching her temple a lot (she suffers from migraines it seems). She also has a dead arm in a sling. And, more importantly, she seems to know Echo as Caroline, and as soon as she gets a moment alone with her, she starts to torture the hell out of her while strapped to the DC equivalent of their imprint chair, which is way cooler in a morgue gurney kind of way. Bennett also shares one of her own memories of Caroline with Echo to show her the pain Caroline caused her, but we’ll get to that later in this episode.

Ballard catches up with Madeline at the airport, but he still isn’t able to get through to her, especially since he now works for the enemy (aka the Dollhouse). When Boyd rings his phone, Ballard looks at it but doesn’t pick up.

DeWitt and Topher travel to DC to get their girl back and Lipman (DeWitt’s DC equivalent, played by Ray Wise in too small a role) go at it when she expresses needing to get Echo back. She gets ballsy (literally) with him until Lipman agrees that Topher can check on Echo. He comments on how things in LA must be slow, but Topher assures him that they have their best man on the job – and it’s Victor imprinted as Topher. Again, I have to take a moment here to commend Enver for not just being a mimic, but being an effective embodiment of the imprint he takes on. First as Dominic, then as the crazy psycho killer and briefly as Echo, and now a full-on Topher, complete with neurotic ticks and god-awful geek-hipster wardrobe. He’s working with Boyd to keep the Dollhouse in working order but also help the real Topher hack into Perrin’s brain when the DC house does.

Real Topher also finally meets Bennett, and there is a geek sparks flying moment from then on. They are awkward and in awe. Bennett fails to reveal herself as the person he’s looking for. Topher asks about her dead arm. He apologizes for his clammy handshake. She finds him asking about her arm refreshing. They giggle at the progresses they’ve made in their own Dollhouse sectors. They talk nerd-shop.

In the interim, Perrin gets berated by Cindy, who says how much she hates him and having to pretend to be his wife, and she’s telling him because in a little while he won’t remember it. He manages to escape and grab Echo, and Bennett is watching this. For a split second, inexplicably, Bennett slams her head against the TV. When she staggers back to where Topher is, she implicates Echo as having done it and having taken the Senator with her. So Topher and Bennett start working on a Disruptor device that would target Echo’s and Perrin’s brainwaves specifically, instead of endangering all Actives. And Echo and Perrin work on staying escaped, showing a (overly, unnecessarily sexualized) scene where Echo removes Perrin’s GPS device from his neck, and he hers.

While Topher’s in contact with fake Topher (Victor) to tap into Perrin’s brain, Bennett’s also working her mojo and uses the newly improved Disruptor to set Perrin on “assassinate”, specifically Echo. Topher figures this out and while Echo’s bond with Perrin is now broken and she’s running for her life (but begging him to fight it at the same time), Topher and Bennett square off. While she might be crazy, she knows the power Caroline and now Echo has and it needs to be stopped. We see a flash of Bennett trapped under a large concrete wall piece, her arm dying, reaching out with the other to Caroline to help her but Caroline leaves her. Topher punches Bennett, pained not only by the physical contact but by the lament that she was “almost perfect”. Fake Topher works on remapping the Senator’s brain, but not before he manages to kill one bodyguard and Cindy. Echo begs him to come with her and fight Rossum.

Perrins bursts into the Senator hearing doing exactly what Rossum was setting up all along – for him to clear Rossum, implicate other companies out to “get” Rossum, and explain that they planted evidence about Madeline, who was “really” in a mental institution for 3 years. Oh, and that these other companies killed his wife with a car bomb. He exits, with Madeline pleading in the background of the hullabaloo that she isn’t crazy. Echo’s missing, and so is Ballard, and Victor-as-Topher resists getting the imprint washed, but it is and then there is only One. Topher, that is. Echo wanders around alone, but amidst the crowd. Madeline is now strapped in the Dollhouse chair in DC with Bennett controlling the switches, going back to being November, or Mellie, or whatever name Bennett wants to give her, and I’m sure setting her phaser to “Kill Echo”.

It was a refreshing twist to see that Perrin was the Active, and an Active that was really a new and improved version of himself. Cindy as the exposed handler was grating; I liked her more as the automaton wife. Miracle Laurie is great as Madeline, either being strong as the person who must face her Dollhouse past as a killer, or as the broken woman betrayed and unsure what to believe. I’m sick of not enough Boyd, whose regulated to background player or Topher babysitter. I’m sick of Eliza, quite honestly, especially coming off a more seasoned and rounded actress in Dichen as Sierra in the previous episode, or even Enver as Victor in this one, whose handful of scenes carried more weight than the multitude of minutes that Echo, sad-eyed and determined, filled. Again, it’s not to say that I think Eliza is incapable, but she is limited. She can only stretch so much, and I’m tired of the maudlin, doll-esque Echo spouting lines like “she’s not right” in a deadened tone. Echo has no life or fire, just as a doll should, but she’s still supposed to be superior in some way that I don’t see even as they try and convince me it’s there. But hopefully we’ll see more of the potential here, perhaps the real Caroline will stand up and Eliza can really save the day, the Dollhouse, and the world, and show how amazing she really is without explanation, but with action.

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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