Dollhouse: Stop-Loss/The Attic

By Sonia Aurora

Argh. This show is really going out with an amazing bang. It makes a person wonder if the creative juices began to really flow with the feel of the axe on their necks before it came down, severing the series at its head, or if the plan all along was to get this good. We’ll never know, but at the very least I’m beginning to feel we’ll be left with a legacy instead of a cast aside. All the blood, sweat and tears is being felt, and the blip that many felt this was in Joss Whedon’s television series career is shaping into becoming something of worth on his resume.

In, “Stop-Loss”, the first hour of this 2 hour block, Victor’s contract is up and he is going to be released. Echo’s distraught because it means that she won’t have him on her team; DeWitt’s distraught because Miss Lonelyhearts is losing her lover – but she’s actually lost him to Sierra, as Victor/Roger confesses to feelings for someone else. The relationship between Victor and Sierra has been, for me, the most honest arc of love on a television show. It’s pure and deep in a way that Joel’s and Clementine’s is in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – it exists and transcends everything logical but is pure and honest at it’s most basic depths. Both pieces showcase that even when you mess with the brain the heart still knows love (and it’s not the heart in our chests, but it’s the heart that exists in our souls). But if other things have faltered in this series, that relationship did not, and for that Joss should be proud (though, as I’ve mentioned, it seems this show is developing into the greatest “what coulda been”).

Victor says goodbye, and he’s now Anthony, ex-military soldier, wanting to no longer be haunted by what he’d seen and done. He is released, set up with a fund, a hotel room, etc. Boyd conducts the exit interview because DeWitt manages to drink herself into oblivion for most of this episode.

We watch Victor assimilate, lonely, and he can’t even sleep in his bed; he takes a pillow and sleeps in the flat shower floor that resembles the Dollhouse beds.

A group of militia infiltrate his room and Victor can’t escape. Topher notices Victor taken off the grid; even his gps is untraceable. Boyd takes Echo to inspect the room and find out what happened. Turns out Rossum isn’t OK with just the Doll Actives – they’re working on a militia style group minding. Victor is indoctrinated and imprinted (in the back of the neck with a chip) to be a part of the Borg collective – er, well, it’s pretty much that. Now there’s Victor’s old battalion and they can all see the same things and think the same things. It’s creepy, and its making a great big old human weapon of mass destructive capabilities.

After Echo, Boyd and Topher figure this out, Echo insists on calling out Priya (Sierra’s real self) because it’s the most effective way to remind Victor of his self, away from any group mind. She’s initially freaked out because she remembers everything with Nolan (and Topher promised she wouldn’t), but to wipe that memory means wiping her memory of Victor, and they need her to remember him. Echo gets a few more imprints in so she has a military advantage, and they essentially get Victor out. In all this melee, Echo does get imprinted with the group mind, but because she’s special (and I mean this in a mildly snarky way, as I am becoming more impressed with her actual special-ness) she manages to rule them all and not get shot at.

Echo, Victor and Sierra escape in an SUV, where Victor and Sierra exchange a genuine and beautiful first time kiss (though they’re not sure if it is their first) and Echo pulls over and opts to send them off to start their lives. She wants their freedom now even if she’s assigned herself to release all the others. When she tells them to look her up as Caroline, they all glitch, noses bleeding. Someone’s set off the Disruptor…

…and that someone is Adele.

Boyd’s being held back by security as he begs DeWitt not to “do this”; this being sending Echo, Victor and Sierra to the Attic. DeWitt’s all sobered up and bad ass evil. I immediately hate her and watch as she talks over and down to Echo, how she’s so corrupted there’s only one place for her. Topher and Ivy are told they need to do DeWitt’s bidding, essentially, so “welcome to the conspiracy”, to quote Topher.

Echo’s “body” (as well as Victor’s and Sierra’s) are sent up, strapped into white rubber suits, hooked up with needle probes on their heads, some kind of mouthpiece for breathing, as blue gelatinous stuff rises around them and the techs wrap the body over with cellophane. Echo’s eyes open. I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to be.

In hour 2, Echo, or, rather, Caroline Farrell, lies in the gunk, and then erratically convulses, becomes “disengaged” per the computer she’s hooked up to, which means she dies. The techs come in, surprised she didn’t last very long, and Echo wakes up, knocking both techs out. She leaves, suddenly clothed and not in her white rubber suit. She gets Sierra and Victor out, and they wander trying to figure out how to get out. An illuminated “Exit” sign leads the way, but when Echo turns to them there is a glass barricade between them. Security comes and shoots Sierra and Victor dead. Echo screams…

And we’re right back to seeing her lying in her Attic bed…

So this is the first thing I learn about the Attic: they don’t wipe you, but they have to deaden you somewhat to strap you in and lock you in your brain. As the episode progresses, we learn that it’s a fear state they need to keep you in, as Victor is perpetually fighting against himself in the war (literally too, as he tangos with a doppelganger). Sierra has it worse, as she initially imagines making love to Victor only to have him transform into the corpse of Nolan. We further learn that all this is necessary to keep the Dollhouse machine alive – their minds and their fear are the fuel that runs the computers of the Dollhouse. As amazing and compelling as this initially seems, I soon realize this is a modification of the plot in Monsters Inc. And I’m disappointed, though I’m gonna have to give them a pass on this one, because this episode – this season – keeps getting better and better.

Boyd, Topher and Ivy, meanwhile, are trying to find a way of bringing Ballard back, and after a few sports metaphors that Topher starts but Ivy finishes and her explanation of the wildcat formation leads Topher to figure out how to “fix” Ballard. It’s not gonna be pretty, since he’ll have to use Active architecture for it to work, but they start piecing together how they’ll do it; well, actually, Topher does, because Ivy gets called to DeWitt’s office. “Darth Vader kills lieutenants, not stormtroopers,” Topher reassures her, but he worried too. When she comes back later in the episode, she can barely look or talk to him. Oh, and somewhere around here DeWitt essentially tells Topher to ship up or she’ll ship him out and she knows about his involvement in killing and dismembering Nolan.

Echo’s starting to figure out to not concentrate on the fear, realizing things aren’t real. In a dream involving her younger self and a tree, she comes to blows with a black figure (as in literally, somewhat ninja-like only I feel like his skin is actually black, but not in the potentially racist sounding way). He keeps coming at her from behind, trying to kill her, but she’s able to combat him. She realizes she’s in the Attic but the pains feel so real. She comes face to face with Dominic (nice to see him back and not a prick) as they battle it out before they realize they are synced up, somehow. Are they in her mind, or his? He tells her he goes from place to place chasing Arcane (Echo’s black attacker) and she pieces together that all the minds are connected in the Attic and that Arcane comes when he senses fear. Echo winds up across from an Asian man in a restaurant who seems to hold a piece of the puzzle; he was trying to find a weakness in the Dollhouse but then they keep him there. Echo wants to bring him with her but his legs are missing, and then Arcane shows up and kills him. She and Dominic need to escape out of his mind fast before he dies or else they’d be trapped. This also leads Echo to the fact that all the Attics are connected in all the world.

Boyd’s depressed, and DeWitt knows it. She’s being a mega bitch throughout this episode, and Topher knows she’s dragging them towards Hell. I want to punch her, yell at her, shake her by the shoulders and ask why she’s just so horrible. I remember that she can’t hear me screaming at my TV set and I sit back down and lower my shaking fist.

Echo and Dominic get to Victor and explain the truth and Arcane to him. They need to get to Sierra, who’s trying hard not to go crazy and is calming herself by reminding herself that it’s all in her mind. As Arcane comes to get her, the other three pounce and are able to unmask Arcane, who’s some spindly British guy. The world in his mind looks like something post apocalyptic and they all run into a safe house so as not to get shot.

This is where we get quite a few answers: Clyde was one of the originators at Rossum, who knows the Attic is the Rossum/Dollhouse Mainframe. The technology feeds off of human computers, and Clyde, as Arcane, was trying to take Rossum down by killing the inhabitants of the Attic. Essentially, he felt he was freeing them as well, releasing them from the constant wheel of fear they needed to endure for however long they were connected. He’s trying to take them down because he and his partner – who he can no longer remember who that was – made him the first brain to be inserted into an Active, minus the genius part. Then his partner betrayed him and Clyde 2.0 stayed behind. That was in 1993, so it’s not as long as he’d supposed; it give him hope that the world can still be saved. He remembered someone saw the faces of the originators, a girl, and Echo realizes it was Caroline who saw, which explains further her history with Bennett, though not too much, as we’ve still got three episodes to go to (hopefully) unravel and understand all. This explains that Caroline is in there not voluntarily but through force (like Sierra/Priya). Also that Bennett probably tried to help her in bringing down Rossum but then when the walls came crashing down (literally) she had to be left behind, and she grew to seethe in hatred and blind loyalty to the corporation she was working against (well, I’m thinking this).

So there is no real way out, because being hooked up to the Attic means your brain can go to mush, but Echo remembers that in her dream sequence when she dies the mind gets disengaged from the computer, meaning it should regulate itself back to normal. She decides to work on a theory and gets up and gets shot. She thinks that they key to not dying in real life, allowing her to get out of the Matrix – I mean Attic – and start to save the world. She intends on doing this alone, but Sierra implores that they are a team, so while Dominic and Clyde elect to stay behind to try and make the others in the Attic aware, Victor shoots Sierra and stabs himself.

Echo manages, just like the beginning of her nightmare sequence, to get up and get out, and she goes to Sierra and starts CPR. I’m worried it not going to work, as its in slow motion panic sequence.

Ballard comes up from the imprint chair and he’s screaming in pain and speaking in tongues. Topher’s explaining that his brain is trying to reorganize and readjust and he finally is able to speak after a few minutes. They explain that he’s technically an Active but it was the only way to save him. As an aside, Boyd and Topher wonder how upset he’ll be when he realizes what they had to take away from him…and I’m so upset they don’t tell me what it is. Three more eps, I think.

We cut to Echo speaking to someone about getting the information they needed. And it’s DEWITT. I’m giddy as now I want to hug her (but maybe slap her just once too). Her plan, that she explained in a whisper to Echo as she lay in the chair before her wipe to get sent to the Attic, was to get all the secrets and information she could from the Attic to bring Rossum down. She expected of everyone Echo would be able to do it. “Nobody else is you,” she tells her, before the horror of that Attic introduction began.

So now, in DeWitt’s office are the new rebel army – DeWitt, Ballard, Boyd, Topher, Ivy, Victor and Sierra (thankfully!) and Echo. But they are missing one, says Echo. “It’s time for me to meet Caroline. It’s time for me to win her war.”

While I mentioned the few missteps (and the show hasn’t been perfect so it’s to be expected), these episodes were dead-on awesome. They are on par with the best sci-fi stuff on past or present, which makes me conflicted about its demise. There’s nothing that can be done about it – the plug is pulled- so I’m concentrating now on the fact that I honestly believe the next (and last) three episodes are going to be what elevates this series to a cult DVD status that it deserves.

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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