Dollhouse Reaction: Stop-Loss And The Attic

When the second season of Dollhouse premiered back at the start of fall, I questioned the show’s potential and I’ll admit, I was losing patience with the direction of the series. Over the last few weeks as Fox has been cramming two episodes of Dollhouse into their Friday night primetime lineup (likely in an effort to speed up the death march for the series), any doubts I had as to what this show could become have vanished. It’s just a shame that the viewership wasn’t strong enough to let Dollhouse find its legs because what we’re seeing in these final episodes is a truly exciting television.

Echo’s no longer the dazed, clueless wiped-doll she once was and over the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen her go from struggling to access her imprints and figure out who she is to what she was tonight, a woman on a mission. Accessing her imprints seems to take almost no effort for her at this point and again, I need to express my disappointment in knowing that Dollhouse is on its way out because seeing the lead character as a fully-functional person with memories and a personality is going to make it a lot harder to let her go than it would have been if the show had ended when Echo was still a blank slate.

The first portion of tonight’s episode filled in some of the blanks on Victor’s pre-active life. We learned that he was a “broken soldier” who spent his five years in the dollhouse forgetting all of the trauma he experienced at war. As his contract was up, he was released back into civilization, only to be kidnapped by a bunch of military people on Rossum’s payroll. Random side-note: Does Rossum supply the actives with their new living quarters once they’re released? I recall Madeline being set up in a posh new pad when we saw her after she left the dollhouse. Given the trust fund they get as a payment for their services, it seems likely that they could afford fancy new digs when they’re done being zombie-prostitutes but I have to question whether or not super-soldier “Anthony” (Victor’s real identity) would actually purchase satin sheets for himself. I suppose that’s not something we need to obsess over but it is a point to ponder, isn’t it?

Back to the relevant portion of the episode. Rossum is apparently using their technology for military purposes. No surprise there. They’ve infiltrated the government so who says they’re not above creating zombie-soldiers with the ability to think as a group? The technology is so effective that the soldiers involved all see what each other see, think each other’s thoughts and feel no personal identity other than their place within the unit. It’s a frightening thought but not one all that unrealistic by Rossum standards.

After being kidnapped by the soldiers, whom Anthony remembered from his pre-Dollhouse-days, they offered him the chance to join their brain and he accepted without questioning it. Thought that was a little odd but then again, the whole episode seemed rushed and crammed together for the most part.

When Boyd and Topher figured out what happened to Victor/Anthony, they sent Echo to get him back. Echo brought Sierra, knowing if Rossum’s technology was back in Victor’s brain, Sierra would be the only person to get him back. As Sierra would’ve been virtually unmanageable in her doll-state, Topher put Priya back into her before sending her off with Echo. While Priya had her personality back, Echo’s bonus was a few new imprints to make her even more badass.

The Priya-approach turned out to be a good plan as it didn’t take long to get Anthony to break away from his “we” mentality with the other soldiers. There was a lot of fighting and shooting, Echo even joined in on the group-think thing by imprinting herself with the soldiers programming so she could fight them, and then she, Sierra and Victor were out of the base and ready to take down Rossum. Just when Echo was trying to convince Sierra and Victor (err.. Priya and Anthony) to go their own way, they were knocked out by the wipe-frequency thing and dragged back to the dollhouse. The episode ended with all three of them being sent to the attic.

So much of what happened in the first episode could have been spread out over the course of the second-half of the season if Fox had been willing to keep the series around. As I said, I thought the episode felt rushed. I think I would’ve preferred Victor’s release and search for Sierra to happen more slowly. There could’ve been more build-up, more not-Sierra sightings like the one Anthony had at the club the night after he was released and even a bit of pining on Sierra’s part as she waited for Victor to return from his treatment. Heck, a whole episode could have been devoted to Sierra trying to get through to Victor instead of having it happen within the span of thirty seconds. But time’s not something this show has and as we saw in the episode that followed, there’s a much bigger end-game at stake and no time for love, Dr. Jones!

I had some major Battlestar Galactica flashbacks during the second episode tonight as we finally got to see “the attic.” I always figured the Dollhouse attic was less of a place and more a state of mind. Almost like how the Cylons in BSG are “boxed.” So when we saw them seal Echo up in plastic wrap, it was hard not to picture the huge room of Threes unconscious and soaking in baths of goo.

The episode took us into Echo’s mind as she faced her fears, courtesy of the great mind-frak that is The Attic. In addition to failed escape-attempts and seeing Victor and Sierra get shot to bits, Echo wandered off into a scene from Legend (except there was a horse instead of a unicorn) and then got attacked by what I thought might be the smoke-monster from Lost before meeting up with her old pal Dominic. Dominic, if you recall from season 1, was the former head of security at the Dollhouse who turned out to be working for the NSA. He was attic’ed when Adelle found out the truth and we learned tonight that he’s been running around through other people’s minds, trying to escape Arcane (the man in black).

When Echo learned that she could jump into other attic’ed people’s minds, she took off to find Sierra and Victor and ended up in the mind of an Asian man who once worked for Rossum and after discovering a weakness in the company’s mainframe, was sent to the attic where he was to spend the rest of his days eating his own legs (and pretending to enjoy it). I have to say, as horrifying as that sounds (and looked), it’s pretty much the perfect example they could’ve used to illustrate just how truly nightmarish the Attic is. Anyone else have a Hannibal flashback?

It was weird seeing Dominic as one of the good-guys but kind of nice all the same and I can’t wait to see what role he plays in the big end game. Sadly, I’m afraid he won’t make it out of the Attic alive but I have a feeling he’ll go out with a bang if that’s the case.

The man in black turned out to be Clyde, one of the founders of the Dollhouse technology. He was attic’ed after his partner and he made Clyde 2.0, a person with Clyde’s intelligence but without his motivation, thus making him as loyal as a genius puppy. Clyde was then sent to the attic and used as the first of what was to be hundreds of people whose minds would be used to power Rossum’s technology. The attic, as it turns out, is basically just a farm of brains being fueled by fear and used as a power source. It seems a lot like the machines feeding off people in The Matrix only there are actual people behind this horrific set-up rather than just a bunch of self-aware computers. And Clyde, knowing this, has made it his mission to destroy as many attic’ed people as he can. Seems like the Matrix rules apply here because if you die in the attic, you die in real life and can no longer be used by the machines.

After Echo and Dominic found Victor and Sierra and they were all grouped together in Clyde’s nightmare, which is the probable scenario of the world to come thanks to Rossum, Clyde reveals the truth about the attic and the likelihood that Rossum will inevitably bring about the end of the world. Echo then figured out that if she let herself die, she could get out of the attic, so she took a bullet in the chest and slipped away. Sierra and Victor were set to follow her out, with Victor sticking a knife in Sierra’s gut. I know I’m throwing out a lot of references to other shows and movies here but going back to BSG, I couldn’t help but be reminded of when Helo shot Athena. The scene with Victor and Sierra was almost as emotional and probably would have been just as great if not for all of the information we’d just absorbed.

The big twist of the night came when we learned (after Echo got out of the attic and went about reviving Victor and Sierra), that it was Adelle’s plan all along to have Echo come back from the Attic. She’s been a bit wishy-washy with her loyalties lately. One minute she’s backing her actives and her house and the next minute, she’s downing breath-mints in preparation to kiss Rossum’s evil backside. While we saw her inebriated for most of the first episode that aired tonight, it seemed her drunk conversation with Echo got through to her and she finally picked a side. She knew there was information in the attic that could be used to take down Rossum and knowing Echo’s extraordinary mental capabilities, she deduced that if anyone could be sent into the attic and somehow come back in once piece, it was she. Her plan worked perfectly as Echo did manage to get the answers they need.

The only thing I’m unclear on as far as the attic situation went, is why Sierra and Victor needed to go in with her? Was it for appearances or did they not really go in there with her and that was all in Echo’s head?

Finally, there’s Ballard. Topher and Ivy used the Wildcat formation theory as a way to repair Ballard’s brain. Since certain vital areas of his mind were damaged beyond repair, they had to bypass those areas and essentially patch the useful parts of his brain together, slap on a Ballard imprint and he’s back to normal, good as new! Well, not quite. Something’s missing. Topher had to take something away from Ballard but I don’t think we learned what.

The second episode definitely topped the first tonight but again, I think the story of Victor’s release could’ve been executed a lot better if they had more time to let it play out a bit more naturally. Meanwhile, we got a true hero-shot at the end of “The Attic” when Adelle addressed Ballard, Topher, Boyd, Echo, Ivy, Sierra and Victor and said, “We’re ready.” This was followed by Echo announcing that it’s time for her to meet Caroline.

Good episodes? In the end, both of them served valuable purposes. Not only can we now see better where things are heading, bit Victor and Sierra are back to their pre-active states, which makes them much more useful as characters. Though I will miss their shy, quiet flirting but the steamy scenes we got tonight (dream-state or not) were just as good.