• Dollhouse 1.8
• The Awakening
• Written by Tracy Bellomo

Apologies for another liveblog. After doing it last week, I found it makes analyzing the show, well, easier. With a title like "Needs" this one might be fun. Alright, off to the show.

Echo at Agent Boring's door. She's bringing him a message, and it's apparently something more than "yes, these are real." Echo starts kissing him, he resists, he calls her Caroline, and this is obviously a dream sequence. And then Mellie walks in and it's even more obviously a dream sequence. Plenty of double-entendres, and then Mellie tells him Caroline's dead. And now Mellie's bleeding. And then Ballard wakes up. 

No, I didn't edit that - that was too easy. 

Now Echo wakes up. And Mellie too. Seeing Mellie stretch, I wish they slept naked. 

Adelle's leading a meeting, and Topher comes in. Adelle is concerned about the glitches in the Actives, and as she points out, "This house is out-of-bounds."  Oh, and they are called Handlers, my bad.  Classic Dominic: "Don't think of them as children, think of them as pets." Lovely. Dominic is my favorite XY character.  Topher explains what he's doing in the language that bores me to death.  Scarface raises objections to Topher's proposed solutions, but nobody cares what she thinks ... yet.

Adelle is giving instructions, and I think she would be more effective if being played by Mellie. Adelle again refers to the Dollhouse as "The House," as in "We protect the House," as in casino language. 

Now the Dolls are wandering around in the House aimlessly. Sierra remembers being raped. She sees Victor. Now Echo's flashing back. Now she wakes up while she's stuck in the Active tomb. Very, very effective.  Think "Vanishing." 

Cut to intro. 

==

I like the fact they're doing the short commercial breaks for most of the show.

==

The Actives have woken up, and it's not pretty. They're all cognizant. This is bad for said House.  Echo is cynical, Mellie is freaking, Victor is quasi-cynical, Sierra is puzzled.  They think they are prisoners, apparently of a war.  Victor recognizes Sierra. Some dude [turns out, it's "Mike" - CBK] who we've not seen before keeps coming up with alien stuff. Sierra is the first to leave, followed by Victor. Basically, we are watching a "Saw" film. This is a classic horror paradigm. A group of strangers, seemingly unrelated, wake up in a room absent of memory and must now figure out what to do next. I would note, one of my favorite horror/suspense plots (the best, needless to say, is the "horny teenagers to go summercamp where a knife-wielding psychopath gets revenge" - just saying).

The Actives are led into the atrium of The Dollhouse, where all the Actives do yoga and shiite. And they're alerted to banana pancakes for breakfast. 

Cut to Agent Boring.  He's trying to hack his iPhone, I think. Hard to tell with him, since he has all the skepticism of Agent Scully with all the intelligence of Gomer Pyle.  Mike and Echo eat with a non-awake active. A guy with a Nehru jacket asks Echo to see her hand.  Echo visits with Dr. Saunders about her hand. Echo has a non-polite reaction to Scarface's, um scars. Echo is asking Scarface for the 411, and she tells Echo she's not her friend.  Now for the co-ed showers. Lots of funniness. Victor recites the staring line-up for the '86 miracle Mets.

Classic. [I'll note here that Dollhouse, thus far, mines its absurdities to great depths in its humor - it is one of the show's strong suits. --CBK]

They run into Mike - he's now body-snatched, and he uses the word "pods" to prove it. As Mellie notes, "We lost Mike."  Dominic tells Adelle about the Actives planning to escape. And, guess what, "right on time."  Cut to commercial. ==

Return to Dominic and Adelle. Adelle is running an exercise, and as she waxes Nietszche, "Freedom has to be earned." In short, this is a test not of the Actives, but of the Handlers. Clever, very clever.  Victor tests his handlers by strangling him. Hilarity does not ensue. 

Victor and Sierra are making a break for it.  Cut to Echo. She's sizing up the yoga-people's asses and the securit at The House.  Cut to Victor and Sierra. They're waiting on the Actives who've not escaped yet. Victor engages in small talk. Sierra's accent is still confusing, even though she's perfectly understandable. Like all men trying to get laid, Victor tries to engage in 'it's about you' talk with Sierra.

The Handlers have themsevles a locker room. One handler tells Langdon regarding Echo, "Even a good dog needs to be put down some time."  Now, Sierra's remembering what I assume is Victor's past rape of her. They hold hands. Echo notices that there's no windows, and that they must be underground. Now they find the uniform galley.  Mellie deduces that she has a daughter, which may explain those ginormous boobs of hers. Someone enters the galley, so they hide. Sierra and Victor conveniently hide toghether, and sx-tnsn ensues.  Now Mellie's in a flowered dress, Echo's dressed like Faith, and on we go.

Lotta forward moving action in this ep. 

Now they're in a parking garage. They're trying to find a sled, but they're all locked. A military-dressed fella and a hottie are Entering a Door. Hmmm. 

Echo's starting to get it, and Victor gets a set of keys. They hop in a vehcile labled "HYBRID." Why, I have no idea.  An Active hooker and some dude take off, and we cut to Dominic, who's tracking them. Adelle says "Here we go," which is Adelle-speak for game-on. Channeling Clarissa, Echo explains it all. She goes back into THe House.  Nice. 

Cut to commercial.

==

I'll admit it - I'm a target market for McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It' campaign. 

==

Asian Woman who must be HR is trying to talk Echo out of her renegadeness. Not working. Since she's Asian, she's also really good at Karate. Go figure.  Echo knocks her the eff out, channeling The Bride from QT's KB.  Nobody panic: Echo is now armed and what could possibly go wrong?

Cut to Agent Boring, who is talking to a really Bizarro-looking Topher (am I crazy or is that Topher?) Is it him in a prior time, or is it Topher? Is Dollhouse screwing with the time-space continuum? Are they going St. Elsewhere on us?  Or worst yet, the most confusing parts of Lost? Better yet, are Agent Ballard's spots from the past, or do they come from us to the future - or does it depend on the lighting? Does this reckon with "The Connor Chronicles" leading into "Dollhouse?"

In short, Ballard is asking Bizarro Topher about a chip, and BT says it's from the future. 

Cut to the carload of awake Actives. Mellie wants out, cause she saw her little girl. She says she remembers her life, and it apparently had something to do with children and strollers and happiness and stuff.  The Escalade they escaped in, btw, has mondo-chrome.  They stop, Mellie gets out. Man, she's too damn hot.  Mellie is called "November" by the Handlers.  Echo, echoing my thoughts on game theory, is surprising the Handlers with her unanticipated moves. As Adelle faux-pretends she knows what Echo is doing, the power goes out. Hella-funny.  Adelle wants Topher to figure out the problem, but Topher is "btw" afriad of the dark. And Echo is pointing a gun at him.  Hard cut. 

==

I'm not a fan of the "I've never been..." commercials. G2 can do better.

==

Cut to The House. Topher is freaked out. Asks Echo if she has blood on her hands. Echo wants answers. Topher tells her it's complicated. Topher tries to explain it, but he can't. He tells her that he puts them in a chair and "I program them ... our brains are natural motherboards."  Echo asks what year it is - '09 - and she asks how long she's been here. He won't say. 

Cut to Sierra and Victor. A former John. Or, better yet, a former spurned lover. He's a whitey Wall Street type. Victor hits him. He notes that she "hopped the fence" and says some Patrick Bateman-style lines.  Now Vic and Sierra are on the run. Wall Steet guy says some creepy stuff. 

Cut to Mellie, whose still hot in her virginal flower-print dress. She's walking among religious children.  Cut to Echo, who is prying info out of Topher. She's holding a hard drive, and is debating the ethics of enslaving people with Windows Vista.  Echo still wants answers. Topher notes that she volunteered. She says he's lying, but he's not. Echo asks what he made her, and he points out that in her last treatment, he mader her, well, her, only wihtout Catherine's memories.

Basically, they're beta-testing her.  "I have your memories, you can have them back," he tells her, as she points to the chair. "You first," Echo says. Oh my.  Vic and Sierra are running. Still. THey see a door named "Utility" and off they go.  Cut to Echo and Topher. He notes that he's the dork, and Echo upbraids him. Echo demands he let them go, and Topher says "I don't have that kind of power."  Enter Adelle. Cut to commerical.  Give Adelle credit - she can certainly make an entrance. 

==

Cut to Adelle. Echo shoots a hard drive. Adelle isn't backing down.  "I eased your suffering" she tells Echo.  Echo gets all pious, and then Adelle notes that she did exactly what Echo wanted. "You couldn't live with the consequences of your own actions..." They're waxing philosophical now ... now Mellie is in a cemetery, presumably to see a dead baby.  Echo shoots again. 

Cut to Vic and Sierra. Sierra apologizes for some reason. Vic backs her up on it. Vic notes he remembers Sierra, referring to some awful Bosnian death-camp-thing [my implication, not the show's - CBK], I'm assuming. 

Is Sierra hot? I think so, but in a really strange way.

When is it going to click that he raped her? This scene is rambling and melodramtic. They kiss. They do it (I think).  Mellie caresses a tombstone. 

Cut to Echo and Adelle. Echo's being all tough. Threatens to shoot Adelle. Cut to, what would have been in the 90s, a scene that Sarah McLaughlin would be singing over, but instead it's someone that sounds like her. All the Dolls our leaving The House, and then Echo falls to the ground.  Echo sees the light, in essence, and collapses. As does Mellie on the tombstone. As do Vic and Sierra. 

Cut to Adelle addressing the staff. Scarface notes that, as a suggestion, "We give them what they need" to repair the glitches. This was the point of tonight's experiment.  Adelle calls it a "self-guided journey." Scarface calls it "let[ting] the tide come in."  They collapsed because they felt closure.  Langdon spells it out for us, and notes that Victor's closure is undefined. Scarface notes that he's in love. 

Langdon and Scarface realize - or don't - that they're fighting the same war.  I made fun just a second ago, but I do like tonight's soundtrack.  Cut to Agent Boring. He gets a voicemail from Echo who is asking for help, and that ends the ep, and it's chilling.  Excellent episode. 

==

What have we learned? 

I wanted to believe that Adelle is the cold sociopath running the show, but Scarface's ingenious plan to cure the glitches in the Actives makes me think otherwise. She's obviously built as a sympatethic character, but that kind of cruel, unhinged out-of-the-box thinking is the kind that could get a girl places in The House. 

On the Whedonian front, I again reference a critical ep of Buffy. One of the most infuriating eps for fans of the 'Verse was Buffy's 18th birthday, whereby in a cruel rite of passage stretching back through the ages the Slayer is stripped of her powers and then locked in a house with a sociopathic demon. The Slayers prevails, of course, but if there is an episdoe that lines up thematically with "Dollhouse," it was that one and this one. 

The Dolls, we are reminded by Dominic, are not children, they are akin to pets. Either way, when not engaged, they are helpless and must use what wits they have to survive, just as Buffy did. Buffy, a Mistress of Game Theory, foiled the House, and the House lost a Slayer and a Watcher in the Process. With Dollhouse (House 2.0), the House clearly won. While Echo used Game Theory to her advantage, Scarface anticipated her moves and the moves of the other Actives and was able to neuter them at their most dangerous. 

Implications? Not sure. For the first seven eps, Echo's strength has been her ability to outwit The House when it suited her situation. Although Scarface is not a major player (is she Alpha? of course not!) in Needs, she has demonstrated the ability to outwit the master-gamer that is Echo. 

As stated, a great episode.