Last season ended with Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) discovering the Dollhouse and inadvertently unleashing Alpha (Alan Tudyk) upon it. Alpha then promptly kidnapped Echo (Eliza Dushku) and downloaded over 30 different personalities into her all at once. But to his dismay, Echo did not feel enlightened or freed by this process. Her reaction was quite the opposite and Alpha then saw that he had created a monster which he could not control and which turned on him. He escaped, barely, and Echo was returned to the Dollhouse. Ballard then traded his freedom for Mellie’s (Miracle Laurie) and agreed to become Echo’s handler while Boyd (Harry Lennix) took over as head of security.
As we re-entered the realm of the Dollhouse in the second season, it was several months later with Paul Ballard now employed as Echo’s handler, with she and Ballard working together to bring down the Dollhouse from the inside. However, unlike previous memory wipes, Echo is no longer unaware of what has happened to her. Due to her super-enhanced multi-identity state, the average memory-wipe does not completely erase the imprinted identity. Thus, each imprint remains with Echo and she remembers everything after her assignments. This is the price Echo must pay for, if she revealed the ineffectiveness of the wipes, she would have not have any identity at all, nor could she assist Ballard in taking down the Dollhouse.
In the second season opener, “Vows,” Ballard was the client and he had retained Echo’s services in order to infiltrate the world of a British arm’s dealer. Echo has been programmed to be an FBI agent who is under-cover as the arms dealer’s fiancé. It was a con within a con. So with Ballard and Echo occupied with their mission to bring down another nefarious organization, the core of the episode actually focused on Dr. Saunders aka: Whiskey (Amy Acker) as she had learned that she was not in fact Dr. Saunders, but was instead a doll. Wanting to punish Topher (Fran Kranz) for imprinting her in the first place, she asked him to explain why he programmed her to hate him and he stated that he hadn’t. That was something she came up with all on her own. He had not merely programmed her to be a “yes” man, but had given her the ability to have free-will. She was free to chose how she felt. In the end, confused as to who she was and her role, Dr. Saunders exercised that free will and finally left the Dollhouse.
In the subsequent episode, “Instinct,” Echo is imprinted with the personality of a recently deceased mother in order to care for the newborn child whose father cannot stand the sight of him. However, when Echo overheard the father saying that he cannot keep up the ruse anymore and that he wanted to get rid of the baby, she kidnapped the child in order to protect it. But, like before, a simple memory wipe was not enough to erase her memories and feeling an overpowering need to protect the child, she went to confront the father. It is only after the father reasoned with her that Echo began to see the difference between her multi-faceted personalities and the imprinted one and was willing to leave the baby with his father. After having her emotions manipulated into loving a child that was not hers, more than ever, Echo swears to make the Dollhouse pay for making her love a child and then being forced to give it up.
Then in the third episode, “Belle Chose,” a serial killer’s personality is downloaded into Victor’s (Enver Gjokaj) body in order to ascertain the location of the woman the killer had taken. After the killer’s uncle released him in Victor’s body back out into society, DeWitt (Olivia Williams) and Topher elected to turn off the Dollhouse system in order to remote-wipe the serial killer’s personality out of Victor. This worked partially, for instead of wiping the killer’s personality, it merely transferred it into Echo’s body – who was in the middle of a teacher/student sex fantasy. Echo, as the killer, promptly stabbed the professor, escaped and returned to his lair where there were three women locked in a cage. Victor (now thinking he is a girl) went dancing at a nearby club and hilarious hi-jinks ensued from that particular identity crisis. In the meantime, Echo grappled with the imprint of the serial killer and urged the women to kill her in order to escape. Fortunately, the GPS-tracking chip led Boyd and the security detail to them and everyone was saved. But are they really? For Echo again still showed trace signs of still having the serial killer embedded into her conscious. It remains to be seen whether she will be strong enough to keep that imprint at bay.
Finally, in the fourth episode “Belonging” the series exploded. They had promised that everything would come together and grab everyone’s attention – and they were absolutely right. Focusing on Sierra and her backstory on how she was kidnapped, drugged and repeatedly sexually assaulted by her captor – all under the permissive watch of the Dollhouse was eye-opening, sickening and riveting. It also ratcheted up the level of tension and moral dilemmas they all face. It was Sierra’s story, and how they all became swept up in it. Victor as the quiet champion awaiting the return of his princess. Boyd the fixer who stepped in to clean-up Topher’s mess. Adelle’s heart-broke handing over Sierra to a monster. And Topher who never had a heart before, discovered he had one. Interestingly enough, even with Echo out of the lime-light, she caught Boyd’s attention and there was some cool interplay with Boyd catching her reading a book (Dolls are not supposed to be able to read) and his attempt to ferret out what she was up to. And in an episode where Paul Ballard did not even appear once, it was startling to see how the other characters came together just fine in his absence.
The second season is not merely a journey through the various fantasies that wealthy clients are willing to pay for. It is a discovery of self-identity as Echo fights to figure out who she is amidst all the downloaded personality imprints. It is also a mission to bring down those behind the Dollhouse and to put a stop to the human enslavement they have created.
“Dollhouse” is created and produced by Joss Whedon and stars Eliza Dushku, Tahmoh Penikett, Olivia Williams, Dichen Lachman, Enver Gjokaj, Harry Lennix, and Fran Kranz. “Dollhouse” airs on Friday nights at 9:00 p.m. on Fox.
