Loaded Couch Potatoes

Honk Mahfah reviews the latest episode of Dollhouse, “Spy in the House of Love.”

Spoilers ahead — the type you can’t wash out.  And they will happen immediately, so if you don’t want to know — and trust me, if you haven’t seen the episode yet you don’t want to know — don’t do the clicky thing.

Okay, so now we know who the spy was: Dominic.  He’s been caught, tortured, and Atticked.  (Is that a word?)

But is he the only spy?  Doesn’t look that way.

This was a terrific episode that didn’t just move the plot forward, it shoved it forward, and on multiple fronts.  This is the type of storytelling we were getting on Battlestar Galactica not too many Fridays ago, and while this isn’t quite that good, it’s close.

The structure of the episode was extremely interesting.  Non-linear storytelling, by this point, is nothing new or innovative, but when it’s done well, it’s still impressive.  And it seems appropriate to this show.

Over on Lost, it’s become obvious that the entire series is dealing with the very definition of “time” and what it means philosophically; they’re doing weird, awesome stuff with structure over there, and have been for five seasons.  Dollhouse doesn’t appear to be up to any of those tricks, but here we have a concept that in some ways is about the cessation of time: for the Actives, or Dolls, or whatever you want to call them, time may as well not exist.  They exist in a world where time is meaningless; in any one of their imprinted guises, they may feel as if they’ve been that person for an entire lifetime, and in their non-imprinted state it’s not clear that the passage of time holds any relevance for them.  And yet, to their actual selves — their original selves, the original personalities who made the deals to become Dolls — time is meaningful, incredibly meaningful, because it is only with the passage of time that their contracts will be up and they will return to their “real” lives.  But since those personalities are on ice somewhere, they do not actually experience time’s passage; they don’t even have the luxury of looking forward.

Now, I’m not sure this episode is intentionally playing with any of those ideas, but it made me think of them, and thinking of them made me begin to reassess some of my feelings about Dollhouse.  The scientific, sociological, and philosophical ramifications regarding what Dolls are — and, more importantly, what they could become — are significant.  What began as a series about doofy high-end hookers now seems primed and ready, only a few episodes later, to become something much deeper … and I would be willing to bet that that is exactly where Joss Whedon and his fellow writers want to go with it.  How long will it take them to get there?  Well, if this episode is any indication, I’m guessing it won’t take long, if they’re given the opportunity by Fox and by the millions of people who aren’t watching each and every week.

Where to start in terms of recap?  Well, where else: Echo as a dominatrix, of course.  I’ll admit, I’ve got no love for S&M, in terms of my own tastes, even if we’re only talking about my viewing tastes, BUT, when you put an actress as attractive as Eliza Dushku in a leather suit, tie her hair back, give her a whip, and film it in high definition, you’re gonna capture my interest every time.  So, yeah, on that particular topic, it’s Joss one, Honk zero.  But that’s no achievement; hell, any show could do that.  This one goes above and beyond by making the scene actually mean something: it establishes the idea of trust as the main concern of the episode.

Trust, of course, has popped up on Dollhouse before.  The Actives are imprinted with a sort of über-trust in their handlers.  And sure enough, the conversation about trust takes place between Echo and Langton.  More correctly, the conversation takes place between Langton and whoever Echo has been temporarily imprinted to be.  Dominatrix Echo seems to be defending what she does, claiming that it isn’t about pain at all, but about trust; giving yourself over to another that completely is a beautiful thing, she says.  “In my experience,” says Langton, “that kind of trust always leads to pain.”

The story being told in this episode is an illustration of that philosophy: DeWitt’s trust in Dominic, who she has trusted professionally for years to be the man to keep the Dollhouse secure, is shattered.  The implication of that fact is that nothing about their world — nothing at all — is secure.  DeWitt can’t trust anything from this point on.  So much so that she breaks off an illicit affair she is having with one of Victor’s guises, Roger.  We don’t learn much about who “Roger” is, or why DeWitt seems so in love with him, or how she has managed to make this relationship happen; those kinds of answers, presumably, will have to wait for another episode.  What we do learn is that DeWitt has some sort of major attachment to this man/personality, and that what has happened with Dominic is so shattering that she is willing to set her own emotions aside to properly deal with the situation.  She does so decisively, and while it seems to cost her quite a bit emotionally (when we see her weeping, I think those tears are for Roger, and not for Dominic, as the structure of the episode might seem to suggest) she does not appear to hesitate.

However, if Dominic’s betrayal is enough to make the Dollhouse seem utterly unsafe, what does it mean to discover that Dominic isn’t the only spy?  Because that’s exactly what we learn; it’s left up to us to connect those dots, but that’s the only conclusion we can really come to by connecting them.  Dominic, it seems, is NSA, but he hasn’t been working to cripple the Dollhouse; no, he’s been working to keep it from becoming crippled, he’s just obviously been doing so at the command of someone whose agenda differs somewhat from DeWitt’s.

But whoever it is who’s been sending the messages to Ballard would seem to be operating from an entirely different agenda still: that person seems to want the Dollhouse to be exposed in some way, and unless Dominic was some weird sort of double agent, this cannot have been his work.

The finger is pointed in several directions.  Could it actually be DeWitt?  Well, it seems that she’s been reprogramming Victor, or having someone do it for her, so it’s a possibility; however, if she’s working to bring down the Dollhouse, then every other action she’s taken on the show would be contrary to that agenda, and that doesn’t seem likely.  Is it Saunders?  Langton?  They both obviously have their issues with the company.  Is it Topher?  He’s obviously too enamored of his job to want to end it.  Ivy?  She wants Topher’s job, so she’s unlikely … until you remember that November was imprinted by Ivy and shortly thereafter delivered a message to Ballard.

And yet, it could be any of them.  We don’t know enough about them to be able to say for sure that any of them is beyond suspicion.  Come to think of it, when can we say that about anyone, on the subject of anything?  We can’t, really.

Well, now we’ve come somewhat full circle, right back to the idea of why anybody would ever want to pay for an Active’s services.  This was a frequent complaint about the series in its first few weeks, and it seemed like a very reasonable, valid complaint.  We might now be approaching a resolution to that dilemma: it’s all about trust.  If you pay a company a million dollars to deliver a baby for you, you can rest assured that your money has purchased someone with impeccable skill … but you can also rest assured that your money has purchased someone you can trust, because they’ve been programmed to be trustworthy.

In a curious way, this episode begins to make that element of the series not merely more palatable, but also more plausible; what seemed to be utterly ludicrous now starts seeming a lot less so.  Again, I don’t know how much of this is intended, and how much of it is simply stuff already inside my mind that has been brought out by the show (that’s a creepy way of thinking about it!), but I do think it’s becoming plainer that Joss and friends are gearing up to start swinging for the fences with this one.

Lots of things to talk about, plot-wise.  First of all, Ballard’s reunion with Mellie.  Holy shit!  I wasn’t expecting Paul to learn so quickly that Mellie is an Active.  But it seems like a genius move, and it’s one that has a lot of potential richness.  Ballard now has a solid connection to the Dollhouse, one he can presumably exploit in some eventual way.  However, he has to be on his toes, because he’s learned his “girlfriend” is a sleeper agent whose teeth could be set at his throat at the slightest sign he’s learned her identity.  And to protect himself, he has to pretend nothing is wrong.  What gums up the works there is that Paul obviously has feelings for “Mellie”; Mellie, who doesn’t actually exist, yet does exist, right there in front of him.  What sort of damage will that wreak in Paul’s psyche as time goes by?  Will he fall further in love with someone who doesn’t actually exist?  Knowing Joss Whedon, the outcome won’t be pretty.  Remember what Langton had to say about trust?

Moving along.

Echo, it is now obvious, IS continuing to build memories of a sort, even after Saunders’ big gratification game last week.  Topher and DeWitt are both astonished — and, plainly, a little thrilled — by the idea that Echo is developing so completely that they can begin to rely upon her to protect them.  Here again, we see that people have an innate need to trust somebody.  Along those lines, DeWitt also now places her trust in Langton, whom she promotes to Dominc’s position as head of security.

A trio of final points I’d like to touch on, starting with the shallowest one:

Seriously, how hot is Dichen Lachman?  She got to go all Sydney Bristow this week (the score during that segment even sounded a bit like Giacchino’s Alias scores), and she was quite good at it.  That’s basically all I had to say about that.

Penultimately, let’s return briefly to Ballard’s conversation with Mellie/November.  “You need to investigate why it exists,” the message Ballard’s been sent tells him about his target.  “The Dollhouse deals in fantasy, but that is not their purpose.”  Well, what the sin does that mean?!?  That question can only lead to fervent, wild-eyed, fannish speculation late at night at places like Dragon*Con, and I don’t want to go there.  Okay, I do want to go there; I’m just not going to.  Such talk inevitably leads me to, uhm, imprint upon the show my own ideas about where it should go, and from there it’s a short fall to disappointment, so I don’t indulge in those types of fantasies any more than my mind forces me to.  But this bit of dialogue obviously means something, and the something it obviously means is undoubtedly huge.  Will we find out before season’s end?  I’m gonna guess no.

Finally (and here again, I’m going to mention something that practically screams out for speculation run amok), consider these lines of dialogue.  “You’re a piece of work,” says someone to DeWitt.  “So they tell me,” DeWitt replies.

Another fine episode.  Damn you, Prison Break, for making me wait two weeks to see another.

As a postscript, check out this article for some information about Fox’s plans to not air the final episode of the season.