Dollhouse 2:3
Posted by dorolerium on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
This particular episode did little to actually show us more about Echo or the evolution of anyone else on the show. It did, however, bring a lot of great lines and for me, the most anxiety inspiring show of the season.
It starts out with a strange situation that I did not fully understand when I first saw it. There’s this guy, moving around, arranging what appears to be mannequins. Cept they turn out to be real people he’s just paralyzed – good times! One of them, Aunt Sheila, is able to move a little, which makes him angry and ultimately he kills her, but not before she manages to get a little of the paralytic in him.
The man, Terry Carens, heads back out into the world to find a new Aunt Sheila for his fantasy. But then he gets hit by a car, I assume partially because of the paralytic, and this is where the dollhouse enters into the picture. Terry’s uncle is a major shareholder, and when conventional doctors tell him they can do nothing for his nephew, he takes Terry to the dollhouse.
What he neglects to tell them, and they figure out on their own, is that Terry kills people and the uncle is interested in finding out where the missing women are. Rather than waking Terry up, they decide to imprint him into Victor, thus creating Serial Killer Victor.
The plan is for Ballard to interview Terry and get all the info they need, but of course things go awry and the uncle breaks Terry out. Which doesn’t quite work as planned, and ultimately Serial Killer Victor is running around the streets of LA looking for his new Aunt Sheila.
As someone who watches the show regularly, my first thought was “oh no worries, they can track Victor because of his dollhouse tech”…which is also what Adele thought. The unfortunate part is that because Alpha went slice and dice on Victor last season, his tech was removed when they did the reconstruction surgery.
On to plan B, which is to attempt a remote wipe. Which also doesn’t work quite like they expected, natch! It turns Victor into Kiki, who had previously been imprinted on Echo, and we get Serial Killer Echo instead. Fortunately, Echo is still glitching and she manages to stop Terry inside her from actually killing anyone else. And this makes me wonder, how does no one else figure out at this point that Echo is glitching? It should be obvious that something happened!
Kiki is possibly the most hilarious imprint yet on the show, and certainly the most fun. She had a ton of great lines:
I figured it was mid-evil lit, not advanced evil, how hard could it be! So I skipped intro to evil or whatever…
(Teacher) It’s middle english. (Kiki) Right, like hobbits or something
When she is first imprinted, Ivy tells her that Paul (Ballard) is going to take her on a little spree, and she says “Shopping, or killing?…Joke!” Which I think is hilarious, especially since she almost does go on a killing spree, albeit not as Kiki.
Langton also says something super funny when Topher says he has serious ethical issues with waking Terry up: “Topher has ethical problems – Topher!”
And we get an awesome spot where Topher says he could do something to wake Terry, before they realize he’s a serial killer, and says “Or it could also give him a man reaction.” If you will recall, “man reaction” is one of my absolute favorite lines from the show last season. So much that I even have a picture for it, as you see.
One curious thing is that this episode ended with at least two clients injured or dead, and three other people who found out that something is clearly strange. They were attacked by Terry himself, then Echo as Terry, then saved by a bunch of dudes in black outfits. I can see the clients getting an explanation somewhere along the lines of “this is what you signed up for”, although it’s not entirely the risk they thought they were taking. But what happens with these civilians who knew nothing of the dollhouse prior to this? Perhaps this will be trouble later on…
Filed in TV | No responses yet
