TV Recap: ‘Dollhouse,’ “Belle Chose”

Image courtesy of the Spoiler Geeks Blogspot

This week, frequent Joss Whedon-collaborator Tim Minear offers his first episode this season. Having set high standards for himself with episodes on The X-Files,  Angel, and Fox victims Firefly and Wonderfalls, Minear delivers another delicious dish of smart, entertaining television.

The scene begins with a prim young man and what seem to be mannequins, reinforced by the bland, upbeat background music reminiscent of convenience stores, playing croquet. The young man is referring to them as “Aunt Sheila” and “little sister” and has a tendency to say things like “goodness gracious.”

Suddenly, we see one of them panting and sweating – clearly, these are not mannequins, but people, paralyzed and held up by metal bars. This particular victim falls to the ground and attempts to crawl away, just as the young man picks up the croquet mallet. Noticing her escape attempt, he picks up a syringe from a black bag and injects her with some substance. As he begins to drag her away by the legs, she grabs the syringe and plunges the needle and the remaining liquid into his ankle. Unfortunately, the remaining liquid wasn’t enough, and the young man only becomes angrier. He lifts the mallet over his head and bludgeons her. Rather non-plussed, he calmly says, “Guess we need to find a new Aunt Sheila.”

We then cut to the young man walking down the street, still affected by whatever was in the syringe, watching and evaluating the women he passes. He notices one woman in particular and crosses the street to meet her – just in time to collide with a car’s windshield. Cue theme sequence.

In the Dollhouse, Ballard searches for Echo among the actives in the showers, visibly bothered by having to navigate his way through a throng of naked people with no concept of being naked. Echo hears and approaches him, which is something for which he was unprepared. He stumbles over his words and asks her if she wants a towel (two syllables, starts with a T, contains the letter E – that’s close to “treatment,” Ballard, excellent try). She says, “Yes, thank you. I’m wet.” Echo takes the towel and wishes him good day before Ballard finally asks her if she wants a treatment. The handler gig will take some getting used to, it seems.

Elsewhere, Adelle asks Boyd if there has been any progress locating Dr. Saunders, their missing employee. People don’t just leave the Dollhouse, she says. Adelle, as always, manages to be threatening even when not directly threatening anyone. Boyd simply answers that Claire did. Adelle notices his informal reference to her and he corrects himself – Dr. Saunders. Victor overhears and asks for Dr. Saunders, saying that there is someone in the medical area who “is not his best” and whom Dr. Saunders could help.

After reassuring Victor, they go into the medical area and ask Topher about the patient, who is revealed to be the young sociopath who had been hit by a car. He is comatose. Topher explains that he needs to finish mapping the patient’s brain, after which he will attempt something that could revive him or could give him a “man reaction.” Lovely.

Boyd asks if they really want to wake this person up, translating everything Adelle says from diplomatic sugar-coating (reuniting a desperate family with a wayward loved one who had been charged with minor offenses that have since been resolved) to the more sinister truth (reuniting a desperate family with a criminal who skipped bail on a trial that has since been hushed up through the bribing of a judge). Adelle resents being translated. The crux of the issue is that the young man’s uncle, Bradley Karrens, is both a valued client and a major Rossum Corporation shareholder. After Adelle leaves, the computer finishes mapping the patient’s brain. Topher is disturbed by what he sees and calls Boyd back.

Meanwhile, in the imprinting room, Ivy explains Echo’s engagement to Ballard. The client is Edmond Gossen, a liberal arts professor at Clairfield College. The engagement designation, Ballard discovers, is R – meaning romance. “As in R-rated?” he asks. “Great.” Ballard is bothered that she is the sex fantasy for some “egghead” (classy, Ballard, classy) professor who can’t get one of his real students to sleep with him. Oh, as opposed to being the sex fantasy for a hypocritical, self-righteous FBI agent who can’t get anyone to sleep with him who wasn’t programmed to do so? But I digress.

After the imprinting, Echo wakes up as Kiki, a preppy, empty-headed sex kitten. Author John Green once said, “The Venn diagram of guys who don’t like smart girls and guys you don’t want to date is a circle.” With that gem of wisdom in mind, there is much to glean about Edmond Gossen by watching Kiki (and by thinking about the episode’s title, which is “beautiful thing” in French). 

Ivy tells Kiki that Paul is going to take her on a spree before taking her to Gossen’s class. “Shopping or killing?” Kiki jokingly asks. Pure Tim Minear concentrate: one cup sugary, one cup funny, two cups crazy.

We then cut to Ballard and Topher going into Adelle’s office. When Adelle asks if there’s any good news about the coma, Topher says yes – the fact that he’s in a coma. He shows her a scan of his brain (overly smart, he adds, but normal) and compares it with a scan of Terry Karrens’ brain. The front area of it is dark, meaning that it is rarely used. This is the area governing “empathy, compassion, an aversion to disemboweling puppies,” as Topher so poetically puts it. The scan essentially resembles the brains of well-known serial killers, and Topher has ethical problems with waking him up. Boyd emphasizes that Topher – TOPHER – has ethical problems with it. Nice.

A small thank you to Tim Minear for bringing Topher back to the characterization of him that Joss Whedon gave us in the season opener. Every character on the show is morally ambiguous, even someone like Boyd, if only because he genuinely believes that the Dollhouse’s work is wrong, yet goes along with it anyway. As Topher worded it in the unaired pilot, “You’re not allowed to have conspiracy theories when you’re under the employ of the conspirators.” One of the central themes of the show is moral ambiguity and the layers of morality, and to make Topher the Selfish Young Scientist With No Morals is overly simplistic and superficial at best. Some of the best episodes of the show showed another side of him, another layer (”Haunted” and “Epitaph One” in particular). But I feel a rant coming on, so I’ll stop here. 

At this point, Ballard takes Kiki on her “spree,” where some kind of clothing expert (does the Dollhouse have a fashion department? What am I saying – of course it does) who openly mocks Kiki to her face, commenting that she’s no rocket scientist, and the snide remark skyrockets right over her head.

Meanwhile, Adelle confronts Bradley Karrens, who had told her only that Terry could not be revived by conventional medical science, which was true, but imcomplete. The truth is that he could not be revived in time to be questioned about missing women that he is suspected to have abducted. Adelle tells him that Terry will be questioned on her terms and she will not negotiate on this issue (reminding us once again the degree to which arguing with Adelle DeWitt is a pointless and potentially hazardous endeavor).

Back down in the fashion department, Kiki has finished getting ready and is looking in the mirror. Ballard ogles her openly, and we see her, through his eyes, moving in slow motion. His fantasy is interrupted by Boyd saying that he’ll take her on her engagement because they are in need of an FBI profiler to interrogate a possible serial killer. Ballard glances back at Kiki one last time and says, “Serial killer? Thank God,” conveniently dodging temptation.

 We cut to Victor waking up as Terry, dressed in Terry’s clothes, and reacting to the last thing he remembers – the car plowing into him. Dollhouse employees throw a black bag over his head. Goodness gracious.

Up in Adelle’s office, Adelle, Topher, Ballard and Bradley Karrens watch Terry, strapped to a chair in a concrete interrogation room, on a screen. Bradley complains about not being able to speak with him directly. Ballard asks what connection Bradley found between the seemingly-unconnected women for whose abductions Bradley suspected Terry to be responsible. When Ballard asks who these women are, there is an abrupt cut to Gossen giving a lecture in his class, beginning a parallel-storyline technique frequently seen in Tim Minear’s episodes (such as the fantastic “Are you now or have you ever been?” episode of Angel). Gossen makes a joke about the students’ obvious disinterest, which has no effect on them except in the case of Kiki giving a big flirtatious giggle from her seat. Gossen then returns the students’ essays on the economics of love in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Tale.” Kiki gets an F. What? Kiki gets an F on a paper on the nuances of medieval literature? Unacceptable! She prances over to Gossen and tells him that she probably shouldn’t have taken this course, but that she figured it wouldn’t be too difficult because it was “Mid-evil,” not “Advanced Evil,” so she skipped “Intro to Evil.” Priceless. This is the girl about whom blond jokes are conceived, brunette though she may be on the outside. She believes that “middle English” refers to Hobbits. Somewhere in Oxford, J.R.R. Tolkien, logophile and linguist, rolls over in  his grave and curses in Elvish. Gossen invites Kiki to come to his office to discuss her grade. He also talks about how Alison, the narrator of “The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” is Chaucer’s most well-developed character. It is interesting that he should feel so strongly about a female character from literature that is considered by many scholars to be an early feminist figure due to her shrewdness and power – then proceeds to tell Kiki that he can see a little Alison in her.

Back at the Dollhouse, Victor-Terry complains about the tightness of the wrist cuffs until Ballard enters and asks if he has been practicing dentistry on large cats. This appears to be an interrogation technique devised by Dr. Seuss. Ballard asks why else he would have traces of a veterinary-grade paralytic in his system. Oh, right. That. Victor-Terry demands his phone call and his attorney. Ballard tells him that he’s not a police officer and that no rights will be afforded to him. He pushes Victor-Terry’s face into the pictures of the abducted women as though he were training a puppy. Bad cop. Bad, bad cop. Ballard offers to help him remember – mother, big sis, little sis, and Aunt Sheila.

Upstairs, Bradley Karrens complains (constantly, it would seem) to Adelle that this is the wrong tack to take. Adelle encourages him to go visit Terry and sends him off with Topher, who awkwardly escorts him. Ballard tells Victor-Terry that when he heard about what Terry did, he thought that he must have killed the women in his family and it was a whole “Norman Bates thing” (Tim Minear gets extra gold stars for his ability to weave in classic movie references). But in fact, no. Terry’s mother, sisters and aunt all continue to live in the family home. Ballard then lays out his profile of Terry. He pushed away the real people in his life in order to surround himself with the fakes. Here comes another overriding theme of the show: the difference between real human interaction and false, engineered human interaction. How close are Ballard, Topher and Adelle (all of whom have, in some way, acted out a desire for human interaction with an active) to someone like Terry Karrens, who harms and manipulates people in order to mold them into the interactions that he desires?

Ballard tells Victor-Terry that he is not as in control as he believes, and shows him a video feed of Terry’s comatose body. How does Victor-Terry respond? “Goodness gracious.” Ballard asks if he actually thinks that he walked away from the car accident without a scratch, but Victor-Terry responds that he thinks it’s a trick – until he sees his uncle visiting his comatose body. Ballard tells him that revealing the location of the abducted women is the only way for him to be revived. Victor-Terry blames “Aunt Sheila” – pointing out the photo of one of the abducted women – for his situation. She made him do what he did, he says. He just wants to have a nice time, but they don’t let him. They’re too preoccupied with their dates and boyfriends to pay attention to Terry or let Terry play. Oh, now he’s referring to himself in the third person. Excellent sign. “They’re whores,” he tells Ballard.

We cut directly to Gossen telling Kiki that the character of Alison is not, as she had said, a whore, even if she does use sex to get what she wants. She’s a self-aware woman, he says, who “doesn’t allow men to define her.” But that’s exactly what he did with Kiki. She can’t be self-aware because she has no real self of which to be aware. Gossen uses the figure of Alison in order to paint a picture of Kiki as a woman who uses sex as an expression of her power, but this is untrue whether or not Kiki believes it. She is literally defined by a man. She was invented, created and paid for by a man. His attempt to compare them only underscores the fundamental difference between them. Gossen has created an illusion, and the reality of the matter is that Kiki is not a woman to him, but a toy. A vessel. A doll.

The scene intercuts between the interrogation of Victor-Terry and Gossen’s conversation with Kiki. Victor-Terry talks about how the women “never do what Terry wants,” implicitly explaining his attempts to achieve the illusion of having control over women, while Gossen creates the illusion of giving control to women, while, at least in this case, the opposite is true.

Ballard reports his findings to Adelle in her office and compliments her on the idea of sending Bradley Karrens to the medical area. Just then, Adelle gets a call from Topher. They run down to the medical area, where alarms have been going off on Terry’s medical equipment since his uncle’s visit. One of the doctors solves the problem and says that it was a false alarm caused by tampering with the main lead. By the time they realize their mistake, they find Victor-Terry missing. Adelle calls Bradley, who talks to her from his car, in which Victor-Terry occupies the passenger seat. Bradley says that Adelle’s way failed, so he’s trying his own way. After he hangs up, Victor-Terry bashes Bradley’s head into the steering wheel. Wait, the sociopath isn’t kind to his elders? This is appalling! The car crashes and Terry steps out, a free man again.

Adelle tells Ballard that this is actually a good turn of events because all actives have GPS tags, so they can follow Victor-Terry straight to his victims and rescue them. Hurray, the world makes sense again!

…Or perhaps not. Victor’s GPS strip was removed when he went into surgery to fix the scars given to him by Alpha, and Dr. Saunders, who ordered the procedure, left before ordering the GPS strip replaced. The Dollhouse, it appears, has imprinted an active as a serial killer and then let him loose. But let’s be fair. This is only, like, the second time this has happened.

Meanwhile, Terry’s other victims wake up imprisoned as the paralytic wears off. “We have names,” one of them assures the youngest. “Remember that. We’re human, not his toys.” We have finally come to the crossroads between three parallel tales: that of Terry Karrens and the lengths to which he’s willing to go to simulate control over others, that of Edmond Gossen and the paradox of promising control to someone over whom he has the ultimate control, and that of the Dollhouse itself, whose attempts to control even the laws of nature and humanity will lead inevitably to tragedy, as we saw in “Epitaph One.”

By now, Ballard has traced the GPS in the Karrens’ car and finds the crash site, which is by the metro station. Ballard guesses that Victor-Terry went back to Beverly Hills, where the original car crash took place, because the location of the abducted women is probably close to there. He suggests that Victor-Terry will return to that location after picking up a new Aunt Sheila.

Back at the Dollhouse, Adelle tells Topher that Victor cannot be used as Terry’s “vehicle for abduction and murder.” Topher, of course, agrees, and says that he’d love to free Victor of Terry, but a remote wipe is impossible, especially since they can’t just call him as Alpha did to Echo to achieve a remote wipe last season in “Gray Hour.” Adelle demands that Topher find another way fast. Here we see another brick in the road that leads to the catastrophic events of “Epitaph One.” First, there were the wiping and imprinting technologies, which undermine the concepts of humanity, identity, individuality – the list goes on and on. Then the ability to wipe someone’s brain without the physical imprint chair – even more dangerous. In the near future, we know, comes the freedom to steal someone’s body as a vessel for one’s own memories and personality forever. We are witnessing the beginning of the end.

The scene then intercuts between Victor-Terry on the hunt and Kiki reading a rather sexual scene from Chaucer. When she reads the word “dance,” she asks where Gossen’s “tuneage” is. I shudder when the suffix “-age” is unnecessarily added to a word, although it happened frequently on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But I suppose it makes sense for Kiki to use it. The two of them start dancing, and Kiki says, “Now, let’s talk about this F.” Straight and to the point. Back in the handler van, Boyd watches Echo’s vitals and says that it looks like “love. Or Something.” Or something, indeed.

Topher calls Boyd to tell him that he’s going to have to take the bio-link grid off-line for a few seconds. Boyd asks why, and Topher tells him the truth, that Victor’s loose, without GPS, and a serial killer. “Ah,” Boyd says. A pretty low-key reaction – because usually things go so swimmingly for the Dollhouse.

Boyd is concerned, however, that Victor would be left totally wiped and alone. Topher says that he’ll be an empty-headed robot wandering through Hollywood, so he’ll be fine. Why, Tim Minear, what a thing to say. The only way it could’ve been more pointed is if Topher had made a reference to the executive bastards who murdered poor little Wonderfalls before its time.

Here, we cut to Victor-Terry watching women on the street. We see where his gaze lingers – it’s a disturbing feeling to see through his eyes. Back at the Dollhouse, Topher explains to Adelle that if the wipe takes, Victor’s vitals will flatten out. Topher initiates the remote wipe, which makes a horrible, discordant sound. Victor-Terry grabs his head in pain, and all the screens in the imprinting room go black. They come back up – yay? – then the power goes out completely. Nay.

Next, we cut to Kiki and Gossen dancing. Gossen says that she does have power over him and that she is an incredible woman – only to be stabbed in the neck. What’s happening? And then we see that Echo is no longer Kiki. “What did you call me?” she asks. Then she notices her reflection in the mirror. “Goodness gracious,” she says.

Adelle informs Boyd of the situation, who says that he’ll send the word out to the handlers to pull the actives back in, then get Echo. Inside, Echo-Terry takes Gossen’s wallet and decides that “now they don’t even get a new Aunt Sheila.” Boyd sees Echo-Terry’s squealing tires as she gets the hell out of dodge, then runs in and calls for medical attention for Gossen. The word “whore” is written on the mirror in blood.

I must add that I hate in movies and television shows when people don’t put pressure on the wound. Hello? Basic first aid!

Meanwhile, Topher tells Adelle that his best guess is that things had gotten scrambled when he had tried to isolate Victor’s bio-link grid only. “If Terry’s in Echo,” Adelle asks, “where did Kiki go?” We cut directly to Victor-Kiki doing some sexy sexy club dancing, as well as allowing me to cross “see Enver Gjokaj do pole dance” off my list of hypothetical fangirl pleasures. And Victor, by the way, is a better Kiki than Echo was. “I don’t know how I got here,” Victor-Kiki says, “and I sort of don’t care. Am I drunk?” Lovely.

At the club where we last saw Victor-Terry, Ballard can’t hear Adelle explain the situation over the phone due to the loud music. He does, however, manage to find Victor-Kiki, who had just knocked out a guy who had thrown a punch at him-her because of of his-her flirting. Victor-Kiki is relieved to see Ballard, or “Paul,” and hugs him. Annoying though Kiki is, it’s kind of precious. Rubbing Victor’s hair, Ballard looks right at the sneering crowd and says, “You got a problem?” It’s nice, for once, to see Ballard stand up for someone other than Echo. Gold star for Ballard this week.

Just as the three surviving abductees free themselves, Echo-Terry walks in. They are relieved to see her – until she bashes one of them with the mallet. Echo-Terry accuses “mother” of trying to kill her-him with a car. From just these lines, I can see that Victor is a better Terry than Echo as well. “You always said, be a man,” Echo-Terry says, and begins having flashbacks of Terry himself as well as Victor-Terry. Just as Echo-Terry is about to kill them, she says, “Did I fall asleep?” and is Echo again – for now.

Back at the Dollhouse, Ballard enters with a wilted Victor-Kiki clutching his chest, just in time to see Topher et al. restore power.

We cut back to Echo talking to the abducted women, who are understandably confused. “He’s still here,” she warns them. “He wants to kill you. You have to kill him first.” She throws down the mallet. One of them gets pretty well on the way to beating Echo to death with the mallet before one of the other women stops her. Echo gives this woman the details of her abduction to convince her that Echo is, in fact, Terry – sort of – and that Terry won’t stop. Convinced, the woman prepares a death blow, but is interrupted just in time by Dollhouse personnel.

Later, Adelle informs Ballard that Terry’s uncle is having him transported back to the hospital later, and admits that it would be nice if he never woke up. Wow, that was pointed. Echo walks into the medical area and tells Ballard that she thinks Terry dreams. Not anymore, Ballard tells her, and walks out just as Terry flatlines. “Goodness gracious,” Echo says. End of episode.

Wow. For an episode in which a great deal of emphasis is placed on individual missions (such story arc players as Senator Perrin and ex-active Madeleine are conspicuously absent, for instance), this one sure was heavy in meaning and significance. A huge piece in the “How do things go so horribly wrong?” puzzle falls into place, but of equal importance is this episode’s use of some of the show’s over-arching themes. Tim Minear shows his skill once again, this time giving an interesting exploration of gender roles, sexuality and power.

Here we had two characters, Kiki and Terry. One was female, one was male. One was sexually uninhibited, the other sexually repressed and confused. Both sought power. So which one achieved it? Neither. They were living, in one way or another, in fantasy worlds. Their power was fleeting and illusory – two adjectives that describe the Dollhouse business to a T. Here, there is no black and white. No simple feminine and masculine, powerful and powerless, or good and bad.

Not bad for an hour of television.

This episode, combined with “Vows,” the season opener, has made me incredibly excited about where they’re going this season – rising trouble for the Dollhouse and plenty of development for the main characters. And, of course, ever-looming is the vision of destruction that we saw in the futuristic world of “Epitaph One.”

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