Spoilers. The quality is really irregular in Dollhouse; episode to episode, and even act to act. "Gray Hour" is very compelling and unleashes an agreeable amount of twists for the first 20 minutes, before slowing down enough for you to start criticizing certain elements. But, generally, this was a more accomplished outing that helped wash away the bad taste of last week...Opening with a teaser involving Echo (Eliza Dushku) as a midwife to a rich couple in their mountaintop cabin (again begging the question "why would millionaires employ the services of illegal "actives" to perform tasks regular people can achieve?"), we're thankfully swept into a far more diverting storyline. Echo appears to be imprinted as a fun-loving hooker for a playboy's birthday party at a plush hotel (a more plausible fit for Dushku, it has to be said), only for her group to be sent upstairs to their room by the manager, due to their disruptive behaviour. From there, things take a series of enticing and revealing twists: first, we jump ahead in time to see Echo running away from her client's hotel room with a cut lip, clearly in some distress (most likely from an attempted rape), and is taken by the hotel manager to his secure office.
Inside, she's offered her $10,000 to keep silent about her experience, because it will reflect badly on the hotel, and to sign a form absolving the hotel of any misconduct. Only from there, another surprise hits us – when Echo beats up the creepy manager and her true modus operandi is revealed: she's Taffy, a brilliant safe-cracker, who's orchestrated everything to get access to the manager's office, which happens to be next door to an art museum's vault. Her three-man crew promptly arrive, and she manages to break through the manager's wall into the basement vault, knowing they have the titular "gray hour" to steal priceless artifacts, before the museum's upgraded alarm system officially goes online.Unfortunately, thinks hit a major snag when Echo takes a phone call during the mission, which is intercepted by an outside agent who manages to perform a "remote wipe" of Echo's imprint, turning sassy professional bank robber Taffy back into credulous shell Echo. Even worse, her colleagues have no idea about Taffy's real identity (her participation was arranged by their benefactor), so when the vault seals them in after one of their team absconds with a piece of the Pantheon, they're at a loss to explain Taffy's apparent amnesia and mental breakdown.
It's a really nice idea, although the episode never fully capitalizes on this thrilling opening. Back at the Dollhouse, DeWitt (Olivia Williams) decides to imprint Sierra (Dichen Lachman) with the same Taffy imprint, so she can talk Echo through how to escape from the vault before security arrive. Meanwhile, Echo's handler Boyd (Harry J. Lennix) catches the team's traitor, but the script is forced to invent semi-plausible reasons why Boyd can't just re-enter the building and extract Echo himself. It’s apparently a mazelike system of corridors, and I guess Boyd wouldn't have the skills to break through the safe anyway. So, I can live with that. But it may become tiresome if episodes constantly have to nullify Boyd in various ways.Imprint expert Topher (Fran Kranz) is at a loss to explain who could have wiped Echo remotely, as that's a branch of theoretical technology even he would struggle to create. As expected, it's later revealed that it was probably the work of the renegade active known as Alpha – who I'm imagining must have retained numerous imprints, turning him a psychotic mastermind and jack-of-all-trades.
Overall, this was possibly my favourite episode so far. It actually had more storytelling problems than "The Target" (particularly in its last third) and I wasn't as emotionally connected as I'd hoped to be, but I'm enjoying how the mytharc is being teased along. Echo, Sierra and Victor are noticed to be interacting with each other in their tabula rasa state at the Dollhouse, with Topher citing its similarity with instinctually flocking birds. It was also a nice idea to have Sierra inhabit the Taffy character we'd seen Echo play initially, as the pear-faced actress did a great job duplicating Dushku's mannerisms.
There are still issues with the premise (the fact Echo becomes different people is a barrier to becoming terribly invested in her as a character, although her "default" state is getting more airtime than I expected), I'm still not swayed by the show's reasoning for clients to be spending thousands/millions for actives with skills available elsewhere, and the recurring subplot for Agent Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) is becoming a bit dull already, despite the neat idea of having his main contact be active Victor (Enver Gjokaj).
6 March 2009
Fox, 9/8c
Writers: Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft
Director: Rod Hardy
Cast: Eliza Dushku (Echo), Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard), Olivia Williams (Adelle DeWitt), Fran Kranz (Topher Brink), Harry J. Lennix (Boyd Langton), Enver Gjokaj (Lubov/Victor), Dichen Lachman (Sierra), Amy Acker (Dr. Claire Saunders), Liza Lapira (Ivy), Reed Diamond (Laurence Dominic), Anson Mount (Vitas), Toby Leonard Moore (Walton), Kevin Will (Gerry), Sarah McElligott (Nancy), Andrew Bowen (Scott), Mark Ivanir (Cyril) & Tony Amendola (Atalo Diakos)
